Terra Nova

Saw the pictures and, yep:

Yes, it was me, thanks Shimpy ^^ Also, since I am not going to watch Season 6, and I will embark on a fool questo to see if I can avoid... well, it's more for how long I can avoid spoilers, I will stay here lurking around until the end of the week, and then I will disappear in a cloud of sulphur. So, thanks everyone for the ride, it's been a blast, and most of all thanks Mya for being an excellent mod (and helping me embed a picture in a comment XD) and Shimpy for the inside, the snark, the chance for a collective (re-)read and all the rest :)

Oh, that's really interesting, could you make some specific example? And, also, your change of mind is due to the comparison with the source or to have had some time to mull over some things? On another topic, it seems the showrunners want S7 and S8 to be only 13 episodes in total: http://variety.com/2016/tv/news/game-of-thrones-end-date-season-8-1201752746/

^ This The culmination of Jon's arc could have been his election as Lord Commander, and leaving the 9th episode free of the big battle would have let the ending of each other arc breathe a little better, since S4 finale was choked full of 'bombastic, shocking moments!': 'Stannis charges! The Wall is safe! The Children of the Forest! Not!Brynden! the dragons locked! Brienne vs the Hound! Tyrion! Shae! Happy Father's Day, Tywin! From that point of view, that episode was really unbalanced, the tension was ramped up for its entire length, and it ended up jumping from one character to the other in order to close all the storylines (not Margaery's, since as said upthread they just drop her around the sixth episode of each season, lol).

The Craster detour also created an(other) ENORMOUS plot hole: Jon knows Bran is alive, somehow divines where he could go but doesn't find him, and then... he never mentions Bran again! When he renounces Winterfell he should mention that it belongs to his very alive brother, but that is the least: he doesn't worry the Wildling army may catch him or, you know, one season later, when he sees the army of the dead that is roaming the land , that Bran may be a zombonie. I would be have the living daylight scared of me thinking my very young and crippled brother to be out there alone. This could have been solved by having Sam promise Bran not to tell a soul about him, since Jon uses the pretext of Karl fooking Tanner giving away the NW's number as the reason to attact him a anyway (another plot hole, since Mance grew in the NW and surely he knows they have only three castles scantily manned).

Also, in the books Shae is around eighteen, ten years younger than Tyrion. The imbalance in age, social class and wealth is enormous (something the show took great care to mitigate as much as possible). And Shae through the silks and the jewels Tyrion promised her (and then took away) could have hoarded enough for retiring and live the rest of her life as a free woman. So of course she tries to get as much as possible out of the deal. Re: Sansa, in the show they even had her saying 'I would kill for that girl!' only for two scenes (ok, maybe three, but I swear it's not more than that) later testify and sentencing her to death (btw, I liked the acting in that scene, in a vacuum: she starts esitantly, clearly reciting what Cersei/Tywin told her, and then almost cries when she says 'I am a whore, remember?' After that she is all flared up and contemptuous, but she seems puzzled when Tyrion asks for the combat - I took that as an evidence she was told he would have been exiled and so she was trying to save his life... yeah, sweet dreams are made of this...).

I mantain that Shae should have been the show equivalent of Tysha, but they dropped her like a hot potato and shoe-horned her in the same position of her book counterpart. It's baffling since during that sort of party before the Battle of the Green Fork in S1 they even had Tyrion failing to read her and guess where she came from, as to suggest that mentally Shae is his equal, at least. Then as soon as she reached King's Landing she reverted to some annoying and incredibly dumb woman. They could have used her as an echo chamber for some of Sansa's thoughts - since bla bla bla inner mologue bla bla difficult to transpose and so on - or to show how harsh the life of smallfolk can be, and there where brief hints of both, but everything just went out of the window in Season 4. And then of course she attacks Tyrion with a tiny knife when found in Tywin's bed.

Yeah, when Qhorin started to explain how Jon should have pretended to defect to the Widlings, Jon even asked him "but you will tell Lord Mormont that it's all a ploy, and that I never broke my oath, right?" (and sneaky sneaky Qhorin told him 'I will telll him, next time I see him', already knowing he needed to die to sell Jon's betrayal) *^* poor sweet boy! @Gertrude I think 'minor' deviations tend to be even more annoying than big ones, since most of the time they are not really needed, nor they improve significantly the plot. I guess on a first watch people tend to give the benefit of the doubt - I tried not to mind Talisa too much, since I told myself that even such a deviation would have ended up being irrelevant after the Red Wedding anyway -, but in hindsight you start and see the pattern, or how a small change in S1 or 2 led to an enormous deviation later on (like, for me it was clear they didn't like Stannis, but I kept telling myself that it didn't matter, once at the Wall they would have been forced to do him justice, or at least let his actions speak for him, and... yeah...)

That's debatable. In the book, Jon just learned that Mance sneaked into Winterfell and was there at the feast, so he knows what Jon is talking about (he saw him sulking far away from the high table). Moreover, because of the backstory provided by Qhorin, Jon knows Mance has been raised by the NW but he himself has Wildling's blood. Jon is trying to create a personal connection to Mance, on the basis they both suffered from discrimination - bastards are treacherous! Wildlings are savages! - and restriction to their personal freedom - a bastard can't do this and that! A crow can take no wife! -. And since the best lies are spiced with truth, Jon truly resents his status as a bastard, something he still hasn't fully overcome in Dance. And with Tyrion poisoning his mind when he joined the NW, but without Donal Noye's eyes-opener speech, Jon may have well turned into a bitter angry person (well, some of his brothers would have gutted him first, most likely, lol) with no respect for 'higher' ideals, the very same thing that caused him to join the cesspit at the Wall. The desire for freedom and equality Jon is advocating for himself is also the main basis for the grudge the Wildlings harbor towards the Westerosi. And that worked very well, since Mance himself deserted the NW for similar reasons, and later Mance-as-Rattleshirt totally wanted to kick Jon's ass and openly adressed his 'treachery' for turning back to the wildlings' cause. On the show, Mance comments that Jon 'wants to be the hero', something quite apart from Jon's characterization in the books, and closer to the bratty tv version (he proposes to go with Qhorin instead of being chosen, he disobeys his orders and doesn't kill Ygritte, causing the death and failure of the rest of his group, bickers with Mormont at Craster's because he's unable to keep his mouth shut and so on). I would rather buy someone's betrayal because of petty reasons, instead of some grand desire for 'doing the right thing'. Also, I think Shanna Marie (I am sorry if I misunderstood ^^) was complaining about the changes in the mission to the Frostfangs, i.e. the endless verbal abuse on Ygritte's part, something that surely sold us the idea she's totes ready to be in love with Jon, the idiotic circumstances that led to them being separated from the main group and, in my opinion, the abysmal treatment of Qhorin and the whole skinchanger affair.

@Alayne: Yes, Jon is very kind with Leathers, and Satin, and even Wun Wun: the wildling, the whore and the monster. That's how it appeared to Westerosi in the NW. But Jon stopped dining with the others, in almost all the gatherings he just gave orders and no reassurances (the three dead rangers come to mind), and grew increasingly snappy with Marsh and the others. Worse, everytime he came up with something closer to treason. It is easy from the outside think he has become haughty and dismissive, and while Jon noticed that, he never put some effort in mitigating the effect. He made himself not particularly loved, but neither feared since he steadily refused the trappings of power, as Mel noticed. This is a far cry from the paternalistic but-don't-mess-with-me approach of Ned.

I wouldn't say though that Ned was distant to his men: he taught both Robb and Jon that they should listen to their smallfolk, and even allowed one of them in turn to sit at the high table close to him, so to chat a little. Heck, he surely knew how to party with the hill clans and keep them at bay. He also gave the very reasonable warning not to become friends with someone's own subjects, since one day they could need to sit in judgment and sentence them to death. Jon as Lord Commander was really good at the second part... and that only, since he actively alienated his supporters in the low ranks of the Night's Watch. (but it's a nitpick, all in all)

I think part of Robb's role in the book is exactly to be quite an opaque character, since he's mainly seen through Catelyn's eyes who has to come to termes with the notion that he's not her boy anymore. That's why he's off page for a good chunk of Clash. As Linda Antonsson said, 'he goes to war and becomes a legend'. And that's why when he reappears in Storm he's already married. Still, it is still possible to sense the character living off the page: his doubts, the way Jeyne is still half a stranger to him, the fear about his wolfdreams. I understand why they wanted to make him more relevant on the show, and since they don't seem to like to portray military campaigns and that the actor looks too old to have the same insecurieties of his book counterpart, the lovestory route may have made sense... but the way it was done! I would have rather liked Robb facing moral dilemmas and the consequences on the smallfolk of his - justified - war: in S2 Roose says they have too many prisoners, it would have been a good chance to show how good characters have to make unsavory decisions, or even if Robb still refused to harm them, this should have had an impact. Part of this lack of material outside the twu lurv thing is also because they brought back the Tullys only for the Red Wedding, never to be seen again; having the Blackfish as Robb's mentor, or Catelyn in Riverrun with her dying father would have provided exposure and context to that whole plotline.

Worse, she scolded Robb for not knowing what he wanted to do after overthrowing and killing Joffrey and Robb was too dumbstruck to say a thing. So for Talisa to shine Robb had to have a sudden brain edema or something along those lines. It's such an illogical way to frame it, because Robb is fighting for an independent North, so of course he plans to rule and defend it once the was is over. But no, suddenly he's an idiot who wants to slay Joffrey for reveeeeeenge and then? who knows! This is what Martin said about plucky farmgirls:

Because it seemed thet thought Jeyne Westerling too passive and feminine for Robb. Instead a sassy girl who talks back to the King and despise arranging feasts and other 'girly' stuff is worthier. This is just like how the replaced the other Jeyne because they thought the audience wouldn't be invested in her (which goes exactly against her point in the book) Because she betrayed their own setting ('Westeros is a though world and of course women get raped') by having her walk unattended on the battlefield and free to sneak into whichever encampment she fancied. Because it was more than hinted she could have been a spy, only for her to be stabbed in her swollen belly for SHOCK! I also do not regard their love story that succesfully told: they talk, she's sassy and whops! They are rolling naked on the floor. This cannot be the soulcrushing love story they tried to sold us. Because she made Robb look like a whiny brat who didn't want to make sacrifices for his kingdom and instead put the blame on Catelyn - who in turn vets sidelined so to get more screentime to Talisa -. Finally, it showed how willing they were to change the story, a bad omen for what was yet to come. Bibliography: http://turtle-paced.tumblr.com/post/142072695202/you-have-criticized-talisas-character-a-couple-of http://starkalypse.com/post/39295219266/if-you-like-talisa-or-robb-dont-read-this http://turtle-paced.tumblr.com/post/130331693072/a-waste-of-time http://jonconsredbeard.tumblr.com/post/130359778667/whats-the-problem-with-talisa-or-how-people#notes

@OhOkayWhat: Oh, ok, I slightly misunderstood your previous comment, but yep, I think it's a case of different interpretations on that quote; IMHO he wouldn't say smt that could have been seen as a critic to the showrunner if he was still on he show. We (well, you guys) will see :) @Alayne: I think that Nymeria is so marginal that even if she reappears on screen it won't be a problem for the actress and her schedule. I mean, even if Loras dies the actor has to film at least a couple of scenes before he's done. That said, D&D just said that they didn't change a single thing after last year critics, so I think we will have Dorne again... at least they will show us Ellaria's head on a spike, since she' totes toast after what she's done, right?