Climbing the Spitball Wall - An Unsullied's Take on A Song of Ice and Fire - Reading Complete! Now onto Rewatching the Show and Anticipating Season 6!

[WindyNights]

That explains how Brienne of Tarth ended up as Captain Phasma and Jojen was some random mook.

[Triskan]

I came here to mention that "Qartheen warlocks with the Crow's Eye" fact for shimpy, but it's been said already ! 

 

That's another one of those stuff I didnt get at all at my first reading !

[Delta1212]

That explains how Brienne of Tarth ended up as Captain Phasma and Jojen was some random mook.

I thought I saw Jojen.

[Ashara Payne]

Mr. Plinkett is hilarious.

I've noticed Nina Gold's name crop up as Casting Director for a few movies now.

[Triskan]

There were six GoT actors in The Force Awakens. 

 

Gwendoline Christie, Thomas Brodie-Sangster, Jessica Henwick, Mark Stanley, Miltos Yeromelou and Max von Sydow ! ;)

 

Although we didnt get to see Mark and Miltos faces... Gwen's neither for that matter, but well, let's not delve back into the "underused Phasma" debate (it's not even a debate it's a universal complaint, but well...) again

Edited December 29, 2015 by Triskan

[Haleth]

Shoot, I was too busy looking for Lost actors! Guess I'll have to see it again.

[stillshimpy]

By the way, Guys.  I did actually notice the Wizards on the Water: Pyatt Pree and crew sailing out of Pentos detail.  I highlighted the passage in my kindle too.  I just didn't think it was worth remarking on because it's just a tie-in vs. a payoff a plot point.  It's kind of like when I noticed the dragon-through-the-wolfs'-eyes detail, and figured it would eventually become important.  

 

I do agree that he's very good about adding connecting narrative tissue like that, it's fun.  I keep waiting to find out what smelled so horrible on the ship that Quentyn was contemplating, by the way.

[Haleth]

I'm pretty sure he was smelling slaves.

[dragonbone]

We were not told where Rickon went in the books

 

There have been a couple solid clues on this given, but I don't know if it could be figured out from the text alone so far

[Mya Stone]

I'm pretty sure he was smelling slaves.

I always thought it was the beginning of

the pale mare

. At least that's how I read it.

[DigitalCount]

Personally I wish we'd gotten season 5 spoiler

Xaro back on the show. Having him back with unknown intentions while the Sons tear up Meereen would have been great, that scene shimpy talked about in particular. I know she's super dismissive in the book, but all those lines can be read like veiled threats while Dany's scared out of her mind.

[WSmith84]

IIRC, Ducksauce bit the dust on the show, didn't he? Dany left him in a vault with no way to escape, along with that prostitute who turned evil for no reason.

[jellyroll2]

Yes, he's dead in the show as far as we know. Of course it was an "I'm leaving you here to die" type death so anything is possible lol

[John Potts]

WSmith84 Ducksauce bit the dust on the show, didn't he?

 

Yes, but it was an offscreen, implied death so bringing him back wouldn't be too much of a stretch!

[Haleth]

Especially if he was an ally of wizards.

Edited December 30, 2015 by Haleth

[WSmith84]

Yes, but it was an offscreen, implied death so bringing him back wouldn't be too much of a stretch!

 

That's true I suppose.

[Constantinople]

IIRC, Ducksauce bit the dust on the show, didn't he? Dany left him in a vault with no way to escape, along with that prostitute who turned evil for no reason.

...to clear handmaiden space for Missandei in Season 3.

Besides, by then in the show, Dany's dragons had been stolen and TV Doreah was all about the dragons. Without them, Dany was just another Jane.

 

 

Yes, but it was an offscreen, implied death so bringing him back wouldn't be too much of a stretch!

If Ducksauce and Doreah time their deaths properly, they could keep resurrecting one another.

But they're still stuck in the vault.

[nksarmi]

Don't we get some clue about where Rickon is from the shared wolf dreams?  Doesn't his wolf encounter something in one of those dreams that has to be pretty rare?  (Not that I know enough about Westerous to piece together where he is from that but it feels like other people have done it).

 

Anyway, shimpy - I can't remember what you thought of Dany before book five, but I'm interested in knowing if your opinion of her changes over the course of this book.  I admit that GRRM really tried my patience after he had her decide to stay in Meereen and "learn to rule."  I went from being incredibly caught up in her journey to being thoroughly annoyed with it.  I think my interest in Barrister and his stories about Rhaegar (because of how all of this might relate to Jon) were about the only thing that kept me going in Dany's story after awhile. 

[Brn2bwild]

Don't we get some clue about where Rickon is from the shared wolf dreams?  Doesn't his wolf encounter something in one of those dreams that has to be pretty rare?  (Not that I know enough about Westerous to piece together where he is from that but it feels like other people have done it).

 

Anyway, shimpy - I can't remember what you thought of Dany before book five, but I'm interested in knowing if your opinion of her changes over the course of this book.  I admit that GRRM really tried my patience after he had her decide to stay in Meereen and "learn to rule."  I went from being incredibly caught up in her journey to being thoroughly annoyed with it.  I think my interest in Barrister and his stories about Rhaegar (because of how all of this might relate to Jon) were about the only thing that kept me going in Dany's story after awhile. 

 

I actually ended up liking Dany better after ADWD, seeing how 

her heart was generally in the right place, and she did make sacrifices (marry Hizdar) and take risks (visited people sick with the pale mare). Some of her actions, like not killing the nobles' children, seem wise in retrospect.

[Terra Nova]

@Brn2bwild:

 

what risks? (Dance spoiler)

she wrongly thinks she's immune to any sickness. If anything, she's endangering her servants and soldiers, since she brings her retinue and orders the Unsullied to touch the dead and the infected

Edited December 31, 2015 by Terra Nova

[Brn2bwild]

You have a point, Terra Nova.  But then again, 

she takes other risks, like letting herself be guarded by the Brazen Beasts in the name of solidarity with her people.

[John Potts]

Personally, I've found myself liking Danny less as the Books progress - she starts out as a pure victim - a bartered bride to buy her brother an army. She gradually over the next two books drags herself up to having a conquering army and a trio of dragons, mostly by guts, determination, a bit of cunning and a slice of ruthlessness. But since the end of SoS she's pretty much stagnated and done more harm than good. Her intentions are mostly noble (you really can't argue with wanting to abolish slavery) but the actual effect of her actions has probably been to cause more deaths than the people she's opposing. And if the idea was to see Danny learning to rule, then I'd like to see some indication she's actually gaining wisdom, but it doesn't seem very apparent lately. 

[WindyNights]

The idea wasn't Dany learning to rule. It was putting Dany in a series of conflicts to test and explore her character.

She's not in AFFC but she goes through the most development in ADWD equal to AGOT. She ends the book with [

]thinking Westeros is her home and that she's a Tagaryen meant to conquer with fire and blood not to compromise and sit on her ass to plant trees in Meereen. [

]

And to be honest, she was kind of coming off Sueish in ASOS. It's like she was playing the game of thrones on easy mode.

[John Potts]

True, but if the author makes everything easy for a character, you can hardly blame readers for going "Well, she seemed to be ruling far better earlier on!" Particularly given Dance ends

with her almost right back where she started - no subjects, no armies, no cities - just(!) a dragon.

 

And Happy New Year everyone!

[ebevan91]

Anyone else waiting for her to get to the (not for Shimpy)

Aegon

chapter?

Edited January 1, 2016 by ebevan91

[Brn2bwild]

I'm also waiting for (not for shimpy) 

her to get to the Manderly chapters.

[ebevan91]

I'm also waiting for (not for shimpy) 

her to get to the Manderly chapters.

 

The North was really the only part of the book I liked.

[WindyNights]

I liked it all.

I think people who don't like Dany's chapters are the people who don't like Essos in general sans Bravoos and find it irrelevant but it's not irrelevant and that's what some people have to understand.

[Lady S.]

Unless any of the characters are going to stay in Essos for the duration, then I think it's considerably less relevant than Westeros. It's also noteworthy that we only see Essos through the PoVs of Westerosi. If GRRM wanted to prove this land was important, he should have done so by giving a PoV to an Essos native. (That's enough reason for me to believe Dany will get her ass to Westeros, there's no reason to care about any of the Meereenese she's trying to rule.)  

The fact that he thought Barristan was the only PoV choice after Dany left Meereen, and not, say, any one of her handmaids, is a pretty clear indicator imo of  the importance Essos and its people serve for him. 

At first I thought the Grey Worm/Missandei romance on the show was annoying, but I can appreciate the intent, if not the execution, of trying to develop the characters as more than just appendages to Dany.

[Haleth]

Hey, Happy New Year, y'all!

[stillshimpy]

Hey there, sorry I've made zero progress in the last few days. Let's hear it for the holidays :-)  Happy New Year, everyone and may 2016 treat us all like Kings.  Or you know, like no one in this show.  Like playboy Kings who are actually figureheads, with all whims indulged and who have no concerns about power struggles.  Of course, that would leave the paparazzi to be avoided and every misstep recorded for the permanent record.  Plus, playboy Kings have liver enzymes like ...whoa.  So screw it,  good fortune in comfortable surroundings to all of us.  (I never get to make the New Year's toast, can't imagine why).  

 

The problem with bringing back Ducksauce , even with the implied death (that never counts) is that he'd need to be acting from afar.  Dany wouldn't allow him in the city or shouldn't.  They changed that plot enough that he couldn't actually ever be seen by Dany as anyone other than a person plotting to do her great harm: see learning from the past so as not to repeat it.  So they already shot the Ducksauce wad in terms of "she wouldn't see it coming" .  She'd totally see it coming and have reason to have him sliced, diced and julienne fried. 

 

 

Anyway, shimpy - I can't remember what you thought of Dany before book five, but I'm interested in knowing if your opinion of her changes over the course of this book.  I admit that GRRM really tried my patience after he had her decide to stay in Meereen and "learn to rule."  I went from being incredibly caught up in her journey to being thoroughly annoyed with it.  I think my interest in Barrister and his stories about Rhaegar (because of how all of this might relate to Jon) were about the only thing that kept me going in Dany's story after awhile.

 

Dany's plot from book to series is not generally so markedly different as it pertains to her actual characterization to draw a lot of focus for me.  They've lost a metric ton of world-building details and ditched as many magical elements as possible, so it's a bit gutted.  Still, the basic structure of who Dany is remains the same.  That actually can't be said of a bunch of the other characters.  Jon is arguably a very different character from page to screen, because the necessity of externalizing so much of his internal process was played as angsty, teenage whining.  Oh joy.  When they finally got around to correcting that, then came The Stall at The Wall and all its attendant momentum murder. 

 

A character like Robb is taken from an almost pure martyr in the book to being very much an active participant in his own downfall.  Arya in the book is a person formed from her trauma and it is easy to see her loss of identity by inches and with regret and sadness from the actual character.  Screen Arya has a full-on psychotic break and becomes a character whose almost sole animating force is as someone wanting murderous revenge.  Jaime from book to screen is so wildly different it boggles the mind and Cersei is simply a different character with the same name.   

 

So they've changed the essential characteristics of a lot of players, but the same can't really be said for Dany.  From book to screen her story becomes more ordinary, but she's mostly the same character.  She's honestly not the most gripping character to ever grace a page and she benefited from having an actor add some shading to some of her more straight-forward actions.  Screen Dany it's actually a little bit easier to believe she got involved with Daario because she's deeply lonely, but there's no real emotional peril there.  Book Dany has a real crush on the guy and whereas the motivation might be the same she seems a lot younger, partially because she's in love with an Anime creation in the book.  

 

However, there is one thing: it's becoming a little alarming how much the series took Dany from ....not the best work in the books, sort of standard issue coming of age, but with power plays and lessons....to something that very often comes across as Dany: The White Savior and it's been startling to realize "oh shit, the series actually did a lot of that on purpose....why-god-why?"  

 

So book Dany's story isn't any more riveting and it is treading narrative water like mad, but reading about all the various characters involved, it has startled me that the show made a couple of decisions that aren't from any "An Older White Guy Wrote This, What Are You Gonna Do?"  kind of "well, that was a ....decision....?"  

 

Realizing that Ducksauce went from a white, gay man to a black guy with duplicity running in his lying veins is really the easiest one to point to in the "Why the fuck did you do that, Show?"  games. 

[bobbybuilderton]

I'd say that on the surface show and book Daenerys are similar at this point, but when you start to read analysis it becomes clear how little they have in common. It'll be for after you're done, though.  Not only do her actions in the show not make much sense, but they are somewhat the opposite of what she does in the books. I think it's one of those situations where they mistake a set of plot points to knock off as being sufficient for a good story. Certain beats from her story in ADwD are there, but the events and also her characterization are different. Her decisions are erratic and they upped her aggression and stubbornness. I don't care much for either version of the character though, so meh.

 

They also changed Saan's race and removed the Summer Islander who was constantly petitioning Robert to help him take back his land. The second one is pretty minor, but still. I liked the idea of him.

[stillshimpy]

They also changed Saan's race

 

I noticed that too and they also reduced the character to a bunch of cliches, who is only briefly there, whereas in the book he's loyal to Davos to a truly touching level for a pirate.  So they really simplified that character too.  Some of this will be inevitable since they just wouldn't have the time to put everything onscreen, but some of it is just a little bit baffling. 

[Haleth]

but some of it is just a little bit baffling.

Ha. Just wait.

[bobbybuilderton]

Nah you can't have things like loyalty and friendship it wouldn't be gritty and realistic enough. We do, however, have ample time for fetching brown pants

[WindyNights]

Shae also got changed from Westerosi to someone from Essos.

[Delta1212]

Shae also got changed from Westerosi to someone from Essos.

I think that's mostly down to the fact that they really liked Sibel Kekilli, who has a very obvious accent.

[DigitalCount]

Speaking as a Summer Islander, I'm really glad they removed the walking joke of Jalabar Xho. I'm pretty sure he'd stick out like a sore thumb. All these noble subdued Westerosi, and then this guy is a freaking toucan, he's as bad as Daario in some ways.

[ImpinAintEasy]

I like show Saan better than book Saan. I don't see the big difference. Show Saan is funnier, and is still friends with Davos. So, this falls under the nitpicky category again for me. I can't get worked up about tertiary characters and their portrayals.

If I did, I guess I would look forward to discussing the differences between show Yezzan and book Yezzan, or something similar.

[bobbybuilderton]

Well nobody was worked up really, just pointed out a difference. Which is that they changed his race, for some reason. Which is a fact.

[stillshimpy]

Yeah, no one is wringing their hands over it, it's just sort of an odd decision particularly when they reduced the character to agreeing to help Stannis by making a crude "It's HBO, we can hurl gendered insults around!  Also? Boobs!!" joke.  

 

Just saying, if they felt that GoT needed un-white-washing they chose the least layered ways. 

[ImpinAintEasy]

Is Saan's portrayal so different on the show? I just searched my kindle and came to a discussion he is having with Davos in ACOK. In it, he gropes a serving woman and speaks of bedding Queen Cersei. Seems fairly consistent with show Saan. 

[nksarmi]

I don't think I can talk about my biggest issues with Dany's story in book five until the end, but I just lost all investment in her over the course of this book. 

 

What I did find interesting was seeing non-book readers start to see Dany as a villain over the course of season five (maybe they did before but I wasn't reading boards before that).  I never felt that way about her, but I can honestly say that if I look at season five and try to forget what I know from the books - I can kind of see it.  I mean with just the choses the show made of what to include - it's easy to wonder if Meereen is any better off under Dany's rule than they were before. 

Edited January 1, 2016 by nksarmi

[WindyNights]

Speaking as a Summer Islander, I'm really glad they removed the walking joke of Jalabar Xho. I'm pretty sure he'd stick out like a sore thumb. All these noble subdued Westerosi, and then this guy is a freaking toucan, he's as bad as Daario in some ways.

Lol wut. Robert Baratheon wears foot long antlers on his helmet and he fucks everything that moves. Jal hasn't even uttered a single word of dialogue as far as I can recall.

His backstory is actually kinda interesting.The thing about him is that he's the Summer Islander version of a Viserys except that he 's content to wait which he does rather than impatiently press himself on Robert like Viserys did to Drogo.

He's also kind of a bad person as the Summer Islands are a very peaceful place and he actually tries to take it over with a foreign army instead of doing things the normal Summer Island way. That makes him reprehensible.

[

]Despite being ruled by several rival independent princes and princesses, the Summer Islands are by and large a peaceful place. War is not unknown there, but those that they do have are highly ritualized, taking place on days and times chosen by their priests. These battles more closely resemble tournament melees in Westeros, or a larger-scale version of a trial of seven. Two opposing teams of warriors (both male and female) meet at the battlefield chosen and consecrated in advance by their priests. It is forbidden to use their mighty goldenheart bows, only spears and slings. Such "wars" rarely last longer than a single day. The losers who survive are not executed or mutilated but must leave the islands in exile, while the winners gain what was in dispute (i.e. the loser's lands). In this way, only the warriors themselves are harmed, without crops and homes being burned, women raped, or innocent commoners slaughtered by invading armies.[

] Edited January 1, 2016 by WindyNights

[chandraReborn]

Yeah, I never saw Xho as a joke--maybe I was just missing things? He seemed to be in a pretty similar position to Viserys. 

[WSmith84]

Yeah, I never saw Xho as a joke--maybe I was just missing things? He seemed to be in a pretty similar position to Viserys. 

 

He's basically in the exact same position, he just has the sense not to press the issue.

 

Also: happy new year! Feliz ano novo! Late as it is.

[stillshimpy]

In it, he gropes a serving woman and speaks of bedding Queen Cersei. Seems fairly consistent with show Saan.

 

Not precisely, whereas that element is part of Saan in the book, in the show, that's all he is.  No sticking around and being loyal.  No saving Davos from himself.  He's a thief and a lech and then he's gone.  So they removed any balancing characteristics.  Again, I'm hardly het up about it, but if they were going to choose to diminish his character traits, it is sort of typically "HBO, they think their audience is comprised of 14 year olds sneaking a peek at their parents cable subscription".

[bobbybuilderton]

No rush on finishing this book, shimpy. You've got months. probably half a year, at least

[Brn2bwild]

No rush on finishing this book, shimpy. You've got months. probably half a year, at least

 

Unless her goal is to watch Season Six fully informed of what's happened in the books.

[bobbybuilderton]

Is she even watching season 6? Thought she was done with the show altogether