-
Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.
*UNMARKED SPOILERS ALL BOOKS* Game of Thrones |OT| - Season 7 Offseason Thread
- Thread starter Steelyuhas
- Start date
- Status
The payoff for Quentyn hasn't yet come, its with Gerris and Doran that his loss will be felt, and in Arianne's arc and Dany's war that his importance will show.
And Ned was a hero and will yet prove to be the hero of the series. Eventually Jon is going to have to choose to embrace the Stark or Targaryen ways as he knows them, as Ned taught him on the Stark side. He'll choose Stark and the world will be saved for him having made that choice.
And Ned was a hero and will yet prove to be the hero of the series. Eventually Jon is going to have to choose to embrace the Stark or Targaryen ways as he knows them, as Ned taught him on the Stark side. He'll choose Stark and the world will be saved for him having made that choice.
Quentyn's story was great because the guy thought himself the far-away foreign prince coming in to save the day and get the girl like you see in many fairy tales. And then he gets burned to death over his own stupidity and arrogance. Welcome to the great game, Quentyn (and Doran). I'm happy GRRM included his story.
And I see mentions of Darkstar but even he's not that bad because the narrative was never about him. His time in the story is very, very brief. Too brief to really complain about. It was always about Arianne having a blindspot. When you insert yourself into the game and take matters into your own hands as a leader, you can't make mistakes like that and expect to come out aces.
And I see mentions of Darkstar but even he's not that bad because the narrative was never about him. His time in the story is very, very brief. Too brief to really complain about. It was always about Arianne having a blindspot. When you insert yourself into the game and take matters into your own hands as a leader, you can't make mistakes like that and expect to come out aces.
Human Trashcan
Banned
I liked Quentyn's arc. I like all the world-building in books 4 and 5. I think they're essential to what GRRM is doing. I'd rate 4&5, as one book (if you haven't done the FeastDance read I highly, highly recommend it) just below book 3 as my favorite.
Also if you think GRRM was making Darkstar out to actually be cool I question your reading comprehension.
Also if you think GRRM was making Darkstar out to actually be cool I question your reading comprehension.
wesleyshark
Banned
Books 4 and 5 together are my favorite so far. There's so much world building... It just sucks you in.
Winds of Winter is shaping up to be the best of the series.
War Peaceman
You're a big guy.
GRRM definitely set him up to be seen that way by readers so that he could subvert it.
One of the things I love most about the Dunk and Egg stories is that you get the world building GRRM excels at but with the burden of plotting.
Human Trashcan
Banned
Yeah Dunk & Egg is excellent, the graphic novel adaptation of Hedge Knight is one of my favorite stories ever, period. I read the short story as well but that adaptation is so good, it's a little nuts.
Mix Master
Member
Kevan Lannister was the true MVP until the end, RIP.
Fuck off with that condescension, GRRM himself has said as much:
http://www.westeros.org/Citadel/SSM/Entry/1764
Indeed.
Look at the first season of Spartacus. Mostly takes place in a single location. It's laser focused on a few characters, and all of them interact with each other. The events in Rome revolve around two characters. Even when the show sometimes focuses on Roman aristocracy, it always comes back to Pullo and Vorenus. What does GoT revolve around? Where's the focus? It's hard to manage something like Game of Thrones and turn it into something that feels cohesive, flows adequately and has properly developed characters. Has D&D really managed to do that? Well no, but it's entertaining enough, some shitty writing aside. GoT shares the same issues with the books. The story got out of GRRM's hands, and D&D went down that path along with him. After seven years, it seems the show is finally climbing out of that hole by setting up all the pieces so that they actually play with each other next year.
p.s. Quentyn is a royal waste of time. Awful book.
LAUGHTREY
Modesty becomes a woman
In the books its because he's given warm bodies and Cersei is basically his patron. He's a sicko freak from the Brave Companions.
In the show its because they're bad writers.
He's a Martell spy. Maybe.
DKehoe
Member
If Cersei is in power then he pretty much gets to do whatever he wants.
Human Trashcan
Banned
"He thought it would go over well" = / = "I think this character is hella rad"
Also wow people get really mad here at the slightest provocation
Reading a Knight of the Seven Kingdoms for the first time and this is brilliant. I can't put it down. Not sure if I want HBO to get their hands on it come GoT's finish.
On one hand, it'd adapt waaaaay better than GoT with it's more simple structure and less characters. On the other, I think I could only stomach so many dick jokes about Dunk and his height.
On one hand, it'd adapt waaaaay better than GoT with it's more simple structure and less characters. On the other, I think I could only stomach so many dick jokes about Dunk and his height.
Not really a narrative nor a Diabolus Ex Machina.
Darkstar is a one note character thus far a la Shae and Daario whose shown up in 7 pages max.
The character is about as prominent as Big Bucket.
The show has kind of played this down a bit, but Qyburn works for Cersei because she lets him do all his unethical experiments to his heart's content.
hendersonhank
Member
He's a disgraced Maester but Cersei took him in and made him her maester and most trusted advisor and right hand man, while spurning the "real" maester Pycelle who treated Qyburn like shit. She also encourages and sponsors his experimentation.
This is his motivation in both book and show. Give me a break with this "because bad writers" BS. The writing is not always good on the show but you are clearly showing a bias here.
God Dayumm
Banned
Qyburn took an interest in befriending Jaime Lannister even before Cersei helped him with the experiments. He clearly wanted to gain powerful influences or has some ulterior motives
Or he wants to help dissolve the Lannister's power.
demosthenes
Member
Sir Gregor goes on a rampage and kills a ton of people, fighting breaks out and there are casualties?
Acidote
Member
Actually, I've always thought Tommen would kill himself after Cersei poisoned Margaery or something like that, making Cersei even more directly responsible.
Byakuya769
Member
Going at someone's reading comprehension is kind of aggressive, breh.
Margaery loses her trial and gets executed as a traitor to the crown. I've speculated that since before even season 5 came out.
Plus it dissolves the alliance between the Tyrells and the Lannisters and gives Aegon an easier and faster win. It also possibly pushes the Tyrells to Aegon's camp.
Tommen gets killed by Jon Connington or the Sand Snakes. All three want him dead. Same with Myrcella actually. I imagine Jon Connington is going to present both their bodies draped in dragon cloaks as a callback to Tywin and his murder of the Targ children.
Tommen is a 8, bro. A dull eight year old.
It's a failure as a narrative because it added nothing to the story and all of his chapters simply added bloat to a book that was so bloated it had to be split into two books. There was nothing in his POV that added to the story and couldn't have been excluded.
I'm not even saying his story, "Dornish Prince arrives in Mereen and tries to wed Dany as part of an old pact but gets rejected and turned into dragon food." won't add to story, just that he didn't require chapters for it and a lot of pages could have been saved in an already bloated book.
Without his chapters, we would have lost a view of Volantis. However, we saw Volantis via Tyrion anyhow.
Without his chapters, we would have lost a view of the sellsword companies. However, we saw the inner workings of the sellsword companies via Tyrion anyhow.
Without his chapters, we would have lost him pleading his case to Dany. However, that could have been just as easily addressed by Dany's POV (and was if I recall correctly).
Without his chapters, we wouldn't have seen him killed by a dragon, which honestly was the only satisfying chapter that involved him but also wasn't necessary. Yes, the events are important to the story as they will likely push Dorne against supporting Dany. Both for rejecting him AND because her dragons killed him. However, again, this does not require a POV chapter and could have been discussed indirectly or the aftermath seen in another POV (for instance, Barristan)
Each and every one of his chapters was a waste of page space that added nothing to the overall story in a book that needed a lot of trimming. So yes, it was a narrative failure.
wesleyshark
Banned
I liked his view on things- presented another angle other than Tyrion's, and it provided a lot of world building in the process. I really don't feel that book 5 needed much trimming, if any at all. Quentyn's POV seemed a great fit. *shrugs*
Why would book Tommen give a shit.
I think you're too focused on the plot and moving things along that you're missing the forest for the trees. GRRM's POVS are all character studies with arcs that add to the themes of the story.
"In the East, the true climax is the death of Quentyn Martell. Everyone who decried Quent’s story as tangential at best or insignificant at worst missed how thoroughly his chapters epitomized and integrated the tone, themes, settings, and style of A Dance with Dragons. It’s worth noting that we spend more time in Essos in Dance than we do in the rest of the series combined. In the wake of Dany’s anti-slavery crusade, everything is in flux: cultures, cities, armies, rulers, quests, hopes, dreams, fears, money, all in motion. Essos dangles on the edge. Again, though, what’s waiting for us at the end isn’t an orgasmic release of bloodlust, but an utterly unshakable image of the suffering and (perhaps even worse) entropy undergirding the whole damn thing:
"After the girl was gone, the old knight peeled back the coverlet for one last look at Quentyn Martell’s face, or what remained of it. So much of the prince’s flesh had sloughed away that he could see the skull beneath. His eyes were pools of pus. He should have stayed in Dorne. He should have stayed a frog. Not all men are meant to dance with dragons."
Quentyn’s quest was doomed from the start, but that doesn’t mean his story is pointless. I invoke entropy because of the unmistakable sense throughout Feast/Dance that everything is slowly falling apart, that whole societies are coming apart at the seams metaphysically as well as politically. It ends not with a superficial bang, but with a devastating whimper. Quentyn learns he’s not the hero, and that’s the point of his arc: what it feels like to play the role of the hero when deep down you know not only that you can’t pull it off but that you never wanted to in the first place.
These climaxes follow each other directly: Quentyn and Jon’s final chapters stand side by side, a metaphysical bond forged in death from halfway across the planet. Those chapters, both among my very favorites in the series, collapse everything accomplished in the latest and greatest book in ASOIAF into the final thoughts of two young men caught between crushing despair and desperate hope, risking everything on a wild, foolish, beautiful gamble of the type that most fantasy stories would unthinkingly reward, and yet they both die for it. Like I’ve said, Dance is about failure, but not in a hectoring or nihilistic sense; GRRM is proud of his characters for taking their stands, yet unwilling to shield them from the consequences of doing so."
There are a lot more chapters that I can cite that are closer to filler in this series than Quent's like a Sam chapter or two and a few Bran and Arya chapters from ACOK and ASOS.
I'd also smash together a couple Brienne chapters.
Count of Monte Sawed-Off
un33dab@dpu$$y
Rome is great. Never seen Vikings.
Incandenza
Banned
Quentyn's story, like basically everything else in ADWD, would be a lot more tolerable if it wasn't followed by a series of non-climaxes and a 5+ year wait for the chapters that were actually supposed to end the book.
wesleyshark
Banned
I loved this paragraph so much.
Last Hearth
Member
As much as I think AFFC/ADWD gets too much flak from show apologists desperate to deflect blame away from D&D. I do think some of the criticisms are valid.
Such the Quentyn chapter. To me the Quentyn chapters felt like it belonged on the cutting floor. It's like when you watch an extended cut of a movie and realize that although the extra scenes are not without artistic merit, ultimately what it adds to the story does not justify it's presence and the theatrical cut without those scenes are actually a better story.
The Quentyn chapters are not without its merits, but we didn't need to see it, and I'm not sure we're that much better off for having seen the events in first person. And chapter bloat like the Quentyn chapters is the reason why when didn't get to see the conclusion of the Battle of Ice/Fire at the end of ADWD, which is unforgivable. Because it was a book without a conclusion.
Can you imagine if PJ decided to release the extended cut of the Two Towers in the theaters, was then told his movie cannot exceed three hours, so instead of cutting the extended scenes, he just decided to lop off the last 30 minutes of the movie and add them to the next movie, so we the audience get a movie that just abruptly ends without seeing the climactic battle's conclusion?
The critics and the fans would have blasted him for it, and they should do the same here.
Yes, you basically said what I said but you did it in a more efficient way.
Such the Quentyn chapter. To me the Quentyn chapters felt like it belonged on the cutting floor. It's like when you watch an extended cut of a movie and realize that although the extra scenes are not without artistic merit, ultimately what it adds to the story does not justify it's presence and the theatrical cut without those scenes are actually a better story.
The Quentyn chapters are not without its merits, but we didn't need to see it, and I'm not sure we're that much better off for having seen the events in first person. And chapter bloat like the Quentyn chapters is the reason why when didn't get to see the conclusion of the Battle of Ice/Fire at the end of ADWD, which is unforgivable. Because it was a book without a conclusion.
Can you imagine if PJ decided to release the extended cut of the Two Towers in the theaters, was then told his movie cannot exceed three hours, so instead of cutting the extended scenes, he just decided to lop off the last 30 minutes of the movie and add them to the next movie, so we the audience get a movie that just abruptly ends without seeing the climactic battle's conclusion?
The critics and the fans would have blasted him for it, and they should do the same here.
Yes, you basically said what I said but you did it in a more efficient way.
Margaery might survive, a piece for Varys/Aegon to sell back to Willas for the Reach's support.
It actually felt that way for me, I was expecting that damn spider at the end of the 2nd movie :/
Anyway, I mostly agree with Black_Sun. Honestly, almost hothing felt like a bloat to me. There is a reason for every chapter and POV, be it for story reasons, character development or world building. I don't even get the hate for Gerold Dayne.
He's a mad scientist and he needs dead bodies. Cercei gives him dead bodies and anything else he needs for his experiment.
Qyburn is the Wormtongue to Cersei's Saruman.
Which, knowing how that turned out...
Correct opinion right here.
Tired of the shitting on those books. Sometimes I think people who just endlessly whine about all the world building in them should just maybe not read GRRM's work anymore and stick to the show.
Which, knowing how that turned out...
Correct opinion right here.
Tired of the shitting on those books. Sometimes I think people who just endlessly whine about all the world building in them should just maybe not read GRRM's work anymore and stick to the show.
DrForester
Kills Photobucket
PantherLotus
Professional Schmuck
Acidote
Member
Because everyone around him dies. Everyone that is dear to him dies. And he is 8. That's something he can't understand and he must be incredibly confused about life and death.
Book Tommen is far too young to understand the shit his mother is doing, that's the big difference between show and book. Show Tommen is a horny teenager with a good heart, when his hot wife and everyone dies he's understandably upset, poor guy. Book Tommen just wants to play with Ser Pounce, he gives no fucks. btw I miss Ser Pounce in the books. My theory is that Arya wargs into him and she kills Tommen by pushing him down a window or something lol
Fuck, I want this.
Fuck, I want this.
Discotheque
Banned
Fimmel is fucking amazing, just a mesmerizing actor.
If they would have been able to cast him as Euron he'd become a more compelling villain than Ramsay ever was within one scene.
I also always thought he'd make a badass Victarion but the show clearly isn't going to put him in.
some people find Fimmel's aloof acting off-putting but I love it. He looks like he finds everyone and everything amusing and beneath him. Dude would have killed it in GOT. A lot of people would. I find myself going to Vikings and especially Black Sails for my swords and schemes stuff now and I just stick to Game of Thrones for the entertainment and production design. The writing and dialogue took a really big step down but it's fun to watch at least.
Really? I enjoyed parts of the Hound and Arya's interactions but that was one of the dumbest scenes.
I think someone else here said it best. That was the scene where Maise stopped being Arya and where she became Maise Williams in a medieval setting.
(But it actually happened a lot earlier than that tbh. Arya was making jokes and laughing like a goofball just after the Red Wedding in season 4. It was off-putting. Book Arya actually behaved like a human being and fell into a deep depression. )
Magic Mushroom
Member
I'd like to see Arya and the Hound team-up again to bring down the Mountain,
- Status