Monday, June 10, 2013
Game of Thrones, as most of you know, is HUGE! If you haven’t heard of it you probably live under a rock. I have talked in my other blog before about the many different facets of media George R.R. Martin has his foot in with this story. He has the original novels, a comic series, a TV show, and even a video game. I have been watching the TV show and slowly been reading through the novels. I am finally on the 5th book, A Dance with Dragons, and have been realizing a few things in the TV show that are different. Obviously there have been differences between the two, but they have always been small tweaks that haven’t affected the storyline much. The differences the I have noticed recently have made me wonder just where the TV show is going to go in the future. That being said, there are going to be *SPOILERS* for those people reading this who haven’t read all the books, or only watch the TV show.
So I should probably talk a little about how the TV show timeline is set up versus the book timeline since these are obviously different. The TV show follows a normal chronological timeline. The first season and second season cover the first and second books respectively. The third season is covering the first half, roughly, of the third book. Next season of the show and the rest to follow, I imagine, will be a little wonky. The fourth and fifth books happen at the same time and so the show will be taking the stories of individual characters from both books and intertwining them so the show makes sense. Okay so that all being said there are a few things that I want to bring up.
The first issue kind of has to do with the timeline thing. So anyone who has been watching this season of the show is probably familiar with these Theon Greyjoy scenes:
Personally when I first saw these scenes I was very confused and a little mad about it. You can ask Alex (who I watch the show with) but I was not a happy camper. I had only finished the third book when the season started thinking that the show would only really be covering that book. These scenes do not happen until almost a quarter of the way through the FIFTH book! Now I understand that they didn’t want to just leave Theon out of a season completely, but I don’t know what they are planning on doing for the 4th season with him now. Are they just going to torture him for another season and then pick up with his storyline once they actually make it into the 4th and 5th books?
My next question is with the Dornish storyline. So you all remember Myrcella? She was Cersei’s other child that daughter that Tyrion “tricked” Cersei into having sent off to Dorne to be married to Trystane Martell.
This happened back in the 2nd book somewhere and I don’t remember when in the TV show’s second season, but it seems like forever ago! I don’t know about you, but I kind of forgot she was a thing until reading the 4th and 5th books when her “claim” to the throne is a BIG deal. This plot has it’s own point of view characters in the 4th and 5th books with the Sand Snakes and also following Quentyn Martell on his search for Daenerys. While this sort of comes out of nowhere in the books, I feel like in a TV show it is more important to introduce at least these important characters earlier on so that when these major events happen, they feel more a part of the story and not just out of the blue “oh yeah you remember that time when Dorne was a thing...here it is again!” They have not once mentioned Myrcella or the Dornish family really at all. Not even in passing that I can recall, it is like Cersei just forgot she had another kid out there somewhere. I am very interested in how they plan on bringing in the Martell’s “fight” for the Iron Throne.
She was Sansa’s friend back in Winterfell and she made an appearance for like 3 seconds in season 1 of the TV show. Since I have been reading the fifth book, I literally am now finding out that she is somewhat more than just some silly side character, she is actually somewhat important. My friend Alex probably puts it the best when he says she is a McGuffin. Her character is not very important, but her plot is used to further develop the stories of other characters like Jon Snow and Theon Greyjoy. In the books she is taken in King’s Landing after Eddard Stark’s execution and not seen for a little while until a “northern girl” is brought back claiming to be Arya Stark. From here she is used to strengthen the claim to Winterfell by being betrothed to Ramsay Bolton. She is similar to Myrcella in the fact that she is just kind of forgotten about in the show. She will probably show up again in the fourth season with Melisandre and Jon Snow’s storyline.
This post I feel is getting a little lengthy now, so I will also quickly just say that Gendry’s story is also intriguing to me since they cut out Edric Storm and are using Gendry in his place, I wonder if they are still planning on using the same story line. In the books Gendry joins the Brotherhood without Banners and later runs into Brienne and saves her life, but Edric is sent off to the Free Cities in order to save his life. Lastly I have this problem with Rickon Stark in both the books and the show. He just kind of disappears... it seems weird to me that ALL of the other Stark children have their own epic adventure, and he just kind of wanders off and is never heard from again. I hope somewhere in the future of the books he has more of a role.
Ok now that I have rambled on I guess I should probably say that I am a huge fan of the series and the books and love pretty much everything about them. That being said, I might have some other posts to come that talk about favorite characters or characters that I like better in the show or in the books.
