OH, Shoe! I spent some time yesterday considering Theon's line that we were both wondering about.
Here's a proposal for you. When he said he's going "home", he didn't mean the Iron Islands, he meant Winterfell. The awakened and contrite Theon realizes his heritage and his debt to the Stark family. He grew up at Winterfell. That's his real home and he realizes that now. He feels guilty about how he treated his family, and he's going to go back there to atone and be punished. The real question is what Ramsay's going to do with him when he gets his hands on him... and whether Theon will be able to keep his spine when that happens.
The Shoemaker wrote:Such as when the Sand Snakes meet Trystanne on the boat he could have easily said "how did you get here?" and the Snakes could explain before doing what they do. Instead we have no way of knowing how they got there without assuming. For me that's not a neat mystery, that appears more like incontinutity considering we last saw them on shore at Dorne and Trystanne's boat far in the distance.
I'll grant you that the sand snakes/Trystane thing is the best example of this we've seen. Davos and Brienne are bad examples. Davos is too busy, and he's not a young (whiny) man / puppydog servant. It's time to get shit done. That's why I suggested that he
may make some mention or gesture of mourning for Stannis later, but now is not the appropriate time. And Brienne does not know the nature of Sansa and the Hound's relationship. You're following the path I'm laying out for you there now. Stannis and Jaime and the candle weren't related to the conversation at hand in the same way that the Hound wasn't. He may have been an important detail for Sansa, and for the readers/viewers who love seeing these little connections made for them, but not for Brienne. That's good writing.
The Shoemaker wrote:But you are right in that I hold a lot of bias against the writers. This is due to their history of refusing to recognize ciriticisms of the show, common instances (on screen and off) of caring more about shocking moments than character development and logic, and distaste for representing the books.
Eh, I honestly think those three criticisms are a bit overblown (not specifically by you, just in a general sense). To suggest that the showrunners and producers on the show (including George R. R. Martin) don't care about character development and logic is a big stretch. There are shocking moments in the show (climactic moments), but they're in the books, too. It's just that they're padded out by hundreds of pages of pedestrian prose in the books. As for distaste for representing the books... it must relate to nitpicks about changing names or not including every reader's pet side-plot or something, ignoring the forest for trees. The show is a massive, expensive, and ambitious representation of the books. Representing the books is their job. They don't have distaste for it. It's their passion and their life's work.
The Shoemaker wrote:My intention is without a doubt to come off as a book snob. I also just like to point out what I felt worked, or didn't work, regardless of its importance.
To the first point, that's fine,
but many of the changes are improvements to Martin's clunky, pulpy style. Changing a name here and there, not so much, but then that's not enough to make a scene work or not work. It's not like the salt throne scene narratively crumbled or someone slipped out of character because they said "salt throne" instead of "seastone chair". [And actually, it's slightly misleading to talk about "changes"—they're not changing the book, they're translating ideas from the book in different ways.] Being a book snob is all well and good when it's levelled critically and selectively. Level 20 book snob lords get insight into missing backstory and deleted scenes. That's cool. Level 2 book snob squires quibble about what the real name of a sword should be, or whether Nick Fury should be white or black.
My intention here isn't to give you a hard time. I fully understand your point that, all things being equal, why not use a shared word to denote the same concept—a simple way to make book readers happy? For the same reason that I think making book readers unhappy with minutiae is a cheap criticism, it may not be the best approach to designing a narrative.
Heck, thinking about this even more, maybe they focus tested the seastone chair / salt throne thing for all we know. Like we both said, neither had ever been mentioned in the series before. This is a visual medium and we don't have the benefit of exposition (dubious literary quality notwithstanding) to explain what a seastone chair is. If they had simply thrown that line out, people may not have understood what it implied. Out of context, it sounds like it could be an Iron Islands euphemism for a toilet.
"Throne" gives us the necessary regal connotations to put the pieces together effortlessly (as well as dovetailing nicely with the "Game of Thrones" motif). It's actually
impressive writing to have been able to identify such a small opportunity for improvement.
VictorViper wrote:SPOILER
I don't know Vic, she was pretty in-sync with the timeline when Meryn and Mace visited Braavos. Bringing time into this is a biiiiiiiig stretch for me unless there's some compelling evidence that you're holding out on.
Still an interesting and entertaining notion that I'd be happy to continue discussing. Plus, Daredevil!!!