BOOK SPOILERS BITCHES
I love the books, they're probably right up there with the chronicles of the black company in terms of the best fantasy I've read. And I love the show too, but after seeing the last couple episodes, I'm beginning to think that too many small changes they made are piling up. Now, for my own sanity I kinda try and regard the two as seperate entities (ala The Walking Dead) that worked for awhile. However what I eventually realized was that they ARE trying to do a straight adaptation of ASOIAF, which means that for all intents and purposes those changes matter. Changes made to the timeline (what it's really been months since Jaime came back? Sansa spent years in kings landing?) will especially require some writer gymnastics to make sense of. The emissions of characters (strong Belwas, Penny, the list goes on) and subplots (why is Jorah still around?) are a little easier to explain away as this show does have a limited budget and running time. However I fear for the growth of these characters, Penny is absolutely crucial to Tyrion's character arc, and her presence at Joffrey's wedding and Tyrion's refusal to joust is integral to her character too. I like Penny and I want to see her done well in the show but so far there's been no sign of her. Strong Belwas' emission is at once understandable and annoying. He's not a super deep character, just a badass who was part of Selmy's cover. He doesn't have that many lines despite being a strong presence in Dany's army, it would have been easy to introduce him alongside Arstan Whitebeard. On the other hand he isn't that important and the show has been perfectly content to let Daario do all the stuff Belwas should've done. The show also has this tendency to dumb down characters in order to make them appear more like able. The case in point is Shae. In the books Shae and Tyrion's relationship is one of mutual benefit, however Shae is so good at playing the part that Tyrion does sorta fall for
her. Then Joffrey dies and Tyrion's trial comes. Shae rips him apart on the stand, essentially calls him a rapist and monster. Shae is a prostitute, she has basically no rights and testified out of necessity to save her own life. Then she screws Tywin because that's her next, best prospect to keep herself alive. I'll be intrigued to see how show-Tyrion's trial plays out but I can pretty much promise that it won't end with a string of golden hands around a delicate throat.
And then there's Jaime.
Jaime, Jaime, Jaime. You know I once read a paper on creating good villains for film and one of its main points was this; if you wanted to create a villain that nobody could empathize with, just a piece of shit who nobody likes, you make them a rapist. I wonder if the director of that episode ever read it? Probably not, Alex Graves strikes me as kind of a shithead. I mean anyone who says that rape can be "consensual by the end" can fuck right off the edge of my dick. That scene I'm the sept of Baelor was handled differently in the books, as has been discussed numerous times, and consent was clearly given in the books. But now we have Jaime rape his sister right in the middle of what is supposed to be his redemptive character arc? Now I'm not opposed to depictions of sexual violence in media, I don't enjoy it either. Sexual violence has touched my life and the lives of people I care about, and can be handled with the proper gravitas that such a traumatic event deserves. A good recent example of rape being handled appropriately is the most recent issue of Invincible, (a superhero comic by Robert Kirkman, of TWD fame). I'm not a psychic so I can't look into the future and see if Jaime's horrible actions will actually have any meaningful impact on they're relationship (Cersei is already in a really bad place in the books at this point). But considering that at this point in the books Jamie is already drawing away from her, I seriously doubt it. We only got one scene of them together this episode and Jaime seems neither aware nor repentant of his actions. Likewise Cersei was about as cold to him as she'd been since he'd come back. Between this and the director's opinion that he was filming a consensual sex scene, I'm actually a bit disgusted at how poorly they're handling this. Having a character be raped and then not bother to address it and treat it as consensual is disgusting and guess what? Rape culture. When a director (along with whoever wrote that scene and whatever dumbass ok'd it) films a rape scene and then plays it off as fine in the story because it was "consensual by the end" that's exactly the kind of thing that that term describes.
I really like the show and I love the source material so this concern is coming from a place of love. I want to keep watching while I wait for the next book to come out. I really do, but right now the show (at least in my opinion) should try and cleave a little closer to the source material. You can say whatever you want about the show and book being seperate entities and that statement is literally true, but it still is and always was intended to be as faithful and adaptation as they could make. I'm worried about you Game of Thrones!
One other thing that annoyed me; the fact that the people making the show know the general outline for the rest of the series. Basically what this boils down to for me is that they'll spoil things but worse; that they'll spoil then really badly. Like that dumb frozen throne/ice satan shit at the end. It's funny, I always remembered Martin describing the white walkers as creatures of otherworldly grace, silent snow shadows in shifting white armor with thin blades the color of ice. The female white walker the Night King married was supposed to be hot as hell, so why Instead do we get some generic looking ice zombies. I felt I was watching a Blizzard cutscene from Warcraft there at the end.
