Game of Thrones (HBO)

Most of Martin’s world is rather distinctly European in tone though. The North is rather easy to equate with Scotland and England, the Iron Islands and some other areas as Scandinavia, the Riverlands/Westerlands as France during the Hundred Years War, and Dorne and other southern areas as Spain. It’s pretty general however, and only the central areas of Westros have really got the tone (and only at the beginning) of being the traditional conception of medieval Europe (with the notion being that our overall conception of medieval Europe is based on mainly France, but also idealized versions of England and Germany) - after everything goes to hell as the series goes on Westros in my opinion looks a hell of a lot like France during the Hundred Years War and England during the War of the Roses.

Of course you are right about a lot of the action taking place out of the traditional area of what is assumed by calling it medieval Europe - everything involving Daenerys is much more slanted towards the Russian steppes and Persia if I remember correctly. And the Free Cities always resembled an odd mix of Med., Arabic, Persian, and Indian. Regardless, the majority of the action DOES unfold in a distinctly European look.

Well, come to think of it I don’t know if they’d even want to put Daenerys into the TV series. It might even be a bit too confusing for audiences because it’s like a whole separate story that doesn’t really have players from Westeros join up until the third book.

If they do, they’d better make it worthwhile. One of the things that I found really lacking about her portion of the story was how many of the characters as well as the politics there seemed like poor caricatures in comparison to the stuff happening in Westeros. Small baronies in Westeros would have a lot of politicking going on but Daeny manages to somehow overthrow a bunch of kingdoms, and Martin doesn’t give a lot of details about how that happens so easily. There’s very little intrigue, powerplays or anything going on there because the people there seem to behave more like a mob that follows the whims of the writer to advance the plot over anything else.

It’s one of the reasons why I prefer Erikson as a writer when it comes to world building, because he really puts a lot of details into the politics, daily life and culture of these locales, and these areas come with their own characters and stories. Martin only seems to devote his efforts to Westeros. The rest of the world could just fall apart and it wouldn’t even matter.

Well, come to think of it I don’t know if they’d even want to put Daenerys into the TV series. It might even be a bit too confusing for audiences because it’s like a whole separate story that doesn’t really have players from Westeros join up until the third book.

Yes, all those tedious Daenerys scenes have NOTHING to do with the overall plot!

/snark. I see your point, but seriously, they can’t leave her out. She is half of the series’ title after all.

Nope, Jon is the entirety of the title.

You might want to re-read the series.

SPOILERS*******

There’s all this foreshadowing in the first book about how much Tyrion loves dragons and boy does he love dragons and yeah, he has a thing for dragons.

Danny and her dragons are coming to Westeros, as surely as Winter comes to the North.

Cutting her would hobble the entire story arc.

END SPOILERS*****

Speaking as someone who only read 1½ book of Song of Ice and Fire, I can see how adapting the part of Daenarys to the screen. I mean, how long do you expect you can string people along with “oh, she’s coming… one of these days”? The question becomes, as usual, if you do it for the fans or for a new audience.

Yeah but…

**** spoilers bit ****

Oh I know all about the foreshadowing with Tyrion and his fascination for Dragons. I thought it was a bit obvious when the book kept mentioning three dragons (I figure it’s Jon, Daeny and Tyrion) and some other stuff I forgot.

But still, I’d only expect Daeny to really come into play in book 6 or 7 and we all know that’s never going to happen. I don’t even expect her to be in book 5 because that’s going to be all focused on the good parts of the story: Jon, Tyrion, The Knight of Flowers guy. The Others.

Really, as Anders said. While he does a lot of foreshadowing with Daeny, I just can’t see them adapting her to the screen because she doesn’t really have much of a presence until the third book and even then, it’s minor and the stuff that happens to her is just kinda sketchy because it doesn’t seem like Martin really crafted out the Free Cities setting all that well. Things just seem to happen and fall into place because he wants them to happen. Not because they make any sense. The writing there really pales in comparison to the Westeros stuff because it’s entirely predictable that nothing really bad is going to happen to her.

As for the first book, Daeny’s scenes are just a bunch of weird pedo sex scenes and some violence involving molten gold. Audiences are going to say “what the fuck was that all about?”. I think that the story would be better served if the audience doesn’t know what’s happening over there until the 2nd season or so, whereby they can dedicate 1-2 entire episodes (about 100-110 minutes long, given most HBO show lengths) to detailing what happened in the first book and then continue on from there with the exiled knights and stuff joining her ranks.

It’d actually make more sense to film that all in one go instead of having two separate filming locations in a single season and splitting the story so much. It’s bad enough that the first book has a bunch of POVs of characters in different locations, but at least they’re all in Westeros and it’s pretty easy to follow the threads once all the characters depart from the Stark fortress, where they’re first at in the beginning.

This is all assuming that the series is going to last more than 1-2 seasons. Most HBO shows don’t. If they’re only gunning for a single season, or even two seasons, it’d be best to leave Daeny out of it. She doesn’t add jack to the main plot unless you’re holding out for the later unwritten books. They’re never going to be written.


So you’re assuming that the chapter(s) he’s already released from book 5 featuring Daenarys was some kind of swerve?

Well, I’m glad Sol isn’t editing the series as it comes out of Martin’s typer. Danny is one of my favourite characters and I find all the stuff that takes place on her side of the poison water just as engaging as the events with Jon and Catelyn, et al.

“Mother, mother, mother…”
is seared into my being.

I was really kind of hoping that Daeny would start taking part in the main events of Westeros in Book 3 or 4 but obviously that didn’t happen. It was like “wait for the next book”. Waiting 4+ years for some fulfillment to her stories is just getting pretty old.

Worked well enough for The X-Files! They wouldn’t even need Martin to finish his series…

They better, for one reason only, and one that should get fleshed out in the upcoming book. THE UNSULLIED!!!

I think it’s due to her bloodline and her 3 pets, and what that’s perceived to be by the world.

If they’re just going through the first 3 books and stopping, making Daenerys a peripheral character and generally ignoring the specifics of her story makes sense. If they’re going through all 7 books (which logistically sounds impossible considering there’s no timetable for the books getting finished), then yeah you have to include her as a major player.

Or maybe Martin has giving up on book-writing and just plans to finish the series as a couple of tv scripts?

The next book will most likely come out since he has released a bunch of chapters for it and revealed big details, but it’s really hard to see him completing books 6 and 7 (assuming it stops there), being the slow writer that he is and all the other stuff he’s involved in. If he released the new book this year and did the remaining two in 2009 and 2010 we’d all be pretty happy about that, but he hasn’t shown any indication that he’ll be completing those anytime soon.

I think it’s due to her bloodline and her 3 pets, and what that’s perceived to be by the world.

I think it’s a bit of a cop-out for him to write something like that. I mean, it just screams ‘plot device’ when every single individual in the entire expanse of a continent knows who she is the moment they lay their eyes on her. That’s just juvenile and it feels like a bad caricature compared to the in-depth details he puts into Westeros.

His last update on the book was Jan 1, 2008. He gets progressively more and more pissy in his updates. I’m pretty sure he’ll eventually announce that there will be no more books and his fans can go eat a dick. Then he’ll retire to the Scottish countryside where he will live out his days painting miniatures and eating live tiger cubs.

I remember back in 2003 before the last elections, he was getting all pissy about the whole Bush administration and because Bush had won he’d taken 3 extra years to come out with the last book. But I think it was an excuse.

I don’t think he gives a shit anymore. I don’t know how true it is, but I heard that he sold the rights to make a game to EA or some other place. This was at about the same time that he sold the TV rights to HBO. In some interview he said that he doesn’t really give a shit about what people do with the series/games/spinoffs because they have no bearing whatsoever on the books. I’ll grant you he’s probably interested in seeing how the HBO series plays out, and he’s got a long history of TV production so he might’ve just gotten back into that instead of finishing the books, and that’s kind of sad. I hope that’s not the case.

He was robbed last month. Could’ve easily used it as an excuse not to finish the books but he didn’t.

(And no, they did NOT take my computers, so the hard drive where A DANCE WITH DRAGONS lives is still there, and safe, and I haven’t lost any work. And yes, I back up regularly, so even if they had made off with the hardware, I have all the finished text saved on disk. So you can all come down off that ledge, please).

That does inspire some hope.

I might be a little pissy too if people kept telling me to hurry up and finish the books, because I might die any day now!

Even before Robert Jordan died, this was a concern to fans. Now it’s a very real possibility. If he’s going to get annoyed, then that’s fine, but the origin of his readers’ sentiment is very easy to understand.

I loathe the thought of anything bad happening to Martin, but let’s face it: the dude as fat as my gramps, who died at around his age.

Admittedly, Jordan had a pretty bad disease. So it’s not exactly a 1:1 comparison. On the other hand, every time I see George R R Martin, he looks progressively more horrible. When he was in Cambridge at last year’s Vericon, he looked like a fucking zombie. A really fat, bearded zombie. Like evil, undead Santa.