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ishtar79-If I don't find a home for the kitten soon, I'll go insane. It (possibly she) is past that tiny, constantly sleeping/cuddling phase and is at the face of running around wrecking destruction with such gusto, I'm wondering it got hold of some good uppers and is holding out on me. My hands and arms were covered in scratches anyway, but now it's decided my bare legs make an excellent scratching post. I pretty much need to constantly keep one eye on it-FFS, it's like having a KID!
-X-Men:First Class has eaten my brain. When I'm not reading a truly frightening amount of fic/meta, I'm systematically going through over thee decades of comics (and yes, the characters are older than that, but thinks really start getting interesting sometime in the late 70s) extracting pics for a “illustration of Charles/Erik's love in comics canon”) post I am planning which is at turns hilarious (oh, the crack that is comics canon), nostalgia-inducing and, above all, exhausting.
-I'm currently rereading the A Song Of Ice And Fire books, and with the distractions described above, it's taking longer than expected. I haven't actually read the last two books, but even rereading the bits I vaguely remembered has left me with A Lot Of Thoughts.
-The character screwed over the most by the book-to-screen transition and pov lost is undoubtedly Ned. While book Ned is places entirely too much faith on concepts of truth and honour and comes off as almost naïve when pitted against characters like Varys, Littlefinger and Cersei, there's still a degree of pragmatism and cautiousness in his thoughts that was completely lost on the show, to say nothing of occasional fine moments of snarkitude. He's still the ultimate fish out of water when it comes to politics and court intrigue, but I didn't spend most of his scenes itching to slap some sense into him.
-I'm not saying the Dothraki portrayal in the books isn't stereotypical and kind of racist, because it is, but the show took it to the point of almost caricature. Much as been written about the consent issues of Dany and Drogo's first night, so I won't rehash that, but what struck me the most is a relatively minor detail. In the books, the wedding feast dishes are described as rather in Martin's usual mouth-watering detail (seriously, the books are often gastronomic porn), and Dany only refuses them due to nerves. To turn what sounds like rather interesting appetizing dishes (well, once you get past the horse meat bit, which personally I'd rather pass on) into the blackened, fly-infested Fear Factor Cuisine we saw on the show comes off as tasteless and cheap visual joke.
-Another thing that lost some of its complexity in the adaptation was the relationship between Dany and Viserys. She both has more contempt (even early on where she’s still under his power, she often sees things he misses and is singularly unimpressed by his arrogance and lack of perceptiveness) and more love for him. She stresses to Jorah how her brother is her only connection to her past in the very chapter of the golden crowning, and while her feelings about his demise are ambiguous, it’s far removed from the cold detachment she had in that scene on the show (which again, is because we’re not privy to her thoughts on the show, but I think some visual cues could have hinted at those mixed feelings).
-Man, the relative importance of Lady the (noble) direwolf versus the common butcher boy is even more obvious in the book than it came off on the show. When Sandor tells Ned he killed Arya's “pet”, there's a moment where Ned is dreading explaining to Arya her wolf died too....but no, “it's just the butcher boy”, seemed to be subtext of the reveal, and the callousness of it it all was almost comical. Of course, once we get to Arya's pov, she's clearly mourning for Mycah, but as far as everybody else goes, the butcher's boy is an afterthought.
-Arya is always awesome, of course, and her resourcefulness is even more obvious in the books (I loved the extended scene of how she escaped the Kingsguard). I kind of miss her killing the stable boy deliberately, rather than accidentally, and I LOVED how in that moment all of Syrio’s lessons left her and only Jon’s “stick them with the pointy end” remained.
-Even seen through Ned’s extremely biased (biased because you just know they once had the epic bromance of the ages) perspective, Robert is as much of a dick in the books as in the show, no more, no less.
-While there is no shortage of characters providing Jon with the verbal smackdown and Teaching Him A Lesson, it seems to sink in a lot more than in the show. I had forgotten why I loved Jon so much originally until I picked up the book again-the lengths to which he went through to help Sam in particular were a lot more impressive that was shown onscreen. Sam’s loyalty makes a lot more sense in the context (also, because Sam is a sweetie, but thankfully that’s apparent in any medium). I also like that, while he plainly adores Ned, he doesn’t place him on a pedestal. There’s a fair bit of resentment coming from the secret of his birth there.
-And speaking of Jon, his relationship with Arya, as little of it as was shown, was probably my favourite familial dynamic in the books. He’s pretty much the ideal older brother-he still teases her as an older sibling might and they joke around, but there is such a depth of mutual respect and understanding between them. And I forever love their conversation of the fundamental unfairness of their world, where Jon points out that women get the arms, but not the swords and bastards gets the swords, but not the arms (I still maintain it’s easier to be a bastard than a woman, all other things being equal, and let’s not even forget the women who are bastards, but try telling Jon that).
-And yes, Catelyn was a lot harsher to Jon in the books, and her loathing also seemed to encompass bastards in general, but I still don’t think that major character flaw negates all the other ways she kind of kicks ass. Maybe it will become apparent further in the series, but right now I can’t understand the level of bashing she gets from certain fandom corners.
-So book 1!Sansa comes off as even more shallow than in the show. At the same time, while she clearly has some Disney fairytale dreams and delusions on the characters of Joffrey and Cersei, she’s also very much aware of things like class and gender roles, and tries her best to fit in perfectly to the assigned role of a noblewoman of this time. Of course, the tragedy of Sansa is that she thinks that by playing the role of the lady, everything will work out-until she’s confronted with the harsh truth that the power her courtesy and keeping of tradition grants her is just an illusions, and there is no way for her to play the game. I’m glad they toned down some of her naiveté on the show (like her going to Cersei and informing her of her father’s plan), because she got quite enough bashing from fandom as it was.
-On a completely shallow note, Renly is so much hotter in the book. Not that the actor is exactly hit by the ugly stick, but book!Renly…yum. And we do have the advantage of first seing him from Sansa’s pov, who notices handsome men as much as certain boy wizard from another series, and through Ned’s pov, who fixates on how much Renly reminds him ofhis boyfriend a young Robert, in a hilariously nostalgic way.
-X-Men:First Class has eaten my brain. When I'm not reading a truly frightening amount of fic/meta, I'm systematically going through over thee decades of comics (and yes, the characters are older than that, but thinks really start getting interesting sometime in the late 70s) extracting pics for a “illustration of Charles/Erik's love in comics canon”) post I am planning which is at turns hilarious (oh, the crack that is comics canon), nostalgia-inducing and, above all, exhausting.
-I'm currently rereading the A Song Of Ice And Fire books, and with the distractions described above, it's taking longer than expected. I haven't actually read the last two books, but even rereading the bits I vaguely remembered has left me with A Lot Of Thoughts.
-The character screwed over the most by the book-to-screen transition and pov lost is undoubtedly Ned. While book Ned is places entirely too much faith on concepts of truth and honour and comes off as almost naïve when pitted against characters like Varys, Littlefinger and Cersei, there's still a degree of pragmatism and cautiousness in his thoughts that was completely lost on the show, to say nothing of occasional fine moments of snarkitude. He's still the ultimate fish out of water when it comes to politics and court intrigue, but I didn't spend most of his scenes itching to slap some sense into him.
-I'm not saying the Dothraki portrayal in the books isn't stereotypical and kind of racist, because it is, but the show took it to the point of almost caricature. Much as been written about the consent issues of Dany and Drogo's first night, so I won't rehash that, but what struck me the most is a relatively minor detail. In the books, the wedding feast dishes are described as rather in Martin's usual mouth-watering detail (seriously, the books are often gastronomic porn), and Dany only refuses them due to nerves. To turn what sounds like rather interesting appetizing dishes (well, once you get past the horse meat bit, which personally I'd rather pass on) into the blackened, fly-infested Fear Factor Cuisine we saw on the show comes off as tasteless and cheap visual joke.
-Another thing that lost some of its complexity in the adaptation was the relationship between Dany and Viserys. She both has more contempt (even early on where she’s still under his power, she often sees things he misses and is singularly unimpressed by his arrogance and lack of perceptiveness) and more love for him. She stresses to Jorah how her brother is her only connection to her past in the very chapter of the golden crowning, and while her feelings about his demise are ambiguous, it’s far removed from the cold detachment she had in that scene on the show (which again, is because we’re not privy to her thoughts on the show, but I think some visual cues could have hinted at those mixed feelings).
-Man, the relative importance of Lady the (noble) direwolf versus the common butcher boy is even more obvious in the book than it came off on the show. When Sandor tells Ned he killed Arya's “pet”, there's a moment where Ned is dreading explaining to Arya her wolf died too....but no, “it's just the butcher boy”, seemed to be subtext of the reveal, and the callousness of it it all was almost comical. Of course, once we get to Arya's pov, she's clearly mourning for Mycah, but as far as everybody else goes, the butcher's boy is an afterthought.
-Arya is always awesome, of course, and her resourcefulness is even more obvious in the books (I loved the extended scene of how she escaped the Kingsguard). I kind of miss her killing the stable boy deliberately, rather than accidentally, and I LOVED how in that moment all of Syrio’s lessons left her and only Jon’s “stick them with the pointy end” remained.
-Even seen through Ned’s extremely biased (biased because you just know they once had the epic bromance of the ages) perspective, Robert is as much of a dick in the books as in the show, no more, no less.
-While there is no shortage of characters providing Jon with the verbal smackdown and Teaching Him A Lesson, it seems to sink in a lot more than in the show. I had forgotten why I loved Jon so much originally until I picked up the book again-the lengths to which he went through to help Sam in particular were a lot more impressive that was shown onscreen. Sam’s loyalty makes a lot more sense in the context (also, because Sam is a sweetie, but thankfully that’s apparent in any medium). I also like that, while he plainly adores Ned, he doesn’t place him on a pedestal. There’s a fair bit of resentment coming from the secret of his birth there.
-And speaking of Jon, his relationship with Arya, as little of it as was shown, was probably my favourite familial dynamic in the books. He’s pretty much the ideal older brother-he still teases her as an older sibling might and they joke around, but there is such a depth of mutual respect and understanding between them. And I forever love their conversation of the fundamental unfairness of their world, where Jon points out that women get the arms, but not the swords and bastards gets the swords, but not the arms (I still maintain it’s easier to be a bastard than a woman, all other things being equal, and let’s not even forget the women who are bastards, but try telling Jon that).
-And yes, Catelyn was a lot harsher to Jon in the books, and her loathing also seemed to encompass bastards in general, but I still don’t think that major character flaw negates all the other ways she kind of kicks ass. Maybe it will become apparent further in the series, but right now I can’t understand the level of bashing she gets from certain fandom corners.
-So book 1!Sansa comes off as even more shallow than in the show. At the same time, while she clearly has some Disney fairytale dreams and delusions on the characters of Joffrey and Cersei, she’s also very much aware of things like class and gender roles, and tries her best to fit in perfectly to the assigned role of a noblewoman of this time. Of course, the tragedy of Sansa is that she thinks that by playing the role of the lady, everything will work out-until she’s confronted with the harsh truth that the power her courtesy and keeping of tradition grants her is just an illusions, and there is no way for her to play the game. I’m glad they toned down some of her naiveté on the show (like her going to Cersei and informing her of her father’s plan), because she got quite enough bashing from fandom as it was.
-On a completely shallow note, Renly is so much hotter in the book. Not that the actor is exactly hit by the ugly stick, but book!Renly…yum. And we do have the advantage of first seing him from Sansa’s pov, who notices handsome men as much as certain boy wizard from another series, and through Ned’s pov, who fixates on how much Renly reminds him of
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no subject
Date: 2011-06-24 11:27 am (UTC)But the revival ones- 1975 on- though still from a different era, were the characters I grew up with. I found Magneto and Charles a lot more interesting and less uni-dimensional. Magneto was a lot less extremely evil and Charles was kind of a bastard- which I liked. And they did show some of their previous relationship and Charles before he was in a wheelchair. Moira was around doing a lot of cock-blocking if I recall.
no subject
Date: 2011-06-24 11:33 am (UTC)Magneto was a lot less extremely evil and Charles was kind of a bastard- which I liked. And they did show some of their previous relationship and Charles before he was in a wheelchair. Moira was around doing a lot of cock-blocking if I recall.
I LOVE those flashbacks into their
new romancefriendship. And yeah, Moira was definitely around, but the biggest cockblock was Gabrielle Heller (who Charles hooked up with! While she was his patient! Because there was never a time when Charles wasn't a creepy fucker!).no subject
Date: 2011-06-24 11:42 am (UTC)I forgot all about Gabrielle Heller!!! I think I blanked her out of my long-term memory. She was THE Charles cock-blocker!!! She blocked Magnus AND Moira! Damn her!
I loved the moments when they would show how Magneto wasn't a total douchebag. I think Storm even had a crush on him at one point.
no subject
Date: 2011-06-24 12:22 pm (UTC)Yikes, I vaguely remember that. WHY SO INAPPROPRIATE, CHARLES?
Gabby was my least favourite out of all of Xavier's girlfriends.
I loved the moments when they would show how Magneto wasn't a total douchebag. I think Storm even had a crush on him at one point.
I think most of the X-women crushed on him at some point. But my favourite interactions of his with a Xavier student is probably with Illyana, when he's stuck with the New Mutants. They do such bonding over being Kind Of Evil.
no subject
Date: 2011-06-24 02:24 pm (UTC)I had to write a huge paper about the first two X Men films for anthropology so please excuse my grasp of minor crap from them.
no subject
Date: 2011-06-24 12:24 pm (UTC)YES. It was frustrating to see him come off as totally ineffectual and kind of stupid on the show, because Ned may have been several things but he WASN'T stupid.
I kind of miss her killing the stable boy deliberately, rather than accidentally
I imagine they probably thought that a deliberate killing would make Arya less sympathetic, especially since all her inner thoughts are lost on the show.
So far most (though definitely not all) character/plot changes have worked for me, but I wonder if that may be because I didn't remember the book all that well.
I wish I were much further along with my rereading so I could have enjoyed your post even more.
no subject
Date: 2011-06-24 12:28 pm (UTC)I imagine they probably thought that a deliberate killing would make Arya less sympathetic, especially since all her inner thoughts are lost on the show.
I agree, much like they removed that bit of Sansa going to Cersei. But still, I have a soft spot for killer little girls in fiction.
So far most (though definitely not all) character/plot changes have worked for me, but I wonder if that may be because I didn't remember the book all that well.
I'm still 90% happy, which is more than I can say for any adaptation I'd seen before.
no subject
Date: 2011-06-24 01:04 pm (UTC)Yes! Ned was my biggest disappointment on the show. (Well, Jaime, but that was more because they didn't make him as complicated as Cersei rather than actually that they departed much from his book characterization.) But I really like Ned in the book and Show!Ned just was not only naive he was also self-righteous and utterly humorless and just ... I mostly itched to slap him until he was in the dungeon.
I have to say that I think the wedding night comes off as totally unbelievable in the book, because of how Drogo acts towards Dany aferwards for a long time. I think that a viewing audience would have gotten whiplash from a kind Drogo > rapey Drogo who comes in every night and hurts Dany on top of her horse-riding blisters to the point where she actually thinks about suicide > Dany takes action and learns to be in charge of her own fate > Dany loves Drogo was a less straight-line trajectory than what they showed on the show by eliminating step one. But I agree that because it's Dany's perspective on the Dothraki in the books, their alienness and scariness until she learns their customs is more about her than it is about how they are automatically savages. That translated less well onscreen, perhaps because of the constraints of time.
So, you have not read ... which books? Storm and Feast?
no subject
Date: 2011-06-24 02:03 pm (UTC)Oh, the Dany/Drogo relationship was WTF in the books too, but so is the show. To be honest, I can't think of how they could have adapted it for it to make sense. As for the Dothraki, I agree about the constraints of time, but that still doesn't explain why they needed to go for the cheap visual gag of the food.
I've read about halfway through the second part of FFC, and then had dropped them because I was overwhelmed with exams at the time, and never picked them up again until recently. Even the ones I did read are very blurry in my mind though.
no subject
Date: 2011-06-25 03:26 am (UTC)I'd forgotten about the food. You're right - that was a cheap gag. I felt like the Dorthraki felt a little like savages rather than men which I get is the Westerosi perspective but felt a lot more implicitly racist on screen versus in the books.
I got into an argument with someone (can't remember who, or even if it was online or off) about whether or not Sansa is the direct cause of Ned's demise... maybe I will reread the books again before the next one comes out, but it seems to me that Ned going to Cersei himself was at least as much of a cause of his imprisonment as Sansa going to Cersei... Sansa's confession is what foils her escape.
I honestly think that book 1 Sansa is pretty bratty... I wouldn't go so far as to say contemptible because of her youth, but she is not very likeable and doesn't seem to want to think for herself or be anything more than what society expects of her. That's what makes what happens to her later all the sadder. I remain pretty hopeful that she's going to come full circle out of this and having studied Cersei, Tyrion, Olenna, and Littlefinger, have all the wisdom and shrewdness she lacked as a child.
Wait?! It is possible to be MORE hot than show!Renly?! I have trouble with this.
no subject
Date: 2011-06-25 10:47 am (UTC)I hadn't thought of that. Most of the reactions I've read are from book readers, and I can't put myself in the headspace of imagining what watching this without context would be like.
I got into an argument with someone (can't remember who, or even if it was online or off) about whether or not Sansa is the direct cause of Ned's demise... maybe I will reread the books again before the next one comes out, but it seems to me that Ned going to Cersei himself was at least as much of a cause of his imprisonment as Sansa going to Cersei... Sansa's confession is what foils her escape.
Yeah, that's how I read it too. Ned doomed himself with his mercy, and Sansa herself (and Arya) with her naivete.
And she's definitely clueless/annoying for most of book 1, but I LOVE her character progression after.
Wait?! It is possible to be MORE hot than show!Renly?! I have trouble with this.
YMMV, obviously, but reading the description of book!Renly, he sounds about as close to my ideal for male looks as you can get, and show!Renly is only cute to me. I wouldn't kick him out of bad, mind you, but I don't find him as hot as in the book.