Amph Game Of Thrones (uh i guess it's done now? Edit: No!)

That's mischaracterizing it. If it happens in the books, the context will be completely different (Shireen is at the Wall hundreds of miles from Stannis because a siege is no place for a little girl). They can't just randomly shoehorn and rearrange plots, expect them to make any sense, and then hide behind GRRM when people call them on it.

 

Unless Martin is rewriting all the books to match the show now...

 

I didn't. In fact, we didn't spend enough time with Stannis' army to see them getting desperate.
We got a few scenes showing that their resources were getting thin, and we see the effects of Ramsay's raid. But they weren't quite desperate yet.



"Desperate" would have been the soldiers becoming increasingly disgruntled. Meanwhile, Melisandre keeps pressing him to do it....that sacrificing Shireen is the only way to survive. Yet he still resists...
Men start dropping dead from exposure and starvation....they're hastily buried after the bodies are plundered for clothes, boots, and any scraps of food they were carrying.
Their horses are butchered and roasted over the camp fires....and when the horses are gone, the army starts digging up their fallen comrades and turning to cannibalism.

Soldiers start abandoning the army, opting to march back to the Wall....ordinarily, a life of servitude at the end of the world would never cross their minds, but the promise of food and shelter drives them towards it. Many of them don't make it; Jon and the Wildlings find their frozen bodies as near as a few hundred yards to Castle Black. The ones that do are quickly given the oath by Alliser Thorne and are now Brothers.

Meanwhile Stannis refuses to budge. He won't allow his daughter to be killed.

And that's when the talk of mutiny reaches him. He finds the conspirators and executes them all in front of the encampment, furthering the rift between him and his men. Suspected sympathizers of the mutineers are accused of cowardice and executed as well.
The army starts doubting his sanity and his devotion to the witch. There are more conspirators that he hasn't discovered yet....or perhaps he's growing increasingly paranoid. He now sees himself surrounded by enemies....and Melisandre offers him a way out by Shireen. Finally, at the point of mental breakdown, Stannis, now on the verge of tears, relents and Shireen is set alight.


THAT'S how it should have happened. It should have been the last act of a grand Napoleonic tragedy.

 

I'm totally okay with what Stannis did in the most recent episode and I don't think it was just a move for shock value. Why? Because he didn't do it. He's a puppet of the Red Woman. She is the one who did it. He's barely a person anymore. This was the actions of the main antagonist, the Red Woman, not Stannis. There was a hint of a person there whenever Stannis talked with his daughter, however, it shows how insane / dedicated / crazy for the throne he is that he would go through with The Burning. Notice how he just stared and did nothing, it wasn't his call, he's a puppet. The interesting thing is the Red Woman has totally taken over his mind but without any potions or magic, she has just maniupated him to the point where he would go through with that. (there is enough of a person there wherein him and his wife hid at the back of the pack and did not have front row seats for the Burning, which means there is a person in there, kinda, who is a coward).

Also The Burning generally just happened to randos over the last few seasons, there had to be one that felt hard to increase the danger on it. Sure, there was Mesrader, who was a big factor in the overall picture of the show, but he had been in like, 3 eps max? So it needed to happen to a character that we know so it would have dramatic stakes.

Stannis is not the bad guy of the plot, it's the Red Woman. Any and all anger directed towards the character should be directed towards her.

 

Will Drogon be okay? His poor neck and wings!

 

Your examples are all fairly modern earth. Do you have examples from a made-up Middle Ages? One with magic and dragons, ideally.

 

Nothing makes sense this season. Too many deviations from the books for the sole purpose of shock value. Not to say that certain scenes from the books didn't seem inspired solely for shock value (Red Wedding), but HBO has possibly jumped the shark.

 

That's his initials, not his name. And as I understand it, his magnum opus isn't finished, so it would be a little premature to go all Napoleon.

 

I think you may be in denial that GRRM may be the bad one here.

 

Seriously!

 

really? i didn't have any doubt he would do it, eventually - i mean, the show has been building to it for some time. Stannis has never been a good guy, he's been a **** the whole way through. he burnt his wife's parents, he kept his daughter locked in a cell just because of her face, he killed his brother (by cheating on his wife to create a demon assassin, no less), he tried to murder his nephew, he attempted to burn Mance Rayder to death, and he's insisted on taking his army and family onwards into a snowstorm, despite being told repeatedly it was going to kill them all. he is clearly by this stage 100% under the influence of Melisandre, and has been for some time - this latest act just highlighted his ultimate betrayal.

they're struggling to fit everything in as it is in 10 episodes. if they built every decision up like this the show would be 20 episodes. people already complain there's been too much 'building' this season.

as for the criticism of him being stupid by killing off his only heir, he is completely invested in the god of light and the red woman at this point. heirs and kin and laws of the land are a trifling matter to him now.

 

Just to be sure, that knight is the one who killed Syrio, right?

 

Yep. That's why he's on Arya's list.

 

Part of me hopes that GRRM is just trolling the showrunners by feeding them random ****. But more likely they're just taking events out of context and rearranging them for the show. I mean, there's no reason they'd start being faithful to the books now all of a sudden.

 

except that it makes perfect sense. and the only people 'calling them on it' is, surprise surprise, book people.

 

it's a weak arc but it does make sense.

 

Actually I think it didn't make sense, especially coupled with his religious-nutcase wife suddenly becoming all maternal. It just feels like they flipped Stannis and Selyse's mindsets for shock value. With more build-up I could believe Stannis would do it, but throwing in Selyse's about-face as well really feels like they were going for a wtf moment.

 

In order for me to not go insane from what I remember from the books vs the changes in the TV series my approach is this:

I'm watching the TV series as something of its own, meaning I will not try to connect it to whatever happens in the books. I'll see it more as a TV series partially based on the books but a phenomenon of its own.

I will probably wait until the TV series ends for good and then re-read the books and not try to compare them to the TV show.

Only this way can I keep my sanity.