denominator wrote:That conversation is not in the books.
However, I really liked it. I have had many discussions with various people since the inception of the show regarding flashbacks. I am staunchly against including flashbacks in the show, as I feel the story is much better served by having the characters tell their stories and their interpretations of past events. Oberyn's recollection of the time he went to see Tyrion as a child, Jaime's description of killing the king, Robert telling war stories about his first kill to Barristan, etc. You get such great character development through this that you don't get through flashbacks, and it obscures the plot a bit more. Plus, it locks the story into a current timeline - you as the audience have a slight advantage in that you can see multiple characters, but you don't have the advantage of reliving the past.
I am generally okay with the changes between the book and the show. I don't remember exactly when it happened, but I believe Jaime goes to talk to Tyrion after Oberyn is killed and Tyrion is sentenced to die. Regardless, this is the time when we as the reader/viewer really get a sense of the relationship between Jaime and Tyrion. I think that scene served to reinforce that relationship more than anything else.
In a broader sense, the story about the cousin and the beetles is a metaphor. Tyrion sees Tywin as the cousin squashing beetles for no apparent reason, wielding all the power, and able to kill whoever he wants whenever he wants. He sees himself as one of the beetles just waiting to be squashed, wondering what the point of it all is. This is why he picks up the beetle and releases it at the end.
Yes I also prefer a conversation to a flashback, it would almost be difficult to imagine GOT doing a flashback. The closest they come is when Bran gets his warg experiences, but that's not a flashback really.
strike wolf wrote:I think you are close but a bit off. Tyrion doesn't see Tywin as the one crushing the beetles. He thinks it's the gods (Remember he made the remark about what kind of gods would have two men fight to the death to determine innocence or guilt). The his cousin kills the beetles is compared to the gods killing people. What purpose does it serve? Will we ever find out? I believe that was the purpose of that conversation.
After reading what you guys wrote I came to the same conclusion, didn't think much of it when I watched it but now in retrospect I think that was what it was about. I don't think he sees his father as doing something mindless, he knows his father has his plans but he's fed up with this world in a sense.
patches70 wrote:
And Mormont, sheesh, Selmy gives him the head's up before hand and when Mormant goes before Dany he's all "uhh, uhh, uhh". Hahahah! You'd think he'd have prepared himself a little better about how he was going to explain himself.
Not only that, but he could have easily just lied about it as well. Just say it was all a ruse by Tywin. In the series Selmy didn't serve on the Little Council and he wouldn't have known about Mormont's part in it. This wasn't so in the books, Selmy knew all about that while he was serving in King's Landing.
TV series messed that up a bit. But to be fair, Mormont should have come clean with Dany a long time ago. She's his Queen now, she needs information and that was important information that he shouldn't have withheld once he finally committed his true loyalty to her.
Heck, if Tywin want's Dany dead all he has to do is hire a faceless man. Why doesn't he do that? I guess the Lords of Westeros kinda snub their noses at the particulars of their Eastern neighbors. But, hire a faceless man and Dany is assured to die before her natural time as the sun is assured to rise.
That is so typical Mormont though, his emotions cloud his judgement, he waited and waited for so long with telling Daenerys that he used to spy on her that eventually someone else told her. I'm not sure how she would've reacted if he told her himself, she might've sent him off anyway, she's quite hot headed, but she would have more respect for him if it didn't come from someone else.
I view it in a similar way to cheating on your girlfriend, if you tell her yourself or if her friends tell her might make all the difference, but she might still dump your ass because quite simply, you deserved it.
About the faceless men, I think it's a bit of a plot hole, sometimes when you create a story that is very long it can be difficult for everything to make sense from begining to end. I think George RR Martin needed the faceless men for one part of the story but ignored their existence when it didn't suit the story. I like to write stories myself, but I can only imagine trying to string up a book series consisting of close to a million words so that everything makes sense at all times. It doesn't happen often in the book series and that is important, but we can't expect it to never happen. It was the same with JK Rowling's Harry Potter franchise, she wrote an enormous amount of words about the same world and for most of the time it was very logical, but sometimes different spells were introduced that made you think, why didn't they use that spell before?
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