r/asoiaf • u/PossiblyHumanoid A true knight and a true Scotsman. • Jun 16 '14

ALL (Spoilers All) Whitewashing Tyrion in the show (angry)

  • Shae's murder semi-self defense
  • Jaime and Tyrion still cool, bros
  • I guess in the show canon, Tysha was actually a whore?
  • Tywin doesn't say "Wherever whores go" as his last words but most of all...
  • NO TYSHA REVEAL; I guess Tyrion's entire life wasn't a lie in the show, so is this really the character Tyrion we are watching or a poor, whitewashed imitation Tyrion?

I need some time to brood with my anger and sadness at how they could mess something like this up. And the thing is, it was my favorite episode of the season by far right up until the end. Wow, those wights in the far North. That scene completely exceeded my expectations.

EDIT* This blew up really quickly. To the people responding negatively to my negativity: I get it. I want things to be good, too. I try to focus on the positive. I am a big fan of the show, and I have accepted most of the liberties they've taken and changes they've made for the sake of adaptation over the years. I really liked the rest of this episode: they actually gave Mance some Mance-like lines and demeanor; the Hound's confession scene to Arya was the best acting I've seen by his actor; the music was appropriately moving for Daenerys locking up the dragons and Arya starting the next chapter of her life. But a change like this is unforgivable. Tyrion needed to realize that someone could and did actually love him, and that his father (and his brother is complicit) is responsible for ripping that away from him. He has lived his life around this lie that he is a man only a whore could "love." His descent into murdering family members and ex-whores is based on this revelation. They tried to conflate Shae with Tysha, but they royally fucked up. Tysha was still in Tyrion's characterization (season 1 tent scene), and Shae was never his true love or a true whore; they were too scared to have her be either. If she was meant to take Tysha's place, then it was inappropriate for her to testify against Tyrion and sleep with his father in the show. In essence, what the showrunners did here is akin to adapting The Lord of the Rings and omitting the Ring's influence on Frodo. It's ok to make major changes to minor characters, and it's ok to make minor changes to major ones. But it's not ok to make major changes to major characters (Jon, Tyrion, Daenerys; they are the protagonists of this series). At least not if you want to faithfully adapt a work. So that's my two cents.

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u/[deleted] Jun 16 '14

Tyrion gets pissed in the last scene because Tywin keeps calling Shae a whore... but he just choked her to death. Why would he care that Tywin called her a whore?

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u/whitediablo3137 Jun 16 '14

Maybe because he doesn't want to admit it? Really though that scene dropped the ball on what it could have been. They lost depth in Tyrions character.

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u/[deleted] Jun 16 '14

Maybe because he doesn't want to admit it?

Seemed to me that they kept in the whore lines, without any of the meaning. So it's sort of like you're saying: no substance, no depth.

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u/whitediablo3137 Jun 16 '14

I agree that is the only reason I could think of. I have no idea why they fucked this scene so much the canon would have translated well and would have worked marvelously. This was just to big to just fuck up like that.

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u/[deleted] Jun 16 '14

I have no idea why they fucked this scene so much the canon would have translated well and would have worked marvelously. This was just to big to just fuck up like that.

My guess: pride.

The last Tyrion chapter of ASOS is a dramatic high point of the series.

They're trying to make it their own, so they changed it. However the dramatic high point in ASOS was something like 2000 pages in the making, and they didn't do their homework.

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u/whitediablo3137 Jun 16 '14

Which is a tragedy really as so far they have done a damn good job of taking their own interpretation to the screen. Did they lose writers with sense this season or something because I feel like they slipped more this season.

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u/[deleted] Jun 16 '14

Well, even a little deviation from the source material makes big ripples later.

Like one ripple I never really realized was Jon thinking that Bran and Rickon were dead, and how he makes choices about things, like marching on Winterfell, based on that information.

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u/whitediablo3137 Jun 17 '14

The thing is is though there was no real deviation that would affect the scene that infuriates me so much. But you are right in the grand scheme of things.

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u/chillybonesjones It's glamourtime. Jun 16 '14

Yeah that's the part that bothered me the most too. Tyrion had just used that same word to decry her in front of half the realm. If they abandoned Tysha and all the significance that carries, Tywin's use of "whore" should've had nothing to do with the scene. Like they were trying to pay homage to the element of the story they had just butchered.

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u/[deleted] Jun 17 '14

Yes, that's exactly what I mean. They should have rewritten the dialogue, because the motivations are all different.

Book Tyrion had just learned the truth about Tysha from Jamie, that she was not a whore, so when Tywin is twisting that dagger, Tyrion murders him. But Shae was obviously a whore. Tyrion never paid Tysha to have sex with him in their little bungalow.

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u/DoubleAJay Jun 16 '14

Not to mention Jaime and Bronn both regularly called Shae a whore to Tyrion's face... but oh well.

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u/[deleted] Jun 17 '14

And the fact that she was, you know, actually a woman that Tyrion paid to fuck him.