You know, I understand that GOT is an adaptation and that HBO has to make changes because books are obviously absorbed differently than [an audio-visual medium like] television. I’m sure other people understand this as well.
I love when certain changes enrich the narrative. I have no problem with changes, as long as the point of the story remains the same and as long as those changes don’t come at the expense of the characters. If a character’s motivations essentially remain the same and their purpose is still understood, then I welcome changes.
However, that’s not what’s happening with Catelyn Stark’s story. Here, you have the creators preaching about how they understand that the women are some of the strongest characters in the series and yet, they made the choice to flatten Cat’s narrative and box her into a place that GRRM removed her from in the first place. What is the point of that? The fact that Cat makes the choice to stay with Robb and that she suggests negotiating with Renly and Stannis is important to her characterization and her story. Cat uses her political acumen to suggest solutions that will bring victory (and hopefully peace)—and this is perhaps the only way she knows that she can have her family back safe and sound. It wouldn’t have hurt to just allow her to have those two lines, which make her character’s motivations quite clear. If the writers have time to insert Ros and give her dialogue and give her scenes with Petyr, then they can manage to accurately portray Catelyn.
I think people have a right to complain about something they feel is an egregious mistake because really, if the writers are willing to take away a character’s agency…that decision doesn’t bode well for any of the marginalized characters in the series.
Honestly, taking away Catelyn’s agency is like having someone else birth Daenerys’ dragons and then handing them over to her to raise.
Thank you. It is really irritating me how the show is turning Catelyn into a declawed Mama Bear, which was precisely the trope her character subverted in the novels. That was kind of the point of Robb and Cat’s arc in the novels — it completely inverted the tired fantasy devices of the miraculously competent boy-king and his utra-supportive mother.
And I am seriously side-eyeing the argument that these changes are an improvement because they make Cat more “likeable”, which is clearly what the writers were going for. Diminishing a female character’s complexity and political acumen makes her more likeable? Doing this just so she can better fit people’s expectations of what a “good” mother is makes her more likeable? And when the writers repeatedly insist that the show is feminist and that the female characters are the strongest and yet, in the first two episodes, have stripped two of the major female characters of some of their most crucial decisions and actions and given those to male characters?
Yeah, that’s crap.
(Source: khaleesiboadicea)
