steve99941

[steve99941]

How HBO's Adaptation of Shae ruined the character(Game of Thrones)

Shae is a fictional character that appears in Game of Thrones from Season 1.

In Both the Books and the HBO Adaptation, Tyrion Lannister meets Shae when he is assigned to battle in the vanguard in the Lannister Army during the March of Tywin Lannister to the North.

In both versions Bronn arranges for her arrival into the Lannister encampment to meet Tyrion at his behest.

After a series of events, Tyrion eventually gets attached to and falls in love with Shae. He finds a way to secretly bring her to King's Landing, and attempts to hide her away from the public.

Despite his best efforts, his actions ultimately fail. But from here, things go down differently, and I would have to explain the differences that occur in the character of Shae, both from the A Song of Ice and Fire Book Series and the HBO Adaptation

Shae(A Song of Ice and Fire)

In this version, everything happens the same way as I have explained earlier, She meets Tyrion Lannister on the Green Fork after Bronn sought her out for him.

Eventually he falls in love with her, but unlike in the HBO Adaptation, he constantly doubts her intentions. This is obviously happening because Shae happens to tell him exactly what he wants to hear, which reminds him of his past and the painful event that happened with Tysha, his first love.

After Tyrion smuggles her to King's Landing against his father's orders, he keeps her in a manse and hires servants and guards to protect her.

He couldn't do this properly well, at least not from the master of whispers. Varys eventually finds out, and Tyrion begs him not to reveal his secret. Tyrion sees her secretly by pretending to patronize a whore in a brothel named Alayaya(who loves reading). He would then use a secret tunnel to meet Shae and go back to the Red Keep afterwards.

During the Riots of King's Landing, Tyrion sends Shagga to protect her.

On hearing of the upcoming arrival of Stannis Baratheon on the Blackwater Bay, accompanied with the intensifying riots in King's Landing as a result of the corruption of the King's Court, Tyrion begins to fear for her safety.

With the help of Varys, Tyrion manages to arrange for her to be the handmaid of Lollys Stokeworth.

Before the Battle of Blackwater, Queen Cersei uses the Kettleblacks to abduct Alayaya, so she can pressurize Tyrion(Cersei is unaware that Tyrion is seeing the hidden Shae). Out of anger, Tyrion promises that he would do to Tommen Baratheon whatever harm that is done to Alayaya, he apologizes to her and promises to free her.

Eventually, Shae is brought into the service of Sansa Stark (so she could be closer and under careful watch by Tyrion himself).

After some time, Tyrion is completely uncomfortable with the presence of Shae, as he is torn in between sending her away from King's Landing or marrying her off to tame the suspicions of Queen Cersei.

After meeting Shae one last time, and having a sleepless night, He decides to marry her off to Ser Tallad the Tall, who had been admiring her.

Tyrion eventually finds himself in Prison when King Joffrey chokes to death during the royal wedding (Joffrey was to be married to Margaery Tyrell, after he had refused Sansa).

During his trial, Shae betrays him by lying about his supposed secret plot with Sansa to eliminate Joffrey. She goes into details surrounding the nature of their relationship, embarrassing him further.

After the death of Prince Oberyn of Dorne(Tyrion's champion after he demanded a trial by combat) by Ser Gregor Clegane (The Mountain), Tyrion is confined to one of the Black cells to await execution.

Ser Jaime Lannister and Lord Varys eventually help him escape, but he finds a secret doorway to the Tower of the King's Hand. There, he finds Shae naked on his bed, wearing the golden chain of office he used to wear.

Shocked to see Tyrion there, she claims that Queen Cersei forced her to do everything she did during the trial, and that she was frightened of Tywin.

Not buying into it, Tyrion uses the golden chain, and strangles her to death. He then proceeds to kill Tywin with Joffrey's crossbow.

Afterwards, it is revealed that Cersei had bribed Shae with a manse and a Knight to wed, If she testified against Tyrion.

PERSONALITY: For this version of Shae, it is obviously revealed that she is nothing but a manipulative and a materialistic person. She probably never loved Tyrion and just loved to tell him what he wanted to hear. Each time she did that she was a step closer to the comfortable life she had dreamed of.

So, as per her personality, we can say that her loyalty lies on the highest bidder, and not on trust, friendship or love.

Shae (Game of Thrones)

This version is quite similar to the other one, in terms of storyline, but only quite a few differences;

When Tyrion first meets Shae, they have a conversation about Tysha, which didn't happen until later(in the books)

Tyrion brings her to King's Landing and hides her in the Tower of The Hand, until he finally found a way to bring her out without arousing suspicion. With Varys' help, Shae becomes a handmaiden to Sansa Stark(She didn't serve Lollys Stokeworth).

This time around, before the arrival of Stannis Baratheon on Blackwater, Ros(A prostitute at Winterfell who traveled to King's Landing. She's a completely created character by the show, and not in the books) is captured by the Kettleblacks and tortured by Queen Cersei to spite Tyrion(Cersei is unaware that the unnoticed Shae is the real person).

After the Battle of Blackwater, a severely injured Tyrion is visited by Shae. She comforts him and begs him to join her on a boat to Volantis, but Tyrion refuses, saying Politics in King's Landing is what he was born to do. Regardless, She accepts him.

Their relationship is placed into awryness when Sansa Stark is commanded to be wed to Tyrion. After the wedding, the awkward but stable relationship between Sansa and Tyrion begins to grow, causing Shae to continuously grow jealous, despite Tyrion's reassurance that he isn't interested in Sansa.

Eventually, Lord Varys offers Shae an opportunity and a bribe(a bag of diamonds) to leave King's Landing and Tyrion alone for her safety (according to him, her presence is making Tyrion unstable and would bring about his downfall). Shae rejects his offer angrily.

Later on, Lord Varys himself approaches Tyrion and warns him about Shae, and the possibility of his father's threats (Of hanging any whore he catches in Tyrion's bed). Varys has already been late, as a servant had seen Shae visiting Tyrion and had reported.

Seeing no other possible option to send her away(as she rarely listens to him about how dangerous King's Landing is), he deliberately hurts her by saying mean things to her, and he prepares a boat to ship her to Volantis. He instructs Bronn to see her to the ship.

After not seeing Shae for the duration of the Royal Wedding and thinking she has finally left King's Landing, he feels a little bit of relief.

However, as like in the books, Joffrey dies of poisoning, and Tyrion is locked up in a cell, to await trial and punishment for regicide.

During the trial, Shae appears, and lies about a lot of things; Like Tyrion planning Joffrey's death with his wife. She also narrates the story of their meeting, but twists it instead to a story of a Stockholm syndrome relationship.

She is shocked when Tyrion demands a trial by combat. As in the books, Oberyn is killed by Gregor Clegane, and Tyrion is assisted by Jaime Lannister and Lord Varys to escape Prison.

Tyrion eventually stumbles upon the Tower of the Hand on his way out of King's Landing. He sees Shae in the room and she immediately attacks him after realizing who he is.

Upon realizing she wanted to kill him, Tyrion strangles her to death with the gold chains he gave to her. He apologizes to her corpse, picks up Joffrey's crossbow and murders Tywin Lannister, after he repeatedly kept calling Shae a whore.

PERSONALITY: For this version of Shae, it is obviously certain that she is kind hearted, strong, and loving. She loves Tyrion, and not for the reason he thinks that she does.

She is driven by their relationship, and is courageous about it, even to the point of naivety.

Okay? So.... What's the Big deal with Shae?

Well, HBO's Game of Thrones ruined her character arc by turning her into a completely different person, and then using the conclusion of the original character to offer closure to a new version of the character they unintentionally created. It didn't work out so well(fans complained of this).

The Shae from A Song of Ice and Fire had a satisfying but tragic end. I say this because from the very first time she was introduced to Tyrion, we could already see, after a bit of time, that she was materialistic and was very manipulative. She seemed to know more than she was supposed to, and she had gotten used to the luxury Tyrion exposed her to, dangerously refusing to let go of said lifestyle, even when her life was at risk.

This version of Shae would have no issue testifying against Tyrion during the trial. Not because of personal issues, no. She's like Bronn, in a sense. The highest bidder is the best Companion. The moment Tyrion stopped giving her what she wanted, she could care less about him.

If HBO adapted this version into the big screen, the bag of diamonds Varys attempted to give to that Shae wouldn't be refused by this one. Not for anything in the world(Infact, she might even hang around for more).

The relationship between Tyrion and the Book Series' Shae is somewhat schematic. Tyrion knows this; It's exactly why he kept doubting her intentions, and he was right.

The Other Shae though? That's a different matter entirely. She genuinely worried about Sansa, she loved Tyrion, she rejected luxury to stay with him, she kept ignoring Tyrion's warnings about King's Landing because she thought they could overcome together.

From what I could understand of this version, she was far from opportunistic, and she genuinely loved Tyrion. I suspected this when I was first introduced to her in the first Season after having read the book.

This version of Shae would not do what she was written to do.(She definitely wouldn't have lied against Tyrion because she loved him).

Yes, we understand that she was hurt and angry, but this was of course way too obvious for her not to understand( I feel Tyrion leaving out the details as to what happened and why she had to leave just sucked because it was obviously a cheap way to make her arc go towards the version of her in the books).

The transition from a loving and understanding character to a lying and mischievous one doesn't do it for me.

Sure, there are lots of defences for why she did what she did; To Spite Tyrion, Or she was under the command of Queen Cersei and the likes.

I don't know, they may be right, but I just feel Shae became a wasted potential that could have been much more. They just had to write her off unrealistically because that was what happened in the books.

The Book Shae wasn't as complicated and as interesting as the TV adaptation. They just had to ruin her character by being faithful to the source material. She deserved better.

[steve99941]

Why Stranger Things' 4 Plot Twist Doesn't Work

Let's face it, Netflix's Stranger Things Series took the world by storm when the first season was released in 2016.

No one expected the idea of a Stephen King/Lovecraftian Horror amalgamation set in the 80's based on Eldritch monstrosities and alternate dimensions. But it happened anyway, and the Duffer Brothers were in for a treat. Not until....

When something becomes too much of a good thing, it becomes a problem. This is a very well known fact, and Stranger Things couldn't have enough of this realization. It just had to overstay it's welcome.

The fanbase became increasingly cringe overtime, and people loved the characters so much that they forgot the point of the entire show, or more like, the point of a horror show; IT'S NOT ABOUT THE CHARACTERS, IT'S ABOUT THE HORROR.

The moment you realize that people are more interested in your characters than in the manifesting horror of your story, you'd know you've messed it up.

I come in peace now, don't hang me. I'm not saying a horror story shouldn't have interesting characters. Of course it should, but the emphasis I'm trying to make here is; Stranger Things' fanbase is invested so much on the iconography, characters and the costumes. There is little to no emphasis on the horror, as per the Series' Popularity. When you see two people talking about Stranger Things, you don't necessarily hear phrases like "The Upside Down" or "The Mind Flayer", it's mostly about the four kids(Dustin, Lucas, Mike and Will), or the cop(Hopper), or the supporting characters.

Anyway, by the time the Duffer Brothers caught on on this hype for the show, they decided to exploit it, by giving the fans what they want; more screentime with the characters. That was the beginning of the downfall of this show.

Anyway, speaking of horror stories that don't necessarily pay attention to character development that much, but are rather invested heavily on the horrors of it's haunted universe, is the work of Junji Ito, a Japanese Mangaka, whose works are very inspired by H.P Lovecraft.

Many of his comic book horror series (The Uzumaki series for example) are not necessarily based on specific characters, but more on how the manifesting horror affects them. You could literally know nothing about his characters and yet still feel so much for them, with it's accompanying horror themes; A dread of the unknown, and a madness from the beyond.

This is what a horror show is supposed to be about. Not the other way round. It's the feeling of inevitability and doom, or the idea of helplessness surrounding the horror that builds fear. It's exactly the reason why Junji Ito's works are one of the most terrifying I've ever seen.

Alright, I digressed. Now let's go back to Stranger Things, and the reason I'm writing this in the first place; the infamous "plot twist" of Stranger Things 4. Why it doesn't work and how it fucking ruins everything in my opinion.

SPOILERS: You know this, I shouldn't be telling you. You've been warned.

What is the Plot Twist for Stranger Things 4?

In Season 4, we are introduced to an entity from the Upside Down, who is later revealed to be Lord Vecna, from the Dungeons and Dragons game the Hellfire club were playing.

Later on, when Eleven(Millie Bobby Brown) is taken by Owen(Paul Reiser) to El Navada, she is forced to confront her past in "Project Nina"(A top secret government facility and program located in the Nevada desert) which was developed by both him and Dr. Martin Brenner(Matthew Modine).

Eleven had apparently lost her abilities by the time of Season 4, so this whole government facility was designed to make her retain them.

Somewhere else, Robin(Maya Hawke) and Nancy(Natalia Dyer) are searching for clues pertaining to one mysterious Victor Creel(Robert Englund 1986, Kevin L. Johnson, 1959). They eventually find where he's being kept(in a mental institution), and he's not looking good.

Before hand, the team had been investigating certain mysteries surrounding a serial killer in 1986 who has been killing victims in a brutal but similar manner(Disjointed limbs, gouged out eyes, broken bones). People talking about these cases only reference a specific killer who would be the only one behind it, named "Victor Creel".

The team decided to check out the 1959 "murders" that Creel was supposedly associated with, so they could understand the nature of the 1986 murders. It turns out they are actually of the same kind, as the news reports explained.

They ask Creel about the 1959 murders that happened, and how he ended up in Pennhurst Asylum. He begins by explaining his backstory;

At some point in March 1959, after he retired from the war, he inherited a "small fortune" from his wife's great uncle who had died.

The house was located in Hawkins, Indiana and they moved there to start a new life. So it would seem.

A month later(the only month of peace they had), the family began to experience various otherworldly and paranormal occurrences (Animals getting strangled and mutilated, flickering lights, radio interferences and so on). It was becoming so frequent, and it made Creel extremely paranoid. He began to believe this was the work of a "Spawn of Satan", and called an exorcist for help.

That never helped. In fact, it made everything worse. Virginia Creel(his wife) died in a very horrific manner(the same kind of the victims in 1986). Horrified at this occurrence, he tried to take his children out of the house, but had a hallucination.

After snapping back to reality, he realized Alice Creel(his daughter), was killed in the same manner Virginia was killed. He also realized that Henry Creel(his son) had passed out and was in a coma.

When the authorities came, they weren't exactly ready to buy into his "demon spawn" story, so he was incarcerated. He begged for an insanity plea (for being arrested for a crime he didn't commit).

It was granted, and he found his way to Pennhurst Asylum. There he also attempted suicide, but couldn't go through with it and only managed to gouge his eyes out.

After making a controversial statement about a "demon" punishing him by killing his family (He heard falsely that Henry Creel died in a coma) which was of course, cast aside and not believed; he vowed never to explain his story to news reporters or authority figures again.

Meanwhile, Eleven keeps having a certain flashback about her "killing" a bunch of kids who were in Dr. Brenner's superweapon "spy" program. However she can't seem to recall how this happened or how she was involved.

Dr. Brenner and Owen plan to help her remember her past by placing her in a simulation-like experiences of her past, allowing her to navigate them and uncover lost memories.

During her past time in a facility(in her flashbacks), she met a certain guy who served as one of their supervisors. This guy, apparently a nice person, gave her a lot of good advice when she was to undergo various training programs. (This attracted Brenner's attention, and he was extremely punished for this).

Eleven slowly began to warm up to him, and felt very terrible for what Brenner had done to him for her sake. They began to relate with one another, until one day....

He decided to help her escape the facility(telling her that she was to be killed by the other kids and that Brenner knew). On reaching the escape point, she beckoned him to come with her, but he refused, saying he was a servant, like she was, and that no matter where he escaped to, "Papa"(Dr Brenner) would always find him.

Refusing to leave him behind, and using her powers, she helped him destroy a chip implanted into his neck with a tracker. He told her to wait in one of the rooms, that he had something he needed to do.

After waiting a long time and having heard nothing but screams, Eleven journeyed back to the rainbow room, where she discovered something shocking;

She didn't kill those children, like she thought she did. She misremembered. Someone did it, and that someone was none other than the "nice guy" that was helping her all along.

He revealed himself as 001. And explained a lot to Eleven, about his backstory and motivations which sounded awfully similar to someone we already knew; Henry Creel, the son of Victor.

That was when the entire team realized, that "Vecna", the supposed character from DND, was actually the "Spawn of Satan" his father had been extremely paranoid about; Who was behind the murder of the entire family (Victor Creel was alive all along, and was taken by Dr. Brenner into his Superweapon program).

The 1959 killer had been Henry Creel (his father never saw this coming), and the 1986 murders were committed by the same person, although completely changed.

After having revealed his true intentions to Eleven and manipulatingly tried to get her to join him, she refuses him and the two of them get into a fight. She eventually wins and out of anger, opens a gate into another dimension (The Upside Down). 001(Victor Creel) goes through the gate, and transforms into Vecna after being struck by a mutated lightning blast.

The scene dramatically cuts to the Creel house in the Upside Down, where Vecna rests, and the mark "001" can be seen on it's arm.

It was Vecna all along, the Upside Down, the Mind Flayer, the Demo-dogs, everything. He had been opening portals all along.

Why doesn't this work?

1. Vecna's motivation doesn't exactly work either.

Basically, if you wanted to summarize Vecna's motivation for turning into a deranged psychopath, it's something like this.

"I Killed everyone I cared about because I was different. I also mentioned something horrible my parents did, which wasn't shown on screen to make everything believable. So I just turned genocidal all of a sudden and had a desire to end the world, because I had spider issues and was sent to the Upside Down."

No, seriously, none of this makes any sense. If it was the case that this mentality developed when he met Dr. Brenner, I would have agreed with it. Brenner was sort of an asshole, so we kind of get why he would have motivation to kill everyone in the facility.

But no, that wasn't how this happened. 001 hadn't even been exposed to this inhumanity before he started killing his family members(Victor Creel looked like a nice guy with a few flaws).

Parents can be shitty and abusive at times, but it wasn't shown enough to make us believe his transition. Certainly not also enough to snap the limbs of a mother and her daughter.

All I'm saying is, the lack of clarity as to what turned him from a sensitive boy who had powers, to a deranged genocidal killer just doesn't work here.

2. Plot hole/Continuity errors

In that exact same episode, of the big reveal, Nancy discovers that the Upside Down is stuck in 1983. Why? Well that's because that was the year as agreed(In Season 1) that Eleven opened a gate to the Upside Down. It was also the same year that Will Byers was declared "missing"(November 6, 1983).

But hold on now, the prequel to all this happened years ago. The flashbacks that Eleven had about Vecna and the first gate that was opened, took place in 1979(as per Season 4), 4 years before the supposed event that made Will Byers a missing person(1983's incident).

So which is it? 1983 or 1979? This is what happens when you're trying to introduce something that wasn't there before in order to scream "Got ya! Clever plot twist! Didn't see that coming, did ya?"

Honestly, this show is like Riverdale and most teen dramas, where they establish a bunch of lore, then they go back and say stuff like, "Uhm... Actually, before all this, uh... This happened. Blah, blah, blah..."

The Duffer Brothers wanted in on the Plot Twist train, but they didn't realise that you can do it so horribly wrong (like this show did), or you can do it brilliantly (Attack On Titan Season 3's plot twist).

Again, why are the Demo-dogs in Russia still alive? Despite the fact that Dustin correctly explained the concept of the mind flayer, the source and the Demo-dogs? Despite the fact that L had closed the gates and all the Demo-dogs died?

Ah. Who remembers this chick from season 2? I honestly didn't see why this episode(Ep.7) had much hate from fans, I just didn't care enough about the characters to hate them.

Okay? Why her? Well, she's another plot-hole. In that same hated episode she explains that she and L were "sisters" and that L escaped before she did.

So, I don't know if the Duffer Brothers were drunk, because I didn't see a single scene in all of L's childhood flashbacks where she appeared.

Honestly, I'm pretty sure I know the answer; People hated the character so much that the Duffer Brothers decided to remove her from the plot. Even if this was the answer, it just sucks. It just shows why I dislike the fanbase of Stranger Things. This is YOUR story, not the story of the fans.

All this would have been corrected, without the need for this plot twist.

3. It ruins Eleven's character.

I seriously cannot begin to explain how much mess up there is about this twist on L's personality.

First of all she acts like she doesn't know what "bullying" is, and she obviously doesn't know how to construct grammatical sentences properly( a major part of her reason for bonding with Mike in the first place).

With all her smaller developments for liking Eggo's, referring to bad people as "mouth breathers"(because she doesn't have much vocabulary to curse much) and all that.

The Duffer Brothers took all that and threw it out a window. Turns out, None of that Mattered! She was bullied back at the Rainbow room, She could speak properly and construct sentences when she was communicating with Vecna/001/Creel. So If she could do a lot of things in 1979, 4 years before she even met the boy team, why doesn't she remember any of them?

Many Stranger Things' fans would argue that L had a traumatic experience, so she forgot all of that. But that doesn't make any sense does it? She remembers Kali. She remembers the rainbow room, she remembers Dr. Brenner, She remembers the kids, She remembers she opened the gate(like we see in Season 1), but she doesn't remember Vecna? Or that she was bullied? Or that she could speak properly?

Lesson to take home dear writers: Please for the love of Isis, Osiris and Horus, do not use trauma to insert new plot points in your story, it doesn't work out well.

One more thing I forgot to add was; The realization that L wasn't behind the murders, but rather Vecna, was horribly disappointing. Why? Because this shatters everything we know about L having a dark and dangerous potential.

I mean, ever since we got introduced to L, we had a feeling that something was off about her, that she was someone who would bring a lot of problems to anyone she found herself acquainted to.

We also believed she had a "dark side" that no one but her knew. Which is what I kind of got in the first season where L says she was a "monster" to Mike(Because she opened the Gate to the Upside Down in anger, and killed a lot of people, mind you, this supposedly the 1983 Byers went missing, but now it's 1979, all thanks to the plot twist). So it all felt she knew she did something terrible out of anger, which screams secret murderous-like tendencies, like when we see her almost kill the stereotypical bully girl with a boot.

All of this was completely destroyed when L's flashback of those "murders" she committed weren't actually hers, but Vecna's. She was a "good person" all along.

I don't know about you, but I like complexities in characters, and this was an opportunity for them to do something like that, but they had to skip this for... A cheap plot twist.

It could have been written without Vecna's intervention, at all, or with his, just not this way.

In my opinion, the "dark side" of her personality would have been explored better if they made it that she was the one who actually killed those children. Just, this time she did it out of anger.

Remember when Vecna had been manipulating her into believing that the children wanted to kill her? That Brenner hated her? And all that?

Since she was a kid, and didn't know much at that time, it would have been a nice character development for her, if she actually did kill those children, not just out of anger, but also of fear. They were about to kill her, like Vecna said.

Afterwards, Vecna would show up and reveal he lied to her. She would feel guilty, not just because she was manipulated into killing those children, but because deep down, she hated the way they treated her(Vecna would have her do this; Kill innocent people, to become more like him)

L's reaction could have been written as a mixture of feelings; Anger, Guilt, Pleasure, Remorse and Fright.

Which would be why she really thinks of herself a monster, because she's hiding behind mixed feelings of "No I didn't kill them intentionally" and "Maybe secretly, you wanted this"(They tried to do this for Max but it didn't work out well in my opinion).

Then, it was the anger of her being manipulated by a puppeteer that made her open the gate and destroy 001's physical body.

Oh well, it's just an opinion. I just would have loved to see that. Characters, especially the main ones in this series are just irredeemably good(Eg. Joyce). I have issues with that.

People are not like that in real life.

4. It ruins the mystery of the Upside Down

This was the ultimate turn off for me. When I saw in the plot twist that Vecna was behind almost everything that happened in the previous seasons, I was horribly disappointed.

So, basically speaking, the Upside Down isn't a terrifying alternate dimension that creeps slowly into living universes and absorbs them, it is not a dimension filled with Eldritch Abominations that are completely unknowable and difficult to understand, the Mind Flayer isn't an abstract, Incomprehensible monstrosity like we thought in Season 2, the portals of this strange world doesn't just creep into ours for unknown reasons (like we see in many Lovecraftian Horror stories), it isn't a very scary place.

Why? Because everything concerning the Upside Down creeping into our world with "uncertainty"(like we believed) was all connected to a kid(a human with powers) with spider issues who later turned into a genocidal psycho. The mind flayer, the opening gates, the monsters, it was all Vecna's doing. Great.(How to ruin a horror mystery 101).

I can go on and on and on. But that's that by the way.

For the Record I still Love Stranger Things (What it was in Season 1 for the most part), so it sort of irks me a bit to criticise the show.

It's just, it's sad to see how fanservice ruined a show like this that had so much potential.

That's it for now, and I'd see you next time.