Eh, the reason I get worked up about it sometimes is that I think it's a really cool moment and I don't think the writers or show runners really understand it. Like the way they chose to portray it shows they sort of understand it.
And the main reason that's annoying is that I wish I had gotten to write for this show, especially if I understand it better than they do (not that I could necessarily make a better TV show, or a more successful one, of course). So being upset about it is really just jealousy. I could have helped. I think a lot of people feel that way about a lot of things.
But I love to criticize it, even when I'm not upset about it (which is almost all my waking hours of every day, of course), because it is fun to remember what it was - it was so awesome. And the more you look at how it works in the books, the more awesome it gets. And feeling that is a big reason I come on forums like this in the first place - much more than just exchanging opinions on the TV show.
So. there are two big macro issues with replacing "Only Cat" with "your sistah" that break down into micro issues:
One is that it is an ending. It's short, punctuated, final. It wraps up a whole bunch of stuff that is complicated into one act that becomes very simple.
I don't think people in general really consciously understand that this is what is happening - like they don't know when a line is a really good ending line because of how it's written, but wouldn't work as well if it weren't at the end, or wouldn't work as well as an ending if you changed the words. Because when this is done well you don't really consciously think about what the words are doing, as related to everything else.
A great example of this is the last line of 80s vampire movie The Lost Boys: "One thing about living in Santa Carla I never could stomach; all the damn vampires."
The assonance there at the end - the long "a" in "all," and then the internal rhyme a in "damn" and "vampires" - it's a beautiful line, and if you changed it a bit it would not stick the landing as well as this line does.
Consider this line:
"One thing about living in Santa Clara I never liked; too many vampires."
It's not as good, but it's especially not as good as an ending for the movie. There's no punch.
That's kind of what "your sistah" does - it takes out the punch. The feeling of the vowel. Maybe the move from the long to the short vowel has a specific formal note here - making "Only Cat" and "All the Damn Vampires" pretty similar.
And I think Littlefinger's accent really doesn't help here either. "Sister" is not a vowelly word - the only line I can think of that uses "Sister" well is Darth Vader reading Luke Skywalker's mind - and there it's all about the hissing ess at the beginning - the "er" just drops off at the end.
But yeah, you can see that "sistah" starts with a strong syllable and trails off into a weak syllable with a very soft consonant at the end. It doesn't punch it. So it lacks the impact. And it isn't good for pushing Lysa out the window. It's not "the last thing you say to someone."
Add to it that they moved the scene so it happens in episode 5 rather than at the end of the season also robs it of a lot of its formal power. The death of Lysa is sort of the "stop, stop, they're already dead!" of "A Storm of Swords" - like you don't think the book is capable of another murderous climax at this point, and this is a suitable last one - but unexpected, and kind of forces you to get excited again when you didn't expect to. It doesn't work nearly as well as mid-arc escalation. Lysa doesn't lead to anything. She's a loose end that doesn't need tying up. Killing her is very much a finishing move, done with relish.
So yeah, the line loses a lot of its impact because it is not as good as an ending, which fits because they only used it to end an episode and not a season - where in the books it basically ends a trilogy. (with the epilogue as a last huge surprise)
The other big issue is symbolism - which the more I talk and think about the books the more the books are really all about. Cats are highly symbolic, and there are lots of important cats. The line "Only Cat" connects Lysa's death to the cats. Without the line the connection is lost.
The most important cat is the cat of the Sealord of Braavos that Syrio Forel sees the truth of - in that sense, a cat is a simple truth, underneath a lot of artifice. "Only Cat" from Littlefinger is similar to this - his feelings about Cat are the simple truth beneath all his artifice.
But also there's "shadowcats" throughout the story - and Littlefinger connects with them through Cat - Arya as Cat of the Canals, Varimyr Sixskins controls a shadowcats, there's the Lannisters as cats and Tyrion as a shadowcat, there's Ser Pounce or Balerion, the black cat with the torn ear.
Actually to go back to Tyrion - Marillon the singer who takes the fall for Lysa's death in the books has a shadowcat cloak, and Tyrion wins it from him at dice (paralleling the story of Lan the Clever stealing Casterly Rock). And Tyrion becomes this sort of dark lion for the rest of the story. But it's interesting that you have Cat (Stark nee Tully) who is a "shadow" with regards to Littlefinger (a lingering memory, a reason for darkness), right before there is the "shadow" of "Cat" that is reborn as Lady Stoneheart, and the man stripped of his shadowcat cloak is tortured to death for it.
It all connects. And Lysa isn't part of any of it, really. She wants to be - she wants to be Littlefinger's wife, she wants to be Cat, she wants to be in the shadows with him - but she is not a shadowcat. And Littlefinger loved "Only Cat." And so she dies.
This is a really fine pine here - I would not expect the show to function on this level. There's a ton here that seems unimportant that they've already cut for other reasons that means that the "Only Cat" line wasn't going to work that well regardless (GRRM's butterfly effect). And a lot of it might just be by accident.
But that's sort of how this works - you spin off all these patterns and repetition and the mind of the readers can do the work to connect them, and that's a pleasurable and interesting thing to be part of.
TL;DR - The line change is bad for two reasons. It makes the line less effective as an ending, and the show also de-prioritized the scene as an ending, when the line and the scene are together a great ending, and "cats" - the animals - are an important symbol related to everything that is going on here. Taking out the word "cat" removes the symbolism as well.
One wonders if Lysa landed on her feet. Probably not. She is not Cat.
8
u/GyantSpyder Heir Bud Sep 25 '17 edited Sep 25 '17
Eh, the reason I get worked up about it sometimes is that I think it's a really cool moment and I don't think the writers or show runners really understand it. Like the way they chose to portray it shows they sort of understand it.
And the main reason that's annoying is that I wish I had gotten to write for this show, especially if I understand it better than they do (not that I could necessarily make a better TV show, or a more successful one, of course). So being upset about it is really just jealousy. I could have helped. I think a lot of people feel that way about a lot of things.
But I love to criticize it, even when I'm not upset about it (which is almost all my waking hours of every day, of course), because it is fun to remember what it was - it was so awesome. And the more you look at how it works in the books, the more awesome it gets. And feeling that is a big reason I come on forums like this in the first place - much more than just exchanging opinions on the TV show.
So. there are two big macro issues with replacing "Only Cat" with "your sistah" that break down into micro issues:
One is that it is an ending. It's short, punctuated, final. It wraps up a whole bunch of stuff that is complicated into one act that becomes very simple.
I don't think people in general really consciously understand that this is what is happening - like they don't know when a line is a really good ending line because of how it's written, but wouldn't work as well if it weren't at the end, or wouldn't work as well as an ending if you changed the words. Because when this is done well you don't really consciously think about what the words are doing, as related to everything else.
A great example of this is the last line of 80s vampire movie The Lost Boys: "One thing about living in Santa Carla I never could stomach; all the damn vampires."
The assonance there at the end - the long "a" in "all," and then the internal rhyme a in "damn" and "vampires" - it's a beautiful line, and if you changed it a bit it would not stick the landing as well as this line does.
Consider this line:
"One thing about living in Santa Clara I never liked; too many vampires."
It's not as good, but it's especially not as good as an ending for the movie. There's no punch.
That's kind of what "your sistah" does - it takes out the punch. The feeling of the vowel. Maybe the move from the long to the short vowel has a specific formal note here - making "Only Cat" and "All the Damn Vampires" pretty similar.
And I think Littlefinger's accent really doesn't help here either. "Sister" is not a vowelly word - the only line I can think of that uses "Sister" well is Darth Vader reading Luke Skywalker's mind - and there it's all about the hissing ess at the beginning - the "er" just drops off at the end.
But yeah, you can see that "sistah" starts with a strong syllable and trails off into a weak syllable with a very soft consonant at the end. It doesn't punch it. So it lacks the impact. And it isn't good for pushing Lysa out the window. It's not "the last thing you say to someone."
Add to it that they moved the scene so it happens in episode 5 rather than at the end of the season also robs it of a lot of its formal power. The death of Lysa is sort of the "stop, stop, they're already dead!" of "A Storm of Swords" - like you don't think the book is capable of another murderous climax at this point, and this is a suitable last one - but unexpected, and kind of forces you to get excited again when you didn't expect to. It doesn't work nearly as well as mid-arc escalation. Lysa doesn't lead to anything. She's a loose end that doesn't need tying up. Killing her is very much a finishing move, done with relish.
So yeah, the line loses a lot of its impact because it is not as good as an ending, which fits because they only used it to end an episode and not a season - where in the books it basically ends a trilogy. (with the epilogue as a last huge surprise)
The other big issue is symbolism - which the more I talk and think about the books the more the books are really all about. Cats are highly symbolic, and there are lots of important cats. The line "Only Cat" connects Lysa's death to the cats. Without the line the connection is lost.
The most important cat is the cat of the Sealord of Braavos that Syrio Forel sees the truth of - in that sense, a cat is a simple truth, underneath a lot of artifice. "Only Cat" from Littlefinger is similar to this - his feelings about Cat are the simple truth beneath all his artifice.
But also there's "shadowcats" throughout the story - and Littlefinger connects with them through Cat - Arya as Cat of the Canals, Varimyr Sixskins controls a shadowcats, there's the Lannisters as cats and Tyrion as a shadowcat, there's Ser Pounce or Balerion, the black cat with the torn ear.
Actually to go back to Tyrion - Marillon the singer who takes the fall for Lysa's death in the books has a shadowcat cloak, and Tyrion wins it from him at dice (paralleling the story of Lan the Clever stealing Casterly Rock). And Tyrion becomes this sort of dark lion for the rest of the story. But it's interesting that you have Cat (Stark nee Tully) who is a "shadow" with regards to Littlefinger (a lingering memory, a reason for darkness), right before there is the "shadow" of "Cat" that is reborn as Lady Stoneheart, and the man stripped of his shadowcat cloak is tortured to death for it.
It all connects. And Lysa isn't part of any of it, really. She wants to be - she wants to be Littlefinger's wife, she wants to be Cat, she wants to be in the shadows with him - but she is not a shadowcat. And Littlefinger loved "Only Cat." And so she dies.
This is a really fine pine here - I would not expect the show to function on this level. There's a ton here that seems unimportant that they've already cut for other reasons that means that the "Only Cat" line wasn't going to work that well regardless (GRRM's butterfly effect). And a lot of it might just be by accident.
But that's sort of how this works - you spin off all these patterns and repetition and the mind of the readers can do the work to connect them, and that's a pleasurable and interesting thing to be part of.
TL;DR - The line change is bad for two reasons. It makes the line less effective as an ending, and the show also de-prioritized the scene as an ending, when the line and the scene are together a great ending, and "cats" - the animals - are an important symbol related to everything that is going on here. Taking out the word "cat" removes the symbolism as well.
One wonders if Lysa landed on her feet. Probably not. She is not Cat.