User blog comment:Shaneymike/The Death of Talisa Stark/@comment-5014364-20160527223953

The TV writers didn't even consider that her family was "the" Maegyr family.

As I've said before: this is like some TV writers in Japan thinking that they can pick a "common American name" from major politicians, and don't think it unusual or worth farther comment to name a character "Jana Obama" or something.

The TV writers never thought to ask, "wait, do we mean she's a member of THE Maegyr family?"

All we ever really heard about this major changeup was that there was fighting in the writers' room, the only thing we ever heard was that podcast Martin made from Worldcon which I posted notes and quotes from.

And I'm not sure how much was him self-filtering. Basically he demanded in disgust that if they were going to drastically re-write the character so much they should outright rename her, because she wasn't "Jeyne Westerling" anymore.

But what I can't tell from the way he said it is if they intended for her to be from Volantis before or after they rewrote her into some battlefield healer thing.

I didn't have thorough access to the TV show at the time. One day I'm going to rewatch Season 2, with all commentary tracks, plus interviews - I've often noticed some patterns others haven't with other stuff.

Many subscribe to the "Talisa Honeypot theory".....I haven't researched the evidence thoroughly enough to make a firm decision. YET.

But I will reiterate what Elio of Westeros.org pointed out: the fact that a sizable portion of viewers and critics thought that her entire personality was an act IS NOT a "vote of confidence" that she was a well-written character.

I mean yikes; the character was so poorly written that people thought she was a spy and not for real?

Lots of little things. Like no human being in Westeros for that many months is stupid enough not to be able to locate WINTERFELL on a map - as if she's laying it on TOO hard of "I don't know who anyone is I'm an innocent"

And at this point, what the hell do people remember about her the most? You say "Talisa", people say "she got stabbed in her pregnant belly!

Not....character actions. Not dialogue that reflects her characterization. She's purely defined as breeding stock for Robb. ....this when Benioff and Weiss said they wanted to give her more of an on-screen presence relative to the novels in which she only briefly appears.

That was just bad writing.

Notice that this sort of happens whenever they go that drastically off-book: Talisa, the Sand Snakes (shudder)

....I thought they'd have mentioned her when we saw Volantis again in Season 5....given that the whole reason they said "she's from Volantis" and not Myr (she doesn't look Volantene...though then again neither did that other guy) was "uh, we wanted to set up Volantis in advance". Really? What the hell did we learn about Volantis from her?

....yes, I do wonder if she'll be mentioned again in the context of the Freys reappearing.