"Book readers" - Season 8 Episode 1 "Winterfell"

bur wrote: »

if we ever get there, the thought of having all these characters in one place having real full conversations gets me giddy.

if we ever get there...

I don't see it ever happening. George might release Winds of Winter before he dies but he's made too much of a mess for himself. We'll only ever dream of A Dream of Spring...

I thoroughly loved books 1-3. Read AFFC shortly after it came out and found it a struggle. ADWD was good, but again all these plotlines and people made it difficult enough to follow. GRRM shot himself in the foot by trying to follow so many people that setting up for endgame was almost impossible. It's no wonder he's been fighting with the book for 8 years and no sign of it ever being released.

You'd love to have him and Pat Rothfuss swap manuscripts and maybe they might finish each others :pac:

[Deleted User] wrote: »

They ruined Stannis for me. Easily one of the best characters in the book. An absolute tactical master when it comes to battle, who withstood the siege of Storm's End for a year. What does he do in the show? Marches on Winterfell. In the snow. On foot. And camps out in the open. Really?

I didn’t hate that. It wasn’t an act of stupidity, as soon as Melisandre abandoned him he knew it was a lost cause, he’d just come too far and lost too much to turn back.

Trent Houseboat wrote: »

In the books as it stand, Jon is dead, Dany is lost in the Dothraki Sea, Mereen is blockaded, Bran's in a cave, Arya's blind, Sansa's in the Vale waiting to get married, Stannis is snowed in, Cersie is about to go on trial in front of the Faith Militant and Jaime has run off with Brienne on some Lady Stoneheart caper. Not to mention that Loris is "dead", but the might of Highgarden still exists as a threat, Doran Martell is up to some sh*t, Euron is up to some sh*t and the whole Young Griff story has to play out. There's a whole lot of story between there and the finale. For me anything in the show post season four is fan fiction up until the end which I assume with be close enough to what Martin intended. It may be the only ending we ever get.

I still like the show and enjoyed the new episode. People complain about not enough being made of Jon's dragon riding, but at this stage we're just trying to get to the end. A few pages of lineage and dragon riding lore are nice in a book, but to explain it in the show would involve Tyrion/Sam/Bran just reeling off exposition.

On Bran in the courtyard, I'd have wheeled him out and left him there too, he's such a bummer.

Really brings home how much story is left to write to try to bring it all together. More than 2 more books tbh.

Tazzimus wrote: »

He did the same in the book, he's camped at some town last we seen him I think, getting ready to move again.
Most horses dead, food ran out, people fed up etc.
Also, he had the mountain clans of the North with him in the books, no sign of them in the show.

Stannis was trying to rally the north, he'd toured the mountain clans and liberated Deepwood Motte from Yara. He was following Jon's advice and the blizzard even seemed to catch the grey haired mountain clansmen and Umbers unawares. So I don't think he can be blamed for getting caught in it. I think it's a freak occurrence or supernatural. It's still Autumn. They were marching on Winterfell for "The Ned's girl", not because Stannis wanted Winterfell or to kill Boltons.

Stannis is much more likely to destroy the Bolton forces in the books than Jon. Though Ser Too Fat to Sit a Horse will probably play an important role. If there is a battle of the bastards I'd expect it to be much smaller an affair that the War for the North we got on the show.

Stannis might be the best king, but I don't think he's going to sit the Iron Throne in the end. Lord Commander of the New Night's Watch would be a great fit for him I think, though in fairness he's probably toast. I could see him dying on the ice, taking the bulk of the Frey/Bolton army with him, though I imagine that at least Theon, maybe Asha are getting out of there. There's no princess there to burn or priestess to urge it so I don't see that happening.

Fian wrote: »

Really brings home how much story is left to write to try to bring it all together. More than 2 more books tbh.

Most likely. He could devote a whole book to Davos and the search for Rickon on Skagos, I think we'll see another book or two from Martin, but I don't think it'll ever be finished. You begin to see why the showrunners just decided that people could travel from one end of the continent to the other in an ad break just to move things along.

I thought it was a good return. Overall I'm just happy to have it back.

My only gripe is by removing the Quentyn storyline, and the way they told the story last night, takes all the significance out of Jon being accepted by Rhaegal as a dragonrider. To non-book readers it probably seems like anyone can just jump onboard and away you go.

It's also a bit late in the game with five episodes left to be trying to paint Dany as a villain when they've spent the last seven seasons showing us she is ultimately a good person with bit of a fiery streak (literally).

Given the seriousness of the situation having Bran lay out the truth to both of them before the dragon lessons begin might have been a better way to go about it, especially as they've spent seven seasons building viewers belief in Bran and his abilities.

lawred2 wrote: »

Euron is great and the scenes with Cersei were excellent

I thought it was brilliant how she was shown to be attracted to him on an animal level, even though the cold, rational part of her probably despises him. Part of the underlying GoT of illustrating how people are driven by their base instincts...

awec wrote: »

Dare I say it, the TV show is actually better than the books in later seasons. It's definitely more accessible anyway, those books are IMO totally off limits for a more casual reader. The screen writers did a good job cutting a lot of the book crap out of the TV show.

A lot would have you hung, drawn and quartered for that comment, but I agree. The show has streamlined well and cut a lot of the crap that didn't need to be in there. It feels like GRRM has written himself into a corner tbh, a consequence of being a gardener rather than an architect perhaps and not mapping out your story but letting it develop. Sansa is just stranded and completely ineffectual to the main plot, there's been so many resurrections now (after emotional deaths that hit home like ) that I can't believe in any character dying, the Quentynne plot took a long time to go nowhere and it feels like the Iron Islands plot is going the same way. The Dany storyline makes the absolute age it took to get through the Slaver's Bay plot on TV seem like 100m compared to a marathon!

Don't get me wrong, I did actually love the books and will read whatever else we get, it's just the TV show is better for me. The only plotlines I wish the show covered, so I'd know I was getting resolution on, are Lady Stoneheart and Young Griff.

People give out about the show going off the rails when they diverged from the book, but I think a lot of those haven't actually read the books in full. Some of the best stuff on GoT has been show-only stuff: Hardhome, Winds of Winter, Battle of the Bastards, even things like Cersei and Rob's heart-to-heart in series 1.

Bran waiting for wight hodor or wight summer

Having only 10 hours of screen time per season alot of content would have to be cut from the source material that can be very dangerous when the story is unfinished if the on screen adaption is to remain loyal to it in this case it is based on which gives HBO licence to kill the source material and rewrite it as they see fit which in many cases has been very strange and almost unbearable to see, the adaptions have been good in other parts but seeing characters underused or misused has been frustrating.

For instance Dorne deserved a place in the story better than the bad poosy brutality, killing off characters that played vital roles in the story and amalgamated or renamed characters has also been bloody frustrating, characters doing silly uncharacteristically wrong things too has confused book readers but the show is in a world quite separate to the book now and until the books are finished any comparison can not properly take place.

What's the timeline in the show now? The show has gone on for about 8 or 9 years but it can't be the same amount of time in the show's timeline can it? How long has it been since Ned Stark got his head cut off?