GoT - Is Over, Post Your Drogon Sightings

I'm not too excited either.

Noodlemod_sl said:

The real issue here is GRRM had like 5 fucking years to complete A SINGLE BOOK. It is absolutely not the producer's faults here, they did their part in the deal. GRRM fucked this up, not them.

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Remember when he said after S1 that the show's reception had re-energized his motivation for finishing the next book. I guess he doesn't hold a charge very well.

The only storylines I'm remotely looking forward to seeing made into motion are the Sansa+Littlefinger interactions and Cersi. I really don't care about any of the other stuff. I guess maybe also the Jon storyline with his interactions with Stannis and Melisandre.

I'm still waiting for my stoneheart goddamnit

Tenks_sl said:

Probably because you know the badness of the storylines to come

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The problem with the storylines in books 4 and 5 is that they were stretched out way too much. The condensing necessary in the show could make them pretty interesting.

For example, the thing tons of people were wanting to see was how Dany and Tyrion would react to each other. We are actually going to see that.
We aren't going to see some random kingsguard interacting in Dorne, we are going to see Jaime and possibly Bronn.
Arya isn't going to spend the entire season doing nothing, she is probably going to kick some ass.
Also looks like Jon's storyline will be more interesting than counting sheep until he gets killed.
etc

I am very much looking forward to this season and the tv show going past the books. I love the books but the books had serious pacing issues in 4 and 5. It is also increasingly looking like they might not ever end.

I think a lot of my apathy for the upcoming season of GoT is for a few reasons

A lot of my enjoyment of the first several seasons was from having read the books many times, trying to imagine how they were going to visualize different key events and people, and then gauging my friends reactions to seeing the show with no book knowledge.

A lot of other shows based on books/comics tend to have their weaker episodes or seasons when they stray too far from the source material. The Walking Dead and True Blood are both guilty of this. There's a reason a TV show gets made based on a literary work, it's because the literary work is outstanding. TV writers are almost never up to par with the original author, and shouldn't try to create a significant amount of new content. Some shows eventually get to the point that they are similar to their source in name only, they diverge so greatly at some point that it isn't even the same story anymore.

I hope the GoT writers can prove me wrong, but I don't have as much faith in them to tell a compelling story as I do in GRRM, but my faith in GRRM has definitely diminished over the last couple of books, so I guess I can say that my overall expectations are just low at this point, whether it's for the books or the show going forward.

I'm really disappointed that she won't appear on the show. I know the showrunners have to condense stuff and trim some of the fat in order to create coherent storylines, but I think they're taking too many artistic liberties. They'll omit something and then include some completely unnecessary change. Most people who adapt written works for the screen are guilty of this. They just wanna put their own little stamp on the material.

Well, since apparently they are skipping a quite a few chapters right off hand from book 4 (the Iron Islands are getting glossed over, which makes me sad because that whole story line was super interesting in my opinion) and condensing the crap out of the teenage girl shit that Daenarys went through, they shouldn't have a problem covering basically all the salient points in season 5 with probably some bleed over into 6. Aren't they also skipping all the shit with Aegon as well? That's like... a very large chunk of characters who won't be getting backstory or anything resolved about them, further reducing the potential content to cover.

I'm excited for the season, but with the things they are cutting out of the show it kind of reduces the amount of "what if" scenarios for the books and makes it a little difficult to get invested in characters that (apparently) aren't major players in the final books.

Soygen_sl said:

I'm excited for this season, if only for the "new" stuff that nobody knows about, like last season's death-touch from the White Walker to the baby, etc. I've completely written off the books at this point.

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This is how I feel. I'm excited for this season of the show because it's almost certainly going to be entering into unknown territory, so there may actually be some "wtf" moments that none of us see coming.

Look, I love the books. But his past 2 books, if considered a TV show unto themselves, would be 80% fluff and 20% actual core story. You know, the kind of TV shows you guys all bitch about.

You have 10 episodes a season. You have actors and production staff you need to keep working. These people need to eat. Sometimes actors die. Kid actors get older. Sets cost money to maintain. You don't have the luxury of 5+ year gaps between seasons unless you're cool with the idea of the cast changing every season.

GRRM has given them the core skeletal structure for the unwritten books. That is HUGE. While it is the little nuances that can make a story enjoyable, any writer worth their salt will outline the big shit first and then work on stitching it together after.

It is unfair to lump Tru Blood in with this, primarily because the source material itself was pretty shitty (if they had remained true to the books, the show would have been even more WTF in my opinion). The show runners have shown that they are able to make some good improvements. Remember the whole Arya and Tywin bits in Harrenhall? Completely made up, but completely awesome. The expanded Hound + Arya stuff? Hell, even the Red Wedding adjustments were good ones IMO, because it made the scene more brutal (killing a pregnant woman and Frey allowing his young wife to die did much to make him even more evil, as opposed to no pregnant wife death and some random mentally challenged Frey dying). Sometimes media can improve on the source material. King thought Darabont's ending to 'The Mist' was ballsy and how he wanted to end it, but couldn't make himself write something that damned bleak at the time.

Soygen_sl said:

I'm excited for this season, if only for the "new" stuff that nobody knows about, like last season's death-touch from the White Walker to the baby, etc. I've completely written off the books at this point.

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This. I have no faith in Gurrm finishing his shit any time soon and it will be interesting to see all the new shit. The Night's King scene was awesome, because that was the first time I was thinking "I have no fucking clue what's about to happen."

Drinsic_sl said:

This. I have no faith in Gurrm finishing his shit any time soon and it will be interesting to see all the new shit. The Night's King scene was awesome, because that was the first time I was thinking "I have no fucking clue what's about to happen."

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this, that scene was probably the highlight of the entire season for book readers. if they were to introduce more Night's King stuff, i think i would change my views on this show. right now when i think of last season, what i remember most vivdly is asha's crew trying to rescue theon from reek and soon after we see them running away monty python style.

GRRM I feel is missing a huge payday not releasing the books on an orderly schedule. They won't have the mass and broad appeal of Harry Potter or anything but he stood to make an absolute fuckton of money. Not that he's hurting for it I'm sure. But Rowling is a freaking billionaire off her books turned into media. I guess I don't know how much of that came from the actual print versus the movies but it would have to be a sizable amount. If GRRM was cranking a new book out once every two years or so the new iteration of the book would sell a ton I'd imagine.

I've been crucified for saying this on other forums but I actually prefer the TV show adaptation to GRRM's source material. It is quicker instead of inflated. It doesn't introduce a slew of new characters to give them 1-2 POV chapters. It cut down on the overall cast of characters significantly. It highlighted characters and add new traits to them in a meaningful way (Bronn is the posterchild here.) Possibly I'm slanted because I watched S1-3 of GoT prior to reading the source but the books just drug on forever with very little happening until there was one chapter where everything happened. Then it reset the story for that character and nothing happened again.

Like you said, GRRM isn't hurting for cash now. I also somehow doubt he's living an incredibly decadent and expensive lifestyle. He seems like the type of guy who would be happy having enough money to buy hot pockets for the rest of his life while affording a bigass TV to watch the Jets lose every year.

Motivation level = 0.

He writes his books on a computer running DOS with one copy of the book in a word (or whatever DOS writes) document.

His decadence is amazing

He's doing all kinds of shit. Writers workshops and groups, arts projects, his theater, etc. Just not writing.

I'm looking forward to the season, and if he released a book tomorrow I would shit my pants. I still love it. I'm tired of his bullshit, but whatever, he's an old man and he's going to live his life how he wants.