# GoT book/show confusion



## Incanus (Oct 27, 2015)

Facts:  I've read all the books of the series so far.  I only see the show on Blu ray in the February of the year following the initial run of each season.  In other words, I've seen the first 4 seasons, and not so much as a single frame of season 5 (I don't see any tv these days).

So then, have I got this right:  will season 6 will be an adaption of a book that hasn't been published?

If so, what the hell are they thinking?  What an terrible idea that is.  No way I'm watching that before I've read the book.  And where does that leave them for season 7?  It appears they started this show a good 3-4 years too early.  Great show, just not very well planned out, I guess.

BTW, despite knowing the story, I'd rather not hear too many spoilers regarding season 5.  Just wondering what the heck is going on.  Did I miss something somewhere?  I sure hope I've got this wrong.


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## Steerpike (Oct 27, 2015)

I believe George Martin has said the show and books might diverge, so they might not even be the same. But either way, he has admitted the show will outpace publication of the books.


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## Incanus (Oct 27, 2015)

Ugh.  That's thoroughly disappointing.  I guess season 5 will be the cutoff for me then.  Not interested in fan-fic, no matter the budget.


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## Steerpike (Oct 27, 2015)

I don't know that it is fanfic - my understanding is Martin has creative power, ultimately, over the direction the show takes. He's not writing the episodes, but I _think_ he has to approve the direction the story takes. So it's still basically a derivative of his work like most all of the episodes have been (since I don't think he has written many scripts for the show). Apparently season 5 deviated from the books as well, but I don't know because I haven't seen it.


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## MineOwnKing (Oct 27, 2015)

It's lonely and unrewarding to choose the path of the loyal purist.

When I watched the hobbit unfold in the theater I was beside myself. 

I know it's an unpleasant pill to swallow but the average bird on the street does not read much more than the back of a beer bottle.

I think the only way to make sense of the situation is to not take it personally and just hope that whatever comes from the television series will entice a small percentage of the fans to start reading something other than tweets and texts.


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## teacup (Oct 27, 2015)

Season 5 is definitely the worst of the lot so far, so if you were to quit at any point, quitting at the end of season 4 is the best time I guess. It's still worth watching though, I think. Plus one of the episodes in S5 is amazing and definitely a must watch.


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## Incanus (Oct 27, 2015)

Fanfic may not be a strictly accurate term for this, but on the other hand, I don't think anything like this has happened before, so it will have to fit.  It doesn't really matter how involved Martin is if they're adapting books that don't yet exist (not publicly at any rate).

@MineOwnKing--absolutely, the Hobbit movies were atrocious.  Didn't go to the theatres after the first one.  But I don't take any of it personally.  It's not really a chosen path, it's just who I am.


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## Penpilot (Oct 28, 2015)

I think Martin has said that there are some things in the show that he wish he'd done instead, and that the show may influence the books. *Shrug*

To me it'll be an interesting exercise to see how the two diverge. Plus, at least I'll get a ending to the story sooner rather than later. 

I'm sorry, at this pace, it'll be almost another 10 years before the book series finishes. Good luck avoiding spoilers in that amount of time. For the longest time, the readers have had a leg up on the tv watchers. Many like me had a good laugh at people reacting to the red wedding. Now the tables have switched, and I'm willing to bet there will be plenty of people looking to spoil the reader's fun.


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## Russ (Oct 28, 2015)

Steerpike said:


> I don't know that it is fanfic - my understanding is Martin has creative power, ultimately, over the direction the show takes. He's not writing the episodes, but I _think_ he has to approve the direction the story takes. So it's still basically a derivative of his work like most all of the episodes have been (since I don't think he has written many scripts for the show). Apparently season 5 deviated from the books as well, but I don't know because I haven't seen it.



this basically accurate.

GRRM has given the show detailed notes and outlines on where he wants the show to go plot and character wise.

Whether he takes the books down exactly the same path remains to be seen.


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## Miskatonic (Oct 28, 2015)

Incanus said:


> Facts:  I've read all the books of the series so far.  I only see the show on Blu ray in the February of the year following the initial run of each season.  In other words, I've seen the first 4 seasons, and not so much as a single frame of season 5 (I don't see any tv these days).
> 
> So then, have I got this right:  will season 6 will be an adaption of a book that hasn't been published?
> 
> ...



Did you enjoy the books?


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## Incanus (Oct 28, 2015)

Miskatonic said:


> Did you enjoy the books?



Very much.  Storm of Swords most of all.  While the show is very well done, the books are much, much better.

But 10 years, Penpilot?  I doubt it.  At least not if the seventh is the final one.  That would be considerably slower than his current rate, and he seems to be wanting to finish.


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## FifthView (Oct 28, 2015)

I gave up on the books when _A Feast for Crows_ was soooo boring I accidentally read it twice.  Years had passed and I thought I'd return to reading GRRM's tale, pick it up from where I'd stopped; so, I ordered the book and, not kidding at all, I was halfway through it before I remembered I'd already read it.  That's how tedious and unremarkable it was.

I'm perfectly fine finishing out the tale via the HBO version.


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## Incanus (Oct 28, 2015)

While I consider _Feast_ the weakest entry in the series so far, it was rarely boring.  Still better than pretty much all other fantasy in the last 15 years or so.  Books are just better than shows or movies.  At the moment I can think of only one exception.  The Shining.  I think the Kubrick movie-version is a more refined telling of that tale.  Over half of that book was pretty boring to me.


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## Steerpike (Oct 28, 2015)

Hmmm...better than all the other fantasy in the last fifteen years?   I'll have to disagree on that point. I haven't made it to _Feast_ yet, and I doubt I'll read any more until the series in complete, but there are lots of recent fantasy works I like better than GoT. I like GoT, don't get me wrong, and I can see why it works well for a series like that on HBO, but it's not among my favorites.


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## Incanus (Oct 28, 2015)

Granted I've not read a ton of recent titles.  Of course, there is no right or wrong about such things--it's highly subjective.  ASoIaF hovers around most of my other favorites, I rate it pretty high.  Don't love everything about it, but that's true of most every book I read as well.  Same with the show--it would be better without some of the gratuitous bits.

Just bummed that season 5 will effectively be the end.  For now.


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## Stephyn Blackwood (Oct 28, 2015)

Just to add my opinion, I totally understand that there's no way that a show can follow the intense and complex storylines of the books, and that's not a jab at the average viewer (god knows I am one sometimes). It's just that there is SO much put into the books that they could never include it all in a show without it being 20 episodes a season and having an unending budget. 

But, I do feel that there are certain things that need to be kept the same. Like Stannis for example. (Die-hard Mannis loyalist right here) I feel that his character is far more complex in the books than in the show. He is a very grey character in the books, whereas the show often makes him out to be more a villain than a hero, due to the writings ultimate love of Dany, which I'll never understand. 

The show's writing is also very weak in Season 5. The whole Dorne plotline serves no purpose what-so-ever. It takes a whole season to establish what could have been done in a 5-10 minute scene. Characters act completely out of character, simply for shock value. And a lot of characters don't progress at all! Like one character does nothing all season until the last two episodes! And it's infuriating.

But anyway, rant over. GoT season 5 is the reason that I have come to be the ultimate skeptic on TV/Film adaptions of books. And the Seventh Son film, but don't get me started on that piece of sh*t.


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## SeverinR (Nov 3, 2015)

Season 5 is great in spectrum of film, but not strong and riveting in story.
Also I think they tried to spice up the season with shock. (Sansa's consummation and Shireen's end.)

I hope the show writers can keep the drama up without having to resort to stupid plot twists.
With the original writer writing the scenes, he keeps all the rules straight, all the action pure. But when you get secondary writers writing the story, they can twist the story into meaningless random encounters and gratuitous sex scenes.

I liked the "snow Sn..."I mean "Sand Snakes".  But other then killing off a character in front of her father, the Dorne section only showed the royal family is as much in turmoil as all the kingdoms.  It also will lead to more conflict when Cersei finds that her daughter was killed on her way home.


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## Incanus (Nov 3, 2015)

I kind of wish you had put some spoiler alerts there.  No biggy really, but I was hoping to watch season 5, not hear about it.

I did realize one thing though:  by the time season 6 is available on Blu-ray (Feb. 2017 if the pattern holds), I will most likely have read the sixth book.  So it will be after that that I will need to stop watching.


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## ThinkerX (Nov 3, 2015)

Thing to keep in mind is GRRM was a scriptwriter for a long while.  Most of his published works, prior to Game of Thrones, were either collaborations or strung together novellas.


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## Penpilot (Nov 3, 2015)

Incanus said:


> But 10 years, Penpilot?  I doubt it.  At least not if the seventh is the final one.  That would be considerably slower than his current rate, and he seems to be wanting to finish.



Well, here's my reasoning. It was five years between Storm of Swords and A Feast of Crows. Then it took another six years for A Dance of Dragons, which came out in 2011. There's no news on the release date of The Winds of Winter, so you're looking at around another year or two for that, gosh forbid three.

This brings us to A Dream of Spring which, if pattern holds, will be another five years, which brings us to around 7 more years before we can put this baby to bed, which is close to that 10 year mark. Cross your fingers that he doesn't experience any delays. OR better yet, hope the turn around time for A Dream of Spring is more akin to that of between A Clash of Kings and A Storm of Swords which was around a year, but that was the exception.

The release time for the books has been 3 years, 1 year, 5 years, 6 years. Notice the pattern of the time between books trending upwards.


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## ThinkerX (Nov 3, 2015)

> Well, here's my reasoning. It was five years between Storm of Swords and A Feast of Crows. Then it took another six years for A Dance of Dragons, which came out in 2011. There's no news on the release date of The Winds of Winter, so you're looking at around another year or two for that, gosh forbid three.
> 
> This brings us to A Dream of Spring which, if pattern holds, will be another five years, which brings us to around 7 more years before we can put this baby to bed, which is close to that 10 year mark. Cross your fingers that he doesn't experience any delays. OR better yet, hope the turn around time for A Dream of Spring is more akin to that of between A Clash of Kings and A Storm of Swords which was around a year, but that was the exception.



It's worse than that.  The Dany Chapters from book one were released as a serial in Asimov's (or was it F&SF?) years before that book appeared.  

This gets into outlining verses pantsing, but originally GRRM planned a five year story gap between Storm and Feast.  A chance for the younger characters to grow up and Westeros to undergo some gradual changes.  But he couldn't make it work.  At one point, he was contemplating plugging the gap with a seven chapter prologue, but couldn't make that work, supposedly because the Dornish situation was too complex and Cersei was really busy killing people.  Then he finally said screw it and scrapped the gap.


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## SeverinR (Nov 10, 2015)

ThinkerX said:


> Thing to keep in mind is GRRM was a scriptwriter for a long while.  Most of his published works, prior to Game of Thrones, were either collaborations or strung together novellas.



Hmm, that is how the Game of thrones story is. Many different character novellas intertwined into one large book.


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