House of the Dragon (Game of Thrones) Thread

[TCO]

Now that you mention the books. Do any of the book readers here actually care if they ever get released? It's been so long that I read A Dance With Dragons that I don't even really remember or care what's going on with most of the characters. With it all getting muddle up with the series and revealing the broad ending, there's no motivation to read it. I'm sure I will read it if WOW ever does come out, but I don't think I care in the slightest any more. With the delay and the show fucking things up so much, it's killed all interest.

[Bobfoc]

Dany being the big bad wasn't problematic in and of itself. The problem was that she had won the war and then decided to burn everyone for no reason. Yes, we've seen her deal out horribly violent punishments, but never against civilians. 

1 minute ago, TCO said:

Now that you mention the books. Do any of the book readers here actually care if they ever get released? It's been so long that I read A Dance With Dragons that I don't even really remember or care what's going on with most of the characters. With it all getting muddle up with the series and revealing the broad ending, there's no motivation to read it. I'm sure I will read it if WOW ever does come out, but I don't think I care in the slightest any more. With the delay and the show fucking things up so much, it's killed all interest.

In my case, and I'm sure in those of many others, yes, I do care.

There are still a lot of interesting plot threads and characters that weren't in the show, and GRRM has said that not all of the endings for the characters will be the same. Even if they are, I'd like to see how they get to those points in a way that's explored in more detail.

[Tigerstyle]

100%. In the book, Jaime is the best character (and never raped anyone) - he’s gone full good guy, and Jon has just died, very interesting to see what happens there.

Arya too is amazing and she’s currently at the house of black and white. The truth behind Aegon (though the TV show seems to have put that in its place), the Dornish uprising and most importantly, Sansa is becoming so so good in the books.

[Bobfoc]

12 minutes ago, Tigerstyle said:

100%. In the book, Jaime is the best character (and never raped anyone) - he’s gone full good guy, and Jon has just died, very interesting to see what happens there.

Arya too is amazing and she’s currently at the house of black and white. The truth behind Aegon (though the TV show seems to have put that in its place), the Dornish uprising and most importantly, Sansa is becoming so so good in the books.

And don't forget Euron actually being a good character.

[Schlitzbrille]

On 23/05/2020 at 09:29, Bobfoc said:

I find it hard to see a reboot happening for years and years, if ever. As @livid suggested, there's so much room for spinoffs that HBO can milk it for a long time if its popularity doesn't tail off dramatically.

Speaking of spinoffs, what ideas have people come up with over the last year?

My spinoff ideas:

• Robert's Rebellion, but it's Bobby B who dies at the Trident.
• Century of Blood
• something involving the lands east of Yi Ti and Leng, primarily around Asshai and the Shadow Lands
• something exploring the politics of the Free Cities
• "modern" setting involving an in-universe theatre troupe recreating the events of the show, heavily inspired by the performance Arya watched during her time in Braavos and how it was played up for comedic effect

 

[GhostMachine]

@Tigerstyle the one thing from the books I was pissed they didn't do was

Lady Stoneheart

, but I understood why and got over it once they started making Arya into a badass. I don't think it would have worked as well on tv as it did in the books.

But Cleganebowl outdid my expectations. 

[Bobfoc]

5 hours ago, GhostMachine said:

@Tigerstyle the one thing from the books I was pissed they didn't do was

  Reveal hidden contents

Lady Stoneheart

, but I understood why and got over it once they started making Arya into a badass. I don't think it would have worked as well on tv as it did in the books.

But Cleganebowl outdid my expectations. 

Spoiler

I think Lady Stoneheart could have worked quite well. The point at which A Dance with Dragons left off, with Brienne taking Jaime to Stoneheart, is a really interesting cliffhanger. Jaime having to face up to his past decisions and try to justify them to a husk of a human being hellbent on bloody vengeance is something I'm very much looking forward to reading.

As for Arya, they made her too powerful for my liking. We saw her surviving what for any unimportant character would be a fatal stab wound and then come back to kill the waif, and then she's almost immediately capable of infiltrating The Crossing and killing all the Freys, despite her fairly minimal training in the art of assassination. That also presumably meant that she had to spend a couple of weeks convincingly masquerading as Walder Frey before the feast, despite only meeting him once. Once she's massacred everyone (because the whole thing she learned from Ed Sheeran's crew about not everyone on the opposing side being evil apparently didn't apply to the Freys, who are all villains), she takes off her disguise and casually walks outside, where you'd imagine there'd be guards stationed.

The next time we see her, she's easily beating Brienne in a sparring session, even though Brienne is one of the best fighters in the land and has many years more experience in both melees and real fights. In my opinion, the whole "badass" portrayal went way too far way too quickly. By all means, make her an angry seeker of justice, but suddenly turning her into an invincible death ninja was a case of fan service going overboard.

[TCO]

13 hours ago, Tigerstyle said:

100%. In the book, Jaime is the best character (and never raped anyone) - he’s gone full good guy, and Jon has just died, very interesting to see what happens there.

Arya too is amazing and she’s currently at the house of black and white. The truth behind Aegon (though the TV show seems to have put that in its place), the Dornish uprising and most importantly, Sansa is becoming so so good in the books.

Did the TV show basically confirm Young Griff is a fraud by writing him out and merging Jon Connington's story with Ser Jorah though?

Now that I think of it, the show left so much good material out that could have extended the series by years. Arainne and Quentyn Martell, and Victarion Greyjoy just don't exist in the TV show. The last few series of the show were such a missed opportunity.

[Tigerstyle]

Just now, TCO said:

Did the TV show basically confirm Young Griff is a fraud by writing him out and merging Jon Connington's story with Ser Jorah though?

Now that I think of it, the show left so much good material out that could have extended the series by years. Arainne and Quentyn Martell, and Victarion Greyjoy were just don't exist in the TV show. The last few series of the show were such a missed opportunity.

I believe they did, at this point in the books of course there is nothing solid that Jon is anything other than Jon... The only consideration is that Jon really is the legitimate child of Rhaegar and Lyanna while Aegon is Elia’s son, I suppose a storyline they could’ve just ripped out all together, I think it works better by yes, Jon being of Targaryen Blood, but him never knowing - This is how he is Rhaegal’s dragon rider.

[Azazel]

2 hours ago, TCO said:

Did the TV show basically confirm Young Griff is a fraud by writing him out and merging Jon Connington's story with Ser Jorah though?

Now that I think of it, the show left so much good material out that could have extended the series by years. Arainne and Quentyn Martell, and Victarion Greyjoy just don't exist in the TV show. The last few series of the show were such a missed opportunity.

My three favorite book characters are Victarion Greyjoy, Strong Belwas and Wyman Manderley and they all got written out of the show (no, I will not count Wyman being in one scene to get scolded by a little girl as being in the show).

I will absolutely read the books because there are so many more plot threads that the show cut out and they got too actiony at the end.  The Battle of Winterfell was pretty badly done, but the episodes featuring every before and after were fantastic.

The one spin off I want is The War of the Ninepenny Kings.  Nine usurpers put their armies together in an attempt to take over the Free Cities and Westeros so they could each take over one of them.  Robert's Grandather, Euron's Father and Tywin's father leading an army across the sea, with a young Barristan Selmy, Tywin, Kevan, The Blackfish, The Mad King, Littlefingers father and basically all the old men being part of it.

[gunnar hendershow]

11 hours ago, Tigerstyle said:

I believe they did, at this point in the books of course there is nothing solid that Jon is anything other than Jon... The only consideration is that Jon really is the legitimate child of Rhaegar and Lyanna while Aegon is Elia’s son, I suppose a storyline they could’ve just ripped out all together, I think it works better by yes, Jon being of Targaryen Blood, but him never knowing - This is how he is Rhaegal’s dragon rider.

I believe it was rumored for a long time that the reason GRRM signed off on the show is that D&D basically told him that they believed Jon was Rhaegar and Lyanna's son.

I'll read the books if they ever come out. I think one thing that GRRM did so well was at in all these non-essential storylines to keep the action going while his characters most important to the endgame can move to their next position so to speak. The TV show largely wrote a lot of those out unfortunately. And instead elected to just fly through things. Arya instantly becoming all-powerful was one of those things. Bran at least had some semblance of time passing in the show to become all-knowing. I forgive them for certain things, like a character moving from the south to the north in one episode. I don't really want half a season of people walking. But they took that freedom and decided to just bring it over to the character development side as well.

Back to the books though, I think so much of the extra stuff going on regarding a number of characters is going to definitely be the thing that keeps them going for me. The TV show felt the need to bring everyone together so that the final episodes weren't jumping between different storylines and they could have more freedom to make these really massive productions. The books won't do that. Some storylines will end on their own. Others will converge with others and then diverge again. And I would wager a lot of characters will have more open endings where they just ride off into the sunset. In fact I think it's that last part that has really affected GRRM so much as a writer, because he's clearly a guy who wants to tell *every* story and I'd wager editor/publisher aren't too keen and him filling up hundreds of pages doing that.

[Bobfoc]

I thought it would be interested to discuss which parts of the story were spoiled for members here as they watched the show. Obviously, those who read the books first will have very different experiences, but leaks for the last couple of series were circulating too, so everyone was at risk of finding out things they didn't want to.

I watched the first series when it came to DVD because a lot of people on here liked it. All I knew at that point was that Sean Bean's character died. I imagine that would have been a big surprise to people coming in completely fresh.

I also had a strong suspicion that Robb would die when he did because Richard Madden seemed to be taking on several new projects at the time. I'd heard about the Red Wedding, but I guessed it would have something to do with Melisandre, The Red Woman.

When Beyond the Wall leaked online, several sites ran the story with an image of Viserion's eye turning blue, which gave away the ending.

As a bonus one, I remember reading online about how emotional it was going to be when Sansa died. Clearly, that was inaccurate, but it meant that I was waiting for it to happen for a couple of series.

[Adam]

I didn't start watching the show until after season 3 had aired, by that point it was impossible to resist and I had a free week to just binge through the first two series one summer.

So, going in I already knew that Ned died and how he died, I must've seen a clip of it or something because it wasn't at all news to me although it was still horrible of course. And I knew about the Red Wedding because everyone on the planet seemed to be talking about it at the time, although I didn't know the details so I just spent season 3 watching all the Robb developments with uneasy dread.

[Mx. Canadian Destroyer]

I moved in with some friends I knew from summer camp entering my last year of university. Season 4 was set to air near the end of our term. They convinced me to watch the first 3 seasons leading up to the new season. 

I knew what happened to Ned when I started watching and I was totally spoiled on the Red Wedding. I remember watching The Purple Wedding with them and that was the first real shocker for me.

I then went and read all the books and re-watched the seasons before each new season came out. Can't believe it ended so poorly that I have no interest in going back to it.

[GoGo Yubari]

Hmmm. I had a sense something terrible was going to happen to Robb Stark, and that he was most likely the one the Red Wedding was referring to, because I'd seen at least a couple vague comments on Reddit suggesting that things turned out bad for him in the book. I think I accidentally spoiled myself on the Tyrells aligning with the Lannisters after Renly's death, too.

What was more common was a thing happening in the show that differed from the books spoiling the books for me. The way I engaged with the source material was I read the first book after season one, the second book after season two, the third book after... I believe season 4, and then I ended up reading the rest of it after I'd dropped the show entirely. So I already basically knew who Lady Stoneheart was, for example, before I'd ever even read the book version of the Red Wedding, let alone her first actual appearance.

[Ruki]

I had the purple wedding spoiled for me and I was super pissed at the people who did it. They said I should have read the books 😕

[Roster Depth Sicko No. 2]

I read Book One, then watched the first three seasons, then read all the books ahead of season 4.

The only thing that I recall being spoiled was the Ice Dragon reveal, because as said the episode leaked and there were images everywhere. It also meant I had the complete anti-spoiler of Lady Stoneheart in the books, which was dope.

[Bobfoc]

I did what a lot of people did and read each book after its corresponding series. Because some of the show's events happened earlier in the books, I knew about Meera and Jojen's appearances and about Balon's death. That said, I had assumed they would happen differently in the show, so they were still surprises of sorts.

[MalaCloudy Black]

The whole reason me or my cousin even got into GoT is because my brother showed us the clip of Ned's beheading and was like "holy shit this show killed off its main character". So that was spoiled right off the bat.

[gunnar hendershow]

I had started reading the books in high school so I was very ahead of the curve and cooler than everyone. But that said I love adaptations of things I enjoy but GoT was a bit harder to really dive into because it relied so much on twists and turns. Once it became apparent they'd blow past the books (it's been almost a decade since book 5) I started diving in to the show.

It became a hard topic to discuss with friends because it was such a massive part of pop culture and if you spoiled something certain people would want you dead so it was easier to not really be an engaged fan. I did eagerly sit on Facebook the night of the Red Wedding episode with a big grin though, that was fun to just laugh at everyone's misery. I don't believe the show played its cards as well with Robb though. I was genuinely shocked in the books but the whole scene builds up because everything is just off. Then you get to the climax where the daggers appear. But I get the hunch from a lot of friends that they just felt like something bad was coming for Robb during season 3. I think less the outcome and more the event were most shocking on the TV show.

The biggest lesson I took from GoT is if a story relies on you not being spoiled to be good then maybe it's not that good of a story. I don't think this is as much the case for the book telling of the story, but man did the show fall back on "you'll never know what's gonna happen next week!" hard.