House of the Dragon (Game of Thrones) Thread

[Stormshadow]

Basically just the first season of the show

[DFF]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sBrsM_WlfV8

[Benjamin]

April?! What the fuck

[GoGo Yubari]

You don't watch HBO shows often, do you?

[Benjamin]

No, I get everything like 8 months behind if I watch it on HBO Asia here. They just started showing the first season here.

[gunnar hendershow]

So I've been waiting around for other people here to finish Dance so we can talk about it, and speculate on what's going to happen in Winds of Winter. So who has reached that point in the series?

Massive spoilers for the entire series please do not click unless you're a troll or have read all the books.

Seriously stay away.

Seriously. Massive spoilers.

Seriously the spoilers are gigantic.

Jon's death was the single most disappointing turn in the whole story. I understand why it happened, and that it made perfect sense with an entire book of build-up, but I wasn't interested to see what happens to The Wall the rest of the way. I was mad at Sam, I was made at Stannis (not hard), and I was mad at GRRM for killing off his most likeable character.

Dany has become insufferable, disappointingly. Kind of the point with her being a queen and all but I was intrigued to see her work on freeing all the slaves. Disappointed that now she appears to have given up on everything and everyone but her dragons. She was stronger than that.

Theon was a blast to read as Reek. I knew what would happen when all was said and done with but it was great having such build-up to the conclusion of his story arc. I hate the Boltons, epic heels.

Tyrion has kept up with his mischevious ways, and seeing how the whole plan came to fruition at the end leaves me excited for just what he'll do next.

I knew Varys was going to be the mastermind, as soon as Petyr left King's Landing it only left one person who could be pulling all the strings.

But all that said, the book was long and not a lot happened until the final few hundred pages. His initial plan was to essentially skip everything in Feast and almost all of Dance he claims and pick up with the start of the Targaryen arrival in Westeros. Part of me thinks, critically speaking, he would have been better off doing that.

[Gongsun Zan]

I don't think Jon is dead. There's definitely something fishy going on there. At the very worst he's warg-ed into Ghost. Or Melisandre may have stepped in, or something.

Agreed with Theon being awesome. Definitely my favourite parts of the book. Plus it has Lord Manderly being doubly awesome and eating Freys, and all that.

Young Grif looks fun! But why did the book have to end just as he started his invasion?

Dany comes across as extremely unsympathetic in this book. Most of what she does in Mereen either makes things worse, or succeeds only through Ser Barristan or dumb luck. Annoyingly, we're not done with her there yet: she still needs to meet Victarion, Tyrion, (and possibly somebody else travelling her way? I can't remember)

Overall I thought the first half was the weakest in the series, but it picks up once we move pass the events in AFFC. Unfortunately then it ends

[gunnar hendershow]

I hope Jon's not dead, I suppose it could be a case of Melisandre getting involved. Maybe taking Jon into another body and switching someone in for Jon, similar to what happened with Mance. That's as good a theory as I have heard.

Dany will have to spend at least the first part of the next book still in Meereen, at this point by the time she goes to Westeros Young Griff might be ruling over King's Landing. I think a long war is coming but I also think he'll take King's Landing with ease while the rest of Westeros declares for him or don't declare for him. In any case, I'm expecting the final conflict to be Targaryen vs. Targaryen. Martin has swerved me enough where if this does not happen I won't be surprised in the slightest.

But I am disappointed, having basically spent 1500 pages stuck with next-to-nothing happening. Feast was slow and the first 700 or so of Dance was even slower. Hopefully he got through the lull and we can march to a conclusion.

[deli]

Haven't watched this. But a new trailer is out. Looks interesting.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UV3RflsNxak

Also. If I want to get into the series. Should I watch it or read the books first?

Edited March 6, 2012 by deli2000

[Liam]

I read the books, and then watched as I went along. The first book is really good, and it does help flesh out what the TV series doesn't tell you.

[jase12881]

I don't know which you should go with first. On one hand, I wish I could watch the show completely unspoiled by the books, but on the other hand, I imagine it's kind of tough to read the books once you've already seen what's going to happen by watching the show. I'm currently halfway through book 3 (read the first book probably 5 years ago and just never got around to following up on the 2nd until after season 1 of GoT) and I really cant wait until that particular season, for a variety of reasons.

Unfortunately some of the big events coming up in the books have already been spoiled for me. That's the other thing. If you do get into the show or books, avoid any kind of forum or comments on youtube or any of that stuff (other than here, where people are generally pretty good about spoilers) because there's assholes out there that live to spoil the plot twists.

[Guest mr. potato head]

Yeah. I've watched the show without reading the books, and I'm going to keep that up (though with a very strict policy of forcing myself to ignore it online other than this thread and the AV Club and Sepinwall reviews without delving into comments). But it's hard to do given that some of my friends have read all the books and would love to talk about the whole series.

[lanky316]

I think from now on you're going to find the differences starting to creep in between books and tv series. Can say from the set I know of at least one change involving Aryas arc which they've made and rumours of a character who hasn't passed away in the series (whether as at CoK or at all I don't know as very tight lipped to prevent spoilers thankfully) dying this season. Granted it could just be the two characters but seeing as the trailers show

SoS spoilers

Robb Stark with Jeyne Westerling

Things from now are going to start being moved around and changed.

So in short, I think you can enjoy both equally, the only thing is. Massive book swerves I can't see them dropping from the series and a couple of them ARE jaw dropping and book hurlingly shocking if you're able to avoid spoilers for them. The question is, could you resist temptation to get the next book to see what happens next when you have to wait nearly a year for the next part?

[Your Mom]

We just finished watching this last night. I was shocked. I thought Sean Bean was like a main character who was going to be around forever. Apparently not.

[jase12881]

I think from now on you're going to find the differences starting to creep in between books and tv series. Can say from the set I know of at least one change involving Aryas arc which they've made and rumours of a character who hasn't passed away in the series (whether as at CoK or at all I don't know as very tight lipped to prevent spoilers thankfully) dying this season. Granted it could just be the two characters but seeing as the trailers show

SoS spoilers

Robb Stark with Jeyne Westerling

Things from now are going to start being moved around and changed.

So in short, I think you can enjoy both equally, the only thing is. Massive book swerves I can't see them dropping from the series and a couple of them ARE jaw dropping and book hurlingly shocking if you're able to avoid spoilers for them. The question is, could you resist temptation to get the next book to see what happens next when you have to wait nearly a year for the next part?

A lot of the "fanboys" are up in arms a bit about this, but honestly, I don't think changing things around is necessarily bad. As long as it follows the same plot, and major characters still follow the same arc. In the books you're limited to the point of view of 5-6 characters, where the show is really not being shown from any particular character's points of view. So where one character doesn't appear in book 2 because none of the POV characters saw them, they WERE interacting with characters from the book during that timeline so it makes sense for the SHOW to put them in season 2.

I don't think you are arguing for or against changes, but I just wanted to put that out there. Different doesn't necessarily mean worse, or even untrue to the source material. Now if there was no beheading in season 1 and they ended the threat north of the wall in a single season and went onto a plot where Jaime plots to become king by starting a rebellion or something equally inane, I could see some uproar, but minor characters having names changed, or very minor characters being merged into a single slightly more important character, I'm ok with.

I love what I've read of the books so far, but they should be the outline for the story, not the end-all-be-all bible for it. MINOR changes are ok with me as long as they make the story better. I honestly do hope they tone down the nudity-for-the-sake-of-nudity slightly in Season 2 though. If nothing else, give me someone else's to look at. I feel like I could sit down and draw Roz's tits to the smallest detail for how much we saw them in Season 1 I'm not a prude, I just feel like sometimes they're insulting my intelligence a little.

[Thrilla]

If the show follows the book, when Daenerys reaches Qarth her breast will always be on show.

[Liam]

And that is why artistic interpretation is always a let down.

[GoGo Yubari]

It's back in just four days! In order to get truly excited, here's some of the cast showing off their gravitas.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t92ukx0A2fk

[Ruki]

Bwahaha, that is the best thing ever.

[Your Mom]

We watched this on blu ray a couple weeks ago or whenever it came out and man it is so tempting to order HBO just to see Season 2