The Karstark events don’t have any impact on anything else, though, do they? By cutting the Karstarks you lose some insights into how the war is affecting Robb. But the show makers might actually consider that a bonus, if they’re concerned about it possibly making Robb less likeable. Losing a bunch of executions ordered by Robb might be like losing Sansa warning Cersei or Catelyn wishing death on Jon.
Although, I’ve only read to the end of Storm of Swords, so if there’s more to the Karstarks than I’ve seen just give a subtle sign and I’ll duck out of the thread.
Since you’ve read to the end of Storm of Swords, you know that Stannis is at the Wall. The Karstark events also have an effect on determining which lords of the North support Stannis’ campaign.
My subtle sign for you is saying “What the hell are you doing in this thread if you’ve only read through Storm of Swords? Get out and save yourself while you still can!”
If nothing else I expect that they will change the name of the Karstarks to something with the the “stark”. They’ve already changed a couple of other names to avoid confusion.
JZigish
3224
Notes from a Comicon panel are interesting.
Quote Benioff gives a hint of the series trajectory: “If we get to R.W.,” he said, “we’ll know we’ve done something. If we can get to R.W., then I can retire.”
That actually seems like a really good (well horrible) place to end the series, if they can’t get the whole thing done due to HBO getting bored or books not existing.
I can actually see them ending after ASOS and the RW. It’s a natural stopping point. They’d have to omit the epilogue, though.
I have been trying to figure out how they will handle AFFC and ADWD - it is not practical to have major characters largely or entirely absent for entire series. They might have to
cover both books over 2 series chronologically. Not sure how well that would work, though.
Just as an aside - how hard would it be to watch the RW episode? It was hard enough to read, and the Episodes where Ned was betrayed then killed were hard enough to watch.
Thanks for that link. I was at Comic-Con on Thursday and that panel was the one panel that I really wanted to see and I didn’t even come close. In retrospect I’m sure they would admit it should have been held in the largest room (H) instead of the second largest (20). I sought out the line a full two-and-a-half hours in advance and had easily 2000 people still in front of me when the panel kicked off. I think room 20 ‘only’ holds 2500.
Sebmojo
3227
Isn’t this the non-spoiler thread?
CSL
3228
Not if it doesn’t say “no spoilers” in the thread title.
I think the whole “end series with RW” idea is… ludicrous. And then they and the Others lived happily ever after? Also, wtf was up with that Dany person? Quite apart from the bindbogglingly depressing nature of the political conclusion narrowly read.
Okay. So. Question. Should I try and read ahead of this show or just let it happen? I’m torn on the issue. On the one hand, it’s only because I had read a few chapters into the series that I knew that the turning point in the relationship between Daenerys and Khal Drogo was not, in fact, her learning to fuck good, which is the impression I suspect I would be left with if I only watched the show, and that Conan there wasn’t just a horrible barbarian that aggressively rapes women into loving him. On the other hand, those books seriously make me angry. Not at the books, because they’re perfectly competent, but at the stuff that happens in the books (case in point, and the spot where I knew I was having a problem, was when I seriously, one hundred percent wanted to choke an imaginary character for ordering an imaginary dog to be imaginary killed by another imaginary character), and I don’t like being angry. Are we agreed on what the appropriate balance is? Because if I’m going to try to smash through Clash of Kings by the time the next season starts, what with Dresden dropping and all the other television to watch and games and everything, I’ll have to start actually kind of pretty soon.
The books are full of assholes being assholes to everyone and getting away with it, so yeah, that scene was fairly representative of the rest of the series.
Agreed. If that scene made you angry, you’d better be prepared to be angry a lot.
Read ahead. The show is still very entertaining, and in the long run, “Ned-level” spoilers will wind up ruining things for non-readers. There are enough huge plot shifts and internet trolls that it’s mathematically certain. It was a miracle that so many people got to the end of GoT Season 1 unspoiled.
There are lots of moments frankly worse than that in terms of wishing for people to die in a fire. Although I’d also say, subjectively, that there were worse moments just in book 1, weren’t there? On the other hand it isn’t just a succession of grimdark death and misery. I never asked myself - as I did reading Stephen Donaldson, say - “why am I putting myseslf through this?”
Well, it got better with the television show. Sort of. Because I also had to walk away from the television show after whatever episode they pulled that in, but since I came back I haven’t had a whole lot of incoherent rage at people who don’t exist. Now I’m at about the seventh episode and I’m chewing up one a week and I’m cool with it.
So I guess what I’m asking is, I know I can tolerate the TV show (since I checked a wiki to confirm that justice happens in a sense that I need it to happen), and I find the books somewhat unpleasant, but I’ve already gained at least one insight from reading in the books that I would not have gained from just the show. So, accepting that there’s a tradeoff, has there been anything that happened in the show as it showed thus far that would imply that it’s worth it for me to suffer through the books that I won’t like?
Edit:
I rarely had the feeling - as I did reading Stephen Donaldson, eg - of “omfg why am I putting myseslf through this.”
And now I feel like I’m weird, because while I found Angus Thermopyle to be more than a little distasteful, I was at least sympathetic to him in a sort of general sense by the time I got to the end. That was when I was, what, twenty though, so it’s possible that my tolerance for horrible things has degraded. What I’ve spoiled for myself of Song of Ice and Fire - because I don’t give a crap about that with this series because the fact that it has existed for so long implies to me that the show is supposed to be good even if you are spoiled - leads me to believe that I might think that about some of the characters I hate here as well.
I was with you up until the last question, then you lost me.
In my mind, it’s a critical failure of the series that Khal Drogo, at least up to the seventh episode, is just a grunting savage rapist, and that the point at which Dany starts to warm up to her predicament is when she learns from the whore they created for the show (I think she’s the one they made up for the show - I know they made somebody up for the show) how to do sex in a way that he will find enjoyable. I only know the explicit details of the whole wedding night scene because I read them. Are there more things like that in the show thus far (that I wouldn’t know about because I didn’t get too much further before I was out), or was this a one-off misstep?
Athryn
3237
There are quite a few subtleties that are missing from not having read the books.
Oh, sorry, I thought you were already through the show and at the equivalent of episode 7 in the novel, reading comprehension fail on my part.
Myself, I sort of filled in the details from the book? My impression had always been that Dany had, as a very person, rather romanticized what was basically a Robert E Howard-ish relationship at best, so it wasn’t like I felt the show had done an injustice to what was a particularly strong aspect of the book there.
If you’re still incomplete on the book and the HBO series, finish the book, then finish the series. That’s probably the better order (and the slightly less emotionally gutting order) and you’ll know better how to proceed than anyone could advise you at this point.
Aw bugger. Though I know the thing that you’re warning me about and I kind of learned about it already because I’m one of those fools that reads the last page of a novel before he’s a third of the way through. I guess I’ll go back to the book and give it another shot to see if I can stick better. I probably ought to anyway, since I should be getting Dragons later this month along with Dresden on account of those were my preselected assigned books at SFBC that they didn’t bother to tell me about and, by miraculous coincidence, I actually turned out to want anyway.
Thanks for the assist.
If you are considering reading ahead, you should go back and finish the book of AGoT. HBO’s Game of Thrones does a good job of covering all the big things, but ACoK is going to assume you’ve read AGoT so there’s no holding your hand when you’re wondering who Donal Noye is and why Rickard Karstark is mad, what Barra has to do with anything and why nobody loves Janos Slynt.
