Of course, there is the crucial difference of Mance being in a cage.
Mance spoiler. No, seriously. Don’t read this Wholly Schmidt
In the book, “Mance” is brought out in a cage and wails and cries, while in the show Mance stalwartly allows himself to be tied to the stake. “Mance” turns out to be Rattleshirt with a glamour in the book, allowing the real Mance to go to Winterfell. Since he give a stirring speech before his death in the show, I suspect it really was Mance.
Yes, mostly. I’ve watched the 4 episodes leaked and without details, I can say:
Jon, Cersei’s and Arya’s story track the books pretty closely. There are necessary adaptations here and there, but most of it is there;
Dany’s story has been modified, a third of it is newish to accommodate some accelerated squishing to her tale - but it’s mostly there.
Tyrion’s is significantly changed, edited and accelerated;
Brienne, Sansa’s, Jaime’s stories are almost completely and entirely new.
On the whole, I would say that 60-65% of Season 5 is new and not in the books so far.
You will want to stop in this thread however as a major spoiler for end of season 5 will come out at some point and I’m pretty sure that’s going to be there in some fashion.
Is it possible to just spoiler tag the major spoilers? Can’t we all just get along?
Watching last night’s episode (and having not read the books), I realized that many of the most interesting characters are dead, and I was somewhat bored. I feel it’s going to be difficult to keep up the high quality of the previous seasons for very long, but hope they can pull it back together.
I just don’t care much about primary sympathetic characters like Dany or Jon Snow. With Tyrion having fled King’s Landing, and Tywin/Joffrey dead, most of the interesting Lannister family dynamics have run their course. Arya is a great character, but without the Hound, it’s going to take some time before her storyline gets rolling again. I do still find Stannis to be an interesting character and I love the acting of the guy who plays him. Aside from that, I feel like there are so many story threads right now that have lost their edge.
I thought this thread, marked HBO, was for the tv show. That is, discussing what has happened on the tv show is fair game. For example, you can ‘spoil’ the last episode by talking about it. What you can’t do is discuss spoilers from the books, since there is another thread for the books. Or at least use a spoiler tag for book spoilers. So in theory this thread should be safe for you.
Mr_Zero
5926
I am a strict constitutionalist, and it was laid down in this thread’s founding documents that “THIS IS THE MOTHER OF ALL FREAKING GAME OF THRONES SPOILER THREADS. DON’T EVEN THINK OF PARTAKING IN THIS THREAD IF YOU HAVEN’T READ THE LATEST BOOK IN THE SERIES.”
All deviations from this course charted for us by Alan Dunkin only show this country’s trajectory – downhill, and fast.
I was hoping for a little more something this episode, but I’m not terribly surprised that it was just a lot of talk, meaningful glances and plot exposition.
Having Tyrion cross the sea a box, drinking the whole time and pushing his shit through the air holes was obviously way less complicated than having him join a travelling troupe of dwarves and having a weird almost-romance with a girl and her pig, but it does seem awful lame that he’s simply in Pentos now, and will soon be on his way to Meereen. Does this mean no Blackfyre plotline (not that it went anywhere in the books)? I can’t remember if he even reached Danaerys in the books or not.
I’m kind of looking forward to this season for exactly those sorts of reasons. The show is now going to be forced to diverge from the books on many fronts, and this will be the first time in the entire series that I, as a reader, won’t really know what’s coming. Oh sure, I know they aren’t going to suddenly kill off certain characters because they have large and important story arcs to play out even if the TV show does depart from the books, but it’s all the little things in-between that will surprise and hopefully delight me this season, and I’m excited about that.
DirecTV gave me HBO for $7 off for 3 months and Starz for half price for three months when I called to turn both back on (my wife is a big Outlander fan, so we needed Starz last weekend). I’m happy to give both channels my $17 a month for 3 months to watch quality shows like this (and I loved Silicon Valley last season too), and I get the nice bonus of recording a bunch of movies we can save for over the summer when TV is sparse. No need to pirate anything when reasonable deals like that can be found.
Thanks for the heads up.
Well, technically there is a totally separate thread that’s only about watching the show, no spoiler talk from the books: http://www.quartertothree.com/game-talk/showthread.php?64212-Games-of-Thrones-on-HBO-(no-spoilers!)/page54&highlight=game+of+thrones
Unfortunately for me, most of the show talk happens in this thread, which has previously been established as allowing book talk. So I check in here occasionally, but knowing that I might be getting myself into trouble. I will always appreciate spoiler tags in this thread, but since there is a separate dedicated no spoilers thread, I’m not going to make a fuss if people don’t use them here. I’m just in the minority around here, and that’s okay.
See above.
Right. It is confusingly named, since edits don’t affect thread titles at the forum level so it just says (HBO) right there in the title, but yes, this thread is where everything’s fair game from the books as well. The TV only thread just doesn’t get much love so it’s understandably not obvious to anyone who wasn’t paying attention all along that this may not be the thread they want.
I just brought this all up again because I wasn’t sure if we were close enough to the point where the show had caught up with the books and any spoilers would be minor. Sounds like we’re not, and hey, may never be, but thought I’d ask.
rowe33
5930
I vaguely remember all the events of books 4 & 5 at this point which is probably for the best. At this point I think I’ll just go with the show and just look it up on Wiki if I remember anything differently. I assume the show version will be less convoluted overall & much more streamlined.
Back when I originally conceived this thread, I would have thought it would have been 99% book readers who were so far ahead, the only clear audience would have been those wanting to see how the show adapted the book material.
But a lot of things have changed over the years. We obviously can’t have a far reaching thread for everything; there are too many people who watch now who haven’t read the books at all (still) and don’t plan to, some that are catching up slowly, those that gave up and don’t want to know, those that gave up and do want to know, and still the prolific readers.
My vision for this thread is still that you should probably be well versed in the current happenings in the books. This is definitely not the thread if you don’t want to be book-spoiled, but book-spoiling can still spill over in the TV-spoiling. God it’s a mess.
— Alan
What always gets me with videogame spoiler threads is how unnecessary it is to spell out specific spoilers in order to have a conversation. Those in the know almost always understand what you’re talking about with vague descriptions, and other people are none the wiser. If talking around it is still too much for some people, they can go to the thread no one uses.
I knew there was an “HBO” marked thread for the tv show, I didn’t realize both threads are marked HBO, even the book thread, d’oh!
rowe33
5934
Wait, do we also have a spoiler thread for the Games of Thrones RPG game that I haven’t finished OR the new GoT Telltale game? This damn franchise has too many permutations!
We need a spoiler thread for the Game of Thrones beer.
Don’t click me!
Razgon
5936
It would be nice though, if those who had seen the leaked versions didn’t comment on them in this thread. I don’t care if you think its little or nothing - its still annoying.
(I’m referring to Steel-winds post which I had to skip over and try to avoid reading)
Yeah, I agree. Pirated/leaked advance stuff should probably not be discussed. It’s not really fair to dump that stuff on the people that actually wait for the normal broadcast.
Heck, just as a courtesy, I don’t discuss episodes until at least the next day to account for the fact that some people see it during one of the encore broadcasts that night.
We should probably have another thread for people who have watched the leaked episodes, and a thread for people who have watched the leaked episodes but haven’t read the books, and maybe a thread for people who have literally only watched the leaked stuff and read none of the books or watched any of the show this far, just to be safe. WINKING EMOTICON.
As somebody who struggled and struggled to finish book 4 (I eventually gave up after reading 2/3), I am delighted that HBO is mostly junking that mess of a book.
So I don’t really care about book spoilers since there is a decent chance they won’t apply. However, you shouldn’t be talking about episode that haven’t aired yet.
Ugh, I still haven’t gotten this season’s beer yet. While Whole Foods in SF usually carries it right when it hits the market, so far they’ve been dry.
— Alan
