Game of Thrones

[The Bandit]

The books are too dense for me.  I felt like I needed charts, maps and family trees to keep track of things.  I like how the show has simplified things.

[Dylan Thomas]

The books are too dense for me.  I felt like I needed charts, maps and family trees to keep track of things.  I like how the show has simplified things.

Fair enough, to each his own.  I've always dug the epics, both ancient and modern, so the density is quite attractive to me.

[strangelight]

the books aren't too dense for me, they're just fucking terribly written. martin is great at world-building but he's fucking wretched when it comes to crafting prose. the exact same phrases repeated over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over. no wonder the books are so long. he decides to make the characters have the exact same inner monologue three or four times in a row. christ.

dany's character in the book is, to me, weak and whimpering and uncertain. always at the mercy of the men around her, her tits flopping all over the place while others play father to her. although i do definitely agree that the tv show pretty much ruined the warlock tower thing. not only did they strip it of most of its meaning, it didn't even look all that difficult to get her dragons back. she entered the tower and left with the dragons in a single episode. some struggle. some danger.  

but cersei's where the tv show really outshines the book for me. in the books she's just a bitch. a power-hungry bitch with penis envy and a drinking problem. the show has given her real depth, shades of grey, moral ambiguity that are all lacking in the book.

in general i think the tv show handles the female characters MUCH better than the books do.

[Dylan Thomas]

Eh, I've read much worse modern fantasy and enjoyed it.  Eddings' writing is really atrocious, he uses the same humor and jokes over and over again, and loves to write lame deus ex machina resolutions.  I still unabashedly love those books.   

I'll agree with you on Cersei, in a lot of ways, she's almost a minor character in the novels.  What they did with her in the show during the siege of King's Landing, for example, adds a lot of facets to her persona.  Catelyn, naw, I like her better in the book.  She's specifically one of the characters where you get to see the inner workings of her mind, and I like how she just gets basically shit on and just keeps on keeping on despite her suffering.  The scenes in Riverrun with her father and brother add a lot too.

I like Dany way better in the book, to me they really miss the mark portraying her twisted sense of justice in the show.  That becomes more prominent in the third novel, so we'll see how they do with it this season.

Curious to see how they'll do with Ygritte this season, didn't like how they changed that at all, nor how they portrayed her.  Mance Rayder, that will be interesting as well.  They also totally fucked both the Bran and Arya storylines, curious to see if they can recover with those.  Arya I think they can, it's going to be tough with Bran, since they never introduced the Crannogmen.

[The Bandit]

Here's an interesting article about adapting the books for the show:

http://io9.com/you-really-dont-want-game-of-thrones-to-last-10-season-456658267

Interested in your responses (especially from y'all that have read the books).

[strangelight]

i think that article makes a lot of good points. as much as i love really good tv (breaking bad, mad men, the wire, the sopranos, etc.), i think 5-7 seasons is a good length for a high quality show.

i also really hope the tv peoples combine book 4 and book 5 into a single season and really trim the fat. both of em are full of new characters that don't do a whole lot. reading someone's internal strife is interesting. seeing them act it out isn't. i also (semi-spoiler) feel like daenerys spends book 5 sitting around not really doing anything (and she isn't in book 4 at all) and who wants to watch that for one or two seasons? unless they work in those novellas that focused on her (which i haven't read yet, but want to).

mad men's the sort of show that's really character driven, so you can watch an entire season without much happening in terms of plot advancement and you still feel like you get a lot out of it (at least i do anyway). but GOT has set itself up as action-filled and fast-paced, and making the transition to introspective character piece in season 4 to whatever will be a difficult sell for an audience that wants dragons and tits and blood.

[The Bandit]

I just want the show to last long enough for Sansa to show her tits.

[strangelight]

i want it to last long enough for cersei to show her everything.

[The Bandit]

i want it to last long enough for cersei to show her everything.

Has she shown anything on the show?  I swear I've seen her nude. Maybe something else?

[juggernaut]

I just want the show to last long enough for Sansa to show her tits.

Settle down there Sandusky. She's only 17. 

[The Shocker]

I am well aware of that fact.

[strangelight]

i want it to last long enough for cersei to show her everything.

Has she shown anything on the show?  I swear I've seen her nude. Maybe something else?

not yet, but she was pregnant during season 1. stuff happens later on that requires her to be fully nude. i don't really see how they could do the scene without full nudity, but they might use a body double?

[The Shocker]

I think she would go for it.

[JemDooM]

Yeah that article was spot on.

I treat the show like a novelty extra and watch it with a pinch of salt, it is thoroughly enjoyable especially with all the beautiful people. I think Martin is an excellent writer, I adore every single paragraph, just picked up A dance with dragons again, sleepy phase over! I think it's that boring bastard stannis! and Davos bores me too, and snow is so uptight and solitary since he took over the watch, I miss his laughing and interactions with his brothers, it's all awesome though gotta ride the storm with them.....

I know what you mean about the women being fiercer in the show its been good to watch!

[strangelight]

one of my friends thinks stannis is super sexy. i don't get it, but i would totally do sex things to davos. tv atheist davos, not book religious davos.

[JemDooM]

I can't remember stannis or davos in the show :* there are a lot of sexy men in that show though, Snow and Ned, hot!

Not long until the next series!

[The Bandit]

Damn, my Game of Thrones boner is hard.  I might have a priaprism come Sunday.

[MadJohnShaft]

Whoot!   That's fun.

I hate this swords and sorcery bullshit so I watch the show without absorbing any of the stupid parts - like the plot lines and all the place and people names, works okay for me. Like with the later Star Wars movies.

[Soundgardenia]

Is it just me or did the Dragon chick drop some pounds?

[The Shocker]

Is it just me or did the Dragon chick drop some pounds?

I was thinking she looked bigger, especially her arms.

[Soundgardenia]

Nopes, her face is definitely looking more boney. The arms look bigger because of the cut of the shirt, it's not a flattering cut.

[MadJohnShaft]

wandering around in the red waste sheds the pounds

[juggernaut]

I was having an argument with an idiot friend of mine who claims that when adapting the books to the tv show, they writers should have changed the story so that Ned Stark lived.  I couldn't seem to get him to understand that making that alteration would have changed the story for the entire series.

[strangelight]

daenerys doesn't really look thinner to me compared to last season. her clothes are more form-fitting this year.

only way to really know is if she gets naked again. /fingers crossed


edit:

i also really wanna see these two ride some dragons.

[The Bandit]

What about ride each other?