"I keep my visions to myself....." ---- Fleetwood Mac "Dreams" That's what Bran has on his iPod and stashes it whenever Sansa approaches him at the Tree.
Yeah, not only is that a sparring sword and not Oathbreaker (you can tell in the videos), but Brienne would be pulling punches like any teacher would ... not actually trying to break Podrick's or Arya's word. I find that a lot of info is just very minor detail in the book, that you could miss or easily forget. But fans have catalogued it all into wikis. For instance, the dimensions of Casterly Rock that I posted after Ep1 (or 2) are contained in like just two sentences. There are several fan-maintained wikis of encyclopedic info. The one I like most is at wikia. It used to be tricky reading it during earlier book seasons, but they do a good job of dividing the facts we know from episodes, from the facts we know from the books. For every Wiki entry, they have a brief summary, then a list of Episodes detailing the facts we know in chronological order per ep. That is followed by Book info. So once I got used to the format, I could avoid book spoilers pretty easy. But obviously, now that's no worry, if you are caught up with the episodes. Here's the home page http://gameofthrones.wikia.com But I typically just google the search items like this "got andals wikia" GOT acronym as a search term works fine lols. I didn't remember the Andals really until fba34 mentioned them again. They pretty much assimilated most of those houses by marrying into them. However, they couldn't beat House Stark, and that's why much of the North still follows the CotF gods/religion and the South follows the Faith of the Seven from Essos. Here's the Andals invasion wiki page, that shows the Houses in the Right Panel http://gameofthrones.wikia.com/wiki/Andal_Invasion
Isn't the 6th book mainly complete and it could be released in the next year? So the writers still had some material for this season right? It's the last season that's going to be a crapshoot.
Supposedly Book 6 is going to be out next year. That's slightly more reliable than Steve Perry "releasing a new album soon" (he says the same thing every year since, oh, 1997). The show's writers / producers know where the story will end up, i.e., what's going to happen to the principal characters. So they'll have that destination. They can probably pave the road a little themselves. It DOES tell you who's fairly extraneous when the next book(s) is (are) released; there are certain characters that clutter the book's landscape who more than likely won't sit the Iron Throne, to be sure. Hell, it's taking so long to finish the books that Stannis is still stuck in the snow north of Winterfell, and Jon Snow is still bleeding out (watch someone scream, "Hey, I was gonna binge-watch the show! SPOILER THAT ****!")
What if GRRM told them everyone dies. They could just do whatever and get to that conclusion. You can kind of tell the difference between the GRRM years and what happens after. Because in the earlier season you really had no idea what was going to happen. Heros were dying and the villians were winning. The last few seasons it felt more like standard story with defined Heros and VIllians.
What? Are you telling us that you knew that you knew Arya was going to kill the Freys all at once? HBO has GRRM's outline for the rest of the story I'm pretty sure. I know he gave a copy of it to his son just in case he doesn't live long enough to write it himself.
They've said they do not have an outline. They have the ending concept and that's it. They are clearly not following any sort of roadmap from the books (nor should they be, this isn't a criticism) because MAJOR story archs are completely different, different people missing characters, etc. I do think you can see a change in the show where everyone started wearing white hats to be good guys or if they were bad we had to REALLY rub it in how evil they were. I remember loling that Trant wasn't just the guy who killed Syrio that Arya hated, they had to make him a child molester/abuser before she killed him. One thing I missed though, I wasn't expecting Olenna to die that episode and I should have been. It followed the formula. She got pulled aside by Dany and got to give her speech and impart wisdom. That was a death sentence as far as the show is concerned.
Wow, I didn't know all of that. Well, that leaves room to read the remaining books when the show ends.
Yeah if you are interested in reading the books then you will be able to without worrying that the show will spoil them for you. It's a very different story at this point. For example...(thar be spoilers ahead matey, book spoilers) Spoiler In the books (I didn't read all this but what I've pieced together from online sources) Stannis is still alive and marched through the North rallying northern houses to his cause. Rickon Stark is still alive on some island and House Manderly is part of a Northern Conspiracy to return a stark to Winterfell, namely Rickon, with Daavos as their liason between the North and Stannis. The burning of Sheeren would never happen, with Stannis giving orders to install Shereen on the Iron Throne if he should die. There is an entirely different character claiming to be a long lost Targ trying to claim the Iron Throne, House Martell is a major force led by the crippled guy that book readers apparently love, etc. They will end up with the same person on the iron throne, but they are not the same story at all at this point. In some ways for the worse, but in a lot of ways it's MUCH better. The books are way too convoluted.
I've read 1-5, I definitely know about some major differences. Spoiler: book spoiler Heck, I'm pretty sure Catelyn Stark is still alive and I'm pretty sure Brienne of Tarth is dead. I want to say that some weird version of Catelyn kills Brienne. Also, Tyrion has the gray scale and entertains the masses in mareen with a female little person. That clearly changed. I think you're left with Tyrion traveling with the lost Targaryan towards the end. Can't remember the bloke's name.
Ok so yeah. I haven't read them all (I started reading and then stopped) but after last season I went ahead and basically read all of the story breakdowns of everyone just to see what might be different. Spoiler Catelyn is alive, Greatjon is alive, Blackfish is alive, Stannis is alive, lol. Sansa never married Bolton. It's a totally different story. The only thing I can gather that the show is worse off than the books is certain characters that were sidekicks being dead on the show. They did it obviously to cut down on unnecessary characters and I get that, but it sucks that Blackfish is dead, Greatjon, Selmy, etc. Those were good actors with cool characters. Other than that, the books seem extremely convoluted and a mess.
Yes, and I personally think it's well done writing. 5 seasons of agony and pain and we are finally seeing payoffs and rewards for those 5 years of agony. The show is going a tad bit more traditional the last two seasons it seems like. The show before didn't have clear protagonists but now it's obvious that the show has two clear 'main characters'(Jon and Dany). Those two are most central to the main story arc.
I'm not sure what GRRM's overall idea was for the conclusion, but if it was as bleak as the first 5 books than the show runners have made a brilliant choice to go their way. Unpredictable and depressing are fine to a point, but after a while watching the good guys lose just becomes bleak and unsatisfying. If Jon Show had in fact died at the end of season 5, it would have been insanely unpredictable (to non book readers anyway) but it also would have likely been the time the show jumped the shark for a lot of it's audience. Not that it has been perfect, but it has been very entertaining the last 2 seasons. The writing has been on the wall for a while that Dany was gonna meet Jon Snow and unleash her Dragons on Westeros, yet still it's entertaining. They've done such a good job with the supporting characters like Jamie and Bronn that you are still nervous for most characters fates. I have read the books, and IMO a Dance With Dragons was mediocre,and A Feast for Crows was bordering on unreadable. Every time I hear someone complain about straying from the books i disagree vehemently. If that was the muddled future for the series, going their own way was inarguably the right call.
Yes, the thing about the books: GRRM obviously works without "storyboards", so to speak. He doesn't largely plot ahead. So he has to resolve the situations of so many characters that he introduced. Young Griff. Victarion Greyjoy. Arianne Martell (the gratuitous nudity alone would have made great TV, but we'll never see that now ). And others. I like big books with lots of characters but GRRM has sort of painted himself into a corner and I think that's part of the reason these stories are so hard for him to finish. The show had to simplify what he complicated.
Re: Book and show changes I'm 99% confident that book-Jamie and show-Jamie will end up with different endings/arcs, and I am so damn thankful for that. Book-Jamie is such an interesting character.
When the show advanced...it proved one thing to me. That all the plots GRRM had going were completely and utterly meaningless. At this point he's obsessed with the number 7 and just wants to put out that many books. The first 3 were good...but since then its just him writing convoluted B.S to waste people's time. The show is 100x better than the what the later books portrayed even with all the hollywood bullcrap (like Cercei blowing everything up).
