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(spoilers) In my opinion GoT is not ASOIAF. <Not a Rant>


Mr Hodor

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I think the show is still Game of thrones and not a song of ice and fire.



In my opinion the show-runners portray Kings landing exceedingly well. The political intrigue drama and back-stabbings in the court whether at Mereen or Kings landing or even Winterfell's hall are well done. Apart from Dorne, in my opinion, the showrunners have absolutely nailed the court intrigues.



But once they move into the mystical aspects, the show is not really good. We don't get beloved characters like Lady stoneheart or Coldhands. Cotf and Bloodraven are not really what we expected. Even Mance's resurrection is cut from the show. Though they have done justice to the threat the others(white walkers) pose and they power they possess.



And therein lies the main problem for me as a book reader. I believe the asoiaf to be a mix of both complex political plots and mystical elements. If one storyline or one character is overemphasized, the end product is not the song of ice and fire.



Despite all that i still like the show and view it as a separate entity from the books. Anime lovers may know the example of Full metal alchemist. The anmie series was about to overtake the manga(books) so the showrunners decided to change the storyline. Many awesome characters in books are never introduced, and many are weakened (read character assassination). However this ensures that Anmie does not spoil the manga series at all, and later we get another awesome series based on the Manga.



Any thoughts?



TLDR; I think showrunners are good at portraying Kings landing politics but not good at mystical elements. I love the show, consider it to be separate from the books. Your Opinions?


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I think it's the same albeit the show has taken some creative liberties this season. I suspect the bigger issue is that many of us built up assumptiions and images ingrained of how things would look and play out and it's just impossible to live up to that for everyone.


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Every adaptation is in some way/shape/form an alternate universe/entity from the source material. Look at say Batman comics, that's the source material and all the various movies, tv shows and video games just take from the source material and do their own spin on it and the "faithfulness" to the source material varies from adaptation to adaptation. The same basically applies to GoT/ASOIAF.


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GRRM says the same thing, i dont get why everyone has to whine over every detail. The show is more popular then the books ever will be. I cant get any of my friends to read the books as they get bored after a chapter but they are fully into game of thrones and watch it religiously. It makes sense not to have all these tiny characters like cold hands. My friends that watch the show constantly ask me whos who when certain characters come on the screen. how are casual show viewers able to keep up with all these random characters.



These forums are just full of whiny children. They riot saying they are done with a show because a girl is burned yet 100s of people have been burned and they dont care. White walkers dont look how people imagine and they give the show a 1/10.



wah wah wah thats all these forums are reddit has better discussions


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I will never find the show as good as the books because I will constantly compare it to the books, whether I mean to or not. It's not fair, but it is how my mind is going to do things. The season probably wasn't as bad as I thought it was, but it was definitely lacking compared to other seasons, let alone the books.

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I never thought of them as the same thing.

That doesn't mean the show isn't good. I've often said on this board that faithfulness does not equal quality. And that's still true.

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I agree with you OP that the King's Landing part of the tv show is pretty good, and that the magical part of the story has largely been cut. Some things remain, of course; the dragons are real and so are the white walkers, Melisandre still killed Renly by shadow, Bran's storyline is nothing if not magic-related. And the House of Black and White is very spooky, not all-natural and realistic exactly. I just watched the episode and haven't thought it through quite yet, but I think I liked the scene where Arya kept pulling off one face after the other, it's much darker than my impression from the books and I get a whole different sense of danger, of consequence, of Arya being on very deep water.



I guess I'm in the "tv show apologist" camp, as I decided to go along with the Sansa storyline - with a heavy heart - and also with Stannis post-sacrifice, with an even heavier heart. But now I really don't know what to make of the Northern storyline, and yes, the bewilderment could very well come from all the magic elements missing, most of them tied to Melisandre and her damn ruby. Since we don't know what'll happen in books 6 and 7, there's no way to know where all this is going, but I can't kick the feeling that the show runners have made their changes for a reason. I just wish I could understand what reason(s). I'm confused and sad, and season 5 has actually managed to leave me with less hope than the fifth book, and after Jon Snow's stabbing, I was devastated. I did have a weird hope in Stannis, though, but now?



... :frown5:



Well, at least now my tv fix is over for 2015 and I can go back to obsessing about the books. Live and not learn :)


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