Avoiding potential book spoilers (and failing)

[WSmith84]

I was going to try and avoid spoilers, but in the end I couldn't be bothered to spend the energy necessary. I watched the first two episodes and while I expect some of the things that happened in the show to happen in the books, I doubt all of them will. And I expect the things that will happen to happen very differently in the books. Honestly, it's not the fear of spoilers that's making me reluctant to watch the rest of the thing, it's the quality.

[Gertrude]

I fully support those of you who want to try and avoid the show and spoilers. I was thinking along these lines myself for a very long time, but came to the conclusion that I didn't want to spend as much energy as that would take. If I'm going to get spoiled on the broad strokes, I'd rather it be because I watched it myself rather than someone telling me about it second hand.

I was reading a thread from a formerly unsullied viewer (show only, zero book or supplemental materials) and hearing her describe the effort it took just to avoid book spoilers, even after the relevant episode aired, I decided that my decision was the right one for me. I wish you the very best in your endeavor!

[Ruhail]

I used to worry like you. Then i watched 6x1 and remembered 85% of the characters are in a different position or have different motivations and I kept them as seperate entities. 

[Leonardo]

Just watch the show ffs. All the big stuff like R+L has been predicted foreeever. The only big spoilers will be coming in the last season anyways, the show and books are on entirely different paths now, just with similar destinations.

[Stubby]

[MOD]

This thread exists on sufferance.

Please give it a chance to persist just a little longer?

Thanks.

[/MOD]

[AryaGonnaEatThatDeadFatGuy]

To the OP,  you may be over-worrying about spoilers. I started reading after season 4 and still got hooked. And have since read through the novels a second time, which I enjoyed more than my first.

I think the show will spoil most of the endings. But if you are going through these forums you are going to get that as well. Getting a huge group of mega fans together to scour through hints is going to result in sound theories that you wouldn't have come up with yourself. So by flipping through this site you will come across a number of spoilers already.  And many of them (not certainties like R+L=J) will have the same likelihood of being in the books: pretty likely

[kissdbyfire]

4 hours ago, JCRB's Honeypot said:

Not that! I mean about Mel, Shireen and Jon.

Now, I dunno about you, but I think we could open a thread that explains -with certain detail- what has been "spoiled" in the episode, and how? Also, what is 100% confirmed (like DD saying "martin told us!"). Because it's better you hear it from us.

If you think it's a good idea, I'll open the thread.

I would never take Mr Benioff and Mr Weiss saying "Martin told us X" as 100% confirmation for anything.

As to the OP, what so many already said... A few plot points will be the same but not all. But most importantly, there's no sense of the journey on the show, how, why, nothing that matters. The destination means nothing without the journey, and even the destination won't be identical books and show. 

[bent branch]

I think you may not have as much to worry about as you think. My daughter was reading ADWD as season 5 aired. Sometime after season 5 ended, my daughter called me and said she had finished ADWD. "Yeah, what did you think?" I asked her.

She responded, "Jon was stabbed!"

"Well, yes." I said. "You did just watch season 5."

"Yeah, but they changed so much I thought that was just another of their changes!"

So the moral of this little story is, even if you watch the show, you most likely won't be spoiled for the books.

[Ebrose]

I have just realised that most of the people commenting in this threat disagree with me in what constitutes a spoiler. Not only I want to avoid EVENT spoilers (which I do, but as you guys said the show and the books have diverged quite substantially), but also PERCEPTION spoilers. With that I mean that whatever you do first (read or watch) will strongly affect how you address the other activity.

Until recently I was of the opinion that newcomers to the series should watch first the show episodes and then read the corresponding books/chapters, because the impact of an unexpected event is (or so I thought) stronger when "witnessing" it rather than "simply" by reading about it. And so I behaved. I tried to first watch an episode and then read up to when the episode finished. Even though this behaviour demonstrated to be quite difficult as soon as the series started to diverge from the books, I managed to make it work quite decently. However, after finishing ADwD, I started to dig into the forums and I found that I had missed everything. My mind had skipped all the details, all the foreshadowings, all the hidden treasures. Why? Because unconsciously I was reading the books as if they were an extended (and improved) version of the series. And I don't want that to happen again to me. I want to read TWoW without any preconception, trying to figure out by myself what GRRM is trying to tell me,

The events in themselves? Yes, of course they are important ("thanks" to those who included spoilers in this thread; very thoughtful of them.) But I don't think that is the main problem of watching the show beforehand.

[mormont]

[mod] Folks, to be clear:

No show spoilers of any sort should be posted anywhere in the book forum, and particularly not in a thread titled 'avoiding potential book spoilers'.

Nothing. Zero. None at all. Not so much as an episode title, a summary or a hint.

Critique of the show should also be avoided. This thread is about avoiding potential book spoilers, nothing else. [/mod]

[Ser Quork]

9 hours ago, kissdbyfire said:

As to the OP, what so many already said... A few plot points will be the same but not all. But most importantly, there's no sense of the journey on the show, how, why, nothing that matters. The destination means nothing without the journey, and even the destination won't be identical books and show. 

This is very much how I feel.

Whatever you may accidentally see/hear, take it with a pinch of salt.  When the books come out, they will be immersive experiences, as always, and the journey will be epic.

[Morgul-Blade]

I knew avoiding spoilers would be impossible, so I gave in. I watch the show with friends who do not read the books. It actually makes for some fun discussion, especially when I scoff at something D&D do. The differences are significant, but the main plot line holds fairly true. As most of us who have spent time on this forum and reddit, the potential true "spoilers" have been already predicted and analyzed, and the only show's mechanics will differ from the novels.

[Nymeria_Snow]

12 hours ago, mormont said:

[mod] Folks, to be clear:

No show spoilers of any sort should be posted anywhere in the book forum, and particularly not in a thread titled 'avoiding potential book spoilers'.

Nothing. Zero. None at all. Not so much as an episode title, a summary or a hint.

Critique of the show should also be avoided. This thread is about avoiding potential book spoilers, nothing else. [/mod]

Thanks Mod, that's actually what I was aiming for. It's the experience and the general choices of why devoted book-readers are/aren't watching the show that I'm interested in. Thanks to the mods for not budging this thread either, it's been great to hear so many opinions in a safer place to avoid spoilers. 

To those watching the show, you all give compelling reasons which I'll definitely consider. My major bugbear is that even if the show is mostly on a different path from the books, major points are still likely to be spoiled without the gentle foreshadowing and development of the books. I'm a major nerd for prophecies and tiny details so to watch an essentially abridged version of some of the biggest plot points that are still to come just isn't my cup of tea.

Having said that, many of you are right in saying that it's better to see show spoilers first hand than reading them on some naff news site or someone's snapchat. I'll consider it! Some of you have a point when you say I'll just have to accept my fate and accept secondhand spoilers for the books. A curse for a book snob such as myself!

Or I might occupy myself with an ASOIAF re-read, who knows. 

For the time being though, it's nice to know that a few are struggling like me, and I'll get back to you guys who want to join the support group at some point if things get tougher! 

[kissdbyfire]

9 minutes ago, Nymeria_Snow said:

Thanks Mod, that's actually what I was aiming for. It's the experience and the general choices of why devoted book-readers are/aren't watching the show that I'm interested in. Thanks to the mods for not budging this thread either, it's been great to hear so many opinions. 

To those watching the show, you all give compelling reasons which I'll definitely consider. My major bugbear is that even if the show is mostly on a different path from the books, major points are still likely to be spoiled without the gentle foreshadowing and development of the books. I'm a major nerd for prophecies and tiny details so to watch an essentially abridged version of some of the biggest plot points that are still to come just isn't my cup of tea.

Having said that, many of you are right in saying that it's better to see show spoilers first hand than reading them on some naff news site or someone's snapchat. I'll consider it! Some of you have a point when you say I'll just have to accept my fate and accept secondhand spoilers for the books. A curse for a book snob such as myself!

Or I might occupy myself with an ASOIAF re-read, who knows. 

For the time being though, it's nice to know that a few are struggling like me, and I'll get back to you guys who want to join the support group at some point if things get tougher! 

I hear you, even if I'm still watching it - for now anyway. I should have added this in my previous post, but I also think the main "plot point checks" that will be more into spoiler territory will be series 7/8. I know, not much help at all, is it?

[Nymeria_Snow]

9 minutes ago, kissdbyfire said:

I hear you, even if I'm still watching it - for now anyway. I should have added this in my previous post, but I also think the main "plot point checks" that will be more into spoiler territory will be series 7/8. I know, not much help at all, is it?

That's very true actually, and no, not really! I think I read somewhere that series 8 is the last (?) so it'll definitely go full throttle to get all the loose ends tied up.

Also the tumblr link on your signature is hilarious! love it!

[Comrade Yurika]

I've actually done pretty well so far (I stopped watching the show after Season 4). I know a few things that happened in Season 5, but not much.

I imagine I will get some stuff spoiled from time to time, but I think that not watching the show will still reduce spoilers for me.

Because my biggest worry about spoilers is not so much finding out what will happen, as it is seeing those things play out and spoiling the future experience reading the books. I don't want to read some great scene in The Winds of Winter and be thinking about some mediocre scene from the TV show that had a similar result. So I decided that not watching the show was the better course of action.

[kissdbyfire]

4 minutes ago, Nymeria_Snow said:

That's very true actually, and no, not really! I think I read somewhere that series 8 is the last (?) so it'll definitely go full throttle to get all the loose ends tied up.

Also the tumblr link on your signature is hilarious! love it!

Aw, thanks.  

I think there hasn't been any official announcements yet regarding how many more episodes there will be. There's talk of 13 more eps after series 6, split into two series but as far as I know, nothing is official yet. And this year, there's some material from AFfC/ADwD they're doing as well, so there's that also.

 

[RoamingRonin]

On May 4, 2016 at 4:57 PM, Nymeria_Snow said:

Thanks Mod, that's actually what I was aiming for. It's the experience and the general choices of why devoted book-readers are/aren't watching the show that I'm interested in. Thanks to the mods for not budging this thread either, it's been great to hear so many opinions in a safer place to avoid spoilers. 

To those watching the show, you all give compelling reasons which I'll definitely consider. My major bugbear is that even if the show is mostly on a different path from the books, major points are still likely to be spoiled without the gentle foreshadowing and development of the books. I'm a major nerd for prophecies and tiny details so to watch an essentially abridged version of some of the biggest plot points that are still to come just isn't my cup of tea.

Having said that, many of you are right in saying that it's better to see show spoilers first hand than reading them on some naff news site or someone's snapchat. I'll consider it! Some of you have a point when you say I'll just have to accept my fate and accept secondhand spoilers for the books. A curse for a book snob such as myself!

Or I might occupy myself with an ASOIAF re-read, who knows. 

For the time being though, it's nice to know that a few are struggling like me, and I'll get back to you guys who want to join the support group at some point if things get tougher! 

The big problem about avoiding spoilers is: we don't have a release date for TWOW. Which means we'll be dodging spoilers indefinitely. It's impossible. Imagine season seven is premiering and TWOW still hasn't come out. It's only been two weeks and you're already overwhelmed trying to avoid spoilers. If it's bad now, it's only going to get worse as the season goes on. 

It's not worth the trouble. If we were told it would be coming out later this year, I would be avoiding the show with you. It wouldn't be that hard knowing I had something to look forward to at a relatively close date. But since we have no release date to work with, I'm not restructuring my life to accommodate A Song of Ice and Fire.

[Walda]

There are people in my real life that are merciless about spoilers. One of them told me straight that "Anyone who really cares has seen that episode now"(the day after the first episode).  But I know the people that care the most are the ones like you, who are not going to see that episode until after the book comes out.

The other lie that is getting annoying is "Oh, it is so different to the book, there is no risk of spoiling anything."
 Even a TV show as far removed from the books as Merlin is from Historia Regum Britanniae  can  stuff up a book reader's experience. Lawyers know something like it called the CSI effect.

Just the specificity of a visual image can distort a book readers impression.  When I first read the World of Ice and Fire, I noticed that the boasted pains GRRM took to ensure the art exactly matched his own conception of the world, did not extend to telling Ted Naismith that the Eyrie had "seven slender white towers bunched as tightly as arrows in a quiver" (AGoT, Ch.34 Catelyn VI)  Whether Sansa looks directly up from the top of an oaken cask on the winch, or down from her maiden-tower balcony, the skycells won't be directly in her point of view in Naismith's world,either.

I was keen to see how Ser Gregor could get from the roof of the armoury to the nursery of the Crown Princess, the ups and downs of the serpentine steps, the various ways of accessing and viewing the litch yard Lady is buried in at Winterfell. I can't help suspecting that GRRM has been doing his utmost to frustrate my investigations.

Just Google "[character name] Fan Art" and see for yourself the effect of TV. No curly golden hair for Jaime and Cersei, no nude nut for Tywin. I can't say the fan art for Gerion, Joanna, or Gerold is more accurate, but there is at least more variety in their depiction than in Tyrion's. Actually, thinking about it, probably better not to Google images from Thrones until Winds of Winter is out.

A  good image can take less than a second to absorb, and can go a long way to over-writing the impressions a text-based description. Then, re-reading the books in an attempt to erase the unhelpful and inaccurate images, actually helps reinforce and recall them. The brain will always prefer to snatch a whole concrete image it has tucked away earlier, than to decode a text and rebuild composite images, and will fill in the blank bits that GRRM carefully left in, with whatever it has got. Of course, I can (or at least, believe I can) still puzzle out the things the books describe when I'm making a conscious effort (for instance by attempting to draw it myself), but the minute I just immerse myself in the story, the gaps vanish and the show images take over. Human brains are not good at 'unseeing' images.

In the Song of Ice and Fire, when such things as the height of  Maester Caleotte or the colour of a rose could make such a difference to one's understanding of who died and how, coming to the story from the TV show can unhelpfully close one's mind to solutions to the puzzles that are all laid out in the book, just waiting to be put together correctly.

Most often, GRRM does not give a single answer but a medley of sights and sounds of days gone by and days to come and days that never were, behind shut and open doors.  I'd rather not be blind to their existence, if I can help it, but coming to the books from the show, I have often found myself missing the plain door hidden behind the showy one, until some dragon on this forum pointed it out to me. In the books, nothing is what it appears to be. Images can only be what they appear to be – that is their nature.

While cinematic greatness lies in the image, words have power too. Most film and television rely more on the power of narrative and dialogue than lucid cinematography. Many of the most popular quotes from the show are not in the books, but most are. There are tell-tale signs that make it easy to spot book quotes when you hear them, and they are more obvious when taken outside their narrative context, the way spoilers are.

It is difficult to mimic another author's style convincingly.  Because GRRM's plots are so intricate, his characters so thoroughly thought through, even his most purple word choices have usually had some rigorous justification. The words he gives his characters are the words someone like them would say in that situation, they have a meaning in the context of the scene and chapter they are written in, and they have a meaning in the context of the Song as a whole. That last bit is quite hard for someone who doesn't know the whole song in detail to do.

When a line sounds a bit clutsy, it is usually because it includes one or two of  the many, many elements like pigs, lemons, sapphires, red, snow, that are imbued with particular significance (for the above, I would read: King Robert Baratheon, Sansa Stark, secrets, R'hollr, Death). Foreshadowing is a big part of the books. Even if the show scrupulously excises it, a book reader might be spoiled by the outline of the plot hole where it used to be.

For example, when GRRM has Jojen declare "This is not the day I die"(ACoK,Ch.21 Bran III), he is showing us that Jojen can accurately foretell the future, but Meera can't. It implies that Jojen already knows which day he will die, too. He arrives saddled with a doom he won't burden his friends with. Carrying an unmet doom is easier for book characters than for characters attached to popular actors with prior commitments to the Maze Runner franchise.  
 
There are so many interlinked plots, shadow stories, literary puzzles and conceits, it isn't hard to see why each book takes longer to write. It is extremely unlikely that GRRM is going to give up on the notes of the last quarter century and strike out in a new direction with the Winds of Winter so the books won't be spoiled by the show.

I doubt he could do it if he tried.  I suppose there is a remote chance that he gave some thought to forking the story for TV before he published Feast, more power to him if he has. More likely, he didn't have the time then, and was confident that Winds of Winter would be published by the time the show caught up.

Most likely, Winds of Winter and the TV series share the same 'broad strokes'. I'm expecting that means at least half the lines in the script are going to appear verbatim in the book, along with all the biggest surprises, and anyone who knows a warg from a wart will be able to pick what's what.

Even plot-lines that have not been on the show at all, or are transformed completely from the ones in the books, tell us which elements of the book were, in the opinion of co-producer GRRM as well as the show runners, not critical to the telling of the main story.

Even the plot lines and characters that were never in the book, were never GRRM's work, can spoil GRRM's work. True, it is harder to pick when another author is using GRRM's concepts than his words, when you haven't got the actual words in front of you, but as soon as you do, it is no harder than spotting the Tolkein influence in GRRM's work on the first read.

Screen writing adaptations is not a great career for people who want recognition. When they absolutely nail it, the actors get all the credit for being the living embodiment of the original characters. When they alter the slightest thing, readers say things like "Where is Denethor's palantir? Why is  Shadowfax white? How did he get into Rath Dinen?"

GRRM waves it away with "How many children did Scarlett O'Hara have?", but the real answer to that question is, Scarlett witnessed the burning of Atlanta first hand in the book and the film. The children she had were not central to the story.

A work of  historical fiction (particularly one as inaccurate as Gone With the Wind) is probably not the best example of how adaptations don't really spoil things. As soon as the reader learns that Tara is a plantation in Georgia and the date is April 1861, the  title is enough to tell you what happens to it. And it's size makes it clear that we will be following Scarlett's life and loves through the war and the reconstruction.

Even though the SoIaF is not exactly Historical fiction, we can reasonably predict there is a Black Death coming. But just because I know it will be soon, and nearly everywhere, doesn't mean I want to know who and how 'in broad strokes' before the book comes out.

I'm hoping a fair analogy would be if the film ended with the announcement of Scarlett's engagement to Rhett, leaving at least half of the Dream of Spring unspoiled.

Regardless and in spite of my fears, I feel privileged to have got into the tail end of the first generation of readers, the ones who remember the book being delivered to their Kindle before the world had read it and analysed it, and spotted all those things that will have become tired old clichés by the time the next generation of readers feel the need to re-interpret it with their more considered adaptations.

Even with the best will in the world, some kinds of spoilers can't be helped.I'm sure Tuesday's experts will claim a few vague paragraphs in a long forgotten archived post are sufficient proof that all the real book readers have known forever about the theory that their fevered discussion has made the hottest thread on the board. I guess, if you wait till the end of the week before checking the boards, it won't be so obvious.

It isn't going to be so hard to avoid most spoilers indefinitely when the season ends- the buzz drops off quickly for all but the biggest cliffhangers. In my line of work its easy enough to avoid Snapchat and FB and memey environments - nobody confuses checking your phone with productive work. But how you do your job and avoid memes if you are in media, I don't know.

It is quite easy to drop a spoiler without being aware of doing so (as my first draft of this post proved, and hopefully this one doesn't). What is obviously a spoiler to the receiver might not seem like a spoiler to the sender.

Like most readers, I came to the books already comparing them to the TV version, so more than half-spoiled already. Not all book readers were as considerate as the members of this forum when it came to protecting my unsullied experience of the TV and progress through the books, either,  but it turned out knowing how Dance ended didn't utterly destroy my reading pleasure. While the first read had been the most thrilling, the re-reading has been more rewarding, to me anyway.

I'm not attempting to excuse or defend spoilers, not even sure how much I really believe this research, but apparently spoiIers don't spoil anything . The books have make me uber-critical of the show, though. Anyway, I'm hoping that even if there has been a little spoilage around the edges by the time I read it, Winds of Winter will be too big to fail.

[Protagoras]

On 2016-05-04 at 10:23 AM, mormont said:

[mod] Folks, to be clear:

No show spoilers of any sort should be posted anywhere in the book forum, and particularly not in a thread titled 'avoiding potential book spoilers'.

Nothing. Zero. None at all. Not so much as an episode title, a summary or a hint.

Critique of the show should also be avoided. This thread is about avoiding potential book spoilers, nothing else. [/mod]

I am having a problem with this...

What happens in the TV-show might be relevant to the plot of future books. As such, it should be discussed. Of course, those threads should be clearly marked as such so no one gets their experience destroyed (something like (Spoilers from the Show) but at the same time it should be possible to discuss wherether or not a certain event from the show will happen in the book and under what form. Linda for example posted a video where at the end she discussed how likely certain events in that episode were to happen in the books and that is precisely the discussion I would like to participate in.