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How did you "discover" ASOIAF?


mushroomshirt

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2 hours ago, TheLastWolf said:

The wannabe popular nerds moved on to something else while I borrowed and finished the series.

 

That is pretty arrogant, but OK. You know, there are other books to read too? I think you "friends" may be ahead of you in that part buddy.

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8 hours ago, Dalinar said:

I am not a book purist. Most people don't seem to understand that books and television are two completely different mediums, and thus are not comparable. What works in the books, does not work on the screen. Best exampple: Exposition. Necessary in a book, the biggest sin on screen. So, I just laugh, when I read those angry comments from book readers, that we are now blessed to read via the glorious Internet. 

I agree with this.  I am also not a book purist.  If I could keep the two versions separate in my head then I would happily have continued to watch the show regardless of quality.

The trouble I had watching season 2 was I started to get confused about what things happened in the show and what things happened in the books.  It was starting to affect my enjoyment of the books, so I decided to stop watching the show.

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4 hours ago, mushroomshirt said:

I agree with this.  I am also not a book purist.  If I could keep the two versions separate in my head then I would happily have continued to watch the show regardless of quality.

The trouble I had watching season 2 was I started to get confused about what things happened in the show and what things happened in the books.  It was starting to affect my enjoyment of the books, so I decided to stop watching the show.

The best part of mixing your mediums is coming to this place to prove it.  That's so embarrassing.  But it happens.   Someone up thread made some good points in not comparing the stories to each other.  I think the same can be said for the characters.  The problem lies in knowing 2 characters, possibly 2 outcomes, in both stories and being able to keep them entirely separate.   I will forever hold the actors' faces and voices in mind as I read or listen.   You can't uncross that.   Much like Shireen teaching Gilly to read, erhum, and many other small differences that do become indelible with enough interest.   Does it take anything from the books when you mix the recall?  Yah, I think it does because you have very different stories in your arsenal to discuss in a community.  It's not fair for either to really cross over.   They really are 2 different stories.   I'm good with Lena Heady's face in my head when I read Cersei.  

 

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20 hours ago, Dalinar said:

That is pretty arrogant, but OK. You know, there are other books to read too? I think you "friends" may be ahead of you in that part buddy.

Those friends haven't gone beyond Enid Blyton. I come from a non-english speaking country. They treat nerds badly, but want to enjoy the nerd treatment

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5 hours ago, TheLastWolf said:

Those friends haven't gone beyond Enid Blyton. I come from a non-english speaking country. They treat nerds badly, but want to enjoy the nerd treatment

I don't think "nerd" is a term, that should be used anyhow. What does that even mean? It sounds pretentious and immature. 

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2 hours ago, Dalinar said:

It sounds pretentious and immature. 

To you maybe. Have you ever felt what it's like to be one? Then talk all you want. 

Nerds used to be ridiculed till a few years ago where I'm from. Now it's suddenly cool to be one. Those are pretentious Aholes. 

#nerdandproud

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I was somewhat into the tv show first. I started watching it from the first episode when it became really big where I live, I think it was just after the third season had finished airing. I liked it well enough, mostly it was fun because a friend of mine had HBO at home and I would go to her place once a week with my then-boyfriend and some other friends and we would make amazing food before it started and watch it together and afterwards we'd open a few beers and comment the episodes. The tradition started at the season four premiere, and endured through seasons five and six. Though by then we didn't really like the show anyone, it was still fun to hang out and talk about what had been most weird that night.

I became pregnant in 2015 and my son was born early into 2016. We watched season six at my place while my son slept and we'd pause the episode so I could nurse him if that was necessary, and everybody was super understanding. It was like the only opportunity I had to be around other adult people while I was exclusively breastfeeding on demand and stuff. Having a kid really changed my relationship with time and hobbies and entertainment. 

I never thought to read the books. "Fantasy" wasn't really my thing. I mean, I read Harry Potter and His Dark Materials when I was a teen and I did love those, but it never went beyond that for me. I felt I was 'over' it, I read a lot of technical stuff for college and I loved classic literature and I read a lot of Brazilian and Latin American literature, but after my son was born I stopped reading for fun at all. I didn't have the time or the energy to engage with a book. 

Season seven aired and it was just overwhelmingly disappointing. Me and the group didn't even get together to watch it anymore. My son was one year old nearing on two, I was still pretty much isolated from contact with other adult human beings because it was so much work with the baby and the house and university. It was around september 2017 when I went to visit a friend and found A Game of Thrones in her bookshelf. It was the original version and not a translation, which immediately appealed to me. I hadn't read a single book since I'd become pregnant and I missed doing something just to indulge myself, so I asked if I could borrow it. At the time, I thought it would work as some mindless reading just to get me into the mood for the "good stuff" again. I mean, I knew the story already from the tv show, and it was fantasy, how difficult could it be? It was about dragons and wolves and wars and betrayals. Just a plot to follow and some cool imagery, or so I thought when I picked it up...

Of course I was absolutely wrong.

I read Game in a week and bought the whole collection for my kindle, which was relatively inexpensive. A year or so and a few rereads later I also bought the Knight of The Seven Kingdoms collection (love them) and when Fire and Blood came out I read that too.

Over three years and many rereads later, I'm still enthralled by the ASOIAF universe. The books have menaged to completely eclipse the show in my mind, maybe because the only season I watched after reading was the last one, and nothing about that made any sense at all, so it was quite forgetable. Reading the books went as far as erasing some of the actors faces and voice from my head - while I still picture Robb, Sansa, Joffrey, Robert and Cersei and Jaime pretty much like in she tv show, other characters, such as Jon Snow, Bran, Arya, Gendry, Brienne and Davos have been completely changed in my mental image. The fact that I only read the books after I watched most of the show and that I never truly loved the show itself in the first place probably helped.

I guess I am rambling and oversharing, but what is an anonymous internet forum for, if not for this? 

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2 hours ago, TheLastWolf said:

To you maybe. Have you ever felt what it's like to be one? Then talk all you want. 

Nerds used to be ridiculed till a few years ago where I'm from. Now it's suddenly cool to be one. Those are pretentious Aholes. 

#nerdandproud

You may have misunderstood me. I am blaming your friends, not you. Who uses such terms? We are all humans and differ from each other. Giving each other names is just stupid imo.

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50 minutes ago, Dalinar said:

You may have misunderstood me. I am blaming your friends, not you.

Oops!!! Sorry 

50 minutes ago, Dalinar said:

Who uses such terms? We are all humans and differ from each other. Giving each other names is just stupid imo.

Ha huh... 

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I think it was in November or December of 2010 after Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1 came out that I started looking for other fantasy series I could read and I googled "top 10 fantasy book series of all time" and ASoIaF came up :rolleyes: The other one I remember from that article was The Wheel of Time, but something about the concept of The Wall, the character of a dwarf that wasn't a fantasy dwarf, and the name Jon Snow just totally appealed to me. The idea of having multiple POV characters and that there weren't any good guys or bad guys sounded great. I was 14 at the time, and my favourite books were LotR, Narnia, HP, HDM and Percy Jackson, so ASoIaF sounded completely wild, epic and free (?) 

Unfortunetly, at the time the books weren't available in spanish in Latin America (at least were I live, they were translated between June 2011 and December 2012 I think), so I couldn't buy them. At some point between December 2010 and April 2011 I became aware that it was going to be adapted and that Sean Bean and Natalia Tena were going to be on it, but I didn't much care for it because what I really wanted was the books.

Then in around May 2011 the first episode was going to premiere on HBO Latin America (they aired the episodes two or three weeks after they aired in the US during the first season) and I caught one of the behind the scenes videos on TV and it reminded me of the behind the scenes videos of LotR, so I decided to watch the first episode when it aired and it was great! I loved the Cersei/Jaime twist and I became completely invested in the characters of Ned, Dany, Tyrion, and Bran (I was SHOCKED because I thought he died). Then a week later after being heartbroken by the death of Lady but becoming attatched to most of the main cast I decided to buy the 4 book box set on Amazon in English :) A Game of Thrones has the honor of being the first book I read in English in my entire life.

But because the box set had to arrive to my country first, I continued watching the TV Show until episode 5. Then I got the books and after reading like two hundread pages decided that I loved it and preordered ADWD :P It took me until January of 2012 to finish reading them but I loved it.

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I had been wanting to check out fantasy for a while but I was totally overwhelmed by the options and didn't want anything too good guys vs cartoonish bad guys. The obvious place to start would have been LotR, but I saw the movies and knew the ending. I'm a heathen and often lose interest when I know the ending ahead of time.

I was going through a rough time at work (long hours, brutal multitasking, barely time to eat and bosses asking us to run a race with one leg tied to the other :bang:) so I needed some hard core escapism to unwind as I'm not much of a drinker. That was when I was in the grocery store checkout and saw AGOT with Sean Bean on the cover. (Sean Bean!)

I went through all 5 books but didn't move to watch the show despite Bean because adaptations are so disappointing, HBO is gimmicky and I thought AMC would have treated the characters better if they could muster the budget. But I had some theories and hints that I was seeing in the books and I wanted to compare and see what made the cut for the show and what didn't, so I watched though, even when it turned into a hate-watch thing for me which I normally don't care for.

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I had a coworker in 2010 who was in love with the series and was trying to get me to read them before Dance came out as she knew I was into fantasy novels. I kept brushing it off until I saw her reading Dance at work... on the clock, haha. By that time the show had premiered and after the first episode I dove into the book series. :cheers:

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3 hours ago, Lord Daedrunk said:

I had a coworker in 2010 who was in love with the series and was trying to get me to read them before Dance came out as she knew I was into fantasy novels. I kept brushing it off until I saw her reading Dance at work... on the clock, haha. By that time the show had premiered and after the first episode I dove into the book series. :cheers:

You know that's funny as the first time I ever heard about GOT was a couple of coworkers discussing something from the show.   I remember asking them if they were talking about real people!   Right on!

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People kept recommending the books to me. They’d tell me a little bit about it, a bastard boy with a dire wolf :sigh internally:. An exiled Princess :double sigh:. Does it have have elves in it? I’d ask. It’s got Children of the Forest! :Nope thank you!:

     It wasn’t until someone asked me why I hadn’t read them and I mentioned I disliked high fantasy. He laughed and said,” You’re gonna love it! The 4th book just came out. I’d wait till the series is done before you start reading them tho” what a peculiar thing to say I thought at the time, the 4th had just been released......sigh......

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18 hours ago, Lady Dacey said:

The books have menaged to completely eclipse the show in my mind, maybe because the only season I watched after reading was the last one, and nothing about that made any sense at all, so it was quite forgetable. Reading the books went as far as erasing some of the actors faces and voice from my head - while I still picture Robb, Sansa, Joffrey, Robert and Cersei and Jaime pretty much like in she tv show, other characters, such as Jon Snow, Bran, Arya, Gendry, Brienne and Davos have been completely changed in my mental image. The fact that I only read the books after I watched most of the show and that I never truly loved the show itself in the first place probably helped.

I watched only 1st episode of 1st season and decided to quit in order not to let the faces and other stuff from the series replace those created by my imagination (the power of pictures). Not that I considered the tv series aesthetics as not faithful to the book, I just did not like it, same with actors. In fact the series might have been more faithful than images spawned in my head - book leaves one more space as for this, and so I may choose not to "see" some things. Still sometimes the faces from the episode and the show commercials haunt me. TV-Jon Snow has even put my Snow out of business for a moment, But my Jon counterattacked during a reread and regained his position in my head XD

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