Aw man. All this talk of Chris is making me really nostalgic. I'm so tempted to go back and listen to the back catalog.

edit: blown

Lord Wyman Manderly does not want to eat Bran! Only Freys.

Nice to know that Amin wants to test out Kyle's editing skills with one of the lesser podcasts...like VOK.

Medium French Freys to go

VOK is where most of you learned to edit, is it not?

Yup, definitely one of those 1 or 2 people who feel super complicated about continuing to watch the show at this point. I wish it were more different which is not to say I don't enjoy the show. I watch other adaptations like The Walking Dead and I wish that GoT had gone on that route and changed more.

Congrats Amber!
Very much enjoyed the conversation.
Looking forward to the elusive all 4 hosts on the same cast again.

I came to the books through the show. Mimi is right that that makes it easier to accept seeing the show do something first. However I would say that I still regard the books as my primary medium. There are very few cases where a film or show will be better quality than a book- "The Godfather" and "Gone with the Wind" are the only two examples I can think of and Game of Thrones comes nowhere close to the quality of ASOIAF.

The way I look at it, the journey to the major plot developments is going to be different enough that a whole bunch of the books are going to feel like completely fresh material. For me how GRRM gets to the end developments is more important than those developments in themselves. I'm not going to be surprised by who is Jon's mother or who will end up on the throne or who will die because I've seen all the fan theories.

Since I'm not going to be surprised by any revelations in the end game and since I know the show's getting there is going to be different, I think my enjoyment of the books will be the same as if they were unspoiled. Seeing the first two seasons of the show before reading didn't diminish my enjoyment of the first two books, and they were more close adaptations than anything the show will put forward in the future.

SLANDER!!!!!!!

WHICH PART?

That is for the uninitiated to wonder

Makes me wonder which parts of the Freys went into the pie and whether there's a heart tree somewhere in the hinterlands of White Harbor that was decorated in the traditional Northern manner to celebrate. Lord Wyman may not keep the Old Gods, but others in his employ probably do and The North Remembering would make that very apropos, in my mind. I'm gonna make this head canon until George says otherwise.

I've listened to just the show-watching discussion and at least for me I think it's a fallacy that having plot points revealed by people tweeting about it will ruin the thing for me. I doubt the ending is going to be some huge shock type of thing and I truly believe it's the journey, not the destination. I mean, the Red Wedding and Ned's death and Tryion shooting Tywin are all shocking moments, but the things I really love in the series, like Jaime's transformation aren't the kind of things you can spoil. I know I've told the story before that I had a shocking character death in Serenity ruined for me and it was still shocking to actually see it. Part of that is how well-executed it was by Whedon, but I'm confident Martin can do similar.

I'm out of the show because it stopped being fun sometime in Season 4 and I just stopped caring what happens on it. I got to the books first, by a couple years so maybe that's made it different, but I just don't enjoy the show as an independent entity. So, I'm out, but I'll hang around, because I enjoy the fandom and this place especially and I'm willing to sacrifice the small amount of enjoyment I might get from not knowing show spoilers.

The McDonalds commercial at the end just made the podcast!

I’m with Kyle in the notion that it will literally be impossible to avoid book spoilers coming from the show viewers (particularly those who both watch and read), so I’d rather see them happen on the show than hear about them in passing. When major things happen on the show, EVERYONE is going to be talking about it. And while some people will try to keep quiet for a few weeks after the episodes air, there are going to be quite a few years between the show’s finale and the last book’s release. Do you honestly think you’ll be able to avoid any comments at all for as many as five years afterwards? Even if people aren’t being spoilery jerks, they may forget 3 years down the line that you don’t know what happened with Jon Snow and didn’t see that awesome scene where he…..

And it’s not like George is going to dramatically change the major plot points of the ending at this point — which he’s already told David and Dan. I mean, he’s already 5.5/7 of the way through the series. He isn’t going to decide right now that he now has a better idea for what to do with Aria, even though he’s been building towards something totally different for nearly 20 years. But he might give her a different stop along the way there.

It will effectively make any conversation about the books impossible. As Kyle said, as much as many things are going to change, the main story beats are not. They’re not going to change what happens with Dany, or Jon Snow or anything big with the Stark kids or Lannister siblings. Jamie may go to Dorne instead of the Riverlands on the show, and Bronn may die there (or not), but if Martin is going to have Jaime end up killing Circe in the books, they’re absolutely going to do that on the show. How can you then have any conversation about Circe when one person knows how she dies?

Think about this podcast. How many times did you guys mention what you know is going to happen to these characters in Dance and how it impacts how you look at those characters and these chapters now? What would happen if two of you hadn’t read it? Now, imagine if one of you knew the end. How can he participate in a conversation about Davos if he knew that he was going to ultimately betray Stannis, for a totally made up example? How can you talk about Bran’s feelings for Meera, if only one of you knows that he ends up killing her and eating her as paste?

I don’t think that it’s fair to be mad at Dave and Dan or HBO at this point for the inevitability of the show finishing before George. After all, at the time that they signed the contracts, both they and he thought that the books would be completed before the show was. George chose to sign those contracts before his series was done. While we can argue whether or not George is “at fault” for getting so far behind, and what part the show has had in that, Dave and Dan and HBO certainly are not at fault. And they owe it to both their bosses at HBO and to their loyal fans of the show to end the story properly. At least George ends up getting very, very rich out of it!

I agree. I've got no animosity towards D&D about this. It's not like it is their fault. But this has me wondering...does anyone know (if we even can quantify this accurately) what the numbers are of book readers compared to show watchers. I know we can look at copies sold, but you have to figure the same people are buying each book, plus how many both watch the show and the books.

The books were by no means unknown or niche before the show. They were still hugely popular among readers, just not on this level.

It's just that if it is something like 20:1 show only to book people then it kind of puts it into perspective how worried we are about the books being spoiled. Now try to think how the show watchers would react if the show was being put on hiatus until the books were done or it would end before they had their ending.

I've separated them long ago and I think that was best. I had my initial freakout about the White Walker spoiler thing from last season, but after that I came to peace with it (I hope).

I just think there's no way of knowing whether or not D&D will stick to Martin's outline or not and hence the best way to treat everything new is maybe to consider it show canon only. They might kill characters that live in the books and vice versa but they don't have the time nor the money to go into every aspect of the narrative at this stage so I don't see how anyone can seriously think that reading the 2 remaining books after watching the show will be a less rewarding experience. The show has dropped the Ironborn and fAegon seemingly and Manderly and the siege of Riverrun are not in there either as far as I can see so there are big sections of the books' narrative that the show will not focus on anyway so what is the big fuss? Just becuse the show does not include LS does not mean it's not going to be important in the books, it's just that they've decided not to include it and work around it somehow. The show has to change stuff around and take shortcuts to plot points that may be show narrative only so to me there is no way that the show will ruin the books for me. I'll definitely continue to watch the show.

Also, if the barest outline of the narrative on tv can ruin two 1000-page long books isn't that kind of an indication that the books might not be as strong as we think? A good story is entertaining and/or meaningful despite one knowing the story elements, which is why people enjoy the Iliad and the Odyssey: because not everything has to be about a soap-opera style plot twist because then we're only debating the twist, not the underlying ideas and concepts, which is far more interesting to me anyway.

Was going to say, no comments on the McDonalds commercial? Until someone posted now... thought that was an apt conclusion to that particular inside joke.

As for SD Comic Con, we will hopefully be at hotel that is closer to the Convention this year.

I think the blowback that Mad Men is getting from its extended break shows the danger of artificially slowing down the show.

I read the books before the show and the only reason I read them was because of the "Winter is Coming" campaign. If it had not been for the show I doubt I would have read the books.

I have used this analogy before but I think that my comic book background has prepared me for this moment. GoT operates in a parallel universe than ASOIAF. Some plot points are the same and the characters all wear different costumes. I too enjoy the journey aspect of ASOIAF more than the big scenes. Truth be told when the Red Wedding happened I just kept reading because Ned's death informed me to expect those kinds of things. I enjoy going back and reading that Catelyn chapter because of how well George wrote it and not because of the shock of the event. Any shocking event in GoT that will be "spoiled" will just make me want to read it from GRRM's hand even more because of the intensity of his writing.

Yup, very much this. I mean, I feel like I can guess fairly well where most stories are going and I still enjoy them, if they're well told. I'm reading another one of Bernard Cornwell's Saxon Tales books and you know where good old Uthred ends up at the end of the series, I think from the first novel. I'm also pretty good at just not thinking about what I think is going to come next.



A guy I work with gave me the book and said I should read it based on me talking about S.M. Stirling's Dies the Fire series and right around the same time I heard it announced as an HBO series. As I worked my way through the series, I remember thinking "yeah, this won't ever get made as a TV show."

I didn't throw the book as so many people describe, I was more like. "Wow, he killed everybody. That's kind of awesome." And then I started doubting it and went back to double check exactly what had been said and yup, everyone's dead.

I'm excited to see the spoilers. I'd like to know the end before I get old or die. Zero patience here.

People who think they can stop watching and not get spoiled strike me as a little tinfoil hattish. Someone three years from now will probably come knocking on your "Books only Fallout shelter" to tell you Danny incest marries Jon and they fly off together to defeat the Others from Sothoryos, or whatever ends up happening in the end. It will be major news. I mean, if the colour of a dress can be news, this will be too....

Then again, I am three quaters out of my mind, so my opinion is not greatly valuable.

I'm liking all the tension on the show these days. Can't wait for the discussions after the show show starts airing.

It's funny, everyone talks about reasons to keep/stop watching the show and my feeling is just that I don't enjoy it particularly much, so I'm done! Great episode by the way!

It's a matter of dropping a couple twitter accounts and fb groups for me.

I'd like to be able to keep up with the books portion of a few message boards (like this one), and would hope some reverse-spoiler free zones could be established on the internet. Book readers have been very good about not spoiling things for show watchers. I have no reason to believe the favor wouldn't be returned.

I'll most likely not participate in the show discussions this year. Last year it got so heated that I was tempted to leave so this time I'll try to avoid a passive-aggressive show discussion that always starts with 'but in the books...', as if that was the only way to review the show, which is partly why I like the show deviating more and more because it means people will hve to review this show like every other show, not just based on fidelity to the source material.

No offense, but we don't believe you, Beric. Once things get cooking, you'll be right back in the kitchen with the best of them. You cannot change who you are. You cannot leave your opinion unaired. Be true to yourself, join the fracas, embrace the inevitable!

Whether Beric shows up or not, I won't be fighting with him this year. I'm on team Don't Care, so it would be very silly to show up and talk about it.

We could all agree on the front end that everyone knows a tv show and a book are different things, but then there would be nothing to talk about.

Edit: This actually gives me an idea. I'm thinking that if I watch this season, I'll come on the boards every Monday and the compare / contrast the tv show with something that is neither a book nor a tv show. "This episode was ok, but a cocker spaniel is just much better imo."

Cocker spaniels are objectively terrible, so that must be the worst possible episode.

Seriously, if Maester Yandel had wanted to make wyverns scarier "flying cocker spaniel with giant teeth" would have been a better way to go.