upon hearing the frustration from mimi and some of the other hosts regarding the idiocy of the newbie GOT tv show fans and how they are 'taking over' the ASOIAF fandom, i wanted to offer some encouragement to our beloved hosts. i stand as a perfect example of a GOT tv show newb. didnt even start watching the show until september of 2011. i graduated from the tvshow season one, to reading one book, and then all the books including a dance with dragons. i then graduated from reading all the books, to powering through all of the House Manwoody podcasts and falling in love with you all. so ive come full circle from being a total GOT newb, to being a 'snobby' proud member of house manwoody/blackwoody. and i think the trend will continue for many of these newer 'noob' got fans. you just have to give it time. yes the ridiculous noob theories of a 'booby trapped saddle' and 'little finger is a eunuch' is unavoidable. but for every one of those newbs, there is potential for a full pokemon/caterpee evolution to the house of 'shocking lack of knowledge' and the realm of being 'quite base at times'.

so please be patient with us noobs my dear podcast hosts, for some of us learn to become full members of the podcast of 'whiners and haters'. and of course, i say that with love.

House Manwoody 4 Life!

cheers

Hey Linecome1. Thanks for joining the forums and becoming part of our community.

It is always good to hear how we are perceived, because what our listeners may hear and interpret may be different from what we perceive ourselves to say. For example, your interpretation of our views of GOT TV fans seems rather harsh to me, but we might sound like that in our episodes. The 4 of us have different views on many things and it is in that interplay and balancing that makes our podcast work. I don't want to put words in the mouth of the other hosts or guess their views, but given the fact that I'm watching the show with 2 viewers and 2 book readers, there is no hate in my heart for the viewers.

If there is any nerd rage in me, it is when HBO thinks low of its viewers in general, such as believing that they will lose interest in exposition material without the use of sexposition. But I feel that they have listened to the feedback and will improve what was already a great show in season 2.

Btw, the booby trapped saddle was very appreciated by our podcast and was incorporated into the Game of Thrones paint project

Thank you! This is also my story as well. I even ended up on a recent episode of the podcast through some stroke of luck!

I know this is a little off topic, but can we also examine the total rage at critics that do not like Ice & Fire? I know the New York Times has given very poorly-written criticisms of GoT (or more often, the fandom), but I think there are some legitimate criticisms out there about Ice & Fire and Sci Fi/Fantasy in general....

@amin I completely agree with you about HBO dumbing things down. Although, I have to wonder if it's also due to the writers squeezing Clash of Kings into ten episodes.

I was under the impression that the major hate was directed at TV show watchers only who never read the books and don't want to read the books, but feel like they are experts on the material now. This is different from Larry, who has not read the books but wants to, but is intentionally holding off to review the show on its own, which I think is a good policy. Also, he never claims to be an expert and doesn't advertise himself as such.

For my part, I have no problems with people who were inspired to read the books after the fact. And obviously, if you're here on the forums, you are sufficiently obsessed enough to count.

yeah perhaps 'hate' is too strong a word. more like annoyance. and dont get me wrong, for every idiot noob whose knowledge is limited to the tv show and who probably assumes ross will eventually become hand of the king, my annoyance meter shoots up as well. i only meant to say that theres a silver lining to this flood of newbies, and that's the mathematical likelihood that a portion of these noobs will develop into full fledged mimi-zombies. thats all i meant to say. i just didnt want our hosts to get too burnt out. its pretty clear from the last podcast, and the fact that she waited a few days to watch the premier that mimi is getting a little burnt out. i just wanted to offer them some encouragement thats all.

btw: good job on the last Girls night out christina! are you half korean, half Vietnamese? whats the nature of the project that you're working on in greece?

hey, thanks for the heads up and the encouragement.

the way i feel about GOT- the whole burnt out thing- that's largely stemming from a fear of the tv show franchise overtaking/swallowing/minimizing what i regard as the finest literary series i've ever had the pleasure of reading. and yes, christina hit the nail on the head- the tv viewers who haven't read the books and don't know shit about the material discussing it is a particular annoyance to me. but that pervasive wariness of the tv show becoming more the preferred form of ASOIAF is the real point of concern for me.

it is definitely a plus to know that there are new fans becoming quickly obsessed, though. and consequently, possibly becoming part of the APOIAF community. i sincerely feel like we differ from the multitudes of other podcasts because we have the absolute best listeners. it's not this divide between the production and the audience- it's entirely a community. house manwoody 4 life, y'all.

Well said.

I think that the TV show will inevitably be the focus of attention for the next few years. Mainly because the 6th book, unless Martin gets into a real writing groove, is probably years away. The TV show will periodically and reliably return every year. There is only so much buzz that rereading the books can generate during this time period.

Once the TV show is over, I think that the book series will spring back into focus. Some viewers may decide not to read the books while the TV show is running, but once it ends I think that most will. And given that the books have a depth to them that the TV show cannot hope to match, it will provide a nice treat to these viewers. Those that will not would never have read the books in the first place anyway.

I do find that there is a limit to my enthusiasm when watching the show so far. I enjoy it but I am not obsessing over it. It is because I know the overall plot and the main twists and turns of it. So I can understand why new viewers would postpone reading the books to fully enjoy this experience and the sense of the unknown. Since the books have a greater depth to them, it is easier to read them as there will still be surprises there and great dialogue, backstory, etc to make the books a good read.

yeah and this was very much my same pattern of westeros fan development. when i was in the middle of the season, i jsut wanted more episodes, but once the season was done and i was staring down months without any new episodes, my thoughts shifted towards the books. i remember the first passage i randomly flipped open to in a clash for kings was the one where catalyn was riding through riverrun and reminiscing about her childhood. it was right at that moment that i realized the difference in the book experience, and the depths in which the books could take you, that the show never could.

I'm half Korean (mother). My dad's from southern Louisiana which is where I grew up, so is culturally Cajun, ethnically mostly Swedish and has a German name. Right now I work as an archaeological illustrator for various excavations here in Greece. I jump around to different projects throughout the summer. I mostly draw pottery, but sometimes I'm lucky and get to draw small finds - jewelry, tools, sculpture, etc. I've gotten to touch some pretty awesome artifacts through the years, stuff that even student archaeologists don't have an opportunity to handle. And I get to live in a country where the sea and a beach is always close. Can't complain. Also, I've found enough ingredients to make Korean food here, so I don't miss it too much.

I think the best way is to regard those who only watch the Tv show as a separate entity from the ASOIAF fanbase because they have a different amount of knowledge. Those who watch the show only have the condensed version that HBO feeds them and many may not decipher some of the more subtle plot twists who watch the show. I think the reason why there is a lot of GOT new fan hate is because of the small minority who post on tumblr, twitter and whatnot really misguided and incorrect interpretations of the show ( the back history, who is betraying who, why people act in a certain manner etc etc) and this really irritates those who have spent the time reading the books and have a far more complex knowledge. I'm not completely defending GOT Tv show noobs as there as some people out there posting on twitter who cannot understand the most basic plot points to save their lives or misconstrue them to the extent its amusing. It only bugs me when new fans get it wrong and are self righteous about their "understanding"

I think we need to remember that this problem isn't unique to the ASOIAF fandom. I also don't think there is such thing as "real" fans or not. If you like it, then you're a fan. Are the people who only watch the show missing out on so many layers of depth? Absolutely. But they're still fans.

I know people who like the show and don't want to read the books at all (huge doorstoppers aren't for everybody), and some who want to experience the show first without the novels clouding their judgement of it. And, there are people like us who think the books are way better. And you know what? They're opinions. Nobody's right.



I've met many readers of the books who also make really distorted/shallow interpretations of the events/characters. Unfortunately, not everybody has great reading comprehension. And, with something so layered (and popular), it's definitely bound to happen.

As for the "Mansplaining", I think the fans of the TV show would feel the exact same way about people who've read the books telling them everything they think is wrong/spoilers, even though they're talking about the TV show, not the books.

But I agree that thinking of the books and TV show as separate canons is very useful.

As gsdg noted, the fan divide/nerd rage problem is common to many fandoms. This is simply the first time ASOIAF has had to deal with it. All the fan podcasts and fan sites (including this one) have the unique opportunity to help set the tone of the fandom going forward. We all love to pick out the moments in ASOIAF where a character's seemingly small action changes the course of an entire plotline. Well, this is one of those moments.

I confess to bristling a bit at the recent "grrr, TV fans!" talk on the podcast. But I get it, I really do. I'm also a huge fan the Resident Evil and I've pretty much given up on those fan boards because I'm too much of a purist to deal with new fans who like those atrocious RE movies. So all things considered, ASOIAF fans are really quite lucky. GOT is being made by people who care about the story and want to tell it. They're not simply out to wring money out of the franchise.

So instead of browbeating fans brought in by GOT to "read the fucking books or we want nothing to do with you," maybe tell new fans that they can find out what happens next by reading the books. "You think that episode was cool? You want some more RIGHT NOW?" That's what got me to read the books after watching season 1. Also, this is such a rich, well-established fandom that it's simply going to take new fans time to get up to speed.

Good points everybody. One of the main things I (as kind of late-comer to the books) appreciated in the ASoIaF-fandom was that every newby was treated as a valuable member from the start. Everybody likes to explain/point out and (thats somehow unique) not-spoil the newcomers.

With new members flooding in massively into the fandom now with the series - in comparison to the slow drop-in before I see the upcoming problems. Let's hope the veterans can keep their patience - most of the new members will surely turn to the books when they have to wait a year for the next season so I'm sure that will be settled in a few months.

What I don't understand are the trolls. They seem to jump on every new train and ASoIaF is the next they caught. They come up in two specific subtypes - the ones that seem too stupid to follow the simplest plots AND the ones that try to spoil everybody right from the start. I don't know how to stop both of them and think we are lucky here in our own little corner of the fandom - because i feel sorry for the maintainers/moderators/admins of TotH and Westeros.

I am a newbie to the series. Being in Australia, where I reckon one in every twenty people has HBO, if not less, Game of Thrones made barely a ripple in terms of word of mouth. It's only when my co-workers in the TV station I work for started raving about a TV show they'd been downloading and watching that was huge in the states. I decided to hold off on downloading as I am pretty crap at finding good illegal downloads, and being generally a purist on these things, I bought the books online, and spent September/October reading them back to back.

Linecom1, did you have all the eps on your channel at one stage? Pretty sure that was the only way I watched the first nine episodes, and attempted to watch the tenth. Then I jumped online, and spent about six months lurking on TOTH before finally plucking up the courage to post.

WELL. Compared to this lovely place, my time over there has been up and down. I remember a bit of a flamestorm when a regular crapped on me for being relatively new to the site and that we only read for their insightful comments, which I shut down with a line about treating newbies like crap. But since demonstrating knowledge about the series, they are generally welcoming. It's very insular, which can make newbs feel lost, unlike here, where you can generally jump in with either a knowledge bomb or a dick joke, and people will accept you.

I think with AGOT and ASOIAF, and any message board really, you have to lurk before you post. It means that you get some sort of idea of the level you are talking with: are they book fans or tv fans? Are they reading for the first time, or long suffering, like our lots. Spoilers or no spoilers? It saves so much angst if people just lurk for a while before they start posting.

Here is much nicer though.

i'm really glad you find these forums welcoming! i know it's not the busiest place on the internet, but it's a fantastic community. just wait til we get going on the podcast pictionary nights again. nothing like drawing horrible manwoodies all night to bring a group of fantasy novel nerds together.

Yeah, I lurked on the Westeros forums for a while, but it was too big for me, too many trolls. Thanks for your efforts in providing this space.

Most people wouldn't peg me as someone who reads fantasy and its not something I advertise so i find that through the Tv show I am at least able to discuss George's world a bit with my wife and a few other friends who would otherwise never have read the series and some co workers who obviously do not enjoy reading.

I don't think the hate for noob podcasts is fair. They're aimed at different demographics than this podcast. Like the various Walking Dead podcasts focused entirely on the show, these GoT podcasts are aimed at people with next to no knowledge of the books who love the show. Naturally they attract new viewers, whereas the Podcast Of Ice and Fire is strictly aimed at people who have read all the books (unless Larry is a guest host).

There's certainly plenty of precedent for long lasting podcasts focused entirely on shows, with no emphasis on the adaptation material; True Blood comes to mind. Eventually a lot of people will venture to the books, but there will always be a large audience that does not have the time or interest to read them. That's perfectly fine, and I wish their podcasts luck and do listen (rarely).

As I've said before, my only problem is that many of these podcasts manage to snag interviews I would prefer for Podcast Of Ice And Fire to get too. Hopefully you guys get some interviews this year. Brian Cogman responds to a lot of fans on twitter, I bet you could get him on eventually.

Y'all ever wonder if you would become fans of the series if you had seen the show first?

There's a lot to love about the TV show and I still consider myself a fan, but there's a sense of...trashiness in the show that's hard to overlook. Like its why I could never take True Blood seriously and it's starting to make me feel a bit like a hypocrite. I think that's one of more legitimate complaints "source material fanboys" can make. People will use any excuse to complain, so I get annoyed by some bitching from purists, but I feel like the series is walking a fine line where theyre clearly trying to appeal to a larger audience, which unfortunately sometimes seems to move closer to a "lowest common denominator". I feel like APOIAF gets that, and you guys are taking some heat for calling it like it is.