HBO adaptation of Game of Thrones - will this be just for nerds? (NO SPOILERS PLEASE)

I was only counting people who had lines

I'm now not only watching for dinklage awesome but also to find out how the eunuch's game plays out with carcetti's game - the great thing is, thanks to the limited POV and exposition, it's hard to tell which parts of what they talk about wanting to do are more game, and which parts are sincere. Clearly both have plenty to gain by destabilizing the state, but how much, and who do they actually favor? Obv nobody was going to favor Ned or the Starks, fundamentalist patriots have no place in a libertarian utopia.

Ned AND the Starks, I guess, all thumbs tonight

oh and somehow I forgot the squire-made-knight dude who got his neck split open in the first joust with the Mountain, now I remember he spoke with Ned's guard captain before the tourney

Tom that is my favorite graph of all time

nice plot! of course, being familiar w/ matlab i immediately noticed the the xaxis labels weren't corresponding to the correct episodes.

is the "people out camping" number for episode 8 (episode 7 in the graph) deliberately odd because of tyrion? if so, nice touch!

yeah the x axis labels were kind of a bitch because I am no senior wrangler when it comes to quickie excel graphs, it's good enough for jazz
I would like to say the little bump is all about dinklage but I think it's just an artifact of the microsoft smoothing routine

you shoulda seen it when I tried to drop in some logarithmic trendlines on that nonsense - 100% campground settings PROVEN BY SCIENCE

The showrunners speak.

Bit of a spoiler in that article if you're worried about that kind of thing

Weiss: In the book there are a couple of characters who have more of an offscreen role and come back in Book 3. But in the case of, say, Robb Stark — played by Richard Madden — he has more of an offscreen presence in the book, but Richard did such a fabulous job once his character came to the fore, he so commanded the screen that we realized there's no way to talk about this guy and not have him in the show. So there are people offscreen in the book who we are going to write onscreen in the show to make sure people who viewers have fallen in love with are still there in the second season.

Benioff: In the case of Jaime Lannister, he's got one scene in the second book, but he's such an important character we want to see more of him. There's fluidity in that certain scenes from the third book find their way into the second season just as certain scenes from the second book find their way into the end of the first season. We wanted to make sure those characters stayed in the audience's mind and didn't disappear for a whole year.

hrm

There's some spoilers in there, just a warning for n00bs.

xp

Seems sensible enough, max.

i am kind of over people who are watching this show and not reading the books frankly, get your act together

Lot of people have been asking to borrow my copies recently

lol the problem is that i have a stack of books to read but i dont have as much good tv...

Not reading that full article, but if they're deviating that much I might be able to justify reading the books after all. Though I have to say I loved the shock of Ned's demise, and would hate to lose that excitement.

Why would you need to justify it?

i am kind of over people who are watching this show and not reading the books frankly, get your act together

you being serious?

i dont think so

heh, are you

Why would you need to justify it?

A lot of books I'd like to be reading, and if the series follows the books as closely as it seems to (from reading the first 150 pages) then I'd rather just watch the show, but if they're deviating significantly from here on out then I can see the value. Part of me just doesn't want to ruin the WTF shock value. I really like the show, but I'm not convinced it's going to have the depth of some of the greats, which leave the WTF funtimes as its greatest asset.

no¿

xpost

Fair enough Gubke, but despite the show following largely the same plot there really is so much more in the books than what's on screen. And you get the WTF moments on the page too.

For this season I'm reading the book but trying not to read ahead of the show. Next season I might try the opposite to see how I feel about it but I like experiencing stuff on the show first and then enriching my viewing after the fact. I sort of fear that reading the book first might make me less enthusiastic about watching the show.

Yeah, I am torn -- < 200 pages into vol. 1, I'm still conflicted about the moment when I'm done with it and waiting on season 2.

you should keep reading; it's not going to diminish your wanting to see the show.

its hard for me to imagine someone regretting reading the books. especially regretting reading the books in order to watch stuff happen on the show first

reading the books made the show better...I think I said this way upthread somewhere, but the show helped me to better picture the minor characters as I was reading, and I was pleased to find that knowing what was going to happen didn't spoil the show because HOW they make it happen from a writing standpoint has been really kind of interesting for me. They've truncated it enough for the screen to make sense, and though some of the exposition scenes can get a bit much, I am really enjoying the subtle and bigger changes in the story. Like a slight redux or something.

I plan to finish out the show and then start reading from the beginning of book 2. I tried starting book 1 midway through the series but I was so bored reading stuff that I had already seen happen. I'm hoping I'll be able to avoid that by reading completely new material.

I was so bored reading stuff that I had already seen happen.

Definitely ran into this after Ned dies! Like, I was at the point where Nymeria noms in Joffrey's arm, and it felt inconsequential compared to what just happened in the show.

Reading the collective advice though is helpful, probably will continue on with all the books. (The dilemma -- or my dilemma -- is definitely rooted in inherent cultural preference for visual arts, where all stories are supposed to culminate in tv/film productions.)

I actually prefer books but it's not like GRRM has a lot of "literary" pleasures in his books. He's a great writer of plot, but if you already know what's gonna happen bc of the show...

Yeah, I'm definitely reading GOT in a pulp mode, which reminds me of a quotation from the NYer article where one of GRRM's haters is all, "[The first three books in the series are] the finest novels I’ve ever read," and I'm like, read much?

The main things the book have got going for them over the show is the humor - the spiteful things every character thinks of everyone else.

Just rewatched ep 5 and found Arya's "I'm not a boy!" reaction pretty lol.

Also forgot how great the Robert/Cersei scene was.

And didn't realize the first time around that the Spider was talking to the Merchant from across the Narrow Sea about Stark looking into the bastards etc

kinda stupid question perhaps...but i looked on amazon and it was really fucking confusing seeing which book was what, or which collections had all the books, some people were even complaining one "set" was missing a book...

is there a definitive way of buying them all at once or what's the cheapest way? which way are you all reading them?

This is what you want LG. There are no books missing from it (apart from the 5th one which isn't actually out for another month)
http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/61RXUvc1PwL._SL500_AA300_.jpg
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Song-Ice-Fire-4v-Thrones/dp/0345529057/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1308304792&sr=8-1

I actually prefer books but it's not like GRRM has a lot of "literary" pleasures in his books. He's a great writer of plot, but if you already know what's gonna happen bc of the show...

― Mordy, Friday, June 17, 2011 1:01 AM (8 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

sure, but the books are much deeper and you dont have to worry about cruddy actors or ugly sets or exposition being crammed into lesbian hooker sex. they have a budget of infinity!

i'm not sure about the claim that they're 'deeper' but i'm more and more befuddled by the HBOzation of this already fairly HBOish set of books

like i was reading the wiki for it and they have introduced one new character, 'roz' -- she is portrayed by a glamour model and was given a name in the xth episode after being previously identified in the scripts as 'red-headed whore'

stay classy, HBO

"deeper" in the sense that theres "more plot/more explanation" not like thematically deeper

they should have called her "exposition whore" since that is her plot function

lolz

i thought Ros was the redhead barmaid that Theon gets it on with in the books, or i assume at least based on her?

she is, and she comes south.

huh huh

kinda stupid question perhaps...but i looked on amazon and it was really fucking confusing seeing which book was what, or which collections had all the books, some people were even complaining one "set" was missing a book...

In the UK, Book 3 is split into two. This might have caused confusion. It also makes me wonder if they'll split book 3 into two seasons.

they should conflate books two and three

It does kinda sound like they're doing that. In the interview with the creators in the LA Times they said they would be bringing elements of the third book into season two, so that certain characters who don't get up to much in the book don't get forgotten by viewers.