GoT=/=ASOIAF

[Molly]

Oww, yea, true... 
But that wasn't part of the latest episode. That's why I assumed... anyway...

[Oberyn]

Well, the battle of hardhome was fucking epic as hell. And that wasn't in the books.

And, well, a dickless man fell in love with a hot chick. That didn't happen in the books either.

So it really balances out. There are pros and cons to both books and show, but I like them both. You must simply accept that they are not exact clone duplicate copies of each other. Lets be honest, if the books never exsisted, I don't think there would be a SINGLE thing to complain about on GoT. Its just these screamers who rage at every deviation from saint martins vision of westeros.

So far the deviations from the books have been either great or abysmal, depending. The sandsnakes thing with Jaime in Dorne was fucking stupid. Hardhome battle, pretty fucking cool imo. Tyrion and Jorah reaching Danny without the unending retarded obstacles like whiny dwarves and fat rotten yellow slavers, also good. Anyways, like I said before, after the third book ASOIAF loses it's focus, starts meandering and pointlessly dragging out plotlines, and the tv show has reached the point where the books stop or cut off a ton of extraneous fat from the plot, so as the thread name implies they are pretty much different things now. I can't really judge the show based on the books anymore. My fanboyish disdain of departures from the books only extended to the books that were actually good, anyways. The TV show is writing the script now, probably with the approval of Martin, but still their own thing.

[Molly]

I wonder what will happen when they go forward in the show by a big margin and Martin is about to release a new book...

Wouldn't it be weird to read what "actually" happens after seeing "fake" events in the show?
I guess that's gonna be pretty weird for me at least.

[Xant]

Actually, screw the show, what I really hate is that, like Oberyn says, the books lose their focus after book three. The first three books were really good, but now I'm not even looking forward to the next books. I read DwD but it was more like "meh, okay" than "yay, another ASOIAF book"

[Jona]

My fanboyish disdain of departures from the books only extended to the books that were actually good, anyways. The TV show is writing the script now, probably with the approval of Martin, but still their own thing.

I accepted that the show and books would always be different entities long ago, but I'm fine with that. The show producers acknowledge that, and they aren't trying to create the "perfect" adaptation of the books since it would be a near-impossible thing to do. They are working within the canon established in the ASOIAF books and pulling from the plotlines to recreate the story in a different form of media. Sure, they may be 80% the same, but I'm glad that it isn't a carbon copy, since as you said they are cutting plenty of things that are bad, and after thinning it down are giving us a more streamlined, and potentially as-good a tale as Martin is, if not better due to removing the unnecessary plot points. I'm guessing that the endings will be fairly similar, since after all we are away that the show writers know what the ending will be, but perhaps the path to get there will be different since we were never told how detailed of an outline they have.

I wonder what will happen when they go forward in the show by a big margin and Martin is about to release a new book...

Wouldn't it be weird to read what "actually" happens after seeing "fake" events in the show?
I guess that's gonna be pretty weird for me at least.

The events in the show will probably mirror what the happens in the books, only instead of certain characters participating in certain events or taking specific actions, it may be someone else doing that in the books, since they may not exist in the show. Really, I'm expecting to see the same major events take place, but some characters may be swapped with others is all, if some aren't simply left out entirely in the show. I wouldn't really say that the show events would be considered "fake" because of it, but more of an "alternate" telling of the same thing. Besides, once the show establishes it as happening, who is to say that the novels don't tell the "fake" story? After all, it happened in the show first at that point. Plenty of people watch the show who never touched the books, and I don't expect that to change any time soon. The only people who would consider the show to be the fake version would be the book purists, and let's be real here, they are probably the minority at this point.

[Moncho]

Hopefully as the climax and end approach all the sprawling threads converge in a good way and it was just a spell in the middle where everything unraveled for a bit. Sort of like those 3-4 books in the Wheel of Time where almost nothing of importance happens, just worldbuilding and stuff getting ready for the actual action

[Teeth]

Well, in the books plenty of sprawling threads have already ended without making even the slightest contribution to any of the main storylines, so Martin has long shattered my hopes of everything making sense and being worth the read in the end.

[The_Bloody_Nine]

Well, in the books plenty of sprawling threads have already ended without making even the slightest contribution to any of the main storylines, so Martin has long shattered my hopes of everything making sense and being worth the read in the end.

Like I wrote in my earlier post I think it is great to have story lines that don't contribute. It is a fucking Novel, not a business plan.

[Xant]

The problem is when POV characters have storylines that take ages and end up being meaningless.

[Casimir]

Can't you enjoy the story for its own sake; does every PoV characters narrative need to have a tie into the wider development of the series? 

[Xant]

It does, yes, when there's 1000 storylines going on and Martin keeps adding POV characters that are useless. It just clutters the books with meaningless chapters, robbing actually interesting and relevant characters of "screen time."

[Molly]

I accepted that the show and books would always be different entities long ago, but I'm fine with that. The show producers acknowledge that, and they aren't trying to create the "perfect" adaptation of the books since it would be a near-impossible thing to do. They are working within the canon established in the ASOIAF books and pulling from the plotlines to recreate the story in a different form of media. Sure, they may be 80% the same, but I'm glad that it isn't a carbon copy, since as you said they are cutting plenty of things that are bad, and after thinning it down are giving us a more streamlined, and potentially as-good a tale as Martin is, if not better due to removing the unnecessary plot points. I'm guessing that the endings will be fairly similar, since after all we are away that the show writers know what the ending will be, but perhaps the path to get there will be different since we were never told how detailed of an outline they have.

The events in the show will probably mirror what the happens in the books, only instead of certain characters participating in certain events or taking specific actions, it may be someone else doing that in the books, since they may not exist in the show. Really, I'm expecting to see the same major events take place, but some characters may be swapped with others is all, if some aren't simply left out entirely in the show. I wouldn't really say that the show events would be considered "fake" because of it, but more of an "alternate" telling of the same thing. Besides, once the show establishes it as happening, who is to say that the novels don't tell the "fake" story? After all, it happened in the show first at that point. Plenty of people watch the show who never touched the books, and I don't expect that to change any time soon. The only people who would consider the show to be the fake version would be the book purists, and let's be real here, they are probably the minority at this point.

The phrasing "fake" was probably a bad choice. I merely ment to seperate the 2.
I am far from being a book purist. I didn't even read the first few books - this might be misleading, iirc the German books are numbered diffenrently than the international version - and started reading where season 3 more or less started.
I'd still consider the books the "real deal" cuz they are made by the creative mind who imagined the whole thing. I'd probably always consider the one original which happened to be created first. Most of the times, books give the idea to a movie. Then the book is the original. Way less often, a book is released after a movie. Well, movie is the original one. Hence why I'll always consider the books as the original.
I believe we gonna be in for a treat when coming to shitstorms when books and show start to deviate too far from each other...