TL;DR – Time columnist implores Game of Thrones fans to stop comparing the books to the television series
Easier said than done.
The one thing about this article that stands out the most to me is the hypothesis that despite how gracious the book snobs have been throughout the gradual progression of the show, there’s probably no way in hell that the show snobs will be as considerate when season 6 of GoT airs, especially in the age of social media and hashtagging everything.
Basically, the fate of Jon Snow, albeit fairly predictable, will be likely absolutely unavoidable to find out once the show begins airing.
The rest of the article goes on to rehash George R.R. Martin’s rhetoric and rambling about how he’s disappointed himself more than any GoT fans can be, and how all fans, book and/or show should do their best to separate the two “universes” from one another, much like fans of Marvel are encouraged to separate the comics from the movies that come out.
It’s really not that simple, no matter how much the idea sounds like a good one.
For example, the article goes on to use the Bryan Singer The Wolverine Show co-starring the X-Men movie franchise as an example; sure, the movies have drastically executed in their own method of storytelling, but it’s not like when they get to the Dark Phoenix Saga, they can go completely in their own direction and not come to the same climax.
An example that I think illustrates my concern efficiently, is Dexter; it’s no secret that the start of season 1 and book 1 and the same, but towards the end of the show, it deviates hard from how the book ends. From there on, the two mediums go in different directions, and despite their eventual peaks and downfalls, however, the two timelines don’t deviate too far from one another, and there are several notable points in either medium, where they have borrowed (read: lifted) concepts and ideas from the other.
For spoilers sake, I won’t specify, but the GoT show, despite their claims of being a separate universe, hasn’t really deviated from the books that dramatically. Sure, there are some characters and arcs that are omitted from television, but I think that’s done more out of wanting to cast 50 more people and go to three more locations to shoot. However, gone as the characters and arcs may be, the concepts and the gists of them have simply been boiled down and merged into existing storylines and characters.
With the show’s timeline basically now surpassing the book’s timeline on account of George R.R. Martin being too busy counting HBO dollars to write despite the fact that it’s been six years now,* I have little faith that the tables won’t turn, and the opposite will not happen to the book series. Like, something will happen to character X in the tv show, and in 2018,* when Winds of Winter finally releases, character Y, whom was merged into X for the show, will have a similar thing happen to them. Or something will happen to Sansa Stark in the show, and then three characters will be introduced in A Dream of Spring in 2026,* illustrating a similar idea.
*oh god, do I sound like one of those GoT fans now?
I’ve read all the books and now watched all of the TV show. Having done all of it somewhat freshly, the parallels are pretty clear in my mind. It’s easy for me to say that I’d rather read Winds of Winter before I watch season 6, but given the fact that there’s no clear date in which Winds will actually release, and the fact that every Sunday night/Monday morning is spent trying to hide the perpetual spoiler blabbers on Facebook before I can see/comprehend any spoilers, it’s a drastically uphill battle awaiting once S6 begins airing.
The bottom line is that it is easy to encourage people to not compare the show to the books, but people will have to be delusional to believe that they are truly two separate entities. Dexter was a property that went in way more separate paths between books and TV, and it was unavoidable for them to not lift each others’ ideas and concepts from time to time; for GoT, which is probably like no further than arm’s reach between books and TV, to do the same, is going to be nigh impossible.
