Board Thread:Administrative/@comment-5014364-20170916210010

Several plotlines from the books have been apparently dropped from the TV series by the end of Season 7, with no realistic hope of them appearing.

For example, is "Arianne Martelle tries to crown Myrcella but the plot gets foiled and Myrcella loses an ear in an attack"...a "spoiler" for Arianne Martell's non-existent TV presence? Probably not.

There are a few other things which either could happen in the future, or, are so important that they'd be a spoiler for people who want to read the books after the TV show.

In earlier seasons, we kept hoping "they'll shuffle this to a later season, no one is crazy enough to abandon this entirely" - i.e. the Tysha reveal, which gradually I just updated into the "in the books" sections because it's ludicrous that they removed it (and near impossible to explain "well the books did it differently") without revealing that.

Things I generally think are still considered Book-Spoilers at this point are:


 * Lady Stoneheart
 * Young Griff, and associated storyline (Varys, the Golden Company).
 * The fact that every Stark child is a Warg, including Jon Snow, Arya Stark, and potentially even Sansa Stark.

Things I do not consider spoilers...personally, are:


 * Treating the Three-Eyed Raven as in fact, Brynden "Bloodraven" Rivers (I still think we'd keep two distinct articles on them though).
 * ...The Valonqar prophecy, that Cersei will be killed by her "little brother".

Is there anything else I'm leaving out?

....by my own standards we probably shouldn't have included the "Valonqar" prophecy but dear god, the whole internet knows about it, and more importantly the meaning of the prophecy is unknown (many assume Jaime, but for all we know Arya...or even Euron...I don't know). It wasn't too spoilery in that respect.

I don't think most people worry too much about a Bloodraven/Three-eyed Raven revelation.

So...unless I'm forgetting something...

Young Griff...is absurdly unlikely to happen as a last minute reveal, but I'd still feel uncomfortable with it. Lady Stoneheart is of course a massive departure.

Morons. Turns out that was the first thing they wanted to change from the books?! WHY? YES, they are accountable to us and to Martin, they have to give a REASON "why" they made a change (and if they quote that crap "Creatively it made sense to us" line I will carve it into them.)

But at this point it truly seems Lady Stoneheart could never happen. Up until Season 6 we had some vain hope that it happened "off screen", but too much time has passed (she'd have rotted by now).

The Stark children being wargs I'm on the fence for because....it is not impossible, that it could be revealed in Season 8.

Why wait this long? I don't know. Why the hell NOT introduce it? Because the special effects were too complicated so they wrote it out? Idiots.

And at this point, it's not so much the argument of "you'll spoil people for future seasons", they're abandoned, so much as it's "you'll spoil people who haven't read the books yet but intend to - it will be a spoiler for future-book-readers, not future-TV-seasons".

Now there were some things which, in context, I felt compelled to point out: yes, explaining the Arianne Martell storyline in the in the books sections technically gave away stuff someone would learn only by reading the books, but 1 - The omission of these storylines was offensive, particularly Dorne, 2 - ...it was never a twist on the scale of Lady Stoneheart or Young Griff, really, 3 - the Tysha twist was so absurd to remove that it was offensive that they left it out, absurd, and on top of that....the TV events don't make sense without them.

Crud.

Generally I've been looking for, with book-only information, a mixture of:


 * It isn't really that big of a spoiler, relative to the novels ("this minor character actually died in the books")
 * It isn't even a spoiler, but adds some more context to what's going on - for condensed storylines (i.e. explaining Cersei's shenanigans with the Small Council in book 4).
 * It's absurd that they cut this out and I am shaming them for it by making a book comparison (mostly Lady Stoneheart...but then, even I long considered that a book-spoiler)
 * Most importantly: - Omitting a story twist resulted in the TV plot making no sense, but events just falling together in dream-like fashion (there's no real way to explain why Tyrion killed Tywin, in-universe, without the full context of the Tysha reveal, or how the Manderlys and Umbers will turn on the Boltons, etc.).

And so we're faced with (unless I'm mistaken):


 * Lady Stoneheart
 * Young Griff
 * Jon and Arya are also wargs

I made this thread because one of those "Fandom" videos openly mentioned that Jon and Arya are wargs in the books when talking about Nymeria. I was going to complain, but then sat back and asked..."is that even a spoiler at this point, if the TV show will never do it?"

So strange. It used to be "spoilers for future TV seasons".

...I will not be a tool of Benioff and Weiss, filtering information away from the audience. They wanted to cut Arianne Martell? Fine. It's still a fact she's in the books this is based on, and they have to deal with fans who are upset they cut out the only POV who is a non-white woman. What am I supposed to do? COVER UP the fact that they cut out beloved characters?

They chose to cut out these things, which means they have to live with that decision.

I'm on the fence about Young Griff and the Stark wargs....given that there is a low but not impossible chance this would be touched upon (one in a million, but...)

Lady Stoneheart....is an even bigger revelation, and one that assuredly will not happen now. We now have interviews of them saying "this was the first thing we cut" - so unless they're lying for a twist later (when has that ever happened?)...Stoneheart isn't in the TV show.

One day we'll look back on Benioff and Weiss as the Ralph Bakshi animated Lord of the Rings relative to Peter Jackson's live-action film trilogy. Or a bad run in Marvel/D.C. comics. I think in terms of the franchise now, and we'll have a new writing team before too long.

So:


 * 1 - Is there anything else we consider a "Book Spoiler" at this point, from ASOIAF?
 * 2 - How do you think we should address the 3-5 I've listed here? 