Game of Thrones - TV show and books

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So a lot of people have recommended Game of Thrones to me. I knew it was on HBO, so there’d probably be more everything than you’d typically see on cable (even though it’s pretty astonishing what’s designated as fine on cable too…), but I was assured it was a really good story so I thought I might check it out since our cable provider made some kind of oopsie and we get HBO free until the end of January.

The whole first season was on a few days ago and my husband DVRed all of it. I figured we’d just fast forward through any bad parts. My husband and I watched the first two episodes. Our verdict was that the story was interesting, but the stuff in between the story development was basically pornography, and there was so much it was basically not worth watching the show. (It seems to me that even HBO has gotten worse since, say, 10 years ago - before my conversion I used to watch Sex and the City and I thought that was raunchy, but it was usually just talk and only the occasional “show” - this was a lot more “show.”)

Anyway, since people say the story is good, I thought I might check out the books the series is based on. I do like fantasy, but if the sex is explicit in the books to the same degree it was on TV, then I really don’t want to bother. Is anyone familiar with the books who could let me know?
 
If you don’t like the TV show, then don’t read the books. For one thing, Daernerys is significantly younger than she is portrayed on the screen, as is Sansa, therefore the, ahem, more intimate scenes you have trouble with on the screen will probably trouble you. The screen version has been adjusted to take into account what can and can’t be done with actors and what censors will permit (both formally and informally).

(Note: I’ve not actually read the books but I know people who have and they have reported these facts to me and I have no reason to doubt them)
 
DexUK said:
If you don’t like the TV show, then don’t read the books. For one thing, Daernerys is significantly younger than she is portrayed on the screen, as is Sansa, therefore the, ahem, more intimate scenes you have trouble with on the screen will probably trouble you. The screen version has been adjusted to take into account what can and can’t be done with actors and what censors will permit (both formally and informally).

(Note: I’ve not actually read the books but I know people who have and they have reported these facts to me and I have no reason to doubt them)
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I don’t know that those scenes would bother me unless they were explicit: for example, I know Daernerys was supposed to be young, and I certainly wouldn’t morally approve of marrying off a younger sister to a warlord for political benefit, but I know that that’s the kind of thing that’s happened in human history. If it’s glorified in print the way it is in screen, or clearly designed to titillate, then no, I probably wouldn’t like it. But the plot point by itself I don’t find problematic.

I thought several times watching the first two episodes that there were loads of ways they could have conveyed what they did, even the rather more disturbing parts, much more subtly (and probably much more effectively if the point was to further the story…which may not have been the point for the producers - after all, it is HBO. :p) The scenes were really, really distracting and IMO shoddy television - it’s lazy to rely on those sorts of devices, and with the budget they were working with and the quality of the story, they didn’t need it for the story to be compelling. If the text is the same - relying on shock value and titillation instead of furthering a storyline, then I don’t want to read it. But if it was just amped up because it was HBO, then maybe I would be interested in reading them.
 
They call it HBO’s required boobie time or something along those lines. Seems like most HBO shows HAVE to have nudity for the sake of just having it. Yes, Game of Thrones seems to have too much nudity when it does nothing to further the plot of the show, but if you ignore all of that, the show is fantastic. I’m not much of a TV watcher, but the show sucked me in pretty quickly.
 
I know next to nothing about the TV show or the books, but I thought I heard someone mention in a previous thread that the TV show definitely amped up the racy aspects and that the books were not nearly as bad.

Again, I’m just going from memory of what I think I saw someone previously post. I would require verification before I would believe me. :o
 
GangGreen said:
They call it HBO’s required boobie time or something along those lines. Seems like most HBO shows HAVE to have nudity for the sake of just having it. Yes, Game of Thrones seems to have too much nudity when it does nothing to further the plot of the show, but if you ignore all of that, the show is fantastic. I’m not much of a TV watcher, but the show sucked me in pretty quickly.
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I wonder if once the show hits syndication, reruns will start showing up on other channels and there will be more sanitized versions of the episodes available for viewing. I recall that “Sex & the City” reruns were airing on the CW in my area a number of years ago. I never watched the show in it’s original incarnation nor on reruns, but I’m fairly certain they would have had to clean it up significantly in order to air it on a (quasi) network channel. If that happens with Game of Thrones, maybe I would check it out at that point. Probably not before, though.
 
DexUK said:
For one thing, Daernerys is significantly younger than she is portrayed on the screen, as is Sansa, therefore the, ahem, more intimate scenes you have trouble with on the screen will probably trouble you.
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Hate to be a pain but just saying this for arguments sake, I believe arranged marriages like this actually happened during the Middle Ages, from what I understand, GRRM based A Song of Ice and Fire on real life European history, so that’s why it’s full of violence and a very gritty world.
Not saying I agree with some of the things, especially some of the sexual things involving Daenerys and Sansa but I am saying things like that did happen at one point in time!

The books do have some graphic sex scenes in them but HBO really went overboard with that in Season 1!

I personally like A Song of Ice and Fire/Game Of Thrones. There are several religions in them as well including a pagan monotheistic religion and another called The Faith which has seven Gods maybe but I think they may actually be seven aspects of the same God, I can’t remember exactly but it closely resembles the Catholic Church because it has a Pope type of leader.
 
People are largely talking about the TV show, which is not the question of this thread. I have never seen the show, but I know enough about it. The show, despite its wasted potential, is sexist and morally void junk. When a show has a plethora of women stripping down to play prostitutes and portray every kind of sex there is while the camera gobbles it up, the show is bad. It doesn’t require a whole lot of consideration.

But this has nothing to do with the point of this thread. She asked if the books are okay. Well? Are they? Horrible TV shows are made of wonderful books. It wouldn’t be the first time.
I’m genuinely interested in reading the books myself. I read about them in a magazine and they sound delightful. So far, nobody has posted anything convincing to the contrary. Could someone who’s read the books say if there are sex scenes in them, if so how often, and if they include graphic detail? Thank you.
 
Pound_Coolish said:
Could someone who’s read the books say if there are sex scenes in them, if so how often, and if they include graphic detail? Thank you.
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There are several sex scenes in the books, they are graphic to an extent but not too graphic. It’s not like the show in my opinion where there’s one every episode or shoved in there for the sake of it.
 
If you could provide a little more clarity, please, what does, “not too graphic” mean here?
 
Pound_Coolish said:
If you could provide a little more clarity, please, what does, “not too graphic” mean here?
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I don’t know, I didn’t think it was that bad. I don’t want to quote it word-for-word but in one woman’s POV chapter she mentions how she could feel her husbands seed inside her and hopes for more children, I thought it was nothing. There is a lot more of characters talking about sex than actual sex scenes if you understand me.
 
Yes, the books contain a lot of sex. No, the sex scenes are not written in an erotic style. But it’s a gritty world. Lot’s of violence, sex, murder, betrayal, torture, etc. I can’t really tell you how the books compare to the movies, and I don’t think anyone can. When a book says that two characters had sex, they had sex and it isn’t a big deal. When a TV show portrays the same thing, it’s more graphic just because of the visual nature. It’s apples to oranges. Sexually, the book is somewhere between Harry Potter and 50 Shades, though I would say significantly closer to the side of Harry Potter.

I would recommend reading them for yourself. If it gets to be too much, just stop.
 
BlueEyedLady said:
Yes, the books contain a lot of sex. No, the sex scenes are not written in an erotic style. But it’s a gritty world. Lot’s of violence, sex, murder, betrayal, torture, etc. I can’t really tell you how the books compare to the movies, and I don’t think anyone can. When a book says that two characters had sex, they had sex and it isn’t a big deal. When a TV show portrays the same thing, it’s more graphic just because of the visual nature. It’s apples to oranges. Sexually, the book is somewhere between Harry Potter and 50 Shades, though I would say significantly closer to the side of Harry Potter.

I would recommend reading them for yourself. If it gets to be too much, just stop.
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I am leaning towards doing that. I just have a tendency to get very invested in what I’m reading, and then it feels like a betrayal if there’s an abrupt change in style or interruption. I don’t mind if sex is talked about or even briefly depicted, but I don’t want to feel like I’m reading a story where the story either serves to link sex scenes or is constantly interrupted by graphic description that’s way more than necessary to get the point.

It sounds like the raciness was upped for TV, which is sad. I wanted to like the show and I could tell it had a good storyline. But all the extra - blech. So maybe reading the books will go better.
 
pensmama87 said:
I am leaning towards doing that. I just have a tendency to get very invested in what I’m reading, and then it feels like a betrayal if there’s an abrupt change in style or interruption. I don’t mind if sex is talked about or even briefly depicted, but I don’t want to feel like I’m reading a story where the story either serves to link sex scenes or is constantly interrupted by graphic description that’s way more than necessary to get the point.

It sounds like the raciness was upped for TV, which is sad. I wanted to like the show and I could tell it had a good storyline. But all the extra - blech. So maybe reading the books will go better.
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I think it should. Yeah, Martin included sex, because at its core its a story about humanity. But he isn’t an HBO exec.

The thing that upset me was that in the first season, they depicted the marital rape of a young woman. In the book, it wasn’t rape.
 
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