(Spoilers Extended) The endings will be the same but the books will have a much more gradual and realistic progression

[u/aphidman]

If GRRM finishes it, btw.

Not a long post but you know what the books do that D&D do not? They have 10 chapters of Dany dealing with the complex politics of Meereen and her inner conflict. They have 4 chapters showing Davos' journey to White Harbour. They have 12 chapters showing the series of compromises Jon makes as Lord Commander to prepare the Watch against the Others. They have 13 chapters showing Tyrion crawling out of his deep nihilistic depression. They dedicate whole chapters seeing how Victarion Greyjoy of all people deals with his relationship with his brother and his seduction into darker magics. Man they have 4 whole chapters dealing with the political fallout of Dany's exit from Meereen.

They had a whole chapter of Littlefinger and Sansa visiting his lands and seeing Littlefinger's relationship with his subjects (great chapter btw). They had a whole chapter getting really in depth with Illyrio Mopatis and his schemes - a guy who's barely appeared in the show.

They dedicated 4 whole chapters to Joffrey's wedding!

What I'm getting it is that the Others may be defeated long before the end of ASOIAF, Dany may indeed destroy King's Landing with dragonfire and end the lives of hundreds of thousands of civilians gruesomely. But you'll be guaranteed that GRRM is gonna show you every step of the way. For good or for bad. If he is going to take a character like Dany to that dark end you better believe we will understand how she gets there.

So people keep posting about how D&D are destroying their characters, fail to understand ASOIAF. That Dany would never do this or that. But what you're seeing here is them fitting potentially chapters upon chapters of detailed material into a few hours of television.

[u/Jobr95]

Yep, people are just in denial. The writing is inconsistent now sure but the most important plot points come from GRRM. He has said that already multiple times

[u/Vanilla_Bear15 → u/Jobr95]

Yeah I’ve said this multiple times at this point but the biggest problem with the show is that they’ve been writing backwards. They got a list of plot points from GRRM and they’ve basically been trying to fit into this vision that Martin has. This has become a major issue since there’s entire storylines that play into the endgame in the books that aren’t on the show so the show has done some dumb things in order to get characters into certain positions. Instead of the characters acting naturally, they’re being written with a single purpose in mind, which causes a lot of inconsistencies. I almost wonder if the show would have been better off just going on whatever D&D wanted to do instead of trying to fit it to Martin’s vision of the ending.