A Blog of Dicks and Spoilers

To the readers of the Song of Ice And Fire book series,

Most of you are wonderful.  Most of you keep your discussions amongst your fellow readers and on the appropriate forums.  Most of you withhold comments about what's coming up in the story when watching the show with people who haven't read the books.

Most of you are good, decent human beings.

And then there are... the others.

I don't care if he insulted your parentage, this is never a valid assumption.

There exists a very specific subset of smug, pretentious assholes who think it's okay to spoil things because the books have been out for so long and anyone who really cares should have read them by now.  If this is your opinion, I invite you to remove your undoubtedly massive head from your rectum and stop being a self-righteous twat who assumes that anyone who hasn't read the books yet is lazy or stupid.

Here are just a few reasons why someone might love the show but hasn't read the books:

1) Those a difficult enough books to get through for a voracious reader, much less someone who has dyslexia or for whom English is not their first language.

2) Not everyone has the time to devote to five 1000+ page novels.

3) Maybe, while a fantasy TV show is appealing to them, a person just isn't interested in reading Fantasy novels.

4) They like the show and don't want to know what's going to happen, so they don't want to read the books yet.

5) This is the most important one:

The reason is none of your damn business.
What is your business is not being a dick.

You read the books and that's great. That doesn't give you the right to run around throwing out plot points like the goddamned Spoiler Fairy. Reading the books doesn't magically make you a better person either. In fact, it makes you a shitty fan if you think the only way anyone can experience this story is via page first. You don't get to decide how other people should enjoy things. If it makes you feel better to look down on people who only watch the show and then spoil things for them under the justification of "You should have read the books", then you seriously need to reconsider the things that bring you joy in life.

This doesn't just go for Game of Thrones, either. This goes for all things that have gone from page to screen. I personally felt I was too old for the first few Harry Potter books when they were originally released. However, by the time the last movie came out, I had become interested in the story purely through the films. But so, so many things were ruined for me from people who had read the books and felt as though I shouldn't be allowed any surprises because I had the gall to enjoy the movies without being interested in the books. The sheer amount of self-righteousness involved in that kind of thinking is truly mind-boggling.

There is nothing wrong with enjoying a filmed version of something without having read the written version first. There is nothing wrong with reading the written version and not seeing the filmed version. There is nothing wrong with knowing both and discussing the differences between the two with other people who know both versions. There is also nothing wrong with liking one version and disliking the other.

BUT

If you think that other fans deserve to have the story spoiled for them because they haven't had the time, energy, desire, or ability to read the books,