GAME OF THRONES Spoiler Thread

[filkertom]

Ho.
Lee.
Fuck.

This entry was originally posted at http://filkertom.dreamwidth.org/1624032.html. You may comment there or here, although LJ tends to have a livelier conversation at this time.

Comments

[alverant]

Question, is there an actual "good side" in the series or is it a matter of "who sucks least right now"? I tried reading the first book and stopped at the point where a child is murdered or some other horrible event. It's been years, I'm not sure what it was. I put the book into the book swap thing at work.

[osprey_cat]

There aren't really "good" and "bad" sides. There are good people, good people who sometimes do bad things, bad people who sometimes do good things, and straight up assholes. People liked the characters that died, but they weren't necessarily "good". At the end of the day, the were still waging war against their king. That's part of the beauty of e series, the characters are complex and so are their interactions. Horrible things happen, just like they do in our own history.

[alverant]

You can have complex characters and interactions in a setting and still have good and bad sides. Horrible things do happen in history and if I wanted to read about horrible people doing horrible things, I would read history and not fiction. But to each their own.

Between GoT and Downton Abby, I don't like how things are going. We need to listen to "Rocket Ride" and look for fiction in that tone.

[osprey_cat]

I disagree. The concept of "good" and "evil" are often highly subjective and once you start adding complexity to a character, you lose that black and white good vs evil. Our history doesn't have magic and dragons in it either, so it's not quite comparable. I personally enjoy the realism of GoT.

I don't watch Downton Abbey, so I don't know what's going on in that show. In regards to GoT, I'll quote something Martin said himself "I try to make the readers feel they’ve lived the events of the book. Just as you grieve if a friend is killed, you should grieve if a fictional character is killed. You should care. If somebody dies and you just go get more popcorn, it’s a superficial experience isn’t it?" GoT may have horrible things happen in it, but that doesn't make it less of a story. I'm quite frankly tired of the "Yay, everything is sunshine forever and no one dies really!" vein of fiction. They couldn't even kill off Coulsen for two minutes. Deaths don't mean anything in fiction anymore, except in GoT. I appreciate that.

[alverant]

Good and evil may be subjective, but they are not black and white concepts. There is also a difference between being a "straight up asshole" and the depravity in GoT. I'd say some of the events that happens in those books are as far removed from realism as "sunshine forever and no one dies really" fiction. Yes, horrible things happen in history, but so do good things and we can't ignore that. GRRM appears to have forgotten that and from what I have seen takes a bit of delight in making personable characters just to kill them for the sake of shocking the reader

[osprey_cat]

Do you even watch the show or read the books? Characters are not killed for the hell of it and their deaths are powerful and have meaning. Comparison to a slasher film shows a lack of insight on your part.

Good things do happen in the show and more frequently in the books. But it takes place during a gigantic civil war. Starvation and death and war crimes will happen. Being upset at that is like reading a fantasy version of the civil war and being upset that a lot of people died and other people burned down houses and stole crops from landowners. It's silly.