I'm sure the Game of Thrones fans have already watched the latest episode of the hit show on HBO. The show has gone into quite some controversy lately, what with all the gore displayed on screen, and the
violence against women, and a number of other controversial issues. But last weekend's installment of the epic story provided yet another piece of
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Daenerys is in a similar situation, by the way. As much as she wants to believe that she's helping alleviate people's lives, the world is a much more complicated place than that - and she ends up harming the people she cares about more often than not, even though she desperately wants not to.
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That is not to say that it doesn't take charismatic visionary figures to trigger and accelerate that process.
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That's part of human-ness, too. The darker part. Any 7-year old kid who's shooting with his sling at pigeons can attest to that.
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Evolution is smarter than you (humankind) are. The world is shot through with people who will eagerly exploit empathy for material profit. Hostage takers, rich people astroturfing for laws that only benefit them, psychopaths whose only deterrent from murder is the threat of jail time, et cetera.
Policy clearly must account for them ... or become victimized by them.
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I'd like to think the fantasy genre has grown up beyond the fairy-tale stage.
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Old fairy-tales are full of blood, murder, and suffering, and often only end because the protagonists simply can't take any more. Also, Tolkien's work has been surrounded by 60+ years of allegorical interpretation. Is the genre a mere set dressing, or does it encompass all this history and development as well?
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There *is* suffering in old fairy tales, except it's depicted in a stylized, more symbolic way, leaving a lot to the imagination of the reader. Now we've got it all into our face, as if we're some kind of imbeciles who can't figure out what's what. I realize that in a way this defeats my point about the genre becoming more mature - but maybe it's the audience that has changed, and with it, its expectations.
As for allegory, GRRM has been ganking stuff from all across the historical and geographical board in order to create his world and the characters and stories that inhabit it. Nearly everyone in the genre does that, including Tolkien.
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