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The Official Game of Thrones [A Song of Ice and Fire] Thread (includes spoilers)

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Re: The Official Game of Thrones [A Song of Ice and Fire] Thread

http://thefederalist.com/2014/04/22/game-of-thrones-are-you-not-entertained/#disqus_thread

I wanted to link to that. It's a critic of the show.

I'm always fine with people having differing views. Television, movies, books, art..they are all subjective. Something that appeals to one person won't appeal to another. Obvious enough.

But i've never understood those who criticize fictional works as not telling a "realistic" story. I mean I get it if the story protrays itself as some sort of truthful event and then doesn't follow the script of what really happened. But these people who, when watching fiction, are looking for a story that they find believable...I don't get it. So here is this guy, and his essential complaint is this: "Game Of Thrones paints a world that is full of darkness and evil and only bad things happen. The little bit of good is always stamped out. That's not realistic. Humans are good, so this story isn't being true to how the world really is."

Forget for a moment whether or not you buy the premise that the world, where good people do good things, and more good things are done than bad things, is more interesting. Never mind. I do not understand why every story must portray that? Why that I, as a conservative, need to justify my liking of the show/story from some conservative standpoint.

It's fiction. It's not real. I don't need the show to portray my viewpoint of society, and more specifically, man's inner nature, in order to enjoy it. Do I believe the world is dark and only bad things happen? No. Does it make any fucking difference in whether or not I can enjoy Game of Thrones? No, of course not. But it does for this guy. He simply can't comprehend how someone who is a conservative/libertarian can justify the worldview of the show, and in turn enjoy the show. It seems for him that unless you can justify the shows view of man as something similar to reality then you can't enjoy the show. Thus, everyone who enjoys the show must somehow find that its portrayal of man is accurate, at least in the eyes of the people enjoying it.

It never crosses his mind that I don't need to be able to justify the worldview of the show in order to enjoy it and find it entertaining. I can separate what happens there, from what I think happens here. The entertainment value I get from the show is not dependent on whether or not I'm able to match that show's view of the world to my own. I don't care.

So, after that rant, I wanted to ask if this is the same for everyone else? Do you guys that enjoy the show inherently believe it's depiction of man and society as somewhat accurate? Or are you like me, in that you could care less if the show correctly portrays man and society as you see it?
 
Re: The Official Game of Thrones [A Song of Ice and Fire] Thread

I enjoy it because it's an amazing story with fantastic characters, and it's a world you can escape into.

Not because of some message it conveys or whatever. I read like a paragraph of that and stopped. Lame. Ser Ilyn, bring me his head.
 
Re: The Official Game of Thrones [A Song of Ice and Fire] Thread

Chris said:
I enjoy it because it's an amazing story with fantastic characters, and it's a world you can escape into.

Not because of some message it conveys or whatever. I read like a paragraph of that and stopped. Lame. Ser Ilyn, bring me his head.
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Yea I guess I've just never understood people who always need to see reality in their entertainment, and if it isn't there they aren't entertained.

A better way to put his argument into a simple phrase is this. To him, for a story to be entertaining or interesting it must reflect in some way the real world, and if it doesn't then it isn't interesting. I just....I don't really get it.
 
Re: The Official Game of Thrones [A Song of Ice and Fire] Thread

Rich said:
Yea I guess I've just never understood people who always need to see reality in their entertainment, and if it isn't there they aren't entertained.

A better way to put his argument into a simple phrase is this. To him, for a story to be entertaining or interesting it must reflect in some way the real world, and if it doesn't then it isn't interesting. I just....I don't really get it.
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Well, to be honest, if I wanted to write a thesis about how ASOIAF/GOT reflects real world dilemmas, themes, motifs, etc ... I could probably spend years on that. Because the story does reflect all of those things. I'm not going to waste my time reading that guy's editorial so maybe I'm misunderstanding him.

But that isn't why I enjoy the story. Like I said, it's just a great plot filled with unpredictability, moments that wow you, make you laugh, cry...characters that I'll honestly never forget, a huge fictional world with an interesting, detailed history and lore. It's just a superb story all around, even through its flaws, I can't think of any story that comes close for me. I've been scolded for saying that before and sure, I haven't read a ton of books, mostly because what most people consider "high literature" bores me to tears. I'd rather just be entertained than analyze the overly colorful prose of certain authors. The crux of writing fiction is entertainment, at least in my opinion. Entertainment in telling a story that people enjoy for whatever reason, be it the ones I listed or for their own reasons, you know?

I think this is why I am more easily pleased when it comes to movies and TV shows and the like, than other people. If the story entertains me and provides memorable moments and characters, count me in. I can overlook plenty of flaws as long as those things are provided. Not that ASOIAF/GOT have a lot of flaws, honestly I haven't picked up a book since I finished A Dance With Dragons. Nothing really compares, for me.
 
Re: The Official Game of Thrones [A Song of Ice and Fire] Thread

Rich said:
So here is this guy, and his essential complaint is this: "Game Of Thrones paints a world that is full of darkness and evil and only bad things happen. The little bit of good is always stamped out. That's not realistic. Humans are good, so this story isn't being true to how the world really is."
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If that's his complaint, he is apparently from a different world than the rest of us. In the world I live in, humans are corrupt and greedy and do terrible things to get ahead. We see it every day in politics and business, where money is almost always the motivating factor over the common good. We see companies put chemicals that cause cancer into our foods because it makes them cheaper. We see healthcare companies go out of their way to deny coverage to sick people because it saves them money. And that's in our modern, civilized society.

Dragons and ice zombies and magic aside, the politics in Game of Thrones are fairly believable and realistic, as are the actions of the characters. They reflect the views and politics of the medieval time period the characters inhabit, and more importantly they reflect that period during a time of war, when people are far more inclined and motivated to do terrible things than they might be otherwise.

Regardless, the idea that "humans are good" is just a fallacy, and it reflects an incredibly naive world view.
 
Re: The Official Game of Thrones [A Song of Ice and Fire] Thread

To be honest I think Game of Thrones is a lot more honest about human nature than many other fictional works. People aren't painted in broad strokes as being good or evil, they all (well almost all) have some redeeming qualities and some glaring flaws. Every character has some layers of values that they hold dear and their actions are driven by those values. Back in the 1600s the homicide rate was 30-40x what it is today. Do we think that people 400 years ago were much more evil than those today? No. The threat of consequences is what has dropped the homicide rate, mainly due to the increased likelihood of being caught. When people are less likely to suffer consequences they are more likely to break the rules. Human nature will always prevail (in the majority) and that will lead us to try and gather as much power and wealth as we can.

Think about if Joffrey had been killed the same way in a modern story. The CSI team would have come in, identified the poison, tested for traces on people at the wedding, and found the culprit immediately.

TL : DR - That reviewer probably didn't think very hard about what he wrote.
 
Re: The Official Game of Thrones [A Song of Ice and Fire] Thread

Jack Brickman said:
If that's his complaint, he is apparently from a different world than the rest of us. In the world I live in, humans are corrupt and greedy and do terrible things to get ahead. We see it every day in politics and business, where money is almost always the motivating factor over the common good. We see companies put chemicals that cause cancer into our foods because it makes them cheaper. We see healthcare companies go out of their way to deny coverage to sick people because it saves them money. And that's in our modern, civilized society.

Dragons and ice zombies and magic aside, the politics in Game of Thrones are fairly believable and realistic, as are the actions of the characters. They reflect the views and politics of the medieval time period the characters inhabit, and more importantly they reflect that period during a time of war, when people are far more inclined and motivated to do terrible things than they might be otherwise.

Regardless, the idea that "humans are good" is just a fallacy, and it reflects an incredibly naive world view.
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I agree with this although I think there are more people who reflect more "good" than "evil" in ou world. My life was almost taken by one bad man...and then I had literally hundreds come to my aid over the next few months. That's just one example. That doesn't make ASOIAF's depiction any less relavant because I love how, as you said, characters are not explicitly on one side of the fence or another. I would never pretend that human beings are inherently GOOD, just like they are not inherently EVIL. People are what their society, growing up, etc shape them into, as well as other factors.
 
Re: The Official Game of Thrones [A Song of Ice and Fire] Thread

Is it fair to say that GRRM is on a comparable level to Tolkien when it comes to fantasy literature? I find it so incredible that one man's ideas that he transformed into prose can spawn hundreds of thousands of die-hard fans who discuss not only the most particular aspects of the novels themselves, but also the larger themes/motifs that are present within them as well. I mean shit, this thread is over 200 pages and most of the discussion has been from maybe a dozen different posters? Then you have other online communities like Winteriscoming.net, the various subreddits, Westeros.org, Towerofthehand, etc. I am amazed everytime I think about how incredibly difficult it must have been to write these stories, let alone keep the hundreds of intertwining plotlines and characters straight in your head.

That was pretty meta, but I still find it hard to believe sometimes.


And to chime in on the previous discussion, I think what makes ASOIAF unique among fantasy novels is its realism. Some people think that it is overly cruel, but I think GRRM's Hobbesian views of the world are fairly accurate, especially if you are living in a proto-medieval world like Westeros. "There is a beast in every man, and it stirs when you put a sword in his hands."
 
Re: The Official Game of Thrones [A Song of Ice and Fire] Thread

Personally, I think he's better than Tolkien, at least as a fiction writer. Tolkien was certainly more dedicated to his world-building, as he wrote all those languages out, but Martin's writing is far more compelling and readable.
 
Re: The Official Game of Thrones [A Song of Ice and Fire] Thread

"There is a beast in every man, and it stirs when you put a sword in his hands."
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One of my favorite quotes. So true.
 
Re: The Official Game of Thrones [A Song of Ice and Fire] Thread

I just watched game of thrones from start to finish in 4 days. Not a bad show at all. Will start on the books this week as well.

Everyone told me GOT was better than Tudors but I just don't see it. Still a great show non the less.
 
Re: The Official Game of Thrones [A Song of Ice and Fire] Thread

Rookie said:
I just watched game of thrones from start to finish in 4 days. Not a bad show at all. Will start on the books this week as well.

Everyone told me GOT was better than Tudors but I just don't see it. Still a great show non the less.
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I think after this season Game of Thrones will make its mark as one of the better shows of all-time. I still don't think it will ever top The Wire because the showrunners are a little too obsessed with pointless nudity and sexposition (I mean, I love tits, but it does lower my opinion of the show artistically), but you're going to see some amazing things this year if they mostly stick to the script of the books.

falcon2294 said:
Just started reading the books. Got the first 5 as a set for 20 on amazon

http://www.amazon.com/George-Martin...tmm_kin_title_0?ie=UTF8&qid=1398115211&sr=1-3
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Excellent deal. The first book starts a little slow, but once you finish it you will be totally on board for as many more books as this motherfucker can write.
 
Re: The Official Game of Thrones [A Song of Ice and Fire] Thread

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Re: The Official Game of Thrones [A Song of Ice and Fire] Thread

Just want to thank those that encouraged me to read the books. First was a bit dull (as knew what was happening) second had some nice parts missed from series 2. But oh my god the third is just crazy good. This season can't hope to fit in all the amazing parts of the back end of storm of swords! Read the whole book in 3 weeks and now have no one to talk to about it as everyone I know is behind the show. If they manage to pull off the battles and the plot twist this year GOT will be the best show for many years. Off to start Book 4
 
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