Samtemdo8 said:
Its called Dark Fantasy. Of course its going to be grim. And I love every minute of it.
If you want a more lighter mood in your fantasy taste that the Warcraft mabye for you. But then again Warcraft 3 had plenty of Dark Moments I mean fuckin Arthas and the Lich King.
Smooth Operator said:
If you wanted frolicking unicorns then you got the wrong show, this show is about some dark messed up shit, if dark messed up shit isn't for you then try something else.
I'm really not sure how people keep missing that feature of freely choosing ones entertainment, or maybe you are held captive and forced to watch GoT? Well then you need to find some way to escape first, that is a most pressing matter.
I'm not sure why I've received two almost identical posts, especially not a condescending one about unicorns. Presumably neither of you read more than the title, because I made it clear in the post that I
like dark fantasy/sci-fi, and generally prefer a more cynical tone to the usual "everyone made it out alive because plot armor" approach most fiction takes. And it's not like I just switched on the TV one day, saw
Game of Thrones and said to myself "ewww, it's all dark and stuff." Again, as I mentioned in the OP, I read all the books, I watched all the episodes over and over, I visited the wiki numerous times to learn more and more about the setting and lore; I've been a fan of the series so far, but I'm beginning to grow tired it's story telling.
Despite the title being about tone, while actually writing out the post I found it was more that the tone exacerbates the feeling of pointlessness brought about by the lack of cohesive overarching story, and the painfully slow pacing. In fact, both AFFC and ADWD brought about that same feeling.
I enjoyed every page of both books, it was a fun read, but I had an identical reaction with both books the moment I turned the last page and put it on the shelf; "wait ... that's
all?!"
It's great at being enjoyable on a moment to moment basis, but the second I thought about it as whole it suddenly felt as if nothing had really happened as far as the overarching plot is concerned. Each individual character has an interesting story, but it just doesn't seem to add up to anything.
I'm not asking for some kind of childishly simple plot where the good guys team up to fight the bad guys, and the hero gets the girl in the end, or any other formulaic plot, but GoT goes too far in the opposite direction, lacking in anything to tie the various stories together. It feels like faith based story telling where we're basically just supposed to
assume all these plot threads and characters will be important to the conclusion, but I'm really beginning to lose faith that so much of this story couldn't simply be cut or rewritten.
Now, I was fine with this sprawling mess of barely connected plot threads for 5 seasons, but it's reached the point where I'm left yearning for something resembling an overarching plot to show itself, and by show itself I mean something more substantial than "dragons exist and so do the white walkers, trust us, they'll be important
eventually". It's weird to look back on it and think about how much more important both elements seemed in the first four seasons.
hermes said:
...
Given that, I think the only logical conclusion based on 5 books is: the White Walkers cross the wall, which was severely undermanned, and they conquered Westeros with little opposition, since all the feudal lords were too busy, too grouchy and too gullibly at each others throat that didn't notice the zombie apocalypse coming.
That was what I was thinking, but that sort of ending was already set up long ago, so it really seems like they could have moved the story forward more than they have. With that said, I kind of hope it doesn't just end with everyone dying. As I already hinted at, that was how I thought and kind of hoped it would end, but now I think it would be a shitty way to end a story this long.
Now, before I get more people giving me snide remarks about not liking grim endings, let it be known that I actually prefer darker, more nihilistic endings. However, when you have a story as long and bloated as GoT/ASoIaF, ending it with "and then everyone died, fuck you" just makes the scope feel so unwarranted.
So far, I applaud the show writers decision to unceremoniously kill off the Martells, Boltons and many others in the first chapters. It is their way of saying those threads are not important enough to pursue, and they are not entirely onboard with the author's way of spamming secondary characters with little agency to milk for content. If it were for GRRM they would have been killed in the last chapters and would make 1/3 of the book feel inconsequential.
Despite griping about the tone, I actually agree. I was kind of annoyed at them cutting so much from the novels last season, but since it's now confirmed that the show will out pace the books, and since the story is diverging more and more, I'm actually glad to see them kill off more characters since it seems like they're attempting to contain the scope a bit more. Part of that might just be because they're diverging so much they can no longer fall back on the books, and so will have to write their own material.
Despite my rather cynical view on the show at this point, I am genuinely hopeful that the story may pick up the pace now. They're apparently aiming to end the show on either season 7 or 8, so we must surely be getting more relevant story elements now. We're getting more and more Bran, which is certainly a good thing, since despite being one of the blandest characters for most of the show and books, he's one of the few who has any connection to the land beyond the wall.
