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Thread: Game of Thrones TV/book series discussion

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    This is long and just a big ramble. I have watched bits of Season 1 and 2. Season 3 I have followed till episode 7 or so. Idk. I don’t remember anymore. I read some spoilers for this Season by accident. I’m not really up to date. I found some characters interesting. I don’t like violence just for some show effect. Hell, I don’t like any glorification of it at all. But idk the whole show portrays how power and violence affect people. It’s not too off, I guess. I mean it’s still fantastical and everything, but it’s also grim and bleak. E.g. Tywin who ordered the Death of Elia and her kids. How she got raped and she and her kids got killed in the most horrible way and how he probably thought it was necessary. If they survive, they would always pose a threat to his claim and his family. You raise to power and these are the choices.

    I think the show is also about survival and who can survive. You just can’t carry around a lot of illusions when you are faced with these kind of choices. But it’s human to have illusions and for me the characters who felt the closest; or the most realistic had this human quality. They had hope. They hoped things, even when their situation pointed to a different outcome. Or they had ideals, they thought they knew what was right and what was wrong, but then life played a trick on them and they got into dangerous situations and then it was adapt and live - or die. They had to do things, that went against what they thought was right. Like when John had to kill Qhorin. He did it because he wanted to gain the wildlings trust, he thought it was his duty - protecting the realm. He had his ideals and he killed, because he thought it served a purpose. But in the end, the ones who think there might be purpose, a point in all this, are vulnerable. Like Sansa said 'it’s always the monsters who win in life'. Vulnerabilities can always be exploited. Illusions don‘t measure up to reality and ideals can lead them to make dumb decisions - ‚the road to hell is paved with good intentions‘.

    I think a lot of things just got stripped away from them. Some tried to mindlessly survive, tried to escape the violence, and turned numb inside, because it all became normal, part of their everyday life. Others again were cold blooded enough, and could deliver the blow to others, so that no one had the upper hand over them. In the end, they all lost something, that they had before. Purpose, meaning or sth else. It’s quite like the price you pay for survival in GRRM world - it's kinda shitty.
    ‘As Faulkner says, all of us have the capacity in us for great good and for great evil, for love but also for hate. I wanted to write those kinds of complex character in a fantasy, and not just have all the good people get together to fight the bad guy’. 'I’ve always preferred writing about grey characters and human characters. Whether they are giants or elves or dwarves, or whatever they are, they’re still human, and the human heart is still in conflict with the self.’ - GRRM

    Re. characters that I find interesting: Sansa (in the books). Yeah there is a part of me that roots for her and wishes that she is going to make it. Idk why. It’s just that she is this young girl and she is practically defenseless. But there is something in her. The monster comment; she understands that you can’t run around having a lot of illusions about the situation. Her development was just realistic for me, like how she turned... flexible so to speak. How she learned to deflect and act her part and she is still living, while harder, ‚tougher‘ types got killed. Like not survival of the toughest, but survival of the one who is best adapted.

    But the opposite, like in Stannis, was also interesting. He, who would rather break than bend. So rigid and tense. Bet, if you could get him to sit on a piece of coal, you could retire early. He was that character who really didn’t wanted to compromise anything in himself and you can get these ideas that this might be a quality needed in a good king. But maybe that was also all before the thing with his daughter. The character that I didn’t like, because I found her development somewhat off, is Daenerys. I mean it’s like she and Tyrion are GRRM favourite kiddos and he got some illusions about these two. Like she says the right things, raises above all challenges and like she is written as the character, that is still somewhat ‚decent‘. The whole thing with her dragons is too deux ex machina for me. Her fierce Dragon ruler, mother of everything schtick is also doing nothing for me. She is to off. Like a fantasy, not a real person.
    Last edited by Moonbeaux Rainfox; 07-18-2015 at 07:02 PM.

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