Game of Thrones.
Yesterdays news, I know, but that's life. Always jumping onto the bandwagon too late.
But the thing is... it isn't too late. People are still talking about Game of Thrones. Or to be more precise, people are still complaining about the end of Game of Thrones.
But why?
This wasn't the worst ending of a TV series ever. Not by any means. It wasn't a magical "happy ever after", it wasn't a brutal bloodbath where every character you care about dies. It may have left some questions unanswered, but, really, this is GOT. The list of questions about the books is longer, faster growing and more complicated than the books, let alone the TV series. It would be impossible for anyone to answer all of them.
So why is everyone so upset?
Well first, I feel the need to throw a spoiler alert out there. Yes, this post discussing the ending of GOT includes spoilers. Who knew.
Let's get down to it. Daenaerys (whose name autocorrects to "anaerobes", by the way. Just a fun fact) spends the penultimate series falling in love with Jon Snow. Jon falls in love back, and in series 8 they are officially a couple. Then they find out that they're related. Jon cools off instantly, Daenaerys really isn't bothered.
I could write a whole other post about whether the incestuous relationship between Queen Anaerobes and Jon Snow is awful or not. I mean, presuming Dany can't have any more kids, there aren't really going to be any problems arising from their incest. But anyway, Jon is fully dis-encouraged, he and Dany break up.
Then there's this whole White Walker thing. Now, was the battle epic? Yep. Was it what everyone wanted to see, blue fire and red fire, massive army of the dead, many, many deaths? Yep. I mean, we couldn't actually see most of it until someone released a brightened up clip on Youtube, but anyway.
Then the White Walkers died. I rejoiced. Yes, I know the major threat, built up since the beginning was destroyed too easily, before we even understood who the were or what they wanted. I don't care. The White Walkers were, in my opinion, always the weakest part of the story. A generic, unfeeling army who existed to provide an ominous threat and allow some main characters to be killed off. Much less interesting than the political and family matters that rules the rest of the series.
I know people think they died too easily, but think about it this way, what else did we want to happen? The Whites destroy Winterfell and kill everyone inside, leaving us with the final battle between Cersei and the Whites, two groups we kind of hate? Or have the living unite against the army of the dead? A bit too peace and love for GOT, you have to admit. No, the army of the dead had to go. In my opinion, it should have never existed, at least not in the way that it did. There was no future in that storyline that would lead to a satisfying ending.
So. Let's move on to Dany. The Mother of Dragons. Or... Dragon.
Let's talk about the decision. THE decision. The moment when she sits on the back of her only surviving child above a fallen city, deciding whether to kill, or be merciful.
And she chooses death.
I'm not going to say that she made a good decision, but I would say that, given recent events, it was not an unpredictable or unusual one. She chose to burn the city that housed her enemies. In the last few days, she's seen her oldest friends and advisers die in front of her. Her lover has rejected her.
She isn't mad, or insane. Not when she makes the decision to burn King's Landing. She's depressed. She's searching for a release, anything that will make her feel better.
And it doesn't work. She wasn't insane when she burned King's Landing, but maybe she was by the time the ashes settled. She has lost herself. She is trying to find herself, to find a way forwards after this. Killing didn't make her better, it just pushed her further away from the person she wanted to be. She doesn't know who she is.
And now, finally, Jon completes his betrayal. Dany needed help. She needed time to process, to recover. But she had put herself into a position where she was too powerful, and where, when she lashed out in pain, thousands died. So she had to die.
Well, she didn't. There were ways she could have been spared. But in the eyes of those around her, she had to die.
And she did, in a painful and poignant way. And her son, who, we must remember, was also scarred and grieving, carried her away, after choosing to spare the man he knew loved his mother, and destroying the symbol that had divided them.
I could type thousands of words, laying out what this ending did well, and what it did badly. But I won't. You can find that elsewhere, if you look. I want to point out the things that truly make this ending a masterpiece.
Firstly, and I know it's a bad-sounding argument, it does as well as it's possible to do. Given the set-up, the story, the complexity of it... You could never tie off every thread. You could never use every set-up to it's full degree, and in order to bring such a monstrosity of creation to a close some plot devices, early character deaths, logical fallacies had to be used. It was crude, perhaps. But an oil tanker like GOT is difficult to stop.
Secondly, every character had their moment. And yes, sometimes it felt contrived or unnecessary, but it's clear the authors cared about the fans. They wanted us to have our moments, to look back at each of our favorite characters and say "You remember when....?" Fan service isn't always a bad thing, when you've spent years forming bonds with Arya or Sansa or Tyrion. It's good that they have their moment.
And thirdly, and most importantly, we're still talking about it. It's been months, and I'm writing a blog post about a finished TV show. It's still in the news, it's still very much alive. And why? Yes, because it was a masterpiece. Because it was incredibly popular, and changed the perception of what TV can do. But most importantly, because it was unsatisfying.
Satisfaction. Completeness. These are things we look for in fiction, in fantasy. Probably because they so rarely exist in real life. Game of Thrones was never anything but real. Real people in a fantasy world. In real life wars, sometimes the bad guys win. Sometimes the young heroes are killed tragically young, sometimes the old are left to fight battles they are too old for. Life is never perfect, and forcing Game of Thrones into a perfect ending would feel... false. Artificial. People are unreliable. Chance is unreliable. People lie. You can watch the last episode of the series and think Bran will reign for hundreds of years of peace over the kingdoms, or you can believe that a few days later he was assassinated. You could see Sansa ruling until she was old and wise up in the North, or dying in childbirth, or just catching a cold and sneezing herself to death. Arya... probably got scurvy. Or something. In real life.
In fiction, we seek conclusion. The "happily ever after". And Game of Thrones was never going to give us that. So yes, it's a masterpiece. A challenging one. A difficult one to understand. One that probably satisfied no-one. But that lack of conclusion, the lack of satisfaction... it keeps us talking about it. It means we can't leave it behind. It means we'll watch the prequels, the sequels. We'll write fan fiction to fill in the gaps, or theorize about which shore Arya will wash up on.
Game of Thrones may have ended, but it's ending means it will never truly be over, and will certainly not be forgotten.
Yesterdays news, I know, but that's life. Always jumping onto the bandwagon too late.
But the thing is... it isn't too late. People are still talking about Game of Thrones. Or to be more precise, people are still complaining about the end of Game of Thrones.
But why?
This wasn't the worst ending of a TV series ever. Not by any means. It wasn't a magical "happy ever after", it wasn't a brutal bloodbath where every character you care about dies. It may have left some questions unanswered, but, really, this is GOT. The list of questions about the books is longer, faster growing and more complicated than the books, let alone the TV series. It would be impossible for anyone to answer all of them.
So why is everyone so upset?
Well first, I feel the need to throw a spoiler alert out there. Yes, this post discussing the ending of GOT includes spoilers. Who knew.
Let's get down to it. Daenaerys (whose name autocorrects to "anaerobes", by the way. Just a fun fact) spends the penultimate series falling in love with Jon Snow. Jon falls in love back, and in series 8 they are officially a couple. Then they find out that they're related. Jon cools off instantly, Daenaerys really isn't bothered.
I could write a whole other post about whether the incestuous relationship between Queen Anaerobes and Jon Snow is awful or not. I mean, presuming Dany can't have any more kids, there aren't really going to be any problems arising from their incest. But anyway, Jon is fully dis-encouraged, he and Dany break up.
Then there's this whole White Walker thing. Now, was the battle epic? Yep. Was it what everyone wanted to see, blue fire and red fire, massive army of the dead, many, many deaths? Yep. I mean, we couldn't actually see most of it until someone released a brightened up clip on Youtube, but anyway.
Then the White Walkers died. I rejoiced. Yes, I know the major threat, built up since the beginning was destroyed too easily, before we even understood who the were or what they wanted. I don't care. The White Walkers were, in my opinion, always the weakest part of the story. A generic, unfeeling army who existed to provide an ominous threat and allow some main characters to be killed off. Much less interesting than the political and family matters that rules the rest of the series.
I know people think they died too easily, but think about it this way, what else did we want to happen? The Whites destroy Winterfell and kill everyone inside, leaving us with the final battle between Cersei and the Whites, two groups we kind of hate? Or have the living unite against the army of the dead? A bit too peace and love for GOT, you have to admit. No, the army of the dead had to go. In my opinion, it should have never existed, at least not in the way that it did. There was no future in that storyline that would lead to a satisfying ending.
So. Let's move on to Dany. The Mother of Dragons. Or... Dragon.
Let's talk about the decision. THE decision. The moment when she sits on the back of her only surviving child above a fallen city, deciding whether to kill, or be merciful.
And she chooses death.
I'm not going to say that she made a good decision, but I would say that, given recent events, it was not an unpredictable or unusual one. She chose to burn the city that housed her enemies. In the last few days, she's seen her oldest friends and advisers die in front of her. Her lover has rejected her.
She isn't mad, or insane. Not when she makes the decision to burn King's Landing. She's depressed. She's searching for a release, anything that will make her feel better.
And it doesn't work. She wasn't insane when she burned King's Landing, but maybe she was by the time the ashes settled. She has lost herself. She is trying to find herself, to find a way forwards after this. Killing didn't make her better, it just pushed her further away from the person she wanted to be. She doesn't know who she is.
And now, finally, Jon completes his betrayal. Dany needed help. She needed time to process, to recover. But she had put herself into a position where she was too powerful, and where, when she lashed out in pain, thousands died. So she had to die.
Well, she didn't. There were ways she could have been spared. But in the eyes of those around her, she had to die.
And she did, in a painful and poignant way. And her son, who, we must remember, was also scarred and grieving, carried her away, after choosing to spare the man he knew loved his mother, and destroying the symbol that had divided them.
I could type thousands of words, laying out what this ending did well, and what it did badly. But I won't. You can find that elsewhere, if you look. I want to point out the things that truly make this ending a masterpiece.
Firstly, and I know it's a bad-sounding argument, it does as well as it's possible to do. Given the set-up, the story, the complexity of it... You could never tie off every thread. You could never use every set-up to it's full degree, and in order to bring such a monstrosity of creation to a close some plot devices, early character deaths, logical fallacies had to be used. It was crude, perhaps. But an oil tanker like GOT is difficult to stop.
Secondly, every character had their moment. And yes, sometimes it felt contrived or unnecessary, but it's clear the authors cared about the fans. They wanted us to have our moments, to look back at each of our favorite characters and say "You remember when....?" Fan service isn't always a bad thing, when you've spent years forming bonds with Arya or Sansa or Tyrion. It's good that they have their moment.
And thirdly, and most importantly, we're still talking about it. It's been months, and I'm writing a blog post about a finished TV show. It's still in the news, it's still very much alive. And why? Yes, because it was a masterpiece. Because it was incredibly popular, and changed the perception of what TV can do. But most importantly, because it was unsatisfying.
Satisfaction. Completeness. These are things we look for in fiction, in fantasy. Probably because they so rarely exist in real life. Game of Thrones was never anything but real. Real people in a fantasy world. In real life wars, sometimes the bad guys win. Sometimes the young heroes are killed tragically young, sometimes the old are left to fight battles they are too old for. Life is never perfect, and forcing Game of Thrones into a perfect ending would feel... false. Artificial. People are unreliable. Chance is unreliable. People lie. You can watch the last episode of the series and think Bran will reign for hundreds of years of peace over the kingdoms, or you can believe that a few days later he was assassinated. You could see Sansa ruling until she was old and wise up in the North, or dying in childbirth, or just catching a cold and sneezing herself to death. Arya... probably got scurvy. Or something. In real life.
In fiction, we seek conclusion. The "happily ever after". And Game of Thrones was never going to give us that. So yes, it's a masterpiece. A challenging one. A difficult one to understand. One that probably satisfied no-one. But that lack of conclusion, the lack of satisfaction... it keeps us talking about it. It means we can't leave it behind. It means we'll watch the prequels, the sequels. We'll write fan fiction to fill in the gaps, or theorize about which shore Arya will wash up on.
Game of Thrones may have ended, but it's ending means it will never truly be over, and will certainly not be forgotten.
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