So, we are underway!!!! I am posting pretty early in the month, so I get to just follow the train of posts throughout the month and enjoy!
Thanks Belghast for once again bringing another lovely event to the blogosphere! You can read his starter post here if you are interested in finding out who the other bloggers are. I am deeply disappointed I missed the April event (I was AFK on blogging at the time), so I am happy to be doing this one 🙂 Also this is his actual first post about changing the fandom.
My writing prompt for the month is as follows:
What is some popular piece of content/media that seems to be universally loved that you have never been able to understand?
The first thing which springs to mind is a little known book series called “Game of Thrones”. I say book series because, dear reader, I was reading them as they were being published. Yes, I am that old. I started reading them because I was actually reading the “Wheel of Time” series and waiting for the next book in the series to be released. It sounded like another high fantasy book – I was wrong. So very very wrong.
I disliked the books enough I never finished the series. I don’t think I made it to the third book. I was bored and uninterested (I also never finished Wheel of Time either – couldn’t get past book 6). I did try years later to re-read them without any success. So I was quite surprised when they made them into an even worse TV series which everyone absolutely adored.
We watched the first season through because I thought it would be high fantasy and brilliant. It wasn’t. Neither were the books though in my opinion. Normalisation of incest, statutory rape, sexual assault is not something I want in my world. Ever. I do not think these are subjects we should be celebrating as excellent. Yes, I get it, it is fantasy, however there are many other paths you can take, within that genre, which do not have multiple women sexually assaulted and raped for character development.
I remember the scene exactly which I told my hubby to turn it off. When Joffrey was aiming a crossbow bolt at a girl whilst they were getting beaten. I think that was very early in season 2. I had decided through all the other stuff going on in the show I couldn’t handle any more of the violence and assaults to women. It was very traumatic to watch as someone who survived a violent sexual assault. I struggled through season 1 and I didn’t want to watch even more of it.
I continued to keep up with what was happening via media and news because whenever something happened it was quite hard to avoid. Including his death. I watched that video with glee. I felt a stab of pain whenever my many friends would ask me why I don’t love the show given it has dragons in it. I was shocked they think dragons outrank the violence to women so heartily celebrated when my PTSD was so severe I didn’t leave the house for almost 12 months. It just never made sense to me. It still makes no sense to me. I still hate the author for even being such a sadistic wanker by publishing this sort of violence and be lauded as brilliant. No. He wasn’t. Neither is the story.
Sorry for the heavy topic, but this was something people still talk about today in conversation (and ask me how much i loved the show) and I just can’t understand how they can’t see all the violence against women and not have an issue with it? Contextually this really ties into the issues we have seen recently in the Warcraft and Streaming community. We need to be better people. We need to more humane. We need to care about people as individuals.
On a more positive note though I am going to send you on your way for tomorrows post and discover what shaped Mailvaltar’s worldview! I am sure theirs will be a more uplifting, light hearted and enjoyable read for your day!!
Thanks for reading and please comment, like and share these blog posts for Belghast to feel the love and appreciation we all have for everything he does in the community
I felt like that as well for the longest time. Essentially all of my friends were into Game of Thrones but I never got it really… but since everyone talked about one episode for a week, then they watched the next episode and talked about that for another week… and then when it was over, they’d move on to Hamilton which is also beyond my tea cupboard.
So, when the last season dropped, I started watching the first season. I didn’t quite get it… Incest was nothing I’m too fond of… Sex scenes for the sake of sex scenes isn’t something I like too much either. The scenes with Joffrey sucked. He was violent and sadistic… the gore and assault and all of that were sickening as well and as someone with no clue about the books, I couldn’t really get into it at first… but I wanted to be able to rant about it or get upset about it and get along with everyone else by being the person that is “finally watching GoT” and over time, I started to like the show… but only for its better moments.
There are good moments but I don’t think that they justify all the bad ones. I tend to skip gore and assault and that kind of stuff… I don’t think it’s an excellent show. A lot of people are thinking like that because of the extreme contents and the characters that get killed off completely… Some parts are entertaining (like some of the parts with Arya, John, and Danaerys… I guess?) but I just hate the harmful content that is being shown for the sake of shocking people. It’s not about entertainment, it’s just about shock. I hate that.
And I haven’t watched any more of GoT since last year because a lot of that. Killing off characters for the sake of killing them off is stupid. Reviving characters because they’re popular is stupid. Raping, attacking and shaming women because it’s shocking, is just edgy and idiotic.
I’m sorry to hear about your past incidents. I wish you all the best over there and hope that it gets better over time. I totally am with you in regards to your opinion of the show.
Thanks for commenting and chatting to me about to his on twitter!!
Can’t say I agree 100% with your reasons, but ASoIaF/Game of Thrones was also the #1 thing that popped into my mind.
My wife convinced me to read the books because she loved them and I simply hated them. It was the most boring and dreadful sort of story. Every chapter I was like “why is this 50 pages, I can sum up the important stuff in 2 paragraphs” and the names. So many names. And they’re all not really important. Nope. Tried to watch the TV show as well, but stopped after 2-3 episodes because it wasn’t in any way better.
I think the world and plot is actually interesting, I went to the GoT wiki and read everything. Encyclopedic short form was simply much more enjoyable than GRRM’s elaborate writing. Happy for the folks who like it, I don’t.
Yeah agree with you on the books for sure!! Hahaha but I also found Tolkien a struggle. He would spent 2 pages explain the particular colours of a forest and it just made it boring for me.
Hehe, yes. Tolkien is a bit the same in this regard, but unlike with GRRM I loved everything else and could ignore these stretches, usually. I’ve read the Lord of the Rings several times completely, but I also gave up at least twice in the beginning/middle of the second book.