'Game of Thrones' Meant Something

To be honest, in the beginning it meant naked women and the promise of dragons. The simple pleasures in life make all the difference.

There were a number of characters, like Jon Snow, that I just didn’t like. In fact most of the Starks’ annoyed me in one way or another. But having come late to the show, I stuck with it and watched the first two seasons almost back to back.

The game changer, of course, was one the final episodes of season one. In the closing episodes, this show; a show about old myths and political families playing war games had done something I had not seen before. They made a statement. That being—these characters, they are ours to play with. And they will die regardless of how much you like or dislike them.

At that point, the show started to mean a lot more to me than just a TV show.

It was a way of telling a story that I hadn’t seen in TV before.

I introduced the show to a close friend and that’s when it became more than just a TV show.

We would go through the fan theories—some made by fans of the books and some made by people who hadn’t read them. We sat and thought about what we wanted to happen and what could happen in this world where you favorite character could die at any moment.

How exactly does the Faceless man work in this world? I still have no idea but it is something that I’ve spent hours debating with friends. Every week we would ignore social media completely until we had watched the episode together.

I’ve found myself caring about characters that I really didn’t care about before. And yes, I am talking about Jon Snow again. I really couldn’t stand that guy in the beginning. But seeing him grow and develop as a character changed my opinion of him.

These characters felt like real people. Real motivations that were grounded in the world that had been built up. We knew Little Finger and what he wanted—even if we couldn’t tell how he was going about it. The plans were hidden, but the characters were there. Watching them grow and change as people—for the ones that did—is what made us love them and get so attached to their story arcs.

Seeing how characters were portrayed from the different viewpoints of different people throughout this extensive world—it was a style of story telling that I hadn’t seen on TV before.

But then it all went so very, very wrong.

This world was built up so that the idea of magic was something special. Lord of the Rings puts magic everywhere. Yet Game of Thrones set up a world where people weren’t sure if magic was real or not—so when something happened, it made us all sit up and take note.

But then it became pointless. Character arcs regressed and magic was used as a gimmick because why not?

And that became the feeling of the whole show. Why not?

A show that would kill off fan favorites became one that refused to harm characters because they were fan favorites.

World building

It’s not a secret that the author of the books was inspired by historical events—like the War of the Roses, and Gaelic mythology. Despite dragons and ice-zombies riding giant spiders, this is a world where magic is rare. And as such, it is all the more… spellbinding when we see it.

In the beginning Game of Thrones meant something to be because it was great story telling with good to great performances and more importantly, it was a world with magic—but that magic meant something significant.

This was a show I would watch every week with a very close friend. With his health issues, he said he’d regret not knowing how it would end. I always had the opinion that everyone would die. Let’s face it, an army of ice zombies that grows bigger with every encounter?

Now, Game of Thrones is a reminder and a warning. The writers of the show are incapable of crafting stories on their own. And honestly, as a Star Wars fan, I’m deeply concerned with what they will do to something else that I love to watch. Stories should never be rushed. They should never feel forced—sadly that’s how this show ended up. But we will always have the memories of the early years.