A Dream of Spring
So, hey, apparently Game of Thrones' ending was a little unsatisfying?
I don't want to say “I told you so”, but... Well, I didn't bother with the show from the start, having decided half a decade prior (Bloody hell, has it been that long?) that I didn't see the story going anywhere interesting when I finished A Feast for Crows, an 800+ page tome that managed to not advance any major character's story whatsoever and instead started up a whole slew more side-plots, which didn't exactly leave me confident in the author's ability to wrap any of it up in a satisfying manner, and left me increasingly convinced that I was halfway though the longest shaggy-dog story in literary history.
(And apparently Shaggydog didn't even make it to the end of the story, so what's the point of any of it?!)
But what really convinced me to drop the series was the Cersei viewpoint chapters. House Lannister has always been my favorite of the noble houses in the series; Tyrion, is, of course, everyone's favorite, and Jamie's chapters in A Storm of Swords had transformed what had seemed like a one-dimensional thug of a character into a genuinely sympathetic, well rounded protagonist. Even Tywin had his moments; we never got inside his head, but he was a fascinating villain, a master of realpolitik at every level. So I was genuinely delighted to finally get a look inside the head of Cersei, to see how my perspective of her would change once I saw more of her.
Instead, I got a flat villain, every stereotype of an evil queen, obsessed with her beauty, unable to ever consider the consequences of her decisions, being led around by the nose by every character that flattered her, falling from one disaster to another through her incompetence. It was disappointing, it was uncomfortable to read, it felt like a betrayal of the depth the rest of the series had promised.
And so, in the end, I'm not surprised that Game of Thrones failed to defy the cliches it had once tried to challenge. I'm not really surprised that in the end, we got nothing more than a bog-standard heroic fantasy, with the noble Starks of the north arrayed against the threats of depraved southerners, savage foreigners, and overly ambitious women. That, in the end, it would go with “Women be crazy, am I right?” as the resolution of a major plot, that it would fail to give its antagonists the same depth and humanity that it offered its heroes. That, in the end, blood would tell who would carry the banner of heroism and who would be reviled as villains.
(But still... Bran?! Did they start pulling names out of hats? The last time anyone cared about Bran, he was being pushed out a window...)
I am sorry for everyone who got invested in this story, and stuck with it until the end, and didn't see that final twist coming: that at the end, there was nothing revolutionary about it after all.
I don't want to say “I told you so”, but... Well, I didn't bother with the show from the start, having decided half a decade prior (Bloody hell, has it been that long?) that I didn't see the story going anywhere interesting when I finished A Feast for Crows, an 800+ page tome that managed to not advance any major character's story whatsoever and instead started up a whole slew more side-plots, which didn't exactly leave me confident in the author's ability to wrap any of it up in a satisfying manner, and left me increasingly convinced that I was halfway though the longest shaggy-dog story in literary history.
(And apparently Shaggydog didn't even make it to the end of the story, so what's the point of any of it?!)
But what really convinced me to drop the series was the Cersei viewpoint chapters. House Lannister has always been my favorite of the noble houses in the series; Tyrion, is, of course, everyone's favorite, and Jamie's chapters in A Storm of Swords had transformed what had seemed like a one-dimensional thug of a character into a genuinely sympathetic, well rounded protagonist. Even Tywin had his moments; we never got inside his head, but he was a fascinating villain, a master of realpolitik at every level. So I was genuinely delighted to finally get a look inside the head of Cersei, to see how my perspective of her would change once I saw more of her.
Instead, I got a flat villain, every stereotype of an evil queen, obsessed with her beauty, unable to ever consider the consequences of her decisions, being led around by the nose by every character that flattered her, falling from one disaster to another through her incompetence. It was disappointing, it was uncomfortable to read, it felt like a betrayal of the depth the rest of the series had promised.
And so, in the end, I'm not surprised that Game of Thrones failed to defy the cliches it had once tried to challenge. I'm not really surprised that in the end, we got nothing more than a bog-standard heroic fantasy, with the noble Starks of the north arrayed against the threats of depraved southerners, savage foreigners, and overly ambitious women. That, in the end, it would go with “Women be crazy, am I right?” as the resolution of a major plot, that it would fail to give its antagonists the same depth and humanity that it offered its heroes. That, in the end, blood would tell who would carry the banner of heroism and who would be reviled as villains.
(But still... Bran?! Did they start pulling names out of hats? The last time anyone cared about Bran, he was being pushed out a window...)
I am sorry for everyone who got invested in this story, and stuck with it until the end, and didn't see that final twist coming: that at the end, there was nothing revolutionary about it after all.