The Problem With Death and a Song of Ice and Fire

This blog used to be about books. Lol.

pictured: me after i read a dance with dragons lol lol lllloll lolloslsldlodlllol

Whether you know it by the name of Game of Thrones or Song of Ice and Fire, at this point most people in the mapped corners of the universe that have been proven to contain sentient life are at least vaguely aware of George R. R. Martin's historical fantasy series starring a bunch of people who fuck each other and then die. In fact, people in the world of ice and fire are so good at fucking each other and dying that those two things are kind of what the series is popularly known for. It's reached hyperbolic meme-tier levels of cultural repetition that Game of Thrones is that one series where you can never be sure which major character is going to die next. Martin, looking much like a violently deranged Santa Claus, can only sustain his raging erection if he's detailing the exact way someone's head hits the floor.

The series has been applauded for this reason. People love that no main character is off the chopping block and anyone could die next. Unlike Hollywood films or other TV series, where main characters only ever die in glorified and telegraphed sacrifices, characters in Game of Thrones can die at any second. It's so real! Martin is so savage! Don't get attached to anyone, lest your most recent favorite character (the last four you liked already got their dicks chopped off and fell down a cliff) be the next to slip on a banana peel and land in a guillotine. People are so enthralled with Martin's wanton slaughter that jokes and memes abound concerning it, and some libraries and fans have even gone through and bookmarked all the pages of each book where someone dies. You know, just so that everyone knows onto which pages they should shoot their chunky loads whilst they rejoice in how edgy and realistic Game of Thrones is.

Except that's all a load of shit. A big stinky load of poopydick. When you really step back and examine the whole story of a Song of Game of Thrones, you begin to realize that- hyperbole aside- characters rarely ever die. In fact, on the contrary, they're often times surviving dangerous and deadly tribulations in the style of any given Hollywood action movie blockbuster. When it comes to main character deaths, yes, we're thrown some curve balls by Martin. Ned Stark, basically the 'main character' of the whole series in book/season 1 ends up dying a surprise death. His son and wife ((that's two different people, not his son who is his wife)), Robb and Catelyn Stark respectively, set out on a revenge mission to crush Ned's murderers. They are murdered along the way. So we get one early curve with Ned and then when we expect for an obvious 'Son and wife ((again, two people, not a son who is the wife)) avenge Ned and beat the bad guys' story to play out, Martin throws another curve with the Red Wedding. So we get two curves and three main characters die.

...And then we get effective radio silence from the whole "main characters die" broadcast. Yeah, some villains die. Joffrey dies. And, uh. Well, Renly died? Oh yeah, Janos Slynt died! And Cleos Frey! Remember Cleos Frey? No? Oh. Well, the list goes on! How about that one Night's Watch guy Arya kills? Uhhhhhhhhh, Ser Dantos? That one Frey kid in Winterfell? How does Martin sleep at night with so much blood upon his tender, chubby hands? Oh yeah, on a huge pile of money with his dusty typewriter on the other side of the room. What I'm primarily getting at is that for a series that has been popularly billed as full of death and praised as "a show where no character is safe", where all deaths are realistic and down to earth, Song of Ice and Fire has almost no death in it and the deaths it does have tend to be more grandiose than realistic. 

When you apply some hindsight to the deaths of Ned, Robb and Catelyn you kind of see there was a lot of literary buildup to their demises. If things were actually realistic, Ned probably would have died of a fever in the black cells from his leg injury. Robb would've fucking died from an arrow in some rando-battle he fought in. Catelyn would have died years ago trying to give birth to Rickon. Arya and Sansa? Raped and dead after the first book. Daenerys? Raped and dead before the end of the first book. Jon? You'd better believe he'd be god damn dead like five times before the point in the story where he ACTUALLY dies. Bran? HAHAHAHA-  dead as shit. The likelihood of Jaime surviving having his hand cut off in the middle of the woods is, you guessed it, pretty much "zero". Forget Tyrion and how he took a sword to the god damn face and somehow survived with a large open wound on his head right near his mouth and nose.

And yet none of these characters (except those first three Starks) end up meeting their untimely ends. In fact, most of them go on some pretty high adventures and come out without so much as a serious injury (except for those last two Lannisters). The ones that do die tend to do it in pretty thematic ways as opposed to something a little more realistic. Robb fought in his vanguard and let his big ass wolf run around in the fray. Robb never fought in a real battle before his war against the Lannisters. The only way Robb should've been making it to the Red Wedding would be posthumously in a fucking box. But I guess when your novel series has around two dozen different point of view characters, three of them dying sure is a lot. I guess? According to popular praise?

It gets worse if you break it down by page length. Maybe you didn't know this, but A Song of Ice and Fire has A LOT OF FUCKING PAGES in it. Right now there's currently 5,035 pages in the series (and that's not counting any appendixes or additional pages) which encompass approximately 1,770,000 words. To give you an idea of how many words that is, think of the show "Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?", where contestants play trivia to try and win one million dollars. There are more words in A Song of Ice and Fire than there are dollars in who wants to be a millionaire. Let that sink in. As a more serious method of giving you a real idea of how long this god damn series is, Song of Ice and Fire is longer than the entirety of the Harry Potter series combined with the entirety of the Lord of the Rings series combined with the fuckin' Bible.

In 1.7 million words and across twenty-six point of view characters, we so far have three major deaths. And even then, those deaths only happen in the first half of the series. That's not exactly what I'd call a blood bath. So why does Game of Thrones get so much praise for how quickly and ruthlessly it'll cut down its main characters?

It's all down to pure shock value. Shock value sticks with people and when enough people start to mindlessly agree to something, it becomes a social acceptance to agree with it. Just look at Republicans. Or Democrats. Or Political Independents. Haha! Everyone in politics is stupid except for me! 

In fact, the novels themselves never got too much overt praise for being full of death. It was only once the TV series hit TV that people watched TV and on the TV they saw the characters die. On TV. First they get to see Sean Bean's head digitally severed from his body and then, at the end of only season 3, comes one of the most hyperbolic-reaction-inducing fucking moments in televised history. The Red Wedding. I think people get more hyped for "Red Wedding Reaction Videos" than they do for the actual Red Wedding. The Red Wedding cemented Game of Thrones in popular culture as "that show where everyone diez lol!!" despite the fact that page-for-page, Game of Thrones has less deaths in it than at an abortion clinic that's been setup on Mike Pence's front lawn. Haha, abortion is always topical!

Comparatively speaking, Game of Thrones has way less deaths in it than Harry Potter did and is more comparable to Lord of the Rings (in terms of main character deaths)- a series only a fraction of its length. Sean Bean also dies in both. So that's pretty cool. While it's true that the series hasn't ended yet in books or on television and it may be that the final season/books will be massive blood brawls where Arya stark's head gets punted off her body by Jaime's severed torso, the point is that at least right now the series isn't that death heavy especially when concerning main or point of view characters. So why don't ya shut up about it already ya soddy lil' wee finna yorkstuff blimey petesnipper, or whatever they say in Westeros when they want to imaginatively call someone a cunt.

FINAL POINTLESS NUMERICAL SCORE:

3 SEAN BEAN HEADS OUT OF 10 SEAN BEAN HEADS

Oh yeah also this is like a preface for what will be a series overview reviewing of Song of Ice and Fire so stay tuned for that my dedicated readers whose numbers are pushing 'zero'.