Current Events > i feel like ASOI&F and GOT were never intended to foster character fandom

(+) Yeah! (+)

spoilers i guess

imo the books in particular really tried to avoid or at least not actively play into this, what with 'big' and more honourable characters dying at a moments notice, various competing forces of different levels of nonetheless grey morality and even the perceivedly 'better' characterts (jon, really) being reluctant or naive or generally willing to throw their lot in with less morally upstanding groups.

as with millions of things in the show at this point, i kinda feel this went badly off the rails once they lost the source material as a guide but they also played too much into it in the first place. it worked well when everybody loved robb only for him to get offed but it's really obvious now that they simply weren't able to do more nuanced characterisations of the likes of jon or dany so both of these characters amongst others now have legions of ardent fans and with the latter we've seen the character change being really badly and awkwardly received as a result.

i dont think all the blame can be laid on the showrunners here either because who could have predicted GOT would get *this* big but still. i kinda feel like they were given outlines of where the characters ended up but never quite followed through with them in a way that made the endpoint feel as natural as it could.

Considering they never even really did the fourth and fifth book at all accurately I don't think the problem was when they ran out of books.
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MrNintendo1213 posted...

Considering they never even really did the fourth and fifth book at all accurately I don't think the problem was when they ran out of books.

i mean i agree cos i've always said they adapted certain parts and characters loosely to a fault but it's just easier to say it the way i did okay

I agree. I can't remember the reaction at the time, but how did people respond to Ned dying? I guess I kind of remember the shock of the 'main' character dying overtook any particular take, but it seems to me that they didn't handle even his character arc right, which should be pretty easy to do when he's such a large part of the book and show. Like... The books did a much better job at balancing making us think Ned is dumb as hell vs sympathetic, and it just gets worse from there on
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What I think is weird is for all those seasons we had rape, taboo, genital mutilation, slavery and generally uncomfortable and horrible death scenes

and so suddenly it's like this "look a cool dragon and a castle" made for everyone show

Did the hardcore episodes get low ratings or something?
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From what little I know of the books vs the show, Tyrion became the fan favorite scoundrel while the novel version is much more morally grey.
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book tyrion was well liked too tbf, he just gets a much less prominent/interesting role as the books go on