So tell me....

[ithildin]

people who have read the Game of Thrones books,
This show is just so unremittingly violent, and more than that, hopeless. They kill off almost everyone who you even give a damn about, in the most brutal way possible, and I wonder why keep on with it? Is there a point, when you finally get to the end? Or is it just one long relentless blood bath? Because if that's all it is, I think I'm done. Tonight's episode was just horrible, upsetting, and I just would like to know if it ever gets better?

Comments

[quarter_to_five]

weeeellll...yes and no. This is only the mid-point of the third book, and it really (really, really) doesn't let up from there. But then the series changes gear and gets a little more introspective and melancholy (I love books 4&5, but opinion is divided a lot more than on the early books.) It's still pretty grim thought.

I also don't know what the show is doing (i've watched it very intermittently) so I can't speak to whether this aspect of the books is even present there, but there's a lot of deconstruction and questioning of the way violence is used in stories, and who you expect to be the hero and how the story 'should' turn out and so on. It's not a shock-value, see-what-I-did-there thing in the books, at least it never has been for me. (I read this 12 years ago, after all. I've had some time to think about it.)

[ithildin]

Are more characters added to make up for the body count, or does the story narrow to focus on the survivors?

[quarter_to_five]

There's not a whole lot of completely new characters (thought there are a few. I think the Dornish have yet to be introduced at all in the show - that's a whole crew right there) but previously minor characters (at least in the books) become more prominent.