#d&d hate

I have had nothing to do over the last few days except knit and contemplate the injustices of the world, so today I am going to rail against Game of Thrones.

I started watching Game of Thrones in 2013.  I had wanted to read the books before watching the show, so as soon as I finished A Dance With Dragons around early March 2013, I went to Barnes & Noble and bought the DVDs of the first two seasons.  I watched season 1 in two days and season 2 in two or three, and I was caught up and ready for the season 3 premiere, which happened to be on my birthday that year. 

It is important to note that I was in the midst of the worst depressive episode of my life at that time.

I had just returned to the US, very unwillingly, after sixteen months living in the UK.  One of the first sights that had greeted me upon getting home from the airport was our family dog, visibly very ill and dying.  I myself was ill with a severe sinus infection I’d caught in early November, which then proceeded to spread to my eyes and my upper respiratory tract and which wouldn’t completely clear my system until February.  I was unable to get a steady job despite my newly-minted Masters degree, and was instead doing unreliable gig-work for an events management company while living with my parents, in my adolescent bedroom.  

In short, it was a wretched spring, and Game of Thrones was one of its few consistently bright spots.  I won’t go so far as to say it saved my life, but it absolutely and undeniably gave me something to look forward to every week.  I watched every new episode three or four times over the course of the week, dissecting scenes and looking and listening for things I hadn’t caught on previous watches.  IMDB discussion boards were still a thing back then, and I was active there.  It was the season of the Red Wedding, the introduction of Ramsay Bolton and Olenna Tyrell, Arya and Gendry’s “I can be your family” moment, Jon Snow’s romance with Ygritte...SO MUCH to enjoy and digest and analyze.

About a month after the finale aired I started getting professional help, and life began to improve.  By that point I’d already decided to go back to school to learn a skill (medical assisting), a road which eventually led where I am now (PA school).  Again, I won’t say season 3 of Game of Thrones was directly responsible...but without something to get out of bed for that spring, who knows?

So the laziness and lack of care with seasons 7 and 8...hurts.  It just plain hurts.  The reasons why those seasons objectively suck have been discussed at great length elsewhere by people more educated about storytelling and film theory than me, so for myself I’ll just reiterate again: the carelessness and impatience that were clearly involved with the productions of those seasons, were downright hurtful to me as a viewer.  

Interestingly, I actually missed the bulk of both of those seasons while they were first airing because I was on hiking trips: my failed LEJOG attempt during season 7, and my “Unfinished Business/Last Hurrah before PA school” trip during season 8.  The last episode I watched in “real time” was "A Knight of the Seven Kingdsoms,” which aired the night before I left on that second trip.  The fact that "A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms” ended up being the last decent episode of the series (how many of us lay on our beds and stared up at our ceilings while “Jenny of Oldstones” played on repeat in the background during the week that ensued?) feels somehow significant.  I didn’t see the last four episodes until the end of May, while staying with a friend in Leeds who’d recorded them for me.  

I haven’t touched the series at all since that day.

Over the last few days I’ve been recalling the joy that the early seasons brought me, and wondering if I’m finally ready for a re-watch of the series from the very beginning.  I tentatively think I am.  The main barrier is that I still don’t own season 8 on home media because I haven’t been able to stomach the idea of paying for it, but I’ve just discovered that I can buy the first three episodes on Amazon Prime for $4.99 each rather than shelling out $50 for physical DVDs of the whole season, so I’m probably going to do that.  I’ve already decided that I’m not watching the final three episodes ever again.  “The Long Night” is the series finale as far as I’m concerned.

One small, comforting thought about all this is that the books aren’t done yet.  And even if the characters all have the same general endpoint that they do in the show, I’m confident that GRRM will get us there in a more satisfying and sensible way than D&D did.  In George we trust.

P l e a s e don't remind me of this atrocity again.

Daenerys in D&D’s vision: