SPICY HOT TAKE OF THE DAY:

The HBO series Game of Thrones has had one of the biggest negative impacts on the development of new media

The trend of MAKE IT GRITTY existed pre-GoT but it really kicked into mainstream gear w/GoT. Now creators and networks have come to equate gratuitously killing and torturing characters with important art

That GRRM believing he's "subverting" fantasy tropes makes it true when really he's just indulging in other fantasy tropes and the show takes this to the next level.

But more than anything, GoT has disseminated this ridiculous idea that it's portraying "reality;" that it's engaging with the basic truths of human nature, that we're all living in a Hobbesian state of nature and those of us who don't accept that are just weak little babies

When really it's just a self-fulfilling prophecy, where edgelord nihilists can point at GoT as proof and GoT can point to edgelord nihilists as proof of this worldview. It's a permission slip for people who are already gleeful about some "nasty brutish" truth only they accept

and this is why we have Netflix wanting to age up characters in their remake of a beloved children's cartoon so said remake can be bloody and gore-filled. Because GoT made it seem like this is what NEEDS to happen, this is the true evolution of entertainment

Also note how the notion of inherent suffering is one that props up white supremacy and is, of course, one that is propagated by white creators like GRRM and the GoT showrunners. The rotten hollowness at the core of American whiteness must be made to seem UNIVERSAL

GRRM wrote a series about how everyone and everything is awful and it ends up being the Handbook For Justifying Whiteness regardless of his original intent

It was brought up that Nolan's Batmans can be blamed for this moreso than GoT and while I can understand that take for sure, and Nolan's Batmans are absolutely the same kind of white dude-centric gritty crap, the MCU was, in a lot of ways, able to counter Nolan's movies

For all its many, many flaws the MCU could be bright and colorful and silly and even funny and it also carries at its core a sense of hope. Though it's not a perfect occlusion, the MCU was able to undo a lot of what Nolan's Batmans did

It'd be really NOT GRIM AND GRITTY to help me rescue cats!! https://twitter.com/ellle_em/status/1285705136514490370?s=20

Just to add: I have read the books and I don't find them any more interesting or groundbreaking than the show. In fact in some ways they're worse and from what I know of GRRM he's exactly the kind of person who sees himself as groundbreaking instead of boring & overwrought

The books are just as eager to punish goodness, destroy humanity, and humiliate its characters (especially the women) as the show and all the while have the author claim the books are doing something """"important""""

Death as narrative is boring. "ohhh the author kills people the audience likes!!!!" is mistaking cruelty for innovation. Joss Whedon did this too, btw...believing that the audience NEEDS to watch characters suffer beyond endurance, that he's providing a SERVICE somehow

If your only hook is "read on to see who dies" then you're not doing a very good job

Another addition: I absolutely think that violence/"grit" CAN be effective and necessary to the narrative if done right. I don't think all fantasy/sci fi has to be rainbows and flowers. I think there there are lots of writers who ARE doing grimdark in interesting ways

N.K. Jemisin's Broken Earth series, for example, is violent as hell but the violence is never gratuitous. Kameron Hurley writes visceral gore in ways that enhance a story rather than overtake it.

Fonda Lee writes action scenes and character deaths that actually work both narrative-wise and emotionally. Tade Thompson and Marlon James both write extremely bloody sci fi and horror without making that violence the entirety of their storytelling

So I don't want to give the impression that there isn't a place for violence in fiction. There absolutely is and there absolutely are authors using it effectively.

GRRM and the people behind GoT are not among those authors/creators

ANOTHER ADDITION TO THIS CURSED THREAD

I understand that the news about the liveaction ATLA is probably untrue BUT that doesn't matter and I still stand behind everything I wrote here