#anyway stream if it is chains you want samwell tarly gender violence and war

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When people describe asoiaf as grimdark it makes me tear at the wallpaper. Do you think that label is from a misunderstanding of the text/only a surface level reading, or the way got portrayed the books?

i mean, on one hand, i get it. there ARE parts of asoiaf that are very deeply nihilistic and cynical. especially compared with other mainstream fantasy. it became really trite to associate got/asoiaf with constant character death… but it IS a departure from the standard! maybe you’d get a mentor or supporting figure dying, your obi wans and boromirs, but ned, cat and robb, oberyn.. these are shocking moments for a reason lol. they ARE subversive! and quentyn and tyrion in adwd in particular feel truly angry and pessimistic. there’s plenty of grimness and darkness to mine from. But firstly, there is…. nothing wrong with being “grimdark”! it’s not wrong to refuse to write about utopias, or to be ultimately cynical and pessimistic about human nature, or for characters not to get what they (as decided by the ~ultimate morality~ of the author) “deserve”— aka the ultimate building block of tragedy. i want more angry art, more art that makes you miserable! sometimes the world does feel hopeless lmao like it’s okay to wallow in the darkness of the human soul or whatever!! asoiaf is not as a whole grimdark, but if it was, that wouldnt be an immoral way to write! (and i dont think GOT is even that much more grimdark than the books— its problem is that it is.. extremely badly written, not that x character didnt get y happy ending therefore it is bad 🤷🏻‍♂️)

i probably dont need to reiterate why it ISNT grimdark— theon adwd, sam, brienne, et cetera, you know the gist. better writers than me have talked about this. i think it’s a bit troubling that a story can get a dismissive response just for genuinely being interested in the whole ugly picture of human experience lol. idk if it’s YA brain or ted lasso kindnesscore or what, and maybe it’d be dismissive to attribute it just to that. but tbh, i dont think the people who write those 50k note posts on here or twitter about how asoiaf is ontologically evil for portraying a broken world have actually read the books at all. there’s plenty of ways to engage in actual criticism of the series if you wanted to. but they are really not interested in having a conversation about themes and stuff, they just want an easy dunk ❤️ so whatever