i usually make it a personal point not to talk about GoT as i hate the show and my relationship to asoiaf is not connected to it.
but one thing, and this is all i’ll say on the matter, is that the way the red wedding wasn’t treated as like, the collective cultural traumatic event that it was has always made me feel sick. i mean specifically in the way that it was characterized as basically a “welp robb got got oh well” insult to one family and (even then robb and catelyn were barely ever mentioned again) and not as the most egregous goddamn massacre that affected every family in the north and the very identity of the north as well.
because they were just hitting the beat-by-beat plot points from the books, they completely ignored the dozens of times characters prophesized or dreamt about the RW, not even bothered understanding what “the north remembers” even meant. that it wasn’t just that bad thing that happened where a main character died— but as a wound still bleeding out and still very much alive in collective memory. and that doesnt just go away— so the idea of like people callously refusing to help sansa and jon because ~the last time they joined the starks looked what happened~ makes me literally want fling shit like a chimpanzee and then rip out my liver with my own two hands.
and this isnt me complaining that they Did The Thing Different than the book cus like whatever who cares. but that they reduced the event that echoes throughout the rest of the series to just Season Finale Big Moment number 3 and specifically WHY it even mattered to begin with. and thats why they didnt care about lady stoneheart (retribution against the freys), fake arya (what brings the northern clans together to save “neds little girl” ie what remains of northern dignity), the manderlys (retribution against the boltons), nor the northern conspiracy in general cus that would mean actually unpacking why THOSE arcs even mattered as ripples of the red wedding- an event so heinous it broke all the laws of god and man. and of course it would mean understanding what “the north remembers” means as a collective cultural truth of how memory is preserved generationally and how specific wounds are kept in that collective memory to be felt by all. and not as just a snappy little slogan they could use for trailers.
and maybe i’m just being sensative, as a person of ethnic origin who’s experienced a wealth of cultural trauma. but it just baffles and insults me how they would have the audacity to show me the desecrated body of robb stark and not even say his name for the remaining like 5 seasons.