A message for disappointed Game of Thrones fans ready to give up on literature
Many of us are feeling a great deal of dejection or even betrayal at the hands of the very franchise we fell in love with. Here are some quotes from fellow fans I’ve found on IMDB, echoing the same general disappointment:
“Bring me my 8 years back.”
“Watching season 8 made me feel sick.”
“I can’t believe I wasted 10 years of my life watching this garbage.”
“You have ruined something I care deeply about.”
“8 years watching it, craving for it, to get so disappointed.”
“From a show I couldn’t wait to watch to a show I couldn’t care about.”
“Seasons 1-7 meant nothing in the end.”
“I wasted 73 hours of my life for this crap?”
“I can’t believe I wasted 9 years of my life!”
I’ve talked to many heartbroken fans and I keep hearing the same things over and over again - Regret and shame in ourselves for ever having been invested in a fictional world at all. Feeling stupid for expressing sorrow or even shedding tears over the decimation of our favorite franchise and its characters.
Hell, this is a quote from yours truly after learning the plot to season eight:
“I feel like this is all some life lesson - not to like anything too much or get invested in fiction.”
…And I almost fell for it.
But no. I’m not going to let to two talentless writers who managed to ruin the greatest series of all time in the span of at least three episodes… determine the fate of my future with literature.
And you shouldn’t, either.
What a writer’s goal should never be:
Alienate their audience
Make the audience feel regret for having invested time in their work
Make the audience feel shame in having rooted for certain characters
Leave a trail of unused foreshadowing that led to dead-ends
Betray in-universe logic in favor of shock
Retcon entire books or seasons in the endgame
Leave the audience feeling apathetic upon reaching the conclusion
Destroy any desire for the audience to reread or rewatch their material
Drive them to throw out their merch and regret spending their money
What a writer’s goal should be:
Aim for complete immersion and suspension of disbelief
Give the audience a cast of characters so rich that they feel represented by someone
Foreshadow. Plant clues and breadcrumb trails and provide payoff later
Inspire the audience to pore over their work for clues and extra detail
Remain consistent with the personalities of the characters they’ve created
Introduce the reader to new points of view
Avoid problematic tropes (and consider their ill effect on the audience)
Remember that every character, good or bad, is beloved by someone, and their ending should be handled with care (for better or worse)
Have a message. Have a point.
I promise you that while David Benioff and D.B. Weiss do not understand this, most writers and screenwriters do.
Now, on the other end of the spectrum, we’ve got fans who weren’t quite so invested telling us to “shut up” and “stop complaining”, insulting us by calling us “cry babies” and “brats” and belittling and dismissing our disappointment as “first world problems” (as seen here).
They’re wrong.
We are not stupid for becoming invested in literature.
To prove that point, I’ll leave you with a collection of quotes to remind you why you invest in fiction or literature, what it is we gain from it, and to help inspire you not to give up on ever falling in love with a fictional world again, because most writers are not here to shock or upset you senselessly, they’re here to inspire you, make you think and feel.
“The use of imaginative fiction is to deepen your understanding of your world, and your fellow men, and your own feelings, and your destiny.” ―Unknown
“Literature offers not just a window into the culture of diverse regions, but also the society, the politics; it’s the only place where we can keep track of ideas.” ―Reza Aslan
“Literature plays a huge role in examining difficult real-life issues.” ―Angie Thomas
“That is part of the beauty of all literature. You discover that your longings are universal longings, that you’re not lonely and isolated from anyone. You belong.” ―F. Scott Fitzgerald
“Literature is my Utopia. Here I am not disenfranchised. No barrier of the senses shuts me out from the sweet, gracious discourses of my book friends. They talk to me without embarrassment or awkwardness.” ―Helen Keller
“Literature overtakes history, for literature gives you more than one life. It expands experience and opens new opportunities to readers.” ―Carlos Fuentes
“Good fiction creates empathy. A novel takes you somewhere and asks you to look through the eyes of another person, to live another life.” ―Barbara Kingsolver
“Literature adds to reality, it does not simply describe it. It enriches the necessary competencies that daily life requires and provides; and in this respect, it irrigates the deserts that our lives have already become.” ―C.S. Lewis
“Literature is where I go to explore the highest and lowest places in human society and in the human spirit, where I hope to find not absolute truth but the truth of the tale, of the imagination and of the heart.” ―Salman Rushdie
“Fiction is a kind of compassion-generating machine that saves us from sloth.” ― George Saunders
“We don’t read novels to have an experience like life. Heck, we’re living lives, complete with all the incompleteness. We turn to fiction to have an author assure us that it means something.” ―Orson Scott Card