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Originally Posted by Firefoot
but for the most part I have just stopped caring.
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A stinging condemnation of a series if ever there was one.
I think that is the fundamental problem with a lot of these newer, darker series. If everything is continually dismal all the time sooner or later readers will grow apathetic about the outcome of the story, especially if you kill off the beloved characters in the story to the point where there are only characters that people hate left.
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One could say it is breaking the obvious traditional narrational rule that you build up those characters you are going to make the heroes (or villains) of the story and leave the statists to their places (look at any old adventure or war-movie and you can tell from the introduction who will die and who will live through the ordeals).
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When reading contemporary fantasy I have reached the point of assuming that anybody who is built up to be likable or a hero type figure that A) they will die, B) horrible things will happen to them before they die, C) there is a better than even chance they will renounce all they orginally stood for, and D) they will die horribly. So in my opinion, it’s not so much a matter of you can't tell who is going to die, it’s just that the more likable characters will.
In a slight aside, GRRM gave an
interview to
Entertainment Weekly that was released after the show last night.
Most of it was stuff that is widely available but the interviewer asked one very interesting question.
Robb was never a POV character and Cat was as stupid as a bucket of dead fish. So then why
were people so upset when they were killed? I don't think too much of GRRM's non-answer to the question.
I think a lot of it has to do with the underlying brilliance of the idea as part of the story. More than the characters I think people were invested in the Stark family's quest for revenge.
The typically expected mode for this revenge quest to be accomplished was gone when the Red Wedding happened and everything went pear-shaped.
As far as actually wiping out the Lannisters goes, that option is still on the table. So it was really more a matter of GRRM messing with his audience
from a story perspective and not a character perspective that made it all too shocking!