Game of thrones - honestly?
- Me
- 23 aug. 2016
- 10 min läsning
Game of thrones first aired April 17, 2011. It's a TV-show about a fictional world. Lets say that it's a little bit of a world in a computer game, or a long winding book, and yes, it is an adaption of a book, called A song of ice and fire.
It's a very expensive TV-show to make, and it shows.
It's now been shot in 6 seasons but it's been renewed for a seventh which will air in 2017 sometime. On HBO Nordic there are 6 seasons. Each season contains of 10 hour-long episodes. (where the first 1 minute and 47 seconds plays the theme-music, which is very dramatic indeed.)
I've been told by a lot of people that it's the best series ever. A must-watch. A "if you don't watch it you'll go to hell" sort of a TV-show.
So, for the last few years, I've done my share of watching. I watched the first whole season a few years ago. Couldn't get in to it and couldn't get passed some of my issues with it.
Then I re-watched the first season. Same result.
Now I made sure to watch an episode per night, for God knows how long. (I guess for fifty evenings, as I've watched fifty episodes)

I am still not into it. There are a few main reasons to this, which I will depict now. For my own perverse fun.
1. Locations.
There is absolutely nothing wrong with the locations of this serie. It's set in a world with lots of different countries, some cold, some hot, some dark some light. Most of the times though, it's gray. Gray gray gray. I am so bored with gray. And dark. A lot of the scenes are so dark that you can hardly see anything. It's supposed to give you a sense of what it is really like I suppose. For me, I just feel as if there is something wrong with my glasses. It's annoying and frankly, terribly boring. The grayness follows the whole five seasons that I've seen so far. And this is only the locations.There are some quite terrifying places. Lots of old castles with stone rooms and gray. Yep, more gray. Countless of camps with tents or without tents. Most of them, guess what? Gray. Forests, moors, mountains. All gray.
There are a few exceptions, and that's when they're in the desert. Then it's mainly red or yellow. Quite pretty but desolate. Also, in some of the castles, they have gardens and they are simply beautiful. The whole show centers around the notion of that the winter is coming. (and it will be a many year long one) Hey, that would be quite awesome, because then it might lighten up some, right? Well it don't. It's still gray snow, and gray people running about in the grayness.
2. Characters.
There are a lot of characters in this tv-show. A lot of the nice or interesting ones get their heads chopped up quite fast, most of the real cool characters, that could be some that I'd like to actually follow through the journey of the story gets killed of in season 1. Sadly, even the characters that I found a bit interesting, were horrible cruel people although some were kindhearted fathers, who only wanted to make some sort of sense of the world. There is a lot of stories within the story, and a lot of characters to keep track of, and it's been a tricky thing I think, because so many of them look exactly the same as the rest of them. Sort of, gray.
Most of the females are pawns, or a person or an entity used to further the purposes of another.
Some females however, are very powerful. These women are also extremely beautiful. All of them. No exception. They are so beautiful that there is no resisting their beauty. Even I can't resist looking at most of them with big eyes. Wow, I mean wow. They're usually not very gray at least. But often very mean, very scheming and a lot of them are what I'd say is the definition of cunning or evil. The children in the series are very clever, and they are survivors in a world where children aren't worth much, unless they are pawns in the big characters game. (big characters are often kings, queens or lords) (and some bastards)
3. Hygien.
Most of these people are just clean with the kindness of the Gods. (seven actually) Their teeth look healthy and straight, clean. Their hair is mostly newly brushed and curled or straightened. Even the females who live out in the wild, are probably cleaner than a babys' bottom after it's washed and powdered. They can use the same clothing forever. They travel light, most of them, so they don't actually need a bag for trivial things like a toothbrush or an extra pair of underpants. I keep wondering things, while watching, how the females do when they've got the period, or you know, after having sex with some dude. It's as if the creator of the series have little to no knowledge of the word of cleanliness. However, sometimes you do see a woman sit in a bath with a server washing their body and hair.

Maybe that's more of a regular occurrence that they let us see. However, the servants seem to be fine without this extravaganza. The men, well, they're also a mystery to me. They seem to keep they're clothes on most of the time, so maybe there isn't a need of a regular wash. Cool place, I'd like to never having to shower again! In the season 5, you get to see quite a lot of bodies being washed. However, they are dead people. They don't actually give them a good scrub or anything, but a little bowl of water is there, with a rag of some material, which they dip into the water and sort of touch the body a bit with. Arms mainly. A lot of the cleaning of anything is done this way. A bowl of water, and a rag. The producers love to show this process of the rag going in to the water and then the water being squeezed out of the material. A lot of close up shots of that.
Now, to describe this a bit better for those who haven't seen the series. All these people, all these worlds, are full of dirt. They roll around in it, they get covered with blood a lot. A LOT. They are raped and they go to brothels (where most females seem to live too...) In one episode, you see a guy sitting on the toilet. Apart from that, they don't seem to have normal bodily functions. Yay for them! The only character really, that I've seen really dirty and not liking it, is the tv-show dwarf. It actually reeks from him, for some reason.
4. Nudity and sex.
Now, as a beginner of watching this tv-show, you'll expect a lot of sex-scenes. That is what it is known for, among other things. Yeah, so, there have been some pretty raw sex-scenes. But first, let me explain the whole getting undress-situation. Most women, who you are going to see have sex with some guy, have real pretty clothing. Amazing dresses, they look extremely complicated, often with the feel of a corset somewhere underneath. But, in this tv-series, ALL dresses are made for easy pickings. All they have to do, is to pull up their left arm, and with the small motion of the hand, the dress comes open, and underneath they are always naked. There are some real beautiful female bodies in this show. Funny enough, all of them are shaved. Yeah, everywhere. Armpits, legs, and between their legs. Hey, maybe in this fantasy world, created by modern men, women have no hair growth apart from on their heads (where they have a lot of it) It is, after all, fiction. Artists freedom and all that.
One of the most interesting stories in season 1, is a woman of "high birth" who get married off with a man from a very violent clan of people. Their rough and tough. A desert people.
After her wedding, he rapes her. And then he goes on to rape her some more. And eventually, after a week or so of being raped, by this huge guy (she is quite little) she falls in love with him, madly in love actually! It's such a beautiful love story, with all that raping going on. She goes ahead and ask a prostitute on how to please her husband and gets shown the ropes so that she can please him even more. Aaah, young love! And because this man is so damn handsome, you sort of buy in to it. I'll show him a photo here, just because I can.

See what I mean? Being raped by this dude, and you're bound to fall crazily in love, right? (He dies quite quickly in season 1)
There are of course other people having sex. There are the siblings, two of the main characters in all the seasons, who have this secret love story and they have three children together, that "no one" knows as their bastards. :) Because it is a big secret, they almost kill a little boy who uuups, saw them.
There are women and men in brothels, getting to do what they love best - having sex with strangers, any strangers, for money, and they all LOVE it. Of course they do. Who wouldn't eh?
Most of all it's titties and waxed fannies. Oh the joy.

5. General feel to the place, and the sounds.
It's funny, because I've really made an effort to constantly listen while watching. And strangely enough, everything sounds pretty much the same all of the the world. It's the steel hitting steel. It's the crowds of people who always sound exactly alike. It's the town areas that I am sure that they only have one sound recording to, which they play on loop. It's the horses (beautiful horses all over the place) neighing, I wonder if this sound too, is the same in all the seasons. The sound of the horses galloping. The men in their heavy armor riding them, getting off and on them as if they weren't dressed in steel clothing. The areas which we see most of are the castles of course, because this IS a show about kings and queens and lords who all want to sit there, in the iron thrown. (it is called "game of the thrones" after all. The sounds of people walking on the stone floors is very important to the general feel of the desolate places that the castles are being portrait as. All other parts, the towns, that we're shown are narrow streets with poor people trying to sell stuff. Fish and the likes. In some villages we only get to see conquering, looting, raping and then setting fire to the gray houses that common people live in. In the cities there are sometimes uproars, and the people are shouting a lot. And then some horses comes in and slaughter them all. Unless it's a hanging or some chopping of a head, then the crowds are shouting even louder in some joyful happiness.
6. Clothing.
There has been NO money saved on the clothing in this tv-series. I have no idea what sort of a budget they had, but it's not peanuts. Even men who have no money to their names have figure-made leather clothing. Big beautiful coats of expensive material and what I can only imagine to be fake fur.

The high-born are even more extravagantly dressed. The dresses are amazing, the materials, the cutting of the fabric, it's all done deliciously pretty.

However. The poor people have rags on, all gray. The "wildlings" - the people who aren't part of one of the main castles, but roam freely around looting, hunting and such things, are all dressed in the same white/gray outfits, with extremely thick materials. It looks a bit as if someone has taken a toilet roll of paper and just let the people turn around and around until they're so covered in the paper-rolls that it's hard to even walk about (not that it is a problem at all, quite the opposite) I am supposing that the way they dress is just to not confuse them with their nearest enemies that are all dressed in black?
Here, have a photo of the toilet-roll people

7. Fighting.
Okay. The show is all about who will get to rule the seven kingdoms. And then there are plenty of other kingdoms too. They're all in conflict with each other because they want the power. And the cash that comes with having power. If you're in power you get to collect the poor peoples money and the farmers and the tailors..yeah, you know the drill. So they all go out there and have a fight. Cling cling says the swords when they hit each-other hard. There is no need to exercise when you get so much of it while just trying to survive in this world. Cling cling, kill kill. Blood (not as much blood as it should be, surely?) and hmm, cut of arms, and then some more cling cling and I'll fast forward until I hope that the fight is over. It's so damn boring. God, if this series were made without the fighting we could cut off half of the time and be done with it already. The fight scenes are always the same. In the end, the ones we think are "good" in that moment wins. It's really no point in sitting through the hours of fighting, I swear on it!
Cling cling.
And on the fighting note, I will also say something about the fact that this series contain of a mishmash of psychopaths, sociopaths and other paths. A lot of the characters in Game of Thrones are people who like to torture animals. Or torture people in many ways. Some of the ways gives me nightmares. (like this one dude, who likes to peel of the skin of a human while they're alive) And then they're given a perfectly fine lady to marry and rape. And who knows, maybe she'll end up loving him in season 6!
8. Overall, it's been a hard viewing. A lot of frustration over the women issues, previously discussed. A lot of boredom, with the constant sword-fighting. Some interest of certain characters stories. (but they keep getting their damn heads chopped of so then that is frustrating too) A lot of admiration of the clothes they wear. Some sorrow that the huge amount of money spent to make this series did. (go to this series)
And a regret that I will, indeed, follow the series to the end, even if it gets on my nerves so much, because it is controversial and it is frightfully dull most of the times, but I still want to see when this damn winter will arrive.

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