This is one of those posts, from one of those people.
Because I don't watch it.
I could have, out of some sense of cultural obligation. How else could I pepper my sermons with knowing, engaged references? But I have not watched it, and I am not watching it. I mean, sure, every now and then, I'll watch a snippet of an episode on Youtube, because dragons.
I did, however, read the books. Not all of them. I read the first three, years ago. They were great. I found them utterly engrossing. After the end of the third book, at the advice of a trusted friend and the stirring of my own instinct, I stopped.
The reason I stopped was simple: I could see how the series had to end.
Not because I'm a prophet, or because I'm in sole possession of the only handwritten manuscripts of the last four books, which George RR accidentally mailed to my home address. That rumor is completely unfounded, no matter what George tells you.
But because I'm a storyteller, and I recognized the flow of the narrative of Westeros.
Here's the truth of it, the only legitimate, true-to-the-genre way Game of Thrones ends:
It doesn't.
It can't. There is no way to end it that would feel right, as y'all are discovering.
The entire series is about the human struggle for power, the wrestling for control. I mean, duh. It's just a mirror of our history, in all of its endlessly cycling brutality and falseness. That kind of story goes on, and on, and on, generation after generation, filled with war and treachery and plotting and greed. There would need to be a hundred books. A thousand. More.
It'd be both exhausting and insane.
I already get that from history itself, as bloody and fascinating and bizarre as anything Westeros offers.
And the news, God help us.
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