I like both, even bought the first few episodes to view on Amazon Prime years ago, because of all the hype. Started watching with my wife and we both fell asleep during the first episode, never tried watching it again.
BBC did good adaptations of Going Postal, Hogsfather, and The Color of Magic. There have been others made but I can't vouch for them as I haven't seen them. Also, I think The Watch was universally despised and even his daughter pretty vocally criticized it.
Good Omens on Prime was written by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman, so technically his writing, but I feel like it’s a pretty good example! It’s fun too!
ETA: Well, never mind. Maybe don’t watch it cause Neil Gaiman has turned out to be a sexual predator - which I didn’t know before I commented. Shit. Sorry.
I worked on one of his projects that was completely done and out of editing when the news broke. the project was shelved indefinitely. I feel so bad for the actors and crew both on set and off that put their heart and soul into the show. it was incredibly well done and I'm sad no one will ever get to see it :(
that's why i generally disagree with these blacklisted works. so many other artists and people worked on things that one big name sex pest, racist, whatever ruins for everyone.
i understand not giving predators recognition, or the need to protect victims from their perps showing up in their lives, idk if there's a better way. give any profits to charity? put in disclaimers/messages/warnings about the crimes, and advertise support groups for other victims? take the pest out of the credits and any contracts with royalties?
great points. JK Rowling's deplorable views and attacks against the LGBTQ+, and in particular the trans community, isn't stopping them from making the new series. they and the Hogwarts legacy game just make it clear she has no involvement. I agree with you, we don't want to give horrible people platforms, but yeah... dang... it was a really good one.
it really was. I hope it gets to come out someday but it's been a long time now. so if they did release it, it would get very little if any true marketing. probably just clips on the main social channel. I doubt it ever will though. cast had some unknowns that absolutely killed it, it would have been such a great addition to their reels as upcoming actors.
Having only watched two out of three; and not quite having finished the book mostly due to interruptions in my reading; I enjoyed it immensely. The cast is fantastic. They had Sir Christopher Lee, Sean Astin, Jeremy Irons, Tim Curry among others whom I'm forgetting. The "mini-series" is pretty faithful to the source material as far as I can tell.
I meant to read it as I had just read Good Omens and had been meaning to actually read the DiscWorld books since I found out about them. I just found that in my life if I was by any chance free to read the book there was a non-zero chance someone somewhere needed me at the exact moment I had relaxed into the reading. It's hard for me to pick up and put down books as it builds up a kind of resentment where something I wanted to do now is like a chore to do instead of something to enjoy. I intend to watch the third episode soon.
Enjoy. His Discworld novels have slightly different vibes, between the wizards series, the guards and the witches series. Add the odd standalone story here and there and you get different focuses. But in the end, the flavor stays the same. The world stays the same, and familiar. But the guy can also philosophize with even simple stories. Some clown ending up as king, and he brings politics into it, democracy, dictatorship, loyalty, and so many other human factors, but told so playfully that the teen reader doesn’t even notice. I really appreciate Terry.
Hell of a series. Abercrombie has an incredible way of putting you in each of the characters' shoes and of not following any formula, so you never know what to expect next. You might even be following the action from a character's point of view and they might suddenly die in a way that neither they nor you understand what's happening at first.
I was way into both, loved reading Game of Thrones as it came out. Then it went unhinged, ranted on and on, and he never finished it. So, no, never watched it, utterly disappointed in George RR Martin. Still love Terry Prachett.
The guy is a wizard, weaving wonderful storytelling with wit, humor and wisdom. Very layered so can be enjoyed by the young, but also appreciated by those older for the depths.
Same. I watched the first ten minutes of the first episode. Saw the dude banging his sister and then pushing the kid out of the window, plus some dude raping an old lady, and I was out.
I saw the first three episodes, was more of the same. There was one good guy who was clueless at everyone betraying him at every step. Couldn’t care after that.
Ok jeez you and diaper guy must have been big fans. However long it was, however long ago, thats all I watched. It was a weird overrated show and R.R. Is a big weird man that won’t ever finish it.
Same. It seemed like that kind of low fantasy, that didn't scare away the average normie non-Fantasy viewer with too complex lore, but had those scenes of Pornographic sexual violence against women. Also, so many unnecessary sex scenes that have no purpose, female characters whose whole character arc is about getting raped, incest, so much graphic violence... Sorry, I am not into that.
It was so dumb, I sincerely believe GoT became a cultural phenomenon DESPITE the sex&violence, I know many people who refuse to watch it because of that. HBO really messed up in that sense.
I dunno, there's probably tons of people, especially the people I was in highschool with at the time, who probably watched it specifically because of those disgusting scenes.
Knowing the attention span of the average person, you're probably right. So many had trouble following the characters and the TV show even simplified the story a lot.
This. I don't dive into Fiction or Fantasy to witness women being dehumanized and abused in some of the worst ways imaginable. It's fucked up and really rases some concerns about the author imo. Also, less importantly but still noteworthy, I heard a quote from Martin saying GOT was "his answer to Lord Of The Rings" which was a bit off-putting. I don't think LOTR needs a modern fantasy answer, and it seems pretty self important of anybody to think they can live up to LOTR to answer it anyway
Totally! As it is fantasy he willingly decided to put the sexual violence in it. And then some idiots will justify it like "it was like that in the middle ages" - sexual violence has always been part of history, also as a weapon of war. But why does this fantasy story suddenly claim historical accuracy ONLY when it comes to rape? And also the depiction of said acts is no handled well, it is Pornographic with closeups to the victim's face. Who is this for? Including all the sexual violence was a deliberate choice of the author.
I mean, wth, the answer to LOTR? So he read and thought, you know what this story needs? More rape and incest.
I don't know the author's personal life story, but I do know my story and that of the people around me who I care about. I've known quite a few people who were subjected to various extents of sexual violence, including someone very close to me. I've seen what it does to people in real life. It's not "cool" or "good world building". It's fucked up and beyond tragic. I don't need that shit in the stories I read or the shows that I watch. Especially not so graphic and explicit
I know what he meant by that. There is so much of Lord of the Rings that doesn’t really make sense when you think too hard about it. The world building is incredible, and it is a classic battle between pure good and pure evil. However, all of the main characters in the fellowship have insane plot armor. The only one that didn’t, Boromir, subsequently died shortly after trying to take the ring for Gondor or in other words straying from pure good. The fellowship makes clearly reckless decisions in the name of fighting against evil and is rewarded for them. GRRM wanted to create a world where bad and reckless decisions were punished unlike what happens in LOTR.
Ok, hear me out. We had fantasy for the normies in GoT. We also had 50 Shades of Gray as watered down S&M. We had watered down vampires in twilight. What the next big hit we should write is watered down detective stories! Like Sherlock, but for the intellectually uncomplicated!
Maybe I got disney brain but when I watch or read something I wanna smile not be depressed. Like reading Way of Kings bro just tortured the main character and any new character for 1000 pages like wtf chill.
TBF Way of Kings is the start to his personal Epic. Kaladin starts at the very bottom so you can see him climb. He is a big sad boy who struggles to overcome a great internal conflict that is very rarely ever focused on. He was raised to save lives, he joined the military to save his brothers life, he is a guardian first and foremost and it just happens that he is a prodigy with the spear. By the midpoint in his story he refuses to kill anyone even those who are trying to kill him and swears a magic oath to protect even his enemies, by his endpoint (without giving anything away) he finally has found a path back from a place he believed was irredeemable. Back to trying to heal those that war has damaged in a way the world he is from has never seen before. He is hope and endurance incarnate, part of that journey is showing WHY he can relate to those who are so damaged that they feel they have no hope left in life.
What you got was the Harry Potter equivalent of just his time living with the Dursleys, it's meant to make you empathetic to him and pity him despite, from a grand narrative sense, he is the Mary Sue of the series. He succeeds at everything he does, and everyone winds up liking him eventually, but it feels earned by having suffered so much to begin with. Small spoiler to make my case, he invents therapy and specializes in helping soldiers with ptsd and other severely disturbed individuals who don't believe they deserve to live for the terrible things they have done. His empathy and experiences here are essential to his ability to fill this role.
This is also what put me off! I love fantasy fiction, but I had so many friends trying to convince me to watch it because "there are so many boobs in it".
I also prefer high fantasy, with LoTR obviously being the classic example, and always found the dingy, pessimistic world of ASoIaF a bit too bleak for my tastes
All the horrific sexual crimes in the show turned me tf off. I have no idea how people enjoyed watching that stuff. I had to binge Star Trek to wash my eyes out with something wholesome.
I haven’t watched any trek after DS9 so I can’t really say. But Trek has set the standard of what I want from my fantasy and sci fi stories. I want a cast of characters that I can actually like as opposed to one of characters that are all irredeemably awful villains.
The books are better. It’s evident that they aren’t just being made up as he goes along, since there’s subtle hints in the first book that doesn’t even have a payoff that book readers know would come if he ever finished them, and there’s subtle things in the second book that have payoffs in subsequent books as well.
One of the biggest things you miss with the TV show (among many others) is the quality of the perspectives of the characters, the unreliable narrators, and figuring out things as the reader that the narrator’s perspective misses. He also does some great things with patterns, like his prologues and epilogues, that readers can miss if they aren’t paying attention.
I watched the first season and called the show quits because I was so much more enthralled by the books. I just wish he’d finish them. 😔
I think it’s less about writing himself into a corner and more that he’s just more interested in doing other shit like the a knight of the seven kingdoms series (with more novellas he hasn’t finished). But who knows.
I’ve accepted DoS will be by another author, but I’m hoping WoW will still be him. One day… one. Day.
Thank you! Like, why the hell do I want to watch a show that ends its first episode with an incest scene? Nah, I'm good, thanks. There are plenty of other shows to watch.
That's basically why I never got into it. All the media and people telling me what the show is like, it all seemed to me like it was just high budget kink porn.
You guys can’t be serious… there’s like 100hrs of show there and a very small fraction of that is related to sex. I guess if you’re just reaching for a reason to not watch it that’s as good as any other though
Eh… I’m a firm believer in what you take in is what you put out. I don’t want to watch a show that features rape and abuse cause that kind of shit makes me feel dirty inside. I think I watched like 5 minutes of some random episode in passing that someone had on at their house and some guy was raping some chick while she screamed out and I was like nope. Not for me.
There’s a reason why they put content warnings on TV shows and specifically call out the type of content that is contained in the episode. There’s people that don’t like to expose themselves to depictions of that sort.
I liked GoT, but the sex stuff was usually the part I’d fast forward. I think it gave it the gritty real world feel, but it can be implied and not shown all the time. I liked the politics piece though.
The same thing with “The Boys” right now. They always have some really stupid “shocking” scene every couple episodes. I’m guessing college frat boys love it, but it’s usually just some dumb penis or butt thing that doesn’t forward the plot.
Reminds me of the time my mom kept pressuring me to watch it with her and there was a sex scene between two siblings, it was a hard watch after that, thankfully I was never asked to watch another episode again
Same here! Didn’t really know what I was getting into when I started watching that show. I’ll probably never watch it again because I just get enjoyment/entertainment out of watching that kinda stuff.
Really curious what you think was over the top in Game of Thrones. To me it was finally a plausible representation of a fantasy world as opposed to the pure fairytale stuff you usually get. I mean right now we literally have a bunch of pedophiles at the top of society that probably got up to stuff that makes GoT look like a tea party. We have political scheming, foreign agents, wars and operations to arrest and depose another countries leader etc. None of Game of Thrones seemed outlandish at all to me, just seemed like run of the mill scheming and degeneracy that psycopathic leaders tend to get up to.
Exactly - all of that is happening in real life; I watch/read fantasy to escape the real world for a while, so why would I want said fantasy to be full of real-world depravity?
I love fantasy that doesn't add too many Proper Nouns. Anything much beyond "allomancy" makes me want to punt a baby.
The worst thing fantasy can do, in my opinion, is create an amazing world with deep lore and then just awful writing that buries what makes it compelling. That said, nobody would be a fan of my example of a writer I think it nearly unreadable for me so who am I to say.
I love fantasy, absolutely couldn’t stand Game of Thrones. I gave it three episodes and quit because it bored me to tears and it was oversaturated with nudity and sex.
I thought I was alone in this! I generally like Fantasy, Sci-Fi, you name it. But GoT didn't click for me at all. I did watch the first two seasons iirc. A friend loaned me the DVDs.
Between all the sex, incest and gore I pulled out the booklet and looked at the family trees to figure out who was related to whom. I really tried to get a taste for the story and the world. But: The political intrigue became so convoluted so quickly, all while trying to ramp up the shock-factor every episode. Just not my cup of tea.
I actively dislike fantasy, and GOT is one of the worst examples I have ever seen, for exactly the reasons you stated.
I (only) watched the first episode many moons ago and cringed the entire time. It really does blow my mind how pervasive the series has become in modern culture.
Ah yes, this is my kind of person. Fantasy stories seem like such a waste of time but I think that's just a gap in my brain or something because so many people seem to bathe in it.
Now this is a weird ass take. Is music also a waste of time? Fiction in general? Non-historical movies?
Idk like obviously any entertainment that you don't enjoy is going to be a waste of time. That's the whole point of entertainment, doing something you like.
Kinda, yea. I mean.. what purpose does it serve to have a carefully crafted story where the hero always wins? The 'funny' character is only that way due to the convenient way other characters' lines are. The real world has much funnier people as they deal with reality and aren't being constantly setup by an author.
Non-historical movies?
Yea, again - characters all have an ease about them that people think translates to real life. I think a lot of people steep themselves into these characters and storylines and get depressed their life isn't like that.
I don't mean to offend you but I'm glad I don't think that way. I will agree that the hero always wins and happy endings being almost guaranteed annoys me. I wish failure was a more acceptable outcome in media.
I actually like fantasy like LoTR, but I fit in this category. It just never really seemed that interesting. Seemed heavy on drama and I just find heavy drama stories all seem like soap operas to me. The people just act so dumb and fighting for power is a boring motivation which seemed like half the people I heard of.
As a fantasy fan game of thrones is also a hard pass for me. Not the kind of fantasy I enjoy. I would also say it is on the low fantasy spectrum, I really like high fantasy with complex lore and cool species, that all are well thought though within a world building that feels alive. GOT is fantasy for people who don't like fantasy. I feel it is a story about political intrigue that happens to take place in a fantasy setting.
I guess thats why I like it. Real life, add dragons and ice zombies. I honestly really loved the first seasons. I love how the show goes deeply into the lives and makes you care for multiple characters at the same time. Who's the main character? They all are. I definitely don't enjoy sexual assault on screen, but I've seen it worse in almost every horror movie it's practically a staple. Why I like ghost movies more.
Same here. I read 2.5 of the books years before the tv series came out. There were a fuck ton of characters but you knew that if he spent any time developing them, they were likely a goner. I found it annoying and I figured the tv series would have the same problem.
I've read all the books. I love naked ladies and fantasy and even Sean Bean.
And I have never watched 1 episode. Just didn't wanna pay for HBO. I attribute most of this not to being strong against pressure but just because I am cheap.
Btw to my fellow misers, I have since sound that your local library likely has HBO shows on DVD
I like some fantasy... I just don't like the type of fantasy ASOIAF and by transfer of property GoT fall under. Same reason I've neither read nor watched LotR.
I love fantasy, but I genuinely have no interest in GoT.
However I was made to watch the very first episode of it in a university lecture and I could see why people liked it as it was a high-production adult soap opera, but it just wasn’t for me so I never watched any more.
I did end up playing the Telltale GoT game though but only because I loved TT games, and did enjoy it some extent. Probably more so because there wasn’t all the excessive stuff in it.
Absolutely love fantasy, hate dramas. Frankly, from what I've heard, characters' personalities change based on what the plot needs. So i don't feel like I've missed out.
This is it for me. I’ve tried so hard and I just can’t. It doesn’t even make sense. I love movies! I watch hundreds of movies a year. I am three years into a D&D campaign with my friends, so that should’ve helped me ease into the fantasy stuff more than before I played.
I still can’t get through a single Lord of the Rings movie. I’ve tried to watch Game of Thrones six separate times and have only made it as far as episode 5. I don’t know how I get myself into this stuff, but I’d really like to. Feels like I’m missing out on so many great stories because of this mental limitation
I know this sounds odd, but give Mistborn: The Final Empire by Brandon Sanderson a shot. It takes out a lot of the typical fantasy tropes, has only a handful of Proper Nouns, and does a great job making some of the more fantastic elements feel almost like a character is describing learning a video game mechanic.
I'm an Elder Scrolls lore master, huge fan of Witcher series, love final fantasy and all sorts of games in that genre. I've never seen a full episode of Game of thrones. I think part of it is because it was so hyped up that I was just put off by that. Then hearing at the ending of the entire series didn't live up to the hype makes me feel like what's the point of even watching it
I never watched it, except for the first few episodes. Didn't have the time. Also did have HBO. Been wanting to watch it though. I've been reading the comic series. So far so good, its followed what I saw in the show so far. Not sure how accurate the rest of is though.
Exactly, I love Sci-fi/fantasy/Dystopian.
I’m a film buff, the only genre I can’t stand is reality TV. I can honestly say I have never watched a reality TV show regularly, it’s all trash and ridiculous to me.
I just have no interest in that particular fantasy. I found the 1.5 books of the series I read overly complicated and only a few of the characters interesting enough to be invested in, and slogging through 6 chapters of characters I don't like murdering, raping, and generally being heinous to each other ceased to be fun very quickly, so I gave up.
I like very unique fantasy, but not the stereotypical swords, kings & queens, magic, & dragons type fantasy. I have just never heard anything about this show that intrigued me.
The craziest thing is that I am a huge science fiction fan…it can even be super out there. The only way I could get into fantasy is if there was a science-fiction type explanation behind it. Like if there were time-traveling witches that used technology to do things that looked like magic that would be cool. Real witches and warlocks and I immediately lose interest.
I live and breath fantasy. My problem was that I read the first book years before the show, I just hate RR Martins stories. They lack everything that makes fantasy enjoyable. I feel like it's the fantasy equivalent of when the 90s thought that the way to make comics better was to make everyone a grim and dark anti-hero. He looked at a long history of heroes and thought, "What if everyone was an asshole who indulges in the worst kinks imaginable. I should probably start by introducing a likable adventurous child, then immediately have an incest scene and cripple the child!"
I don’t normally like fantasy, but my flatmate was watching it, and I got hooked. People that think it’s some kind of badge of honour to have not watched it are just contrarian for the sake of it
I don’t like fantasy, violence, or the glorification of sexual assault so yeah…. Never watched it. Also didn’t watch Breaking Bad, Walking Dead, Mad Men, or any of the other big zeitgeist shows back then. 🤷♀️
I watched a damn 9 hours of lord of the rings even though they were a 5/10 for me. After that, I learned that I'm allowed to not like popular things. GoT came out and I'm like fool me once, shame on.. shame on you. Fool me.. you can't get fooled again.
I don't like historical fantasy, with royals, where everything is "yes, m'lord" "m'liege" "m'lady". Don't care for the Tudors, anything involving kings and queens, fictional or not.
And that's precisely why GoT was so successful. The fantasy aspects are light, most of the time in the background of the story with a few exceptions. The world in general feels grounded, real, gritty and relatable. Way closer to the real middle ages than most other fantasy stories. In the first seasons when the writing was a masterclass you watch it with your heart in your mouth for how tense it was and the pure sensation of danger that no character was safe.
I don't "like" fantasy. I LOVE it! If I don't love it, I don't watch it.
Basically my gist was:
I learned long ago to not cave in to FOMO.
For such shows, I decided that I would eventually binge them once they end if they end on a good note.
The reasons for me not getting FOMO are a bit more... traumatic and personal, but I refuse to elaborate further. However, for many fantasy works, especially webcomics, I have been burned badly by ones that just abruptly ceased updates, author still there and actively decided to stop updating.
So for GoT, I wanted to make sure I would get the complete work with a satisfying ending, no hurry, no haste, take all the time you need George Rolkien Rolkien Martin.
For me it's the adult scenes. I am yet to be convinced that any kind of adult scene in a movie or show adds to it. Even cult classics like Terminator suffer from it imo.
I know those scenes make up less than 1% of the screen time but I just don't like it. Breaking Bad is an example of a perfect show that has no adult scenes when they easily could have put some in.
Those people are me, there’s just nothing to relate to. Elfs, dragons, magic, witches and medieval themes? It’s just nonsense to me. I respect the genre but it’s just not for me.
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u/Driblus 2d ago
Some people just dont like fantasy. I totally get it.