I honestly think Game of Thrones fucked up the media landscape just as much as Harry Potter, hear me out.
It started the trend of nihilistic defeatism and capitalist realism being presented as mature and adult. "The world is shitty, it can only every be shitty and trying to change things for the better is childish and leads to worse things than just accepting that you live in a shitty world."
I swear you can pin the decline of hopeful stories and happy endings in adult media to this shitty book/show that thinks it's deeper than it is. You can't have anything now without it trying to pull off a "totally deep bittersweet ending" in an attempt to be mature and subvert expectations.
Although, media literacy is so bad that this author thinks Trump is just like Daernerys Targaryan, who was about one of the only characters who wasn't a sex offender, so maybe libs haven't internalized GOTs shitty ideology too much
Mostly in the Starks and Danny’s arcs, but it’s everywhere tbh. One example: Ned dying for his morals, for trying to do good instead of acting in self-service. And his death causing the whole world to move. He had no rewards for his goodness, but the world still needed it to move and have a chance to change for the better.
Good example. I definitely saw how good is not rewarded and evil is rewarded, but I didn't really see how they represented good still being important in that world, except to some small individuals where acts of kindness are very important to them on a personal level.
But you have to see how those small acts cascade into actually giving a fighting chance for change, in the world and in individual people.