Certainly. You just don\’t care when it happens to boys and men.

I mean, why the focus on the innocent, teenage/pre-teen girls? I get that GOTs is totally brutal but it\’s prettttyyyyyy equally brutal to everyone across both genders and all ages… which is how life actually is and why I actually like GOTs more than other shows–it\’s real. Like that\’s how death actually works? Death can be unpredictable, it can be swift, sometimes it\’s the good guy, sometimes it\’s the bad. Sometimes it\’s slow and gratifying, there\’s closure and everything, and other times it\’s fast and unfair with important people dying suddenly without so much as a proper last word.

GOTs\’ unpredictability is (IMO) it\’s saving grace. Nothing is worse than predictability. I HATE stories where all the good guys are obviously going to live and ultimately all the bad guys die without exception with only the middling companions you don\’t care about really at any risk. GOTs turns that model on its head, killing all the people at the extremes and leaving you with a super complex middle which is usually how life actually works and why real life isn\’t as simple as what\’s on TV.

Tropes can only go so far when one removes an active sense of danger and unpredictability. If you did that, GOTs would basically just be LOTRs. While LOTRs was great, it was more like an epic ballad and so you still suspend your disbelief even though the ONLY main good guy to actually die was Boramir (personally I wished Gandalf had stayed dead for realism\’s sake). Like how you gonna fight not one but THREE EPIC WARS and lose only ONE important dude? But GOTs is trying something different, it\’s trying to be that medieval show that keeps it real. If it knitpicked who should suffer and die, there would be no excitement, no rollercoaster of ACTUAL emotion. I feel like your review is asking for GOTs to be more like LOTRs which it isn\’t… at all… and if it was you\’d be complaining about how it\’s basically just LOTRs.

When you actually see brave innocence (Shireen)… develop complex likability over time (Hound)… visualize inner conflict (Jaime)… experience personal and heartbreaking loss (the Starks)… root for underdogs (Pod and Brienne)… or build towards the satisfaction of ultimate revenge (Arya and Sansa)… ask yourself if you could have forged any of these bonds without a liberal and brutal usage of genuine suffering and loss.

I didn\’t see complaints about the old woman in the North getting skinned alive by Ramsey… or Mormont getting grey scale… or Theon/the Spider getting castrated… in episode 1, the only real person who suffers is a young boy (Bran). When Arya stabs the young farmboy through the belly no one even flinched and the same when the Hound killed the young ginger boy by running him over with a horse. So these didn\’t touch you at all and they were all perfectly acceptable means to an end because they\’re not young girls?

I know including young girls and women in these brutal acts is hard to watch but it\’d definitely be more unrealistic and predictable if they, for some random reason, had everyone suffer BUT young girls and women. Like if this was the case, what would it look like? So only young boys, young men, old men, and older women are expendable? Honestly, that\’s just as insulting to women (particularly older women). I would see your point if they ONLY made young girls and women suffer but I think if you actually kept count of on-screen deaths, it\’s like 20:1 in favor of killing, skinning, castrating, de-handing, and burning-alive dudes. They even put in some rape for Theon in that one scene.

I\’m not keeping count, I personally find ALL of the suffering equally hard to watch, and honestly, I didn\’t even think about it til I read your article. Then again, one of my favorite authors during childhood (David Gemmell) was WAY more brutal than Martin when it came to killing, sometimes ALL of, his main characters. He was no Hemingway, but still his books would actually get me to genuinely cry because he showed how cruel, sudden, unceremonious, and unfair death can be. You ACTUALLY had NO IDEA who was going to live or die and EVERY CHARACTER no matter how good or bad was up for grabs. Even with subpar plots, that makes for a crazy page turner. Believe.

The feminism of the matter is understandably hard to balance because to fully employ it, one must not only fight to gain rights (say like equal pay) but at the same time must also fight to give some up (cultural expectation of men to pay for dinner as one monetary parallel). But almost always, if you take a step back, it\’s a pretty small price to pay for something that\’s totally worth it. I\’m sure women worldwide would agree it\’d be a verrryyyy small price to pay and would GLADLY split every bill with every man on every date EVER to suddenly achieve equal pay.

People don\’t make progress by demanding double standards… particularly for themselves and their own interests/demographic. You can\’t ask for awesome feminist heroes but then demand that one never show a young woman suffering something real. Think about how impossible that would be to do realistically and how trite the results would be even if you managed to make it work.

If I were to have a complaint about GOTs it\’s still predictable once you figure out the formula. The more disgusting a character is suddenly set up to be (Ramsey, Trant), you know they\’re gonna suffer/die. The more heartfelt innocence and beauty you see suddenly crammed down your throat (Shireen, the Starks), you know they\’re gonna suffer/die.

Again GOTs turns the traditional model of good guys live and bad guys die by flipping it on its head and bringing the focus of the story to the middle. The only characters who seem to survive are those whose stories revolve around struggling between the two extremes versus representing them (Tyrion, Jaime, Brienne) with all those who have more 1-dimensional storylines at either end of the spectrum (Cersei, Trant, Hound, Ned Stark, Shireen) suffering or getting killed off to make the struggle of those who are left more complex.

I think the technique of killing off the extremes to drive up the complexity of the remaining middle is worth it. It\’s hard, I agree, but what do you want? A show that\’s predictable and easy to watch? I honestly believe this article would be far more harsh/critical if GOTs went that route and you may have "quit" it 3 seasons ago instead of straddling that threshold all the way up to the end of season 5.

It\’s one thing to support freedom of storytelling, but it\’s another thing to try to justify the act. There is literally nothing that Stannis can do to save himself in people\’s eyes. And if the show\’s creators are planning to redeem him in some way down the line, then they set themselves for a tough road considering how sweet they made the girl, setting her up over many scenes and making us listen to her plead for her life and scream as she died.

False. If you had bothered to watch this week\’s "Inside the Episode" you would know that the Shireen scene is something that GRRM has been planning in the books for a while now. It is not an independent choice by the showrunners to "push" some non-existent agenda.