Game of Thrones

About

Game of Thrones is an HBO medieval fantasy television series adapted from George R. R. Martin's series of novels A Song of Ice and Fire. The series takes place in the Seven Kingdoms of Westeros, revolving around a violent struggle for control of the Iron Throne between several noble families. The series is known for its extreme violence, disturbing subject matter and explicit sex scenes.

History

A Song of Ice and Fire

The first book in the A Song of Ice and Fire series titled A Game of Thrones was published Bantam Spectra on August 6th, 1996. In the following years, the sequels A Clash of Kings (February, 1999), A Storm of Swords (November 2000) A Feast for Crows (November 2005) and A Dance with Dragons (July 2011) were released.^[2]

Game of Thrones

The pilot season^[43] of the HBO television series created by David Benioff and D. B. Weiss debuted on April 17th, 2011. The series was filmed primarily at the Paint Hall Studios in Belfast, Northern Ireland, with other portions filmed in Iceland, Croatia, Morocco and Malta.^[1]

Reception

The show's first season received positive reviews from critics for its production value, character development and acting performances, receiving a Metacritic^[13] score of 79. On December 23rd, 2011, the Game of Thrones fan blog Winter is Coming^[14] reported that the show had been selected in both the Washington Post and Time's "best of 2011" television show lists.

The show has been criticized for its numerous scenes involving nudity and sexuality. On April 14th, the comedy television show Saturday Night Live ran a Game of Thrones parody sketch (shown below)^[41], which mocked the show's gratuitous use of nude scenes. On April 26th, Washington Post^[15] columnist Anna Holmes criticized the show for being aimed primarily at male heterosexual audiences and pointed out the absurdity of women in a medieval setting having Brazilian waxes. On May 2nd, Gawker's pop culture blog io9^[16] published an article titled "Is Game of Thrones’ gratuitous sex worse than the gratuitous violence?," which argued that the show's second season used disturbing and distasteful sexual imagery.

Red Wedding Reactions

On June 2nd, 2013, following the broadcast of "The Rains of Castamere" (Season 3, Episode 9), many reactions were posted online addressing various plot points in the show. A scene involving the mentally disabled character Hodor was mocked by Redditor jeffraider in a post on the /r/hodor^[25] subreddit, which received over 100 up votes in the first 20 hours. FunnyJunk^[28] user Sootypoorrat posted a screen captured image from the scene, in which the character Bran orders Hodor to stop "Hodoring" (shown below).

The scene depicting the event known as the "Red Wedding" was met with anticipation by many who had read the novels, some of whom encouraged the recording of television viewers watching the scene in a post on the /r/gameofthrones^[26] subreddit. YouTuber Horrorcirdan uploaded a compilation of the reaction videos on June 3rd (shown below), featuring many watchers reacting with shock and disgust.

The viral content site BuzzFeed^[27] published a compilation of animated GIFs and image macros from the show titled "25 Steps To Get Over Your Intense 'Game of Thrones' Depression." Other image macros and animated GIFs reacting to the scene were posted on the /r/gameofthrones subreddit (shown below).

On the next day, Game of Thrones actress Maisie Williams posted a Vine video^[42] reaction to the scene, which received over 1,830 tweets within 24 hours.

A Purple Wedding Reactions

On April 13th, 2014, yet another major turning point in the plot was introduced in "The Lion and The Rose" (Season 4, Episode 2), in which King Joffrey abruptly dies of poisoning during the feast for his own wedding. Having long been one of the most despised characters since the beginning of the series, King Joffrey's sudden death was immediately met with cheers and celebrations from the fans online, whose reactions were subsequently compiled into a video montage and uploaded to YouTube on the following day (shown below).

Breaks of Chains Rape Scene Reactions

On April 20th, following the airing of "Breaker of Chains" (Season 4, Episode 3), the fans took their reactions to Twitter to express their disgust and shock at a disturbing scene in which Jaime Lannister, the Kingslayer and the father of the late King Joffrey, rapes Cersei Lannister, his own sister and the grieving mother of Joffrey, over the altar of their dead son.

Omission of Lady Stoneheart

Following the airing of the fourth season finale on June 15th, 2014, many fans of the show expressed surprise and frustration over the notable absence of Lady Stoneheart, the resurrected form of Catelyn Stark after she is brought back to life by Lord Beric Dondarrion, in the episode. The omission of this character in the fourth season was met with heavy backlash largely due to the anticipation from the fans who have read the book, as Lady Stoneheart is re-introduced only three days after the Red Wedding in A Song of Ice and Fire. In less than 24 hours after the finale aired, the hashtag #ladystoneheart^[29] was tweeted out over 1,000 times.

On June 16th, the online reaction to the omission of Lady Stoneheart in the finale episode was picked up by several entertainment news sites, including Hollywood Life^[31]and FanSided,^[32] while Entertainment Weekly^[30] published an interview with Alex Graves, the director of the episode, who offered an explanation regarding the decision to leave out Lady Stoneheart from Game of Thrones:

"But to bring back Michelle Fairley, one of the greatest actresses around, to be a zombie for a little while -- and just kill people? It is really sort of, what are we doing with that? How does it play into the whole story in a way that we’re really going to like? It just didn’t end up being a part of what was going to happen this season. And finally one [more] reason: In case you didn’t notice, a lot happens this season … To add that in is something they opted out of. But what’s funny is that it was never going to be in the season, yet it took off on the Internet like it was going to happen.”

Season 7 Leak

In mid-October 2016, a Reddit user named awayforthelads posted a leak of what is supposedly the entire seventh season's plot to the Game of Thrones speculation forum, /r/freefolk. The original thread and the account have since been deleted,^[33] but there are screenshots of the potential spoilers.^[34] On October 17th, user maureencreates^[35] created a thread compiling awayforthelads' leaks. While not all of the information has been confirmed, certain important points of the leak were confirmed when certain actors were documented arriving in certain locations for filming,^[36] leading to speculation that all of the leaks may be legitimate. This drew the attention of major media outlets, including Complex,^[38] Deadspin,^[39] Huffington Post,^[40] and others. The leak was trending on Facebook on November 8th, 2016.^[37]

Ed Sheeran Cameo Reaction

On July 16th, 2017, season seven of Game of Thrones premiered with the episode "Dragonstone." The installment featured a surprise guest appearance from singer and recording artist Ed Sheeran (video below).

Ed Sheeran fans seemed to approve of the appearance. That night, on Instagram, Ed Sheeran shared a photograph of him on the show. He captioned the photograph (shown below, left) "Throwback to the time I was a Lannister." The post received more than 1.4 million likes in less than 24 hours. Sheeran also posted a selfie featuring himself, actress Maisie Williams, who plays Arya Stark on the show. The post (shown below) received more than 1.3 million likes.^[47][48]

The reaction to the cameo from Game of Thones fans was negative. Fans, by and large, disapproved of the appearance, saying that his presence took them out of the world of the show, which has largely be averse to having such recognizable guest stars before. Many online joked that they were disappointed by the show's writer's decision to kill so many beloved characters but not Ed Sheeran's character.

Many news outlets covered the reaction to Sheeran's appearance, including TIME,^[44] EW,^[45] NPR^[46] and more.

Season Eight Remake Petition

On May 9th, 2019, following the release of the divisive Game of Thrones episode "The Bells", Change.org user Dylan D. published the petition^[55] Remake Game of Thrones Season 8 with competent writers." In the petition, the author writes:

David Benioff and D.B. Weiss have proven themselves to be woefully incompetent writers when they have no source material (i.e. the books) to fall back on.

This series deserves a final season that makes sense.

Subvert my expectations and make it happen, HBO!

Within one week, the petition received more than 555,000 signatures of the campaign's 1 million signature goal. The petition has also received coverage by several news outlets, including The Guardian,^[49] CNN,^[51] Digital Spy,^[52] NBC,^[53] IGN^[54] and more.

The petition also became the subject of numerous discussions online. On May 16th, Redditor^[56] cgmcnama posted "Petition Megathread – Petition Content Only Allowed Here" in the /r/freefolk subreddit, a Game of Thrones fan community. The post received more than 860 points (94% upvoted) and 465 comments.

The petition was mocked by some on Twitter. For example, Twitter ^[57] user @pixelatedboat tweeted,^[57] "Petition for Game of Thrones to be reshot so that everything is the same except that whenever a character gets angry a train whistle sounds and steam shoots out of their ears." The tweet received more than 320 retweets and 3,700 likes in 24 hours (shown below).

Fandom

Parodies

On March 2nd, 2010, the /r/GameofThrones^[5] subreddit was created by Redditor DadfyddLlyr, which accumulated over 76,000 subscribers in two years. On August 29th, 2011, the Internet humor site Dorkly^[9] published a post titled "Stupid Game of Thrones Characters", which featured several image macros mocking the storylines of various characters in the series (shown below).

On February 20, 2012, the webcomic site TheOatmeal published a comic^[4] titled "I Tried to Watch Game of Thrones and This is What Happened", which lamented HBO's lack of on demand Internet streaming for the show leading to piracy.

On May 4th, an anonymous 4chan user started a thread on the /tv/^[12] (television) board featuring poorly drawn MS Paint illustrations of the characters from the series, accompanied by child-like descriptions with misspelled names. The thread received over 320 responses prior to being archived. As of June 14th, 2012, the Game of Thrones Wiki^[19] has over 1,300 pages, the official @GameOfThrones Twitter^[17] account has over 385,000 followers and the "Game of Thrones" Facebook^[18] page has over 3.1 million likes.

Fan Art

The fantasy series has inspired fans to create illustrations of the show's characters, many of which can be found on the art sharing community DeviantArt.^[11]

Theme Covers

Related Memes

Brace Yourselves

Brace Yourselves, X is Coming is a snowclone phrase inspired by the motto of House Stark of Winterfell from A Song of Ice and Fire and the title of the HBO pilot episode. Its advice animal character Imminent Ned is typically used to forewarn or proclaim the impending arrival of a highly anticipated event, a product or an internet meme.

You Know Nothing, Jon Snow

"You Know Nothing, Jon Snow" is a memorable quote attributed to the Wildling character Ygritte from George R. R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire. Due to its repeated appearance throughout A Storm of Swords and the HBO TV series adaptation, the quote has been regarded by some fans as obnoxious and celebrated by others in the form of fan art illustrations and image macros.

Joffrey Bieber

On April 17th, 2013, a single topic blog titled "Joffrey Bieber"^[20] was launched on Tumblr with the tagline "where fiction's biggest brat and real life's biggest brat become one," which showcased a series of photoshopped images in which the face of Canadian pop singer Justin Bieber is superimposed over the body of Joffrey Baratheon, one of the main youth characters portrayed as a willful, but reckless and sinister "Lord of the Seven Kingdoms" in the saga. On April 19th, two "Joffrey Bieber" images began picking up steam on Tumblr, garnering more than 2,600 notes and 1,640 notes respectively in the first two weeks (shown below).

In the following week, the ultimate anti-fan blog was covered by several entertainment news sites and celebrity blogs, beginning with Uproxx^[21] on April 23rd, BuzzFeed^[22] and Mashable^[24] on April 24th and Complex Magazine and A.V. Club^[23] on April 25th.

Meanwhile, the earliest known comparison between Joffrey Baratheon and Justin Bieber were drawn by Uproxx' staff writer The Cajun Boy in a tweet he had posted on April 3rd, two weeks prior to the launch of the Tumblr blog.

Hello, This is Daenerys

Hello, This Is Daenerys refers to a series of image macros that feature behind the scenes photographs Game of Thrones actors Emilia Clarke and Kit Harington in costume on their cellphones. Online, people have captioned the picture with hypothetical phone calls between their two series characters Daenerys Targaren and Jon Snow, respectively, generally focusing on Daenerys and Snow meeting.

A Lannister Always Pays His Debts

"A Lannister Always Pays His Debts is the unofficial motto of the Lannister family on the American television series Game of Thrones. Since the series launch in 2011, it has been the subject of parody among Game of Thrones fans (example below).

A Man Needs a Name

"A Man Needs a Name" is a memorable quote uttered by the character Jaqen H'ghar on the American fantasy television series Game of Thrones. On the series, the character Jaqen H'ghar trains Arya Stark (portrayed by Tom Wlaschiha and Maisie Williams, respectively) and offers to kill another for her. When asked for a name on her kill list, he says the line (shown below).

The Night King's Challenge

The Night King's Challenge refers to a popular reaction image based on a scene from the American fantasy television series Game of Thrones. On May 31st, 2015, the season five episode of Game of Thrones "Hardhome" aired in the United States. In the episode, the character Jon Snow (portrayed by Kit Harington) successfully survives an attack by the villainous White Walkers. As he escapes, the leader of the White Walkers raises his arms up and the dead on the field resurrect. Online, GIFs and images of the scene have been used to express intimidation.

The Shame Nun

The Shame Nun refers to a memorable scene from the American fantasy television series Game of Thrones during which the character Unella walks the character Cersei Lannister (portrayed by Hannah Waddington and Lena Headey, respectively) through the streets, ringing a bell and shouting "Shame!" GIFs and images of the scene, which first aired on June 14th, 2015, have become used as reaction images to express disgust.

Search Interest

External References