I rather unexpectedly finished my Game of Thrones prodject (intentionally misspelled) Saturday night. I thought I had a few more episodes to go. I’m not exactly sure when this phenomenon started but toward the end of the season, the episodes got fewer and longer and all of a sudden, I was done!

I am a bit bereft about the ending of the GOT series. I started watching it last fall. Alas, I could not keep up with it. So I read the books. There are five (long) books and if I have it right, the author has long been planning a sixth but has suffered from writer’s block. I suffer from writer’s block a LOT but my prodjects are nowhere near as epic as GOT. A daily blahg of blather and the functional specifications that I write at my financial tech job which pays the “rent” here at the Landfill. I finished reading the GOT books to the detriment of my Goodreads challenge for the year and then I began re-watching the TV series.

Apparently the TV series writers went on ahead and their story eventually diverged quite a bit from the author’s. At least I think it did. I believe they did consult the author and the general arc of the story seemed to ring true to what I think his vision is.

I did like how the TV series ended things whether or not the author may have agreed with everything. It wrapped things up on a positive note. I needed that after watching so many episodes of violence and dystopia (which may not be the right word) and family members dead or separated for years. I have a feeling the author might have needed to write 10 more books to wrap things up at the pace he was going. This is NOT a criticism. He is an amazing writer. I think he has an immense vision and hasn’t yet quite figured out how to tie it all back together. I think one reason this is okay was maybe that it gave the TV writers a bit of poetic license in their adaptation. For all I know, people will write dissertations about this someday but I will certainly not be one of them.

What I mainly had trouble processing throughout the series was the battle scenes. I could not follow them whatsoever and had to just kind of ride along, waiting until the end of the battle to find out who won and which characters made it through. But that’s how I personally process movie/TV battle scenes anyway and not a criticism.

All that said, I am now in mourning, wondering when I will be ready to start another series. The last episode didn’t end with insights from the TV writers and I missed that. I didn’t binge this series in the sense that I watched umpteen bazillion episodes a day. I saved an episode (or two (and once or twice three)) for each evening. I looked forward to that every day and savored watching it. I have heard that the Golden Compass is now a TV series. I couldn’t convince the GG to watch GOT with me but he has read Golden Compass and seems more open to that. I’m not sure if I’m ready to start a new series yet but I’ll get there.

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