Saturday, June 16, 2012

Game of Thrones, where justice is best served by not being served

I'm in the midst of Game of Thrones and it's a pretty rough struggle.  When I say "Game of Thrones"* I mean the books and when I say "struggle" I mean life struggle.  I'm literally 3000 pages in and, since I don't want to give anything away, I'm going to use an analogy to describe how I feel on a pretty regular basis.

Let's say you enter grade school as a transfer in the 3rd grade to a Finnish grade school (I'm specifying Finnish, not to distinguish a difference in the culture, but so you can get a feel for how fucking hard it is to keep the names straight).  You get there day one and you meet some people. Some seem cool and others seem like they are kind of a dick.  Some seem important, others are clearly in the shadows.  Time moves on and you realize that you really like some people, they are great and treat you well, and are well liked by all, and even their follies are the kind we all make.  Others are just cruel, evil, wanton destruction types.  They are the bigger, badder bullies and they do terrible things.  The kind of terrible things that you feel bad about, even if they weren't done to you.

But this is no matter, there are teachers out there who will right the wrongs, recognize the good, punish the bad, and expel the wicked.  Such is the way of life, in a just world.

That is not how things are going as you come to finish (get it?) 3rd grade. The bad kids seem to have curried favor with the teachers, the good kids have been put in a corner, and the best kid just got expelled (if you watch Game of Thrones, I think you know where we are).

Ok, well not how it was planned, but we have 3 more years till we graduate, plenty of time to make amends.  But fuck no, you get no such justice.  4th grade comes and the bullies have been promoted to hall patrol and given gold stars.  Your friends, the ones plainly seen as good by all (even the bullies see their good) are being expelled left and right.  On top of that, you are being forced into the same classrooms, and onto the same sports teams, as some of the bullies, and as you get to know them, instead of their crimes being punished, they are explaining them from their point of view and you are starting to side with them.  The truly good people are being expelled and the bad guys are seeming not so bad.

5th grade is upon us.  Really cutting it close on the justice being served side, especially since your expelled friends aren't making it back to this school system any time soon.  Probably time to start dolling out at least a little justice.  This will be a good year.  It must.  A small victory perhaps.  At least one punished bad guy...right?  No.  The rest of your friends are expelled.  Four remain and all four are in some stage where they are completely helpless to exact any revenge.  The bullies continue to rule and are relatively unopposed.

Admittedly, I have another year and a half to go, but a year is a long fucking time and you can't unexpel these people.  Also, I've become so calloused to the calamities that befall my friends, that nothing you can do to the true bullies will possibly be horrible enough to fulfill the revenge I want for my friends.

This book could be considered a deeply depressing lesson in actual life, but actual life is generally much more fair.  Fuck you Game of Thrones.

*Note: It's funny how the name "Game of Thrones" has stuck, which is a fantastic title; while the actual title of the series, "A Song of Fire and Ice", is completely lost.  Probably because if fucking sucks.

1 comment:

Julie D. said...

Your blogging volume correlates to?