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.
Game of Thrones
The first season 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.
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), 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.
Online Reaction
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 tiled “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 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, X is Coming
The snowclone phrase Brace Yourselves, X is Coming was inspired by the motto of House Stark of Winterfell from A Song of Ice and Fire and the title of the HBO pilot episode. The advice animal Imminent Ned is typically captioned with variations of the snowclone template.
Search Interest
External References
[1] Wikipedia – Game of Thrones
[2] Wikipedia – A Song of Ice and Fire
[3] College Humor – Game of THrones House Sigils for Other TV Families
[4] TheOatmeal – Game of Thrones
[5] Reddit – /r/gameofthrones
[6] Chanarchive – Game of Thrones RPG
[7] The Onion – Game of Thrones Running Out of Unkempt Old Men to Cast
[8] Thought Catalod – What Game of Thrones Characters Would Tweet If They Had Twitter
[9] Dorkly – Stupid Game of Thrones Characters
[10] Tumblr – Winter is Coming, Bitches
[11] Deviant Art – game of thrones
[12] Chanarchive – helo /tv/ this is edward starch
[13] Metacritic – Game of Thrones
[14] Winter is Coming – Game of Thrones lands on tons of top TV shows of 2011 lists
[15] Washington Post – Skin is wearing thin on HBO’s Game of Thrones
[16] io9 – Is Game of Thrones gratuitous sex worse than the gratuitous violence?
[17] Twitter – @GameOfThrones
[18] Facebook – Game of Thrones
[19] Wikia – Game of Thrones Wiki