Game of Thrones Fatigue

After watching the 87-minute Game of Thrones Season 8 episode last night, I told my friend on the phone that today I have Game of Thrones fatigue.

Don't worry, I won't give away anything in case you've yet to see it.

I stayed up until 10:30 p.m. to watch the show, and then stayed up another half-hour waiting on my sweetie. So I went to bed a little later than normal.

Us older folks need our shut-eye time, you know. Can't be out prowlin' around like them young kids. Or the young kids we used to be.

I am enjoy Game of Thrones but I do not rewatch the episodes all the time. I find them gruesome and they have many bad things happen to women. But I like the story line and some of the characters, although everyone knows by now not to like characters in this show because they generally die.

I was thinking back though to my very first "fandom," which wasn't Star Trek or anything like that. No, it was Xena: Warrior Princess, which started in 1995 and came along about the time the Internet was becoming a thing. We were tied into our desktops then and half of us could only access through dial-up with America Online, but it was the first place and first time I ever found myself involved with other people who liked the same TV show to an extreme that others found, well, nerdy or weird, I suppose.

The fandom gave me many friends, a number of whom I am still friends with today, mostly on Facebook. But these are some of the people that I have known the longest now, people who have been on my radar for almost 25 years.

That's a very long time.

Fandoms are interesting. I found myself with trading cards, dolls, comic books - anything Xena-related suddenly became a prized possession. I think most of my collection is now rotting away in the storage shed, with the exception perhaps of the trading cards and one Xena doll that sits on a bookcase.

Now I have a few Wonder Woman dolls on my shelves, but nothing like with Xena. It can be exciting to throw yourself into a TV or movie show, into its world, to visit with other folks who enjoy the nuances and weird eccentrics of a show.

But not to the point of fatigue.

Part of that fatigue comes from GoT not being on for a year and a half. I'm straining my brain trying to remember the characters and why they matter. Or if they matter. Or what they did to bring them to where they are now. But after seven years, those fine details have fled my brain.

Like I said, I didn't rewatch GoT because of the gore and nudity. I can see it once but I have no desire to revisit it. I've not read the books, either, and have no plan to do so. The TV show is all the gore and gruesome I care to deal with.

That said, if you like fantasy, then Game of Thrones is an interesting watch. If you like intrigue and character assassination, it's interesting to watch. There are many elements to it. People who automatically dismiss it because it's fantasy are missing the point.

Fantasy is dream come to life. It also harbors a lot of truth buried beneath the dragon hordes. Fantasy makes you think, makes you feel, makes you empathize with others. Besides, mysteries are fantasies, really. There's no Dick Tracy wandering around out there. Most fiction is fantasy of a sort. I'd argue that the Bible is the most fantastical of all books, really. The Lord of the Rings has nothing on that piece of work.

I suspect people who say they dislike fantasy have never seen a good fantasy. Their loss.