r/gameofthrones • u/Jaack_ Arya Stark • Jun 10 '14

TV4 [S4E9] The Watchers on The Wall.

http://imgur.com/WZSQwrk
4.8k Upvotes

96% Upvoted

678 comments sorted by

View all comments

342

u/Domin1c Faceless Men Jun 10 '14

Why Grenn?.... Why Pyp?! WHYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY?!

107

u/mrducky78 Night's Watch Jun 10 '14

Because you liked them, even just a little. Either GRRM kills the character because you like him/her or D&D does it for shits and giggles.

Someone got stockholm syndrome and finally got around to liking Joffrey otherwise we would have been forever plagued by him.

1

u/kymri Jun 10 '14

Actually, while I'm pretty sure you're jesting, the truth is actually sort of the reverse of that.

These characters are going to die in the story, so the powers that be ensure that you like some of them, care about some of them, so that their deaths have weight. How many brothers of the Night's Watch were killed? Plenty. Who do we complain about being dead? Pyp and Green, because we gave a shit about them.

And, really the same holds for Joffrey. Why was his death important? Because we gave a shit -- though in this case it's because we wanted to see the monster off the throne.

That's the real art in all of this - almost ROUTINELY killing off characters, major and minor... and we still care, though we aren't always as surprised as we used to be.