3. Anyone Can Die
What It Is: Ned Stark, Jon Snow, Tywin Lannister, The Hound, Joffrey...just a small sample of the big names George R.R. Martin has killed off over the course of A Song Of Ice And Fire. Anyone can die means that no character is safe. When it comes Martin, anyone really does mean anyone. What It Really Means: There's a reason Game Of Thrones and specifically George R.R. Martin has garnered a reputation for being utterly ruthless. Over the course of the novels and TV show, dozens of characters have been killed off in unexpected circumstances, proving the nature of this particular trope. But the trope is immensely useful. It achieves a number of goals all while lending the story a palpable air of realism. After all...what's political war without unexpected death? Not only does Martin's commitment to the Anyone Can Die trope create an unbearable tension throughout his novels, it raises the stakes to extraordinary heights, removing the safety blanket mentality of oh, he or she is a main character, so they're bound to make it out of this alive. It also allows Martin more freedom when it comes to developing the overall story. The series is so huge that it's unlikely Martin has had every little detail plotted out in advance. It's more than likely that he's figuring a lot out as he goes along (at this stage, though, lets hope he at least has some idea of how it all ends). This allows him to commit to multiple characters at once, swapping them out when he realises they aren't working and shifting focus onto someone else.
Brian Wilson
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Commonly found reading, sitting firmly in a seat at the cinema (bottle of water and a Freddo bar, please) or listening to the Mountain Goats.
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