If you are a Game of Thrones fan it may interest you to know that season 2 has been leaked in great detail. According to Tor.com “[n]otorious author George R. R. Martin has immediately taken credit for the leaked information becoming public.” Tor also quotes “an unnamed HBO exec” as saying “Reading is for people who want to be confused. We never do it. Why should our viewers?” Ah, April 1st.
(Most of my friends who are watching Game of Thrones had already read all the books published so far in the series before the HBO adaptation started, so I doubt they’re worried.)
Thus far I haven’t watched it. Partly it’s that the trailers give me no reason to watch – generally they’re showing the characters. This is great if you have read the books and know who you’re looking at. If you haven’t, well, why should I care, you know?
This is often my response to TV and movies, by the way. Why should I care? I will note I grew up in a house in the 70s and 80s where the TV was turned off on very rare occasions. I am well experienced in the tropes of cop shows, sitcoms, soap operas and action-adventure stories. (To this day I can recall more of the General Hospital and Dallas plotlines than I would prefer.) I hate procedurals, Law & Order most of all. I am bored by many sitcoms. I find cop shows are predictable and/or trying to hard to push my emotional buttons. (It’s not just a dead victim, it’s a dead victim who was a child molester and killed by a victim’s mother! Etc.) Then, if I do start to get into the story, the commercials kick me out of the narrative to shout about diets, cars, beer, sales, and other minutiae — often with a side of women-hating and self-loathing for the win.
I do like humor. I do like stories. There’s a reason I bought Daria and Coupling on DVD. I did go see The Hunger Games in the theater, even though I knew going in that the movie had a longer run time than it took to read the book.
There’s another factor, and that has to do with what do I want in my brain.
Sherlock Holmes: Listen: [gets up and points to his head] This is my harddrive, and it only makes sense to put things in there that are useful. Really useful. Ordinary people fill their heads with all kinds of rubbish, and that makes it hard to get at the stuff that matters! Do you see?
I have enough stress from real life. I don’t need stress from entertainment. I don’t want Biggest Loser or Fat March or Extreme Makeover: Weight Loss Edition or Hydroxycut commercials in my brain. I don’t need to compare my body to “Hollywood normal”. I also don’t claim to only be spending time on things that are perfect or useful. I want my leisure time to be spent on things I enjoy and that help me relieve stress. Sherlock makes me laugh. Rosemary and Thyme is beautiful and I can’t always spot whodunit. More often, I curl up with something like Murder With Peacocks or The Adept or Murder Must Advertise or Discount Armageddon, and … I smile.
Living ~400lbs 
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