I was going to do another of those silly blathering posts in which I threaten to rewrite history so as to remove either George R. R. Martin’s oeuvre or J. K. Rowlings’s from the world, forcing Dopers to choose between the two. But I’m not gonna, partly because I don’t care enough, partly because I’m not sure I’m using the word “oeuvre” correctly, but mostly because I find it difficult to believe that there’s people who are fans of both works. So instead I’ll run a simple poll asking if any of y’all are fans of both, or if the radically different worldviews of the two sets of stories makes that impossible.
Poll in a moment, but don’t let that slow you down. No recipes today, I can’t be arsed.
I haven’t read GoT, only watched the show. I happen to like both worlds. The crazy scheming murderous Westeros is a blast, and Hogwarts is much more lighthearted entertainment.
Sometimes you want to eat a big plate of overloaded nachos, and sometimes you want a peppermint candy.
I just binged thru the first 4 seasons, twice. I find the show a lot of fun and interesting, as well as marvelously executed on all technical fronts, but I always think as I watch, “man, it would suck to live in this world.”
ETA: Oh, and to the OP, yeah, I like both HP and GoT just fine. I also like LotR, Narnia, Safehold, the Riverworld, Dune, and the first Shanarra book, among others.
I’m not a fan of the fantasy genre in particular, but I like good books and good TV/movies so I chose both options for liking both.
I read A Song of Ice and Fire, which I enjoyed, but then I stopped reading the series because I started watching the TV show (which I love). I also read all of the Harry Potter books and have seen all of the movies (at least twice).
I don’t understand why it seems like a natural “no Venn overlap” thing to some…?
I like both fine, but for me it is kind of the difference between a great multi-course meal meal and an ice cream sandwich.
Harry Potter is relatively speaking a much slighter work. It’s okay for what it is, but not particularly extraordinary despite its outsize impact on popular culture relative to better works in the same sub-genre. GoT certainly has plenty of detractors, but IMHO it is much closer to the top of its own little sub-genre.
I just go and peruse Rule34 for a while, where she also isn’t wearing pants. Things average out nicely.
(My favorite Zatanna crossover, of course, was in John Constantine: Hellblazer. Oh, also in the little one-off story where she and Wonder Woman and Barbara Gordon were having a “girls’ night out” on the night before the Joker shot Gordon. Zatanna knew something was wrong, but not what. Wonder Woman gives a beautiful little speech about Oracles…)
I don’t usually like fantasy tv and movies, though. Obviously, there are exceptions. I think fantasy movies make the same stupid mistakes scifi movies do, thinking that the setting is what’s important instead of the story.
Of course Avatar made umpteen-billion dollars, so what do I know?
I haven’t—at least not yet—gotten around to giving Ice and Fire/Game of Thrones a chance. If and when I do, I might like it or I might not. But, if I do like it, I doubt if I’ll like it for the same reasons as Harry Potter. Because, as you say, they do have different worldviews, and I find myself more sympathetic with HP’s. One of the reasons I love at least some fantasy literature is that I love a believable and well-earned example of Good Triumphing Over Evil. I love a good eucatastrophe.
[QUOTE=J. R. R. Tolkien]
The eucatastrophic tale is the true form of fairy-tale, and its highest function.
The consolation of fairy-stories, the joy of the happy ending: or more correctly of the good catastrophe, the sudden joyous “turn” (for there is no true end to any fairy-tale): this joy, which is one of the things which fairy-stories can produce supremely well, is not essentially ‘escapist’, nor ‘fugitive’. In its fairy-tale—or otherworld—setting, it is a sudden and miraculous grace: never to be counted on to recur. It does not deny the existence of dyscatastrophe, of sorrow and failure: the possibility of these is necessary to the joy of deliverance; it denies (in the face of much evidence, if you will) universal final defeat and in so far is evangelium, giving a fleeting glimpse of Joy, Joy beyond the walls of the world, poignant as grief.
It is the mark of a good fairy-story, of the higher or more complete kind, that however wild its events, however fantastic or terrible the adventures, it can give to child or man that hears it, when the “turn” comes, a catch of the breath, a beat and lifting of the heart, near to (or indeed accompanied by) tears, as keen as that given by any form of literary art, and having a peculiar quality."
[/QUOTE]
That problem with that story is that it raises the question why Diana, being a lot more rational than the trust fund baby and certainly not inclined to share a laugh with a psycho after he’s shot and sexually humiliated a friend of hers, and not visit Barbara after she was home from the hospital to say, “Oh, by the way, I stopped by Arkham on the way here and broke every fucking bone in the Joker’s body. Also all the cartilage.”
I read the first Potter book and saw the first two or three movies. I don’t hate them, but nor do I like them. They’re passable, agreeable works of fantasy. I find it a mystery as to why they became big when any quantity of similar works didn’t, but I don’t begrudge them that since they are perfectly fine.
I haven’t read GoT. When I watch the TV series, I enjoy it, but it quickly exits my mind afterwards and I don’t feel very pressed to get more of it.
I grew up reading, almost exclusively, fantasy. But even as a kid, I don’t think that either of these works would have done anything for me. I prefer things with more substance than Potter and I prefer my fantasy to actually be fantasy, not just “quasi-medieval history”. From the intrigue and blood side of things, I do enjoy GoT, but I find that TV shows like Justified, Spartacus, Banshee, etc. do it in a more entertaining way, so those end up higher on my watch list.
That’s a major problem with superhero universes in general!
How can a universe exist with both Guy Gardner and the Joker? It can’t! Guy would take care of things, once and for all, and never worry about it for a nanosecond.
While I like both of them better than the average stuff on TV, I like Harry Potter a lot more. Bad poll options!
The problem with Game of Thrones is that it just gets old after a while. Harry Potter is saving the world, with a clear end game in sight even in the early books. Game of Thrones is like the promise of 1984 delivered: a boot stomping on a human face for eternity. After a while it gets old.
