Seven Bloody Sins

To mark the end of another insane season of True Blood, and to celebrate HBO’s upcoming blood-and-guts fantasy series Game of Thrones, Winter-Is-Coming.net (youronlychoiceforup totheminuteGameofThronesproductionnewsandrumors) has tasked me, your friendly neighborhood FaBio, to compare and contrast seven shared themes between the two shows.

I’ve agreed, if only because A. I’m a fan of True Blood; and B. most HBO viewers have no idea they’re about to get painfully smacked in the mouth by a “fantasy” series. Warning some of them is only fair.

Poindexter: Hey, Dherek, Game of Thrones is on! Come watch some of this!

Dherek: Naaah, that fantasy crap is for pussies.

Poindexter: And yet, inexplicably, you like True Blood.

Dherek: Yeah, ‘course. True Blood is badass. It has vampires. And werewolves. And tits!

Poindexter: Dude, Sookie’s a fairy.

Dherek: … you have a point. Alright, I’ll watch just a litt—AHHH HOLY MOTHER OF CROM, THIS SHOW IS SO BADASS IT’S EATING MY EYES!

[dramatization]

So we’re here to spread the word. Today’s post isn’t just for our regular readers; today we’re reaching out and inviting True Blood fans to come on over, see our site, and whet their collective whistles for yet another mindblowing television series.

Obligatory Warning: This post contains some spoilers, as well as excessive sex, violence, and language. If you’re offended by any of these—well why the fuck do you watch True Blood? Jesus …

Necessary newbie blurb: Game of Thrones is the television adaptation of George R. R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire series of novels. The first season encapsulates the first book, A Game of Thrones, first published in 1996. It stars Sean Bean as Eddard Stark, and boasts a number of other excellent, lauded actors, such as Peter Dinklage, Lena Headey, Mark Addy, Aidan Gillen, Charles Dance, Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, Natalia Tena (Tonks!), and other luminaries. Additionally it introduces some fresh talent, such as Emilia Clarke as Daenerys Targaryen, and Kit Harington as Jon Snow. And the kids. The kids will be epic. We hope. (Real pretty, there, Branflakes.)

Seriously, the acting will be bloody phenomenal. Bank on that.

So here we go. Seven things True Blood and Game of Thrones have in common:

1. Badass Wolves: Werewolves and shapeshifters play second fiddle to the bloodsuckers of True Blood (Joe Manganiello’s six-pack begs to differ), but in Game of Thrones we have an entirely different kind of wolf. Our direwolves may start out cute and cuddly, but those little bastards eventually grow up—and some of them get to be as big as horses. Wolves in Game of Thrones play a pivotal role in the story, bonding with (and fighting alongside) the Stark family children. There’s also this little thing called “warging”… which I won’t get into now, but suffice to say the badassery grows exponentially.

2. Crazy-Ass Kings: What are thrones without kings? Game of Thrones boasts a number of whacked-out royals. Many of the older ones were literally batshit crazy, and the current ruler of the Seven Kingdoms, Robert Baratheon, speaks loudly and carries a big warhammer (usually accompanied by a large alcoholic beverage in his free hand). But as much as I’d like to say Game of Thrones rules the “crazy” roost, we got nothin’ on Russell Edgington, the Vampire King of Mississippi. THAT dude is fucking nuts! True Blood—you get the win.

“Now time for the weather. Tiffany?”

3. Veiled Magic: True Blood has its share of supernatural occurrences; the premise that vampires are “out of the closet” is essentially the story’s overriding plot, and a lot of other crazy shit keeps rising up and biting the poor people of Bon Temps in the ass. In Game of Thrones, magic is a slightly different beast. There is an understanding that the supernatural used to exist in some form (the skulls of extinct dragons hanging from throne room walls tell us that much), but generally speaking, magic is a forgotten thing. The story is set in a very believable, starkly realistic medieval world, so when the magic starts slowly eking back in—it takes everyone completely by surprise. If you’re watching Game of Thrones to see this, or this, or even this, you’ve tuned into the wrong show.

4. Deviant Sex: Where should I begin? True Blood has vampire-on-vampire sex, human-on-vampire sex, human-on-border collie sex … you name it—they’ve done it. True Blood sex can be found with a wide variety of different people in a wide variety of different places, and in all sorts of interesting positions. Well, Game of Thrones is no slouch in the fuckbusiness either. In fact, we’ll see your necrophilia and your bestiality and raise you a fine slice of dwarf-on-prostitute action. After that we’ll throw in some nice underage sex (it’s consensual … mostly), and then top it all off with a heavenly slice of incest!

And that’s just in the first episode. Winner, winner, chicken dinner.

5. Brutal Violence: When you stake a vamp in True Blood, the fangers don’t just conveniently “dust off” in a nice, clean, Whedonesque sort of way. No, the gore sprays, and it sprays with impunity. Gore is to True Blood what Bourbon Street is to New Orleans: it may not be the best part, but it’s what most people end up talking about. It’s different in Game of Thrones; I’d like to think our violence is more … normal? We have beheadings (men and horses alike—no creature is safe from a good hacking), we have wolves ripping out stomachs, we have children getting cleaved in two. Overall, I’d say the mayhem in True Blood is still a bit more over-the-top (See: Deviant Sex, above), but in my opinion, Game of Thrones‘ violence hits harder because it often happens to the characters we love the most. (Don’t blame HBO if and when your favorite character bites it—blame George R. R. Martin.)

6. The Undead: True Blood has vampires; Game of Thrones has the Others. And no, these are not ineffective leftovers from the Lost island. (For the record, GRRM’s Others were here in book form long before Lost was even a gleam in J.J. Abrams’ eye.) But what are the Others? There have been arguments on various message boards concerning this little mystery … and one of the many theories is that they’re actually vampires! Pale white skin, susceptible to fire, the ability to slip like shadows through the dark … not the mention a few other surprises that I won’t spoil. (Look out, Will!) Some people scoff at the notion, but the theory may not be too far off. Perhaps it’s time for a re-read of George R. R. Martin’s vampire novel, Fevre Dream to see what his idea of a vampire really is…

7. It’s HBO, Bitches: Charlaine Harris and George R. R. Martin are (sadly) two of a very small pool of authors whose works have been given a fair shot at legitimate adaptation. Network television simply does not allow the freedom that subscription cable has, and books that are adapted to network television are hamstrung straight out of the gate; the “bite” gets taken out, so to speak. Let’s all take a moment of silence to honor the poor adapted novels that never really had a chance. (I’m talkin’ to you, Legend of the Seeker.)

Subscription cable is the only option if you want to see everything a given story has to offer, and HBO still rules that roost. It was and still remains the best option for the Sookie Stackhouse novels, as it does for A Song of Ice and Fire. We are the fortunate few.

Can’t wait for spring. Winter is Coming.

• Published on 09/17/2010 at 12:00 PM CDT
• Last updated on 10/20/2016 at 5:14 PM CDT