"Game of Thrones" was famous for a lot of things: popularizing long-form storytelling, pushing the limits of TV budgets, and killing off characters like it was going out of style. From Ned Stark to Stannis Baratheon to Daenerys Targaryen, there was no character who was safe. The shock audiences felt while watching these characters get bumped off is a sign of how few shows are actually willing to go there, but "A Song of Ice and Fire" author George R.R. Martin has always made this a part of his storytelling.
As Martin explained to The Independent, his distaste for low-stakes storytelling started back in his childhood, when he was unsatisfied with the superhero comics he was reading. "The stories never went anywhere," the author said. "Superman would be there, and his girlfriend Lois Lane, Jimmy Olsen his best friend, Perry White the editor of the Daily Planet, and something would happen. At the end of the story, everything would be exactly the way it was at the beginning of the story, for issue after issue, year after year."
