Let’s face it, Game of Thrones is having a serious identity crisis. It thinks it’s The Walking Dead, now. Careless inconsistencies abound! From a fiction writer’s perspective, the situation is disturbing. Sure, Walking Dead doesn’t own the zombie archetype. Anyone can use it, but it’s about the way Thrones is using it.
Zombie Weapons: More Careless Inconsistencies!
The whole army of the dead thing started to unravel over the problem of weapons. Used to be the living dead on Game of Thrones had to kill their victims with weapons, meanwhile the zombies called “walkers” on Walking Dead had to kill their victims by biting them. That wasn’t a huge difference, but it was something. For many seasons of both shows, these limitations remained pleasantly consistent.
In these last couple of Thrones episodes, though, I’ve noticed a lot of those lazy zombies don’t bother carrying weapons anymore. They just kind of embrace and engulf their prey, and maybe bite them, it’s unclear. Not only is this inconsistent with the rules of zombie-dom, it’s just damn illogical–a frustrating and careless inconsistency.
Getting bitten by a skeleton just isn’t going to kill anyone. In fact, the scary zombie that came out of the box at the great summit meeting in yesterday’s Thrones episode–it wasn’t scary at all, because it had no weapon. UNLESS you were worried about it biting you, or strangling you … or shedding old skin on you?
I mean what exactly can these things do to you without a weapon? Scare you to death? Boo! Their crumbly old zombie jaws wouldn’t kill anyone.
The whole issue with the dead on Thrones was that they carried weapons and had the strength to kill people with those weapons. Plus, they couldn’t be killed. However, someone in the Thrones writing room seems to have forgotten that the Thrones’ dead don’t carry viruses like the Walking Dead dead do. They’re just animated skeletal remains.
Keep Your Fictional Worlds Consistent
The lesson here being–and as someone who writes both memoir and fantasy, I take this to heart: when you’re creating a fictional world, you have to know the rules and stick to them. Otherwise, like a sad, undead skeleton, your story starts to crumble.
Thrones is a strong enough story to withstand some careless inconsistencies, but come on, this is a WAR, which is all about WEAPONS. So, Thrones writers, what exactly are the zombies’ weapons and how exactly do they kill people? I want answers.