Chapotraphouse

Personal opinion of/c but GOTs identity kinda strives on being the grounded 'realistic' & edgy fantasy.

The novel series plays with unreliable narrators and historical distortion under medieval level historians a lot more, leading some fans to theorize that the world isn't magical, but rather a sort of regressed sci-fi world, with observed magical abilities plausibly being sci-fi concepts related to genetics instead of prophecy.

IMO, it does take a brilliant writer to create a world textured enough that people can dispute the nature of it all, within its own genre conventions.

I have a hard time taking the political intrigue aspect of high fantasy settings seriously. The dragons in gambo had to be introduced later on and brought into the already functioning seven kingdoms (i know they used to have dragons before)

An experienced wizard in high fantasy may as well be a dragon and it makes a lot of the politics seem futile when the court wizard can launch a missile from their hands.

I'm sure it's possible. The Malazan series does it pretty well

I'm still pissed we didn't get Lady Stoneheart in the show

The political aspects were okay, but the magic was more fascinating

But then one aspect of the setting is that most people didn't really believe in magic, dragons or the things beyond the wall; most people didn't believe in giants or the walking dead but there absolutely were giants and whitewalkers beyond the wall. Unless you lived by the wall, most people seemed skeptical.

the books did have a lot more of that, most of it was cut for the show

much more time warging

tons more prophecies

marwyn the mage

lots more with glass candles and the cult of starry wisdom

euron greyjoy is magical and eldritch in his villainy and is foreshadowed to cause the 2nd long night be calling down a meteor strike

there's merfolk called squishers and they are real and eat people. Biter is a half-breed with one such creature

the white walkers are more ghosty and ethereal and less zombie guys

There was a line in Fullmetal Alchemist: Conquerer of Shamballa, where Edward Elric and Mabusa (a filmmaker) were having a conversation about other worlds/parallel theory and the conversation mentioned "what if Alchemy prevailed" and treated it as a magic system.

Paraphrasing, Edward responds that we wouldn't know the difference since it'd be another technology for people to use. It wouldn't be magic it would be mundane.

Part of the appeal of magic in Television/film and series is that magic is mystified, undefined, and rare. If it were commonplace then it'd have to be game-ified (i.e, mana, trinkets, runes, power level) and then the show's magic would be something like latter era seasons of Supernatural. A science unto itself with magic batteries like grace or soul power instead of an esoteric channeling of incomprehensible mysticism.

The magic is interesting because there's not much of it. If you put a lot of magic into the world then you have to do things like explain why magic isn't used in the day to day economy of the world.

The show achieves this by making magic so rare that everyone doesn't believe it is real.

If people believed and accepted magic was real then you'd have the whole of society structure around using it as part of the system, you end up with Frieren's worldbuilding instead where whole structures of society are engaged in creating a magic-using profession due to its usefulness.

Game of Thrones is a fantasy setting where the magic is disbelieved so it doesn't have the academic schools of magic you see in other fantasy settings.

https://awoiaf.westeros.org/index.php/Bestiary

check out all the shit that's in the books, either mentioned or directly encountered or referenced in myth and lore. Almost all of this stuff is "real" in the planetos world, but just very rare or in the fringes and frontiers of the world.

We do directly see: Merfolk/Squisher half-breeds and their descendents (Biter, Manderlies), White Walkers, Cold Wights (including sentient ones like Coldhands), Fire Wights (Deric Dondarrion, Lady Stoneheart, Jon Snow), Shadow Binding, Warging, Astral Projection (Glass Candles), Visions, Prophecies, Far Sight/Scrying (Glass Candles / Fire Magic), Time Travel (Bran interfering in the past via weirwoods), Glamors/Illusion Magic, Warlocks, Greenseers, Red Priests/Shadow Binders, Greenmen, Children of the Forests, Giants, Magical Horns, Dragons, Dragonbinding magic, Pyromancy, Wildfire, Qyburn doing non-fire/ice Necromancy ala Frankenstein, weirwood root networks underground are all connected worldwide, the drowned god saving Aeron Damphair/Patchface - both of which should have drowned and one of which were lost at sea for multiple days.

We will likely see at some point: Krakens, Euron calling down the red bleeding star, squishers making a more overt move, and a lot more overt high fantasy magic.

I want gamba thrones, were it's about anthropomorphic shrimp.

Wair till you get to Harrenhall in HOTD

If you only seen the show and not read the books this is an reasonable position

If you've read the books and think this you are a philistine