this post was submitted on 23 Mar 2026
22 points (100.0% liked)
Chapotraphouse
14320 readers
636 users here now
Banned? DM Wmill to appeal.
No anti-nautilism posts. See: Eco-fascism Primer
Slop posts go in c/slop. Don't post low-hanging fruit here.
founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
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.
All magic in Game of Thrones are forms of blood magic. It isn't common because there is often a very high cost to pay and a strict taboo against even attempting it. Look at what happened to Dany when she attempted to use blood magic to exchange a horse for Drogo's life. The horse died, her unborn baby was sacrificed too without her knowledge and Drogo lived on in a comatose state.
Then Dany did blood magic in the other direction, burning Drogo, the Witch and her miscarried child in exchange for hatching the three eggs.
Lighting the glass candles? Requires blood. Offerings to the Old Gods at the Weirwood Trees? Human sacrifices and babies. Don't get me started on how many drowned victims had to be sacrificed to create the magic that saved Patchface's life via the merfolk. Shit is inherently evil. Magic in Game of Thrones is not a neutral act, and those who practice it openly are often feared and attacked.
but like what I wanted was for the magic-comic-back to be expanded on, like my understanding is there is a lot more of it portrayed in the books than there was in the show (but I saw the other comments mentioning that it's from the perspective of unreliable narrators) and what I want is to see how the dirt farming feudal serf society reacts to that
instead it was just like, dragons are back, magic is back maybe (??), also there's face stealers who I guess could basically do magic even with dragons extinct?? and then not much more of it and it's like ugh lame yawn