> Probably why I also prefer hard scifi - it must follow the known rules of physics, or at least have plausible extensions.
Well, if you're going to put in plausible extensions instead of following the rules then "i'm not interested in such lazy writing" as you stated. In any fictional story telling, there's going to be some creative licensing involved to tell the story. Hell, even in biopics and "based on true" there's a lot of creative license just to make the story interesting. Following the rules of known physics just limits the imagination to make for bland stories.
> I liked GoT a lot as it was driven by human decisions and foibles. But it slowly devolved into convenient magic absurdities, like resurrecting dead people, and I lost interest.
From the very off of the show, the resurrecting dead people was involved in the story. If it wasn't, "the night is dark and full of terrors" and "winter is coming" would be pointless. Just because the dead coming back was timed to happen with the story is just part of it.
I mean, next, you'll tell me that Zombieland or Shaun of the Dead were pointless since they were resurrected dead people too.
I think you've moved into the comic book guy territory of "worst book/movie/comic ever" type of meme
How does that change anything? If anything that adds a suspense element to the story: we're not sure if all the Lord of Light stuff is true, but finally when Jon is resurrected, we find out that it is.
To be fair, though, it was established before then that it was true, unless you didn't believe that Dondarrion had actually been repeatedly resurrected, and that it was just a story they told to make him more fearsome. Which is also fair, but it still feeds into the point of the suspense: if you had trouble buying the fact of the Dondarrion resurrections, then you finally got your answer when Jon got his treatment.
Also recall -- if you read the books and aren't just relying on the TV series -- Catelyn Stark was also resurrected after her death during the Red Wedding, though her resurrection didn't go quite so well physically, since her body had already partly decomposed in a river, or mentally/emotionally, as she turned into a non-empathetic vengeance machine.
I didn't like the Catelyn Stark resurrection, either. My interest in the books waned at that point, and I didn't finish it.
I liked the GoT where it was about human power plays, action, politics, intrigue, alliances, betrayal, love, death, etc. Suddenly mixing random magic into a well established structure just didn't work for me.
Both the book series and the show open with magic. It (and the fact that the people doing human squabbling, despite having a huge history of warnings about it that have faded into myth, were unprepared for it, and how they respond) is fairly overtly the theme of the series, and marketed as such.
I get not being interested in that theme, but being surprised and disappointed that the series progressively turns out to be about exactly the thing it tells you is the lurking force that most in the setting disregard that it is going to be about is... well, surprisingly poor media literacy.
It very, very clearly came not out of nowhere, even in the show. We had the Brotherhood of Banners resurrecting Bendric several times using the same magic, and in the book we had Lady Stoneheart to show what can also happen after being resurrected.
While the resurrection is probably going to happen if Winds ever comes out, it's not clear if Jon will actually be the Jon we know, or even Jon, after he comes back. Warging into Ghost will probably play a role, as that's a common theme in Dance.
Oh and, we had wights right from the very first book, maybe even Prologue ...
So it's not "convenient", nothing for GRRM is convenient currently, otherwise Winds would be out by now ...
The JS resurrection was not related to the zombies, as JS was able to resume a normal life.
If this could happen in the GoT universe, wouldn't you think that there'd be a massive effort by kings and others to resurrect dead family members? Or even talk about resurrecting them? There was no hint of that.
(Zombies violate the laws of physics, like conservation of energy, which makes it sad that most zombie movies try on some hackneyed explanation for them being the result of some virus. If you're going to try a scientific explanation for them, don't blatantly violate fundamental laws of physics.)
Well, if you're going to put in plausible extensions instead of following the rules then "i'm not interested in such lazy writing" as you stated. In any fictional story telling, there's going to be some creative licensing involved to tell the story. Hell, even in biopics and "based on true" there's a lot of creative license just to make the story interesting. Following the rules of known physics just limits the imagination to make for bland stories.
> I liked GoT a lot as it was driven by human decisions and foibles. But it slowly devolved into convenient magic absurdities, like resurrecting dead people, and I lost interest.
From the very off of the show, the resurrecting dead people was involved in the story. If it wasn't, "the night is dark and full of terrors" and "winter is coming" would be pointless. Just because the dead coming back was timed to happen with the story is just part of it.
I mean, next, you'll tell me that Zombieland or Shaun of the Dead were pointless since they were resurrected dead people too.
I think you've moved into the comic book guy territory of "worst book/movie/comic ever" type of meme