This Is a Safe Space: The Struggle for Those of Us Who Are Only Pretty Into 'Game of Thrones'

By Courtney Enlow | Miscellaneous | June 10, 2015 |

It’s taken me five seasons to admit something of this magnitude: I’m only pretty into Game of Thrones. Like, I really like the show, I watch it every week, I’d call myself a fan, but my level of fan is vastly different from other people’s level of FAN. And that level seems to dominate the internet. In a world where people either love a show and are FANS as in part of the FANDOM, straight up FANNERY O’CONNOR, or they just don’t care, I want to speak for those of us who care but don’t care as much as everyone else does.

We are here. We are proud. We are pretty fairly into this show.

Outside of the main characters, we don’t know anyone’s name.

Including and especially Youngest Stark. We don’t know what the hell Youngest Stark’s name is. Is it Riker? I think it’s Riker. Whatever, we’re pretty sure he doesn’t matter. He’s just…there.

This lack of nomenclatural knowledge might have something to do with the fact that all older white guys with receding hairlines look alike on this show. In fact, we only know contextually/by the grace of beard that these are different people.

That’s why we get really excited when a character we can genuinely care about is introduced. It doesn’t usually go well. Like this one.

Or this.

There’s a lot of stuff that happens that gets us really excited.

But there’s a lot of stuff that is pretty…

That’s not to say there aren’t certain characters we completely adore.

And that’s not to say we don’t have strong feelings when really shitty stuff happens. Like this.

Or this.

Because that stuff was messed up.

And then when there’s no fallout from something that seemed major, or we learn something wasn’t even in the books…

Because we totally didn’t read the books. Sorry.

But it’s not exactly a major protest when we quit watching.

Because full disclosure we were already kind of watching it like this.

So for those of us who are pretty into Game of Thrones but not super into Game of Thrones, this has been a rough season. There’s been a lot for people to care about and some of it has us all…