George R.R. Martin fans: stop taking your favorite series so damn seriously!

Okay, I've decided that fans of George R.R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire series take themselves and the books WAY TOO SERIOUSLY. I don't mean in the sense that Tolkien or Star Trek fans give a piece of their hearts over to the world, characters, and stories -- I mean in the sense that (unlike Tolkien fans) Game of Thrones fans seem to believe that Westeros is a freaking REAL world, or was a real world, or is representative of the real world. 

I was just reading a Wheel of Time fan board, and saw some Game of Thrones trolls arguing that, while they liked WoT, they LOVE Game of Thrones because it is a "realistic" world with "real" characters who act like real people in real situations, and that Westeros is just like ancient Rome (what???) and like medieval Europe all at the same time. (Yeah, again -- WHAT???) 

I like ASOIF too. I think GRRM is one of the BEST writers writing today -- but these diehard GoT fans really need a reality check. You're reading a series of books in which ice monsters, from beyond an 800 foot tall wall, are coming to overthrow the seven kingdoms which was once ruled by a family who mated with dragons! (Or however it was they got their magical, dragon-like abilities to survive being burnt at the freaking stake.) Yeah.....nice, gritty, realistic stuff, wouldn't you say? 

Look, I'm NOT bashing the fantasy genre. Fantasy, of one sort or another, is pretty much the only type of fiction I read these days. The fantasy genre does things that so called "mainstream" literature does poorly or cannot do at all. It deals with the "other" and can make commentary on subjects that, we otherwise might be uncomfortable with. But there is this ugly side to the fantasy genre -- or rather, fantasy fans -- that assumes that their favorite story is the BEST story. WoT fans did it. Sword of Truth fans did it. And now ASOIF fans do it. For them, all other fantasy is second class, or outright "crap" while their favorite book is "real literature, take that Terry Goodkind/Robert Jordan/J.R.R. Tolkien."

Of course, in fifty years I doubt that there will be entire scholarly societies dedicated to doing scholarship on Westeros like they do with Tolkien. But that's irrelevant, because George Martin has a badass dwarf who gets laid -- and that proves he's the best!

Don't get me wrong. I love GRRM's emphasis on the "grey" reality of human nature -- I like the story, but to pretend it's anymore "realistic" than WoT (or LOTR, or Terry Brooks) is total bullshit!  Yeah, more people die and they use the words "whore" and "fuck" more than in other books, but that doesn't make it "realistic," just different. If Martin's Westeros was representative of the REAL Middle Ages, we'd definitely see the brutality, but we'd also see the beauty of that time too. We'd see the poetry, the language, magnificent cathedrals, monasteries educating people etc. Martin has no beauty in his story. It's horror after horror. I get that that is the "point" of the story. But, in my opinion, that  makes it "gritty" but not necessarily anymore  "realistic" than anything else.