On Hope, Escapism and Attrition as Discussed between Black Men

My Father doesn’t like Game of Thrones. Of course, I knew he wouldn’t when he stood in my home and asked to borrow the first season, but I handed him Ned Stark’s yet to be severed head in Bluray form anyway. As alike as my father as I am, I know his tolerance for violence, gore, and all out debauchery is a lot lower than mine. And yet, he too had heard about the phenomenon that was Thrones and thought he should at least see what the hype was. My father is an Omega-level nerd, so maybe there was some street cred to be lost if he didn’t at least try to watch it. By the time season four of Thrones had ended, coming off of arguably its best season, my father came back to me with season one in hand. [quote_simple]Me: You want season two? My Pops: Nope, I’m good.[/quote_simple] I don’t know if I’m going to win any nerd offs with Benioff and Weiss, but I’m probably approaching some minor expert status in Game of Thrones lore and history. And that means my overall knowledge base of Thrones compares to about 30% of what my Father knows about the Lord of the Rings history. To be fair, the man has been reading, ingesting, reciting, rinse and repeating the books, lore, and movies for about the same amount of time I’ve been alive, so you shouldn’t feel sorry for my nerd inferiority here. But for people my age, Lord of the Rings and Thrones share “a” universe, if not “the same” universe. The fantasy and lore, the humans trying to overcome old evil, it’s all familiar. But one of the big th…