The Pagan Sorrow of Game of Thrones
By Andrew Patrick
I. Introduction
There is an amusing internet meme, semi-current for the past few years, known as The
Virgin vs. The Chad. In its visual form, it features two young men: the Virgin on the left is pall
and skinny, dressed in dark colors, his unhappy face stares glumly at the ground in front of him
as he walks. The Chad on the right is goofily muscular, with a mowhawk like Guile from Street
Fighter. His clothes are bright and colorful and he is displaying himself with all the vulgarity of
a silverback gorilla. The Virgin is introspective, thoughtful, educated, miserable, weak, and
ineffective. The Chad is ridiculous, confident, unencumbered, and powerful. The joke is using
this heuristic as an almost counter-cultural critique of history and pop culture. You can adjust the
text and make minor image edits for each version. Reddit is replete with such displays, such as
The Virgin Fascist vs. The Chad Monarchist in the r/monarchism subreddit.
As a Civil War buff (such a nicer word than "nerd") of ancient vintage, I found George
Virgin McClellen vs. Ulysses S. Chad both hilarious and, in a meta sense, absolutely accurate.
McClellan was a bit too enamored of his army, like a child with a bright shiny sword, to do what
was necessary to defeat Robert E. Lee. He was kind of a nerd. Lincoln summed him up as
lacking "the killer instinct". And while the real-life U.S. Grant was hardly Chad-like, in the sense
of being hyper-masculine and brash in his personal relations, he had the killer instinct in spades,
the will to go straight for the throat of his opponent, and the refusal to stop at anything short of
total victory. Over-the-top humor can have the virtue of clarifying matters.
Now that Game of Thrones has run its course and ended on a note that rivals How I Met
Your Mother for fan disappointment, I cannot help reaching for this meme to explain my own
distaste for the finale. George R.R. Martin has been compared to J.R.R. Tolkein so many times
that there are actors portraying both men dueling in Epic Rap Battles on YouTube, and of course,
a Virgin Martin vs. Chad Tolkein version of the meme. So comparing the heroes of the two sagas
feels terribly inevitable. I forgo the visual element of the meme, but here's my list (obviously,
SPOILERS ensue):