Counting and illustrating Game of Thrones deaths

Shelly Tan, for The Washington Post, has been counting on-screen deaths in Game of Thrones over the past few years. As the season ended, Tan described her process in an entertaining Twitter thread:

This graphic had a lot of numbers, so here are the final ones:

– 5 years of working on this project
– 6887 deaths
– 290 character illustrations
– Far too many hours of sleep lost

And now, at the end of it all, my watch has finally ended. Thanks for following along pic.twitter.com/w7VUPjJHE8

— Shelly Tan (@Tan_Shelly) May 22, 2019

I kept thinking about how her process transfers to counting all things. You know, like the decennial Census. The hand-wavy process always seems so straightforward. It’s like, sure, it’ll take a while, but the challenge is just time. But then you get into it, and there’s all these small bumps along the way that make everything more complicated. And then you’re like, great, well, I’ve already come this far. Better keep on counting.