T w e n t y S i d e d
Last week we attempted to locate the “original sin” of the season five Winterfell storyline – the place where it all started to go wrong. My conclusion is that the whole thing never should’ve happened to begin with. From a character motivation standpoint, it was hopelessly broken from the word go. And yet as you’ll recall, the critical backlash centered not on the fact that none of it made any sense but that Sansa’s rape was some mixture of excessive and exploitative. My personal explanation for this centers around something I call the “gitchy feeling.”
The Gitchy Feeling
The phrase itself comes from an oldBy “old,” I mean nineties-era. You know, old. comic book called Bone. I briefly attempted to be a comic book nerd in the fifth grade – it never really took, but I did enjoy Bone, which had an art style and sensibility something like Walt Kelly’s Pogo, another favorite of mine. One of the characters in it is Gran’ma Ben, a salt-of-the-earth homesteader type who sometimes gets the “gitchy feeling,” an omen of bad things to come.
For whatever reason the phrase stuck with me for years afterward. Eventually, inside my own head, I came to use it to describe the feeling I got when in the presence of slapdash writing – the feeling that something is not right, and whatever’s happening on the page or screen is going to end not with a satisfying conclusion but with a cloud of excuses and distractions. You could think of the gitchy feeling as being an early warning sign for story collapse, and if it gets bad enough it can spoil a story by itself.I remember for instance that starting around season three of Lost I couldn’t really enjoy the show anymore because the gitchy feeling had gotten too bad.
One of the tricky things about the gitchy feeling is that it’s possible and even easy to misdiagnose its source. This leads me to an example that’s important in my own psuedo-career as an amateur internet complainer guy. Like many people, I was influenced by the famous “Mr. Plinkett” review of Star Wars: The Phantom Menace.Here’s a link just in case you haven’t already seen it. Warning: long. Of course, that movie had produced a negative reaction in many who saw it, but it also produced a common misdiagnosis for that negative reaction: Jar-Jar Binks. It was Jar-Jar, people said angrily, that had ruined the movie – or possibly the kid who played a young Anakin, or maybe the introduction of midichlorians, or some other specific, limited failing.
Plinkett, by contrast, correctly stated that the problems ran deeper: the movie had no clear protagonist, bland characters, and a murky plot that failed to establish any emotional stakes with the viewer. The problem wasn’t so much Jar-Jar as it was everything else. This is what led me to believe that audiences get the gitchy feeling just like I do – and when they do, they often look for the most obviously offensive or conspicuous flaw in a work and identify that as the culprit. In the case of the Phantom Menace, that was the goofy, overbroad comic-relief character: Jar-Jar Binks.
Now, with the full knowledge that this theory is about as thin as gossamer, I’ve come to hold the following belief about Game of Thrones: that Sansa’s rape was to season five as Jar-Jar was to The Phantom Menace. Audiences, attempting to locate the source of their dissatisfaction with the story, seized on its most offensive and conspicuous element. This isn’t to say that the scene wasn’t bad in and of itself, or that people are somehow wrong to dislike it on its own merits, or that other criticisms of the show not made here aren’t valid. But I do suspect that some of the dissatisfaction that audiences thought came from that particular scene also come from deeper problems with the narrative.
Regardless of the source, however, the show now had an image problem, and HBO wanted it fixed. It was now time for…
Woman on Top
Never let it be said that the showrunners, Benioff and Weiss, don’t listen to at least some of their critics some of the time. If Game of Thrones was being accused of sexism, then by god they were going to fix it, and they were going to let everyone KNOW they’d fixed it. That meant a marketing blitz where nearly every mouthpiece the show had was deployed to give interviews and plot tidbits designed to play up the strength and agency of the women of Westeros.
Most notably (and infamously, in certain corners of the internet), this led to Entertainment Weekly’s collection of “Dame of Thrones/Woman on Top” cover stories, each featuring a different female character from the show. The fact that they chose to brand this campaign with a rather crude sexual innuendo suggests that they may not have learned the exact lessons their critics wanted them to. With that said, I don’t mean to be overly scornful of the attempt. If you believe, as many do, that popular culture is sexist in its representational habits, then one way of addressing the problem is to deliberately and self-consciously overcorrect in the opposite direction. Such overcorrections can be clumsy at times, but it doesn’t mean their intentions aren’t good, or that they can’t be positive in their net effect.
Of course, changes such as these are only worthwhile if they take place on a level deeper than the superficial. If the only lesson the writers learn is “take it easy on the rape scenes” that’s not too encouraging. Nonetheless, the narrative was set: the show had made its mistakes in season five, but it was going to fix them and then some in season six. Stay tuned to see how successful they were.Spoiler alert: I think they pretty much made a hash of it.
Finally, the End of the Introduction
Now, after three weeks’ worth of posts, I’ve finally arrived at what was supposed to be my starting point: a critical analysis of the season six Winterfell storyline. In my defense, brevity was never one of my virtues. But I felt that a detailed introduction was necessary to establish my various claims going forward:
1. That Game of Thrones has a writing problem, and a pretty bad one.
2. That audiences and critics are aware of this problem on some level, and are experiencing the “gitchy feeling.”
3. That at some point between now and the end of the final season, the writing problems are going to become too severe too ignore, at a cost to the show’s reputation.
4. That the negative reaction to certain elements of the fifth season has given us a sneak preview of what this might look like.
My goal now is to demonstrate that the show’s writing hasn’t been any less broken in season six than it was in season five. My critique of season five’s Winterfell storyline was about as brief as I could possibly make it; I could probably write reams on its other parts, from Ramsay’s rape and torture extravaganza to Stannis Baratheon’s terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day. But I want to stay as focused as I can: from here on in, we get to the real meat of the complaining, so strap in. This week’s post is pretty short – the calm before the storm…
Footnotes:
[1] By “old,” I mean nineties-era. You know, old.
[2] I remember for instance that starting around season three of Lost I couldn’t really enjoy the show anymore because the gitchy feeling had gotten too bad.
[3] Here’s a link just in case you haven’t already seen it. Warning: long.
[4] Spoiler alert: I think they pretty much made a hash of it.
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Disagree.
If a scene is squicky, people are going to feel uncomfortable. This had a whole bunch of ingredients to make it more squicky. It’s a character we’ve known since she was a child. There was a slow and relentless build up because we know what her new husband was like and she didn’t, and he was acting all friendly and we were waiting for something nasty to happen. Her humilation was increased because Theon was there. He also hated what was happening but felt powerless to help, just like we did.
Once a show makes us feel bad we then try to justify why it makes us feel bad. “It’s sexist.” “It goes against her character arc.”
This happens whether or not we’re getting frustrated with things like “characters not dying when they do things that ought to be fatal” (which bothers me and undermines future scenes of peril) or “Littlefinger’s motivations are unclear” (which doesn’t bother me, because he’s the Loki/Joker type whose motivations are frequently unclear).
Agreed. I thought the scene was tastefully done and made it’s point very, very clearly.
Was it overall a terrible plot line contrived merely to get us to that scene? Probably, but it doesn’t diminish the cinematography of the scene. Would I be happier had GoT followed more closely to ASoFaI in this plot? Yes.
I suupose I should find out: did Season 1 still have the rape of the old witch, and: did anybody say the show shouldn’t have killed Ned Stark?
No idea on the witch.
Anns i don’t know about whether the author *shouldn’t* have killed Ned Stark (obviously the show should be sticking to the books wherever feasible), but that was the point where I realised that this wasn’t a story that I was going to enjoy watching any more of, so I didn’t.
But that just means I’m not part of the audience for the show or the books.
If the old witch is who I think you’re talking about, it happened, but entirely offscreen. Daenerys saves her life but then, after comprehensively and protractedly destroying just about everything Daenerys managed to salvage from her rather less-than-optimal start to adulthood, for no obvious reason and thus becoming somewhat unsympathetic as a character, the witch finally reveals that she’d already been raped several times by the time she was “saved.”
So you’re not actually disagreeing with this article.
The show started to lose me after season 4, a bit like you are saying here. It mostly kept me engrossed and entertained despite a few mis-steps all the way through. However, once many storylines wrapped up in 4 and it had quite a sendoff.
It was all down hill from there. I suppose you can blame it on having less book material to work with and the writers perhaps trying to stand on their own legs more. It sort of showed that they can’t actually write…!
Now I continue to watch it but I just don’t care. It felt like every storyline I thought was building to something ended up going no where and I had given the writers way too much credit. It started to feel like a poorly written video game.
You can’t win them all.
It’s funny, because I started to get a serious “gitchy feeling” about the Song of Ice and Fire books by the end of book three. I was rapidly losing confidence in the writer’s ability to tie Dany’s story into the rest of the plot as anything but a deus ex machina to sweep away the victories of the villains with a giant army from nowhere, and was more and more worried that the eponymous “song” was going to relate to Jon Snow and Dany – the two characters who had the least to do with events so far – taking center stage in some kind of climactic showdown with the White Walkers. Except, that would necessarily mean that almost all of the political jockeying we’d spent the bulk of three books looking at was completely pointless, just so much sound and fury made as prelude to the real conflict, which was a completely bland contest between two flawlessly virtuous characters and their crusade to hold back a mindless and all-consuming evil.
Everything that Game of Thrones actually had going for it – the way virtue and honor have no bearing at all on victory or defeat, the complex political relationships led to a web of shifting alliances between different pretenders to the throne – was going to be swept aside in favor of a retelling of Lord of the Rings, except with the thematic core sullied beyond repair by the unflinchingly cynical and grim prologue. It seemed more and more like Game of Thrones would not end with good triumphing over evil because good happened to have more competent people on its side this go around and even then a lot of concessions had to be made to evil jackasses to get them to join the “good” team and the structural flaws that led to the war are completely unresolved which means this whole tragedy will continue to happen about once a generation indefinitely. Instead, it seemed more like the author was going to write a story where good didn’t triumph over evil until his favorite good guys were properly positioned, at which point standard epic fantasy rules of right making might would apply.
My gitchy feeling about the books (and the show by extension) is that I believe that the shenanigans Jon Snow has gotten up to will prove to be drastically more important than the pagespace they were given, to the point where the entire story could’ve been several books shorter if stuck with the guy who was secretly the main character all along instead of following an ultimately pointless political drama – and likewise that Dany’s story is going to turn out to have been the other half of the actual narrative all along, which is doubly terrible for how completely unrelated it was to the other 95% of the cast for several books, and even now has only tangential connections.
I think it’s short sighted to think that the story, specially a 7 big books saga, is supposed to have one or two protagonists, and all the rest is useless BS.
The very possible end game of
Jon Snow and Daenerys Targaryen somehow teaming up to save the day against the WW after everyone else has been taken out, is not a given, but even if it happened verbatim, it would not invalidate the journey and arcs of every other character in the books.Robb Stark’s tragedyis a beautiful tale on it’s now, not every protagonist has to win all the time (that’s part of the point).Tommen Baratheon’s arc and final determinationas seen in the show, is another tale that really spoke to me.When faced with ultimate betrayal and the destruction of what he was trying to achieve, he took the only choice that was left to him, to deprive his traitor of her joy.If the only important takeaway from all of the books so far is that Westeros is in disarray and totally unprepared to stand against a common enemy, that’s something that could’ve been demonstrated in well under ten percent of the time that’s been dedicated to it so far. This is, in fact, exactly what Lord of the Rings does. That Middle-Earth is woefully unprepared to unite against Sauron is in fact a theme of that story just as much as in A Song of Ice and Fire, but Tolkien recognized that it wasn’t the main story and shouldn’t be taking up 80% of the narrative. We are five books into a seven book series. It is way too late to be drastically shifting focus to a war against cold and unfeeling evil personified.
-I don’t think that’s a part of the story at all. The Lannisters, Boltons and Freys are clearly digging their own graves throughout the narrative, that’s a major part of it. Violation of guest right, kinslaying, etc, etc are all actions that have or will have major consequences.
The Starks clearly have fate against them but they will still be instrumental in saving the world.
Stannis, the last surviving king of the War of Five Kings will fight and defend Winterfell from the White Walkers, the Tyrells, Garlan and Willas will probably help take down Euron, the Northern Lords and the Vale Lords led by Sansa will also help Jon, Dany and Tyrion defeat the WWs.
So the politics will in fact play a role in the finale because the survivors of those politics will be the ones left to take on the Others.
I agree. I believe that the books show a world where cruel and evil actions, especially ones that violate sacred laws, have serious consequences. The bad guys (or least the human ones) have basically poisoned their own regime before it can even begin. The Boltons, Freys, and Lannisters are openly despised by all the other houses for their actions, and even their allies seem to be plotting against them or are ready to desert them if things go wrong.
But I think it is correct to say all the political jockeying for the throne is a sideshow. That’s sort of the point. Most people are ignoring the larger threat while feuding with each other. Many of the characters who are poised to actually contribute to the fight against the Walkers and emerge as the real heroes of the story are people who have been marginalized by society and have no shot at the throne themselves (“Cripples, Bastards and Broken Things”).
Definitely! But just because its a sideshow doesn’t mean it won’t contribute to the endgame and it certainly wasn’t meaningless to read it.
The books show that acting foolishly good will lead to more cutthroat people viewing you as weak and trying to exploit that weakness. (Ned & Robb Stark)
They also show that acting foolishly evil will simply antagonize everyone into wanting you dead. (Joffrey, Ramsay, Brave Companions, too many others).
Hell, even trying to be cautiously pragmatic and balanced isn’t safe (Tyrion, Daenerys, Jaime, maybe Tywin).
On the whole, however, being good does tend to keep you around longer than being evil, especially if you are slightly pragmatic about it.
My $.02, anyway.
I find it an even deeper exploration of political structures besides. The Targaeryan right to rule wasn’t upheld by objective reality. They united the Seven Kingdoms through violence, basically bringing the fantasy equivalent of a B-29 bomber wing to a Hundred Years War-era battlefield. They don’t even claim a divine right to rule like real medieval dynasties did–their dynastic incest is in stark opposition to the prevailing religious doctrine! All the social institutions of Westerosi kingship are polite fictions, but so entrenched they persisted well over a century after the threat of dragonfire was gone. Robert Baratheon thought he could just overthrow the Targaeryans and put himself in their place, but once he challenged the heretofore immutable truth of Targaeryan rule, everyone realized the old rules weren’t actually backed by anything but gentlemen’s agreement. The other Houses are learning these lessons too: if you violate guestright, why would anyone respect your own right?
I think Robert’s rebellion was pretty easy to justify, even according to the fantasy version of the feudal contract in the series. The crown prince unlawfully abducted (as far as anyone knows) Lyanna, who was the daughter of one paramount lord and engaged to another. When her father and brother went to the king to protest they were promptly arrested and executed in a brutal fashion with no trial, along with several other important lords and their sons. Then Jon Arryn was ordered to turn over Robert and Ned so they could suffer the same fait.
Kings did not have the right to abduct the daughters of paramount lords on a whim, then brutally execute those same lords and their sons when they show up to protest (especially since they didn’t bring their armies and posed no threat to the king). Why would anyone be willing serve a leader who behaves in such a arbitrary, unpredictable, and downright psychotic fashion?
The king’s power is largely derived from the support of his vassals, especially in the post dragon era. The Lannister’s are making exactly the same mistake as the Targaryen’s did before them. You cannot maintain power in a kingdom that large purely through threat of or application of violence, you need the support of at least some of the more powerful lords, and nobody wants to pledge their support to a leader who can’t be trusted not to turn on them.
Well, those specific things, and the fact that the Targaryens were increasingly mad as hatters. It’s really quite hard to maintain your legitimacy when you give insane orders, rant like a maniac about nonsense, and do random things as the whims strike you. (Although still fun in the Game of Thrones mod for CK2!)
And at least some fans think the Targaryens were based in part off the Roman Emperors, particularly the… err… more eccentric Romans.
Back in the day when the series was planned as 6 books long, 4th book was supposed to move the timeline 5 years to the moment Dany arrives in Westros, events of those five years summed up in flashbacks. Then Martin realised that there is too much detail to put into flashbacks and he might as well do it without time skip. So from meta-narrative we know that most of political power struggle is filler to put key players of the finale in their position, entire plot lines were envisioned as mere sentences or paragraphs. Combined with the show going towards the same endgame we can suspect which plots were red herrings in the first place (who lives, who dies, who was never cast to begin with). Rob’s child? Going nowhere. Lady Stoneheart? Less important than a fact that red priests can resurrect people.
Ned Stark also dug his own grave. He was extremely proactive in setting up the chain of events that ultimately killed him, and he could have avoided all personal consequences if he had just not done anything. In Game of Thrones, being evil doesn’t automatically make you victorious and isn’t free of consequences, but being virtuous is the exact same way.
EDIT: Crap. I can’t edit my name to be correct. Oh, well.
He ensured his own imprisonment, but not his death. That was Littlefinger and Joffrey’s doing, and again a part of how they dug their own graves.
Honor and loyalty actually rarely get punished in retrospect, the Red Wedding was less about Robb Stark marrying the woman whose virginity he took and more about Walder Frey being a greedy jackass. He and Roose Bolton were clearly planning a betrayal as early as the Battle of the Green Fork
And Robb broke his word to Walder Frey, a fact Catelyn repeatedly warned him about.
The Red Wedding was betrayal to repay betrayal.
It was a betrayal that was coming regardless of whether he went through with the marriage, though.
Robb should have kept his word but at the same time Edmure shouldn’t have taken the field against Tywin for his own pride, ensuring that Tywin wasn’t trapped between him and Robb and that he could safely pull back to King’s Landing. The loss of Winterfell no doubt also cemented Walder’s choice to betray his king.
And we’ve known as early as the Green Fork that Roose Bolton wasn’t fully committed to the Northern side.
If he was imprisoned instead, that also would have been the doing of some other human being. “Digging your own grave” just means setting yourself up for something bad to happen to you, it doesn’t mean that other people cannot be involved at any point, and if it did mean that, the phrase wouldn’t apply to the Freys or Boltons or Lannisters. ASoIaF does not care how virtuous you are.
The problem with this is Ned didn’t fail by being virtuous, he failed by not understanding the power he actually wielded as Hand of the King. As Tyrion showed in ACOK, the Hand has the power to appoint and dismiss at their pleasure.
Ned could easily have dismissed Janos and put in his own man loyal to the Starks and the Realm as Commander of the Goldcloaks and he could have charged that new Commander with recruiting more Goldcloaks to pacify the Lannister soldiers.
Overall his position afforded him a lot more opportunities to succeed than he realized
This is true, but it only supports my point. ASoIaF doesn’t care if you’re virtuous, it cares if you’re capable enough to effectively acquire and wield power. If you are, bully for you and for better or for worse to everyone else, and if you aren’t, your head comes off. Virtue doesn’t factor into it at all.
Virtue, observance of guest-right, kinslaying, etc, it all has consequences in the story
Only insofar as doing so can either be the right or wrong move to make pragmatically at a certain time.
How much of the story have you actually read?
Kinslaying, betrayal of guest right, etc are explicitly not the right thing and do not benefit the people who commit them in the long term.
The Lannisters/Freys/Boltons all perpetrated the Red Wedding and in so doing ensured they would not survive with or without the Long Night
Okay, you’re not getting this. Just because doing bad things sometimes results in bad results does not mean that doing bad things always results in bad results. There has to be a direct correlation in general and not just in specific isolated events for virtue to matter. Virtue matters in Lord of the Rings, because good guys are significantly more likely to triumph than bad guys, and when bad guys do triumph, it’s usually because the good guys they were fighting were insufficiently virtuous. That is not how ASoIaF works. Whether you succeed or fail hinges on things other than virtue, and again, just because a virtuous act works out that one time or a vicious act turns out to be a bad idea that one time does not mean that right makes might in ASoIaF. It doesn’t. People can be quite virtuous and still be defeated by quite vicious opponents. Unless you can somehow provide evidence that the more virtuous of two opposed parties is typically victorious, you have not proven anything. That is the standard you’re up against here. Not that virtue can work out ever or that viciousness can backfire ever, but that virtue working out and viciousness backfiring are the standard, expected results and that it is unusual when the story deviates from that pattern.
I cannot for the life of me understand your logic, have you read any of my responses??
The truly heinous actions DO reap bad consequences, this is show REPEATEDLY in the narrative. As I’ve said, the Boltons, the Freys, the Lannisters kill THEMSELVES through their actions.
Tywin Lannister died because he treated his family, his youngest son in particular like shit, and he might well have been in the privy here he was shot because of poison delivered by Oberyn Martell, who wanted him dead for unleashing the Mountain on his sister and her children.
The Mountain died slowly and painfully and was then turned into a zombie because of his brutality.
And its not just the death of individuals, the Lannisters WILL be wiped out for being too ambitious, brutal and dishonorable, the Boltons and Freys will share that fate.
Horrible things happen to honorable characters, but their families will most often survive. Ned is dead but the Starks will still hold the North and they will be instrumental in defeating the White Walkers.
Again and again Martin shows the consequences of truly awful behavior and breaking cultural taboos.
Listen. This is not hard. For virtue to be relevant in ASoIaF, it has to be generally true that virtuous people succeed and vicious people fail. You can’t just ignore it when Ned and Robb Stark get killed and say that’s because other people were successful opponents. Everyone who has been killed in ASoIaF was killed because someone else took an action, almost always intentionally, to kill them. All you’re doing here is saying that when an event in the book supports your argument it’s relevant, but when it contradicts your argument it doesn’t count.
I should have dismissed this all as trolling long ago, now you’ve just made it absolutely clear. Look up what themes are and get back to me, read GRR Martin’s actual writing after that
This isn’t even the only time you’ve had a Game of Thrones argument where your entire argument boiled down to an unwillingness to accept that any perspective but your own could possibly be valid. The common element in these arguments is you, maybe take a hint.
You seem to think you’ve caught some great contradiction, but getting frustrated with someone who keeps asserting themselves as correct without even presenting an argument isn’t even slightly similar to being unable to process that other people have different perspectives and that your emotional reaction to something is neither universal nor somehow inherently correct. It’s unclear why you’d even think there was a connection between those two things.
I’ve made myself perfectly clear, you’re just being obtuse
You’re wrong on several points here.
First off, Dany is nowhere close to “flawlessly virtuous”. She can be downright bloodthirsty, and her desire to take back the Iron Throne (killing lots of people in the process) is based entirely on a selfish sense of entitlement. She’s already made a number of messes over on her side of the ocean.
Second off, the War of Five Kings was not pointless. It’s what weakened the realm to the point where it’s going to need Dany and Jon to come save it, and it’s going to be what largely defines what the political landscape looks like after they do. It’s also what’s going to make bringing Dany over possible in the first place- it’s what put Barristan the Bold and Tyrion in her lap, after all.
This was never true. The theme of the series was that actions had consequences. Being honorable does not give you plot armor, but being dishonorable can bite you in the ass too. Robert’s lack of virtue led to a court that was in his wife’s family’s pocket, kids that weren’t his own, and a drunken liaison with a boar.
The only way the “swept aside” part will hold true is if everyone suddenly decides to act out of character. We’ve already seen that the threat from the north is being ignored and allowed to build. We’ll very likely see the jockeying for power continue even as the realm scrambles to defend itself, and getting it under control is likely to be one more dimension to defeating the Walkers.
What is actually suggesting that it will work out that way? So far, Jon as Commander of the Watch has tried to make good, practical decisions. And he still got stabbed for it. Dany and Tyrion are still in a giant mess, and Cersei is setting up her own fall with her paranoia, narcissism, and stupidity. We’ve seen the good guys take their hits for doing dumb things, but the bad guys have been telegraphing the hits they’re due to take for a very long time.
My glitchy feeling about ASOIAF at this point is that GRRM isn’t going to finish it. He needed an editor to step in two books ago to tell him to trim the fat. I think he’s a little lost at this point, trying to figure out what to do with all of the parts he’s left lying around, and I don’t think he has enough books left in him to do it.
What happened was that there was supposed to be a ten to twenty year time jump between the last books… but as Martin tried writing some incidences as flashbacks they weren’t working (taking too much space, not flowing well narratively with the scene sparking the flashback) and so after chipping away at if tor a few years he tossed that whole idea and just went “write it all out’… which seems to be taking him a really long time.
I don’t know his original plans, but it also seems to me that in books 4 & 5 he’s tried adding new plotlines into the story that probably didn’t need to be there -virtually everything with Euron and the Iron Islands and the plan for Daenerys, the Citadel issues, Dorne secretly abetting the Targaryens, etc. I can’t imagine that this was all part of the original plan if he intended to complete the story in 3-5 books. It seems more like brief elements mentioned in earlier books that he decided to flesh out, and as a result is juggling more balls at once. If Euron was that critical to Dany’s story, then he should have emerged earlier in the books, IMO.
I was going to add the introduction of the Targaryen prince in Book 5, but if he’s the “false dragon” he was at least implied in Book 2 with Dany’s vision.
The rest of it is either needlessly giving too much time to characters that should only receive brief (if any) POVs like Brienne and Cersei, and keeping more important characters like Tyrion and Daenerys in a holding pattern that shows POV but little actual development.
This is a good explanation for Euron’s role in the story-
<a href="http://poorquentyn.tumblr.com/post/146617620773/in-one-of-your-metas-you-said-of-euron-that-hes-a
Thanks, that was…..something.
If that’s indeed the point of him (and by extension, Aegon), that’s certainly enough to not only support my point but make me madder besides.
“Bah, I’m bored of my own story and the groundwork I’ve laid so I’m creating characters to say that everything that came before could be construed as meaningless.”
Euron was planted in the groundwork, he’s clearly alluded to in Clash of Kings.
And the difference between his and FakeAegon’s inclusion later is to serve the narrative but not be absolutely critical to it. Its not like the Deathly Hallows in Harry Potter which was critical to the story of Harry Potter and introduced in the second-to-last book
As far as I recall, the Deathly Hallows were never mentioned in The Half-Blood Prince, at least not by name.
He’s had one of them since the first book, but the rules for invisibility cloaks were never really stated until the last book.
Even then the first few books implied that Invisibility Cloaks were common place, and I think the last book gave the excuse that other Cloaks only had temporary enchantments whereas Harry’s would last forever… which is a really crappy handwave but I still love those books
That wasn’t the only benefit. Standard invisibility cloaks are usually just normal cloaks with disillusionment charms on them. This doesn’t just mean they last a limited time. It also means that a person who know’s you’re there can literally just summon the cloak. Not The Cloak though. Further standard cloaks still permit people to find you by any number of standard magical means, whereas The Cloak will literally hide you from death and can only be foiled by you being dumb enough not to have a muffling charm, or if you’ve got tracking charms like the trace on you. If he had a mind to harry could literally hide near a farm or market occasionally stealing food and never be seen again. If he already has the trace removed this gets even easier because he can use magic and not get singled out.
Reminds me to reread the series, the movies have overridden most of my memory of the books
She’s a shining beacon of virtue who brings freedom to slaves and overturns dogma and puts a stop to oppression wherever she goes. She is overwhelmingly more moral than almost any other character in the story, pays almost no price whatsoever for her morals where comparably moral characters are killed at the first sign of weakness. Most of all, she does all of this while being so far detached from the rest of the story that you can seriously skip every single Dany chapter written so far and it would change nothing.
Lord of the Rings does not have and would not have benefited from a four-book prologue in which the weakening of the kingdoms of men is detailed from the perspectives of characters whose contributions to the plot are completely erased by the time any of the actual main characters show up.
Are you going to try and convince me that five books was the shortest amount of time this could’ve been accomplished?
You pretty clearly think you’re disagreeing with me, but it’s not really clear how. I didn’t say that evil always triumphs because good is dumb. I said that the world of Game of Thrones is indifferent to how virtuous or vicious you are. Virtuous actions do not necessarily bring good consequences.
Seriously? If standard Game of Thrones rules applied to Jon Snow, he’d be dead. Dany would be dead multiple times over. They frequently make dumb decisions out of commitment to morals, but when they do it, it works out for them. Ned Stark commits himself to his morals, turns out Littlefinger’s brilliant and Ned gets his head cut off. Dany commits herself to her morals, turns out she’s the only smart person on the entire continent and a city will gladly sell the services of their entire army to someone who clearly despises them and their way of life.
Jon Snow is less overt, and it’s theoretically possible that the “ice” in the Song of Ice and Fire is just the White Walkers, but unless he is actually dead, he’s still done way the Hell better than anyone else who made impulsive, emotionally driven decisions ever has. Robb Stark didn’t get a second chance when his judgement was clouded by emotion just the one time. This is someone who has made a meteoric ascent to commanding the entire Night Watch and effectively the Wildlings as well for no better reason than being in the right place at the right time, so unless he is legit dead, he is still looking at rewards way beyond anything he’s earned delivered to him through means that have nothing to do with the ineffectiveness of Westeros’ government nor the brutalities of war nor any other actual theme of the story, except for the hidden theme of “Jon Snow is awesome.”
Mrs Drogo a shining beacon of virtue? She brutally slaughters the ruling class of every city she occupies, no matter how generous they are to her. Remember when she bought her entire slave army using a coin on a string, and then Astroport using those same slaves. Dick move of Mrs Drogo.
Or how about how she imposes her Valyrian ways on Slavers bay, ruining the entire economy, ending the gladitorial games, and forcing thousands of free citizens onto the street. All from her efforts to “Free the slaves”.
What about when she completely arbitrarily crucified 300 random nobles, as soon as she took Mareep? Danaerious Drogo is a tyrant. NOTHING LESS.
Let’s not move from one extreme to the other, shes not a saint but she’s certainly no tyrant, not the book version anyway
I feel like I’m reading a post from /r/EmpireDidNothingWrong.
Jon snow did die.Its only that he was lucky that there was someone there to resurrect him.
As for dany,she isnt really your standard person.She is immune to fire,and she has dragons that obey her.Killing her is not as easy as killing a regular human.
He wasn’t lucky, it was author fiat that made sure he could be resurrected. Let’s not forget that what happens in the story itself is not the same as how it happens on a meta level. GRRM/D&D wants Jon alive, so Melisandre is around and can resurrect him. Dany keeps making incredibly stupid decision out of moral conviction (stealing an army, freeing slaves, executing every last ruler that opposes her) but they never backfire in anywhere near the disastrous way that even half the number of mistakes backfire on other characters (Robb, Ned, Cersei etc.).
Simply put, both Jon and Dany are obviously the protagonists at this point and they have been given a bunch of plot armor in comparison to every other character in the books, perhaps barring Tyrion. Whether you have a problem with that or not depends on how much credit you put in GRRM/D&Ds ability and intention to subvert genre expectations.
Dany’s entire story since Astapor has been about the disasters her behavior has resulted in, from the Butcher King, to the unrest in Mereen, to the army that’s camped outside the city now, to almost being poisoned.
Dany hasn’t died. That’s about the extent to which you can say that things are going well for her.
Granted, her last chapter in the book ended with her having the flux, possibly without blood, and confronted by one of the assholes who served Drogo; it’s kind of open whether or not he’s going to kill her or join her since, you know, she’s also got a fairly-large dragon with her. :P
I don’t think this is true either, from Sandor’s “retirement” to Stannis Baratheon’s support from the Crownlands and the Northern Lords, I think we clearly see how just actions do bring about good results.
Unless you’re Ned Stark, in which case they are the deciding factor in getting you killed, or Robb Stark, in which case they matter bugger all to you in the end. ASoIaF has zero correlation between doing good and getting good results. Not a negative correlation, just no correlation whatsoever.
I gave you correlation, if Sansa hadn’t treated Sandor with kindness he wouldn’t have started down the path that lead him to his “death”/retirement, and if Stannis didn’t promise to rescue the remaining Starks and restore their rule he would never have the support of the Northern Lords in his war against the Boltons and eventually the White Walkers.
There’s plenty of other examples, Dany having a loyal well-trained army by freeing them from slavery, even the Northern Lords rising up against the treachery of the Boltons and Freys had more to with Ned’s justness as a ruler.
And as I’ve said, Ned wasn’t punished for his mercy and honor, but for his misunderstanding of his position as Hand
You do not understand what “correlation” means. “Correlation” does not mean “X has coincided with Y at least once,” it means “X coincides with Y as a general rule.”
Lets not do that, I gave you correlation, good actions do bring about good results, the question is when and in what way.
Ned Stark isn’t going to survive partially because he wants to give Cersei enough time to get her children away from Robert’s wrath, but that same sentiment is what saves Jon Snow’s life. It directly helps save the world from the White Walkers.
Sansa isn’t going to save herself from the abuse she experiences at Joffrey’s hands, but her kindness and strength will help break Sandor Clegane’s nihilistic attitude and eventually lead to his retirement as a grave digger.
The Starks as a whole are mostly just and well-loved leaders of the North, this won’t save many of them but it will keep them in power when the Northern Lords come together under Stannis to destroy the Boltons.
It all comes down to the attitude of the writer himself, and while George RR Martin does deconstruct traditional medieval fantasy tropes, he also reconstructs them, as evident by Sansa, Brienne and Davos’s storylines, who display the morality and ideals that true Knights, Lords and Ladies should have. He’s definitely a romantic.
Do what? Adhere to the actual definitions of words? That’s kind of important. It is an extremely major plot point that Ned Stark’s virtuous behavior gets him killed. It’s the big twist of the first book. GRRM goes out of his way to put enormous emphasis on how virtue does not protect him from anything. It’s not the last time that virtue fails to protect someone from the consequences of poor strategy – Robb Stark isn’t set up to be a protagonist as strong as Ned was, what with not having a single viewpoint chapter and all, but he also gets murdered despite generally doing the right thing, and that’s pretty damning because that there is in fact the end of the story that ASoIaF started with. That’s not to say that having more than one major plot arc in the same series isn’t okay, but it does make it very obvious that even if the series does end with the Starks back in power and justice having been served, ending the series there is totally arbitrary and if you went on the next plot arc in Westeros’ history it’s just as likely that some nutcase like Cersei will have their day and a bunch of other good people will die.
You can’t try to wriggle out of this by changing the definition of “correlation,” because all that would mean is that my original statement about virtue not correlating with success was semantically incorrect, using the wrong words to express the idea that virtue is not a significant contributor to success in the story one way or another. Being virtuous works out sometimes and other times it doesn’t.
It’s true that GRRM pretty clearly wants to reconstruct the tropes he’s just deconstructed, but the problem is that he doesn’t seem to have any idea how to do so, and his main strategy so far has been that when his favorite characters are involved, the rules of the setting change. He doesn’t actually have a point to make except that he likes some people more than others.
You know very well that I understand the definition, you just misunderstand the actual text.
And here comes the misunderstanding, the big twist is that the “main character”, the hero of any other basic fantasy story gets his head lopped off.
Ned Stark’s fate had very little to do with his virtue, it had to do with Littlefinger, LF wanted him dead so that he might get Cat back. The little man casting a large shadow Varys refers to in ACOK is Littlefinger, who convinced Joffrey to go against his mother and council’s wishes.
And as to Ned’s virtue and the injustice of his death at the Sept of Baelor is fuel for retribution by the North and Smallfolk.
You can’t possibly have read that far into the series if you believe this. The rules of the setting are clearly established and maintained throughout the series. Guest right is still sacred, kinslaying, incest, etc, etc. The fate of the Freys, Boltons, Lannisters all demonstrate this. The sins of the Lannisters in particular are being exploited by those around them, the Sparrows, the Tyrells and soon
fakeAegon and Varys.My advice would be to read the rest of the books or reread it fully if you just skimmed it
I wrote the actual text! I am the one who brought up the word “correlation!” And you have still not presented any actual correlation between virtue and success, because in order to do that you would have to demonstrate that virtuous behavior is in general successful and vicious behavior is in general not, and you haven’t. All you’ve done is claimed that when virtuous behavior doesn’t work that doesn’t count because other people were involved.
Ned Stark’s fate is entirely a result of his virtue. If he had not behaved virtuously, he would not have been executed. Your entire argument here is that when someone does something vicious and it goes poorly for them, that’s solely a result of their own behavior, but when someone does something virtuous and it goes poorly for them, that’s solely a result of other circumstances. That’s not how this conversation works. This is a conversation about whether or not virtuous behavior is an advantageous thing to have in ASoIaF. Ned Stark behaved virtuously and that is a proximate cause to his death. Robb Stark behaved virtuously and that did not prevent his death. It doesn’t matter if other people were involved in the process – other people are also involved in the retribution against the Boltons and the Freys and the Lannisters.
Not true.His fate is a result of trusting the wrong person.If he didnt put his faith into littlefingers word,he couldve done a bunch of virtuous things that wouldve kept him alive.Uncover the bastards thing to someone else.Go back to the north before challenging joeffry.Ally with a more trustworthy person.Etc.
See, that was you being intentionally difficult again, I obviously meant the text of the books.
And as Daemian said, Ned was mostly due to trusting Littlefinger because his wife trusted him. Even had he followed Littlefinger’s plan to detain the Lannister children, he still wouldn’t have survived because he had Catelyn
If the text of the book is what you were referring to, then your objection is incoherent. You have failed to provide any general correlation between virtue and success, and your efforts to do so are consistently based upon saying that counter-examples don’t count. Every single person who is killed in ASoIaF is killed because someone else wanted them to die. Saying that Ned was killed because he had enemies doesn’t make him any different from Gregor Clegane or Tywin Lannister or anyone else. You can’t say that Ned Stark was only killed because Littlefinger had it in for him unless you’re also willing to say that Tywin Lannister died because Tyrion fired a crossbow at him, or that Cersei’s walk of shame was a result of political convenience. It is unambiguously true that if Ned Stark had just left well enough alone instead of doing his duty to the king and pursuing the truth, or even if he’d just been more willing to throw Cersei and her children under the bus and strike without warning, the entire War of Five Kings would not have happened, Ned Stark would still be alive, and Winterfell would be in the hands of his family. Quit special pleading about how Ned Stark doesn’t count because you don’t want him to.
Try to actually analyze WHY someone wants to kill someone else before you continue with this nonsense.What did Ned do that would make Littlefinger want him dead?
What did Tywin Lannister do? Be serious for once and respond with some manner of intelligence
Why would you think that openly insulting someone like this is an appropriate way to carry on a conversation? Your reaction to the idea that someone else might have different opinions from you is bordering on parody. I’m not even going to get into why your latest arguments are hollow, that’s not the most important thing in contention right now.
Your perspective is what I have issue with, not your opinion because its intentionally limited, you’re ignoring the themes in the text in favor of saying “People die because other people kill them”.
What you’re demonstrating here is a total inability either to remember or else understand in the first place what my argument is. Not only are you again simply declaring victory without actually making an argument, you’ve also apparently come to the conclusion that I’m claiming people only die because someone else kills them, when that is in fact my criticism of your argument. Ned and Robb Stark’s deaths have thematic importance and that importance is not “someone else wanted them dead and was clever enough to pull it off.” That the entirety of the meaning of Ned Stark’s death is that Littlefinger successfully killed him is your argument, not mine.
Which really just highlights the more significant problem, here: You are acting like a colossal jackass, which would be unacceptable even if your criticisms of my opinion weren’t incoherent.
And as I’ve said, its a facile criticism. I’ve already addressed it, Starks may die individually because of the dishonorable acts of others, but their family will survive when the same can’t be said for the Boltons, Lannisters or Freys.
Again most of the series is dishonorable and murderous characters setting up their wown downfall.
Ha! Namecalling from the guy who’s being deliberately obtuse, really? Your arguments have been ridiculous and its clear you haven’t read much of any of Martin’s writing.
Try reading the whole series and keep in mind the larger themes he’s using
I’m sure that’s what she’s putting on her propoganda posters, but there’s also the wee issue of the bloodshed and murder she’s left in her wake, and the bloodshed that she’s planning on bringing to Westeros for no good reason.
Lord of the Rings was a completely different story. What’s your point? Oh, and you know about the Hobbit, right? And the Silmarillion?
“As short as possible” is a very, very poor metric for rating the quality of fiction. Tolkein could have just written “A hobbit finds an evil ring and throws it into a volcano” on a scrap of paper, but I doubt that would have become a time-honored classic.
Your exact words were “the way virtue and honor have no bearing at all on victory or defeat”. This, as I have pointed out, is a false statement.
Which decisions are you talking about? Jon has had to make a lot of tough decisions, like executing Janos Slant, but when has he done something that wasn’t arguably logical?
So what you’ve got here is #1 actions committed by other people that are tangentially related to Dany and #2 actions that Dany hasn’t actually taken yet. These are your insistence that Dany is actually a morally grey character. That’s really, really weak.
Lord of the Rings isn’t a completely different story, it’s a story in which kingdoms weakened by internal bickering need to unite in the face of an irredeemably evil enemy, and it communicates the weakened state of the kingdoms of men in paragraphs, not entire books.
More than you do, evidently. They’re separate and standalone works in the same setting, not part of the same story.
Of course not – because that sentence isn’t as short as possible, it’s shorter. Too short to contain the book’s themes, too short to build up the stakes of the conflict or explain the consequences of the ring’s destruction, too short to explore the world of Middle-Earth, and so on. A book needs to be long enough to communicate what it needs to and anything more than that is useless cruft. That a story is complete when there is nothing left to take away, rather than when there is nothing left to add, is an extremely well known tenet of the craft. If you’re going to try and argue that 80% of the book being completely unnecessary cruft, that there are literally entire chapters you can skip completely without having any impact whatsoever on the experience of the rest of the book, isn’t a problem, you’re going to need to explain what you think you know that the entire book publishing industry doesn’t.
Again and still, it is not clear why you think the statement is false. “Things work out for good guys sometimes” is not the same thing as “good guys always win” or even “being good puts you at an advantage.” Ned Stark is dead, half of his family is dead, and his lands are in the hands of usurpers, all specifically because he was moral. If he hadn’t been moral, it wouldn’t have happened. Morality is not an advantage in ASoIaF. It’s irrelevant.
The one that got him stabbed.
Are you talking about that useless sideplot with Aragorn not having the ring that they spent half the books on? Man, what a waste of words that was.
I really don’t know what point you think you’re making here. Lord of the Rings made it clear strong and early that using the ring would not have benefited anyone but Sauron, and also makes it clear about as soon as armies are involved that Aragorn and company can’t win a military victory over Sauron. The War of the Ring is a stalling action, keeping kingdoms from going under and distracting the forces of Sauron all towards the end of Frodo getting the ring into Mt. Doom. For that matter, even if Aragorn did totally abandon the quest for the ring, seek a military victory over Sauron, and subsequently achieve that victory, the ring plot still wouldn’t have been as unrelated as the events of ASoIaF have been to the secret main plot so far, because at least the basic story is still about defeating Sauron front to back, rather than meandering into War of the Roses fanfiction for multiple books before remembering that this is a story about fighting the White Walkers.
I’m saying Aragorn, Merry, Pippin, Legolas, Gimli, and Gandalf could have all died alongside Boromir without affecting the plot; Sauron’s threat is already established, and their sole contribution to his defeat is getting him to move out of Frodo’s way, which he could have done anyway for a variety of reasons. Everything they do in Book 2 or Book 3 is pure flavor.
As you’ve described the series as kingdoms needing to unite against a powerful threat, I’m assuming you think the world-building stuff past Boromir’s death was worth including, which contradicts the stance of plot irrelevance deserving cutting.
None of this is true. Sauron’s threat has been spoken of in Fellowship of the Ring. It has not been depicted except in the most limited sense. The desperation of Aragorn and company’s fight against Sauron, and the scale that fight takes place on, is absolutely necessary to showing, rather than just telling, the scale of threat that Sauron poses, and to demonstrate all of his different weapons. Grima Wormtongue’s influence over Theoden, Saruman’s uruk-hai horde, and the vast hordes that spill forth from Mordor are all different tools in Sauron’s arsenal and showing them off (while also occasionally referencing that he’s got even more ready to go when those fail) is necessary to show, not tell, that Gondor and Rohan can’t just team up and fight their way through the Black Gate and cleanse Mordor orc by orc.
Tolkien liked to show off his world and that’s fine, but he didn’t abandon his plot to do it. He didn’t spend entire books nominally in the same series following Boromir and Aragorn around before they even joined the Fellowship, and he definitely didn’t spend entire books describing the efforts of Faramir and the Prince of Dol-Amroth to increase the military readiness of Gondor and hold Ithilien, only to have both those characters killed and their efforts completely erased so that someone else entirely can come along and solve that problem. Those characters and their struggles were tied in with the main characters and main plot. You never have to speculate to figure out how this matters even slightly to the main plot. Every main character interacts directly with the fight against Sauron all the time. Visiting Gondor as part of the quest to defeat Sauron is not the same as visiting Gondor because Aragorn has abandoned the ring quest and would now like to go and reclaim his throne, and then also there are chapters about this guy Frodo doing something completely unrelated.
Grima is Saruman’s tool. It’s known from the first book that the most powerful wizard in the land has betrayed it for Sauron’s favor, and that he has Rohan under his control. It’s known Sauron is making alliances across the world and that he can already send corrupted monsters deep into the west. Frodo sees Boromir’s desperation for a tool to fight against Mordor. He sees Sauron’s armies with his own eyes. The threat is shown without Aragorn, or Rohan, or Gondor.
And Saruman is an ally of Sauron. So what?
No, it isn’t. The people sitting outside towns who need water constantly no matter how much you give them don’t show the lack of water in the wasteland in Fallout 3, and Frodo seeing a very large army that never does anything doesn’t show the threat Sauron poses to others. The idea that just hearing about Saruman having Rohan under his control is showing and not telling is exactly backwards. That would be a textbook example of telling rather than showing.
Neither does Gondor kicking its ass.
Again: This is completely wrong. Gondor barely surviving an attack by Sauron by the skin of their teeth and with multiple different miraculous interventions needed just to preserve it for now absolutely demonstrates the power of Mordor in a way that just seeing a very large army (without even seeing how big Gondor’s is as comparison) would not.
I’m speaking purely about the books here, and just relating a personal theory:
I think Mr Martin started with this story:
The Starks are cruelly treated and broken up, but each has an individual journey that teaches them one aspect of power. Then they have to come back together and work together to use their lessons to form a complete power strong enough to “win” the game.
But I think he realized during writing that the story was telling him to write something else. He played his hand when Brienne met Septim Meribald in the salt marshes, but there were other hints scattered about. Now I think the story is about how their stupid warring is leaving them unprepared for the real threats to come. No one has been putting enough food aside for winter, and the Lannister’s lackeys have been burning crops left and right. The white walkers are coming and the Watchers are infighting.
In short, I suspect the series, when finished and viewed as a whole, will be found to be a giant anti-war polemic. Winter will fall, and between the walkers and starvation, kill so many people that it will be unclear if Westerosi civilization will see spring as anything but a dream. The dragons will be uncontrollable and raze King’s Landing. Bran’s prophecy of snow falling through the broken roof the throne room onto an empty iron throne will effectively be the end of the series. No one wins. Everyone dies. Shakespeare’s ending.
—
As for the show, I think it’s declining for reason’s Bob laid out in his video on it: it has missed the point of the series (wars. wars are bad, mmkay?) and instead wants to make everyone a badass in a story about how badasses are bad for the real people trying to make a daily living.
The show is dying to end with Jon and Dany and Tyrion riding in on dragons and saving Westeros from the white walkers, followed by Jon and Dany getting married and winning by sharing the throne and making Tyrion the Hand who does everything right. The story they’re aping from the books is dying to end with lots of dying.
In the books, the ice and fire are the walkers and the dragons, two forces we sought to control but which will ultimately destroy us. In the show, the ice and fire are Jon and Dany because they’re so badass.
As I said though, just a personal theory (I’m totally right, though)
I mean, I hope you’re right about the books. Dany’s entire story would still be only tangentially related and tied with the rest of the plot way too late in the series to matter, and would’ve been better off as a separate set of tie-in books rather than sharing pagespace with a story she barely even crosses over with, but at least the books wouldn’t completely abandon its themes as soon as the right characters get into position to benefit from it. The problem is, I read the books before I watched the show, and I still got powerful “Jon and Dany will get married and fix everything” vibes from it. That their union is the ice and fire about which people are singing. Now, “dragons and White Walkers murder everyone” would also be ice and fire, so that could be a thing, but then it begs the question why Dany spends so much goddamn time so far away from the rest of the plot if GRR isn’t trying to lay a foundation that will justify her swooping in and fixing everything. Like, “it’s not deus ex machina if I spend 5+ books telling an unrelated story about the person who fixes everything at the end.”
Like, “it's not deus ex machina if I spend 5+ books telling an unrelated story about the person who fixes everything at the end.”
I mean, to be fair, it isn’t.
Technically it’s not, but it is a story with unimaginable amounts of cruft. If the real story has always been about Jon and Dany, then very few of the other chapters are at all important. You need to devote some pagespace to establishing the War of Five Kings and the level of wrecked that Westeros is when the Walkers arrive, but not nearly as much as it got, and you’d also want to involve your actual main characters somehow – so Tyrion’s chapters can probably stay for the most part. Bran’s, Sansa’s, and Arya’s chapters may or may not be relevant, depending on how much “Starks get the band back together” is supposed to be a big deal to the climax and how much of that is just a red herring plot like Ned’s whole thing.
Of course, the problem here is that over half of Game of Thrones’ (as in, the first book in the series) chapters are on the chopping block, and if you skip the Dany and most of the Jon chapters Game of Thrones is a tightly plotted, engaging story that forms the foundation upon which the steadily declining quality of the rest of the series retains its fanbase.
Dany’s chapters are some of the only ones relevant to what’s turning out to be the actual main plot, but they’re also the worst ones in the book, featuring a character with no power, no agency, and whose growth into overcoming that is atrociously paced because of how it’s spliced in not only with a much better story but also with lots of erotic sex scenes starring a thirteen year old girl whose purpose in the character arc remain unclear four books later. All that needs to happen for Dany’s entire character arc in the first book is that she starts out terrorized by her older brother, she gets taken under the wing of someone who protects her from her brother and affords her significant authority by proxy, and then that someone is taken away leaving her to try and sustain that authority under her own merits. That could be accomplished in half as many chapters as Dany actually gets, and we could edit it down by, for example, removing the explicit sex scenes with a thirteen year old girl.
But more importantly than this is the fact that even if you clean up Dany’s story, you still had to rip out Ned Stark’s far more interesting plot to get there, and by far the better option here is to rip out Dany’s plot and make the story about the Stark family in the War of Five Kings. No White Walkers (Jon’s plot will need significant revision because of this – although cutting it entirely would be defensible, since he is the least interesting of the Stark children), no mucking around in Essos, just a couple of scared children trying to avenge their murdered father while also trying to hold to the honor and virtue that he died protecting, and some of them succeed more than others. That’s the story that ASoIaF built 80% of its plot around in the first few books, the books that actually made it popular. Fans keep insisting that the ending is all going to tie it together in a satisfying way, and that insistence reminds me of Mass Effect in a big way.
Its not just Jon and Dany’s story that are critical to the defeat of the White Walkers, Tyrion’s the other head of that dragon prophesied, Bran is the new Bloodraven, Arya has her knowledge of the Faceless Men and her wolf Nymeria with her pack of savage wolves, Stannis will defend Winterfell in the initial WW assault, Euron will directly or indirectly bring down the Wall and maybe his own little eldritch apocalypse a la the “Deep Ones”, Sam will be in his immediate vicinity while he’s doing it, the Faceless Man formerly known as Jaqen H’gar will be there too, along with possibly one of the Sand Snakes, cross-dressing to be a Maester, etc, etc, etc.
Do you see where I’m going with this, how all these characters have a part to play?
The fans have been plotting out the books since the 90’s and they’ve most often been right with every new publication. There is a definite endgame that Martin’s alluded to since the first book. He’s obviously dropped some characters and settings along the way( like Asshai, which Dany was probably supposed to visit before Westeros), but overall he’s remained on track.
The idea that every plot that doesn’t directly deal with the White Walkers is War of the Roses fanfiction or otherwise cruft is silly. The state of the world after the Winter is still dependent on the politics involved in the book. Knowing who takes over Casterly Rock after the Lannisters die out is interesting to the fans, you can’t just dismiss it all as fluff.
Considering I mentioned the potential relevance of both Tyrion and the other Stark children in my post, it’s weird that you think this is some kind of surprise to me, but it’s not. These characters have some kind of part to play, but it’s hugely disproportionate to the pagespace they’re given. Their stories can be effectively told in overwhelmingly less time and it can be done while putting them in closer proximity to the actual main characters of the series – not that those main characters aren’t the weakest parts of the books and the decline in quality of the books directly tied to higher emphasis on them, and the story would actually benefit from cutting those “main” characters and the “main” plot that’s been at best tangentially related to everything that fans actually care about. Fans do want to know the fate of Casterly Rock, in fact, that’s what they’re here for, and making those plotlines nothing but the setup to a shaggy dog joke is not good storytelling.
“Kill your darlings” is writing 101. That’s often misunderstood as meaning “let bad things happen to your protagonists,” but its actual meaning is “remove the unnecessary parts of your story, even if you think they’re clever.” This is something that editors and agents constantly hammer into aspiring writers, and you keep declaring that it isn’t true, but you don’t actually make a case for why. You’re basing your entire argument around best practices for an industry being completely wrong, it is on you to explain why you think that is true and you haven’t.
Might as well add something here too. Two points.
As an industry, the entertainment world values consistency over brilliance; cutting the ideas that don’t directly add to the plot is solid advice for telling consistently better stories, and someone trying to make a living is better off being consistently good than running the gamut from crap to incredible (M Night Shyamalan joke goes here). But stories are art, and art breaks rules sometimes.
A Song of Ice and Fire is really big on detail from the word go (minor characters get detailed descriptions to the point that it’s shocking when they die by the dozen), and also big on metaphor and allusion. Most of the important characters’ arcs are about the nature of power, and their downfalls through their various misunderstandings or compromises of it. While their actions might not tie in to the final plot directly, it will very likely inform the reader why the ending is the way it is instead of something happier.
See also: Everything else. Conventional wisdom doesn’t apply to every situation and the mark of a true master is being able to see when it does or doesn’t apply and still be able to execute well even when in new territory. This is how every skill works. Shamus has a post somewhere around here making the same point about computer programming.
The thing is, you can’t just declare that defiance of conventional wisdom can be a good idea ever. You have to explain why it is a good idea in this specific instance. Like, you talk about how a lot of character arcs are about wielding power, and that’s a great thematic core for a book and a perfectly good reason to have umpteen different viewpoint characters handling it in different ways and occasionally getting knocked off for handling it poorly, and some of them don’t actually have power and are on the outside looking in. Sure. That’s the War of Five Kings meta-plot and all its little sub-plots, and that works fine.
The inclusion of the White Walkers as the hidden true antagonist plays merry Hell with all of that, though, and equally so the unnecessary and incredible distance between Dany and the rest of the plot. If Dany’s importance to the plot and theme of the story is just to grow through multiple different approaches to handling power as she matures, there’s no reason she can’t do that while actually taking a crack at invading Westeros to reclaim the crown. GRRM wouldn’t even have to blemish her perfect moral intentions to make that happen, since preventing the ascension of Joffrey, Cersei, and arguably even Stannis (that’s a dude who’s gonna hang a lot of peasants for things they only did because war time is desperate) is a perfectly reasonable casus belli, especially since she already has a claim to the throne. If Dany was meant to showcase a specific approach to power, then let her showcase it in direct opposition to the other candidates struggling for the throne. Why keep her out of play this deep into the series? We’re more than halfway done.
Likewise, what approach to power do the White Walkers represent? They’re implacably evil aliens who want to exterminate everyone and they contribute nothing to the story of power and virtue that the rest of the book is telling, which is why it is so concerning that they’re taking over. If the story is supposed to be about how the power struggles ultimately make things worse for all involved, that can be more than adequately demonstrated by just having the war wreck the land and kill people on all sides, which has already happened. You could use them as a personification of the desolation of war and have them destroy the weakened Westeros completely as sort of karmic retribution for their various failings, but to do that would require GRRM to have Jon Snow and Dany fail to defeat them or even escape the destruction, and the favoritism he’s shown to those two leaves me with no confidence that this will actually happen.
The White Walkers actually reveal the truth about the nature of power in Westeros; the only way to kill a Walker is with dragons and dragon accessories. Knowing that, it becomes clear that the only reason the Targaryens were ever in charge to begin with is because they had the dragons. It wasn’t because they were virtuous, or inspired loyalty, or were great planners, or had royal blood*; they had the biggest stick, so they got the biggest chair. Then everyone forgot about the Walkers and built a bunch of cruft on top of kingship and nobility, which is all being stripped away now that they’re back.
Daenarys has been off the main board trying her hand at wise leadership and inspiring loyalty, and very gradually learning that that isn’t going to work. If she was still in Westeros the mess she makes could be blamed on the other players and the message would be muddled.
*although apparently the dragons are because they have royal blood.
If the truth that the White Walkers are meant to reveal is that ultimately might makes right, then they’re completely irrelevant to the story. That truth was laid extremely bare very quickly in the War of Five Kings arc, and the Walkers are completely unnecessary to conveying it.
The mess she’s making now can be also be blamed on other players. In fact, other players totally are directly responsible for the messes she’s made, and she is not directly responsible for anything that has gone wrong.
I’m pretty sure you’re just trolling, but whatever. Which part of the War of the Five Kings laid that extremely bare, and which other players are directly responsible for Daenarys’ position?
Every part of the War of Five Kings lays bare that might makes right. Arya’s chapters in particular show the level of brutality of the war, and it works out pretty damn well for the brutes in the short term. Gregor Clegane is horrifically cruel to the common people of Westeros, and when he bites it it’s because he offended a noble with murders he committed twenty years ago and has been getting off scot free for the entire time. Cersei Lannister is bugfuck insane and cruel and she gets crowned queen for it. Robb Stark is generally honorable and just, and he and his family lose everything.
The jaw-dropping stupidity of the Good Masters are primarily responsible for Dany’s current position, and Cleon the Butcher is responsible for the actions of Cleon the Butcher.
These books are some of the most consistently popular and critically acclaimed in the industry, its on you to show why they aren’t worthy of that. Fans write essays on these books, analyze the texts like they’re actual history. Two morons who couldn’t write the script of a Michael Bay movie made an adaptation that is one of the most popular shows of all time.
I’ll be the first to admit they’re not perfect, but to say the storytelling fails at such a level is absurd
Right, which is why I spent several paragraphs doing that. Here, let me quote them for you:
Except I’ve dismantled your arguments.
There are mutliple characters that affect the main conflict and the main conflict is not the SOLE conflict of the books. There are multiple themes that run through the series, on the deconstructions of chivalry, patriarchy, feudalism, politics, etc, etc.
In fact I would argue the overarching point of the whole series is not the horde of ice zombies incoming but that everyone has failed to recognize that their fellow human beings are not the real enemies. GRRM is much more focused on emotions and “the human heart in conflict with itself”
Apparently you’ve forgotten what the argument is about.
I claimed that GRRM’s meandering plot is in violation of basic principles of the craft of writing. You claimed that the basic principles of the craft of writing don’t apply all the time, and there can be exceptions when breaking them is wise. I challenged you to make an argument why GRRM’s doing so would actually be an example of such an exception. You completely ignored this and said that GRRM’s popular and critical success also cannot be dismissed without argument. I agreed and referred you back to all the arguments I’ve been making. Even if just declaring yourself victorious in those arguments was valid – which it is obviously not – you’re still left with the problem that you have clearly recognized that my argument exists because you have acknowledged that you are engaging with it, which brings us back around to the actual point of this thread of argument, that you have presented absolutely no argument as to why GRRM’s extremely cruft-laden plot with threads that barely ever interact with one another would not have been improved by being condensed into something more tight and inter-related.
I’ve demonstrated repeatedly that Martin has not “violated the basic principles of the craft of writing”, if you had actually bothered to read his writing you would understand. A horde of ice zombies is not the be all, end all of the plot, there are larger themes and ideas in the narrative
No, you haven’t. You haven’t even tried. Your entire contribution to this thread of the argument has been to stamp your feet and insist that you’re right without presenting a single actual argument of any kind.
Then you’ve read as much of my responses as you’ve read the actual books. Cliff notes don’t give you the necessary information to say Martin fails in basic writing principles and and a horde of ice is not the be all, end all of the narrative
The principle in question here is the idea that in order to keep pacing tight you should remove all unnecessary elements of the story. Sub-plots that don’t contradict to the main plot, scenes that do nothing, even individual words that don’t contribute to the story should be cut. This is a basic tenet of the craft. Anyone who has made any serious effort to become a writer will be aware of it. You have not made any argument as to why GRRM is justified in his blatant disregard of this tenet, for which he is famous. You are, again, just declaring yourself victorious. You aren’t engaging with my arguments at all, you’re just angry that I don’t like the thing that you like.
You’re not making arguments supported by the actual text, which I suspect you’ve barely read. Again, dealing with the horde of ice zombies is not the only point of the books, there are larger themes and conflicts that play into the narrative
Oh, I love Bone! I have the trade paperback collecting the whole story (1300 pages, so I’m not sure I agree with “tragically short”). I used to read single issues in the public library as a kid, but only got the big picture when I read it whole, start to finish.
I’m still sad Telltale abandoned their Bone games.
I’m sorry, I really still don’t get the premise. GoT (the show) clearly defines its characters and setting, and then pits them against each other. The characters are, by design, mostly horrible people. Complaining that the outcomes of horrible people interacting are also horrible seems to miss the point.
As to the clear protagonist thing – well, that’s missing the point, too. GoT deliberately, and successfully, obfuscates this. Hands up who didn’t think Robb Stark was suppposed to be the hero?
He was talking about the “Phantom Menace” movie, not Game of Thrones.
That aside, I am quite enjoying this series so far, mister Case. Please continue.
I’d argue that Robb Stark being a decoy protagonist was a clever rug-pull (which taught the reader/viewer something more about the world). What Bob was (reasonably) complaining about the in article was the lack of protagonist in The Phantom Menace, which didn’t have a decoy protagonist, it just had no real protagonist at all.
TLDR: Decoy protagonist = OK, no protagonist = not OK
Seven Samurai doesn’t have a protagonist.
Glib response: No, it has seven.
Serious response: Katsushiro functions as someone the audience can easily empathise with and put themselves into the shoes of. There’s nobody in Phantom Menace like this. In fact nobody in Phantom Menace acts either plausibly or humanely, whilst Seven Samurai has a cast of flawed, believable human beings following a script written by someone who could pull off not having an obvious protagonist.
Clarification: I think demanding that a story have a clearly defined protagonist and….eugh…character arcs *ptooie* is just a symptom of the obsession everybody’s had with the hero’s journey ever since Star Wars was a massive commercial hit. Hence western cinema being nothing but a string of superhero origin movies, and geek critique being nothing but commenting on said origin stories.
Observation: discussing this stuff in the manner of HK-47 at an Elcor speed-dating night really does help to keep track of the points at issue :-P
I don’t know about that. For a movie to work, you need to have at least one character that a) you want to watch and b) that you want to watch doing what they do. A set protagonist and a character arc for that protagonist give you a a character to follow and a story to follow them with. You can indeed do it other ways, but I tend to think that complaints about there not being a protagonist and not being an arc tend to reflect more “There isn’t EVEN that” rather than “You’ve done wonderful things with an ensemble story, but I just wanted a protagonist”.
I’m going to paraphrase Plinkett here and say that of course it’s possible for your story not to have a protagonist, and to avoid retreading the beats of the Hero’s Story… but you have to know exactly what you’re doing. If you’re doing a space adventure story that aims to appeal to a very broad audience, then it’s probably wise to play it safe.
It may well be that Lucas deliberately intended to break out of the cycle he himself helped to lock Western film into with Phantom Menace; that he aimed to make the Prequels every bit as daring and fresh as the originals were. Certainly PM is… unique. I very much doubt anything like it will ever be made again. The problem is that at heart, Lucas is a really poor director and character writer. Whatever he was aiming to do with PM falls completely flat, and the backlash was such that he retreated into a sulky little ball for the other two and just did what he thought the fans wanted to see, which resulted in pleasing no-one.
You don’t need to have a clear central protagonist, but you do need at least one protagonist because they are the characters that experience the conflicts. You don’t need a clear antagonist (example: pretty much every mystery story obscures the antagonist), but you need a clear apparent conflict or else there’s “nothing happening”.
Narrative Theory uses The Hero’s Journey as the easiest example for new writers to understand, but Narrative Theory is so much more than The Hero’s Journey.
I wrote protagonist here to mean clear main protagonist for time-keeping’s sake, sorry.
Protagonist = character who experiences conflict.
Antagonist = thing (usually, but not necessarily, a character) which causes the conflict.
Character arc = an internal resolution to the conflict.
Not every protagonist needs to be a hero, and not every story needs to have a character arc. Conflicts can be internal, unintentional, accidental, well-meaning (antagonist has protagonist’s best interest in mind), and so on. Protagonists can give up, fail, have Pyrrhic victories, or realize they need to achieve something else.
But absolutely every complete story has a protagonist, antagonist, conflict, and resolution. It’s what stories are about.
Think of it this way: All games have players, and players can do stuff in those games. The player is often personified in the game as a character (or the player is left to roleplay their own or pretend they’re literally there), and that character is the protagonist.
The game presents a goal and obstacles (sometimes not clear, but they’re there) and usually presents a reason for them. Sometimes the player is left to invent their own reasons. Regardless, that reason(s) is/are the antagonist(s).
When the player loses, they experience failure. When they win, they experience victory. When they give up, sometimes temporarily, that’s also a kind of resolution.
When the pre-written story fails to sync up with the story the player is experiencing, the player becomes aware that the pre-written story is different to their experience. This sensation is known infamously as ludo-narrative dissonance.
And now you’ve had a crash course in narrative theory and understand how it applies to videogames and why ludo-narrative dissonance is a real thing.
Eh, the whole point of a shaggy dog story is that nothing happens. Bathos is a perfectly respectable narrative technique.
Ludonarrative dissonance is terribly over-sold. A) Clint Hocking really needs to make more than one decent game before he shits on everybody else’s (and splinter cell wasn’t exactly Shakespeare) and B) everybody who goes on about it seems to take the position that the gameplay should be made to fit the story, whereas the opposite is more the case.
Agreed.Gameplay and story need to complement each other,whichever is given a bigger priority.
Also agree that you dont need a protagonist and an arc for a movie to work.Snatch and lock stock are great examples of this,as movies where a bunch of things happen to a bunch of people,and comedy ensues.Monty pythons meaning of life would be an even better example.
Yeah, why would a Star Wars prequel use the narrative technique from Star Wars.
Seven Samurai has four protagonists, but one of the arcs is actually just an introductory story, so just three protagonists for the full length of the movie. Everyone else is a fantastic supporting character.
That’s part of what makes the movie so great: the character set up to get all of the attention immediately becomes a supporting character and we never see him fight for the rest of the movie. The part where he defeats a whole bunch of guys by himself is off-screen and used for suspense. That’s a complete subversion of normal action movie tropes.
The show might make things a bit more muddled, but he couldn’t be considered a decoy protagonist in the books because he doesn’t have even a single POV chapter.
That's true but not necessarily indicative. It's not unheard of to have a first-person viewpoint character who isn't the protagonist, but instead tells the story of when they accompany the protagonist. For instance, in the Black Company novel The Silver Spike, Darling is the main protagonist and her love interest is the viewpoint character for her chapters. Catelyn was our viewpoint for Robb's part of the story.
Other famous non-viewpoint protagonists include McMurphy from One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, and Sherlock Holmes.
I would argue that those are exceptions to the rule for a good reason. The author deliberately doesn’t want the audience getting into the head of the driving character due to wanting to make that character seem more impressive, larger-than life, mysterious, etc. I don’t believe that Robb Stark would justify having his own POV for these reasons, especially in an ensemble piece.
Robb not getting his own viewpoint is more about attempted viewpoint consolidation rather than how important the character is. Catelyn does things no one else can see, so she has to have a viewpoint already. (I’m pretty sure part of the later books bogging down is GRRM adding more and more viewpoint characters to show off more of the world at once.)
Plus the viewpoint main character already died, so expectations can be shifted as to what actually makes a character main.
The clear protagonist thing is part of the reason why Phantom Menace doesn’t work. Being a 2-hour movie, it has to be more economical about its narrative and pacing and following one or two characters instead of a whole ensemble is one way to do that. The Plinkett review is also clear that it’s not necessary for a film to have a clear protagonist, but it’s really hard for any but the best filmmakers to actually pull that off.
Game of Thrones isn’t a 2-hour movie; it’s a TV series dozens of hours in length. So it can easily get away with a large ensemble cast and have the plot follow a couple of characters at a time. Bob’s reasons why Game of Thrones doesn’t work isn’t about the lack of a central protagonist (at least not that I’ve read yet); it’s other reasons.
That’s what he’s describing with the Gitchy feeling. FilmCritHulk called it “tangible details”; the audience knows something is wrong but doesn’t know what (Phantom Menace is bad, Spider-Man 3 is bad), so they pick something they can point to (Jar-Jar Binks is an annoying stereoytype, Peter Parker is an emo) and mistakenly blame it for the problems they can’t point to (this scene hasn’t been properly led up to, the music doesn’t set the right tone).
(Also Rami Ismail from Nuclear Throne talks: “Any problem a player tells you about is right. Any solution a player tells you about is wrong.”)
I have to say, I think the analysis is plausible, even if I don’t agree with it, but I’m outraged, OUTRAGED, I say, that you’d compare yourself to Pelé and Garrincha instead of Maradona and Messi.
Unless by Pelé you mean “corporate sellout” and by Garrincha you mean “guy who will die in poverty due to excessive drinking”.
So a coke fiend and a tax fraudster?
I agree that the Sansa rape scene was unnecessary and exploitive (and not executed well).
However, having recently rewatched the series, I strongly disagree that the writing is to blame for the overall decline in the show’s quality. Breaking down the series from a writing standpoint, it holds together incredibly well (other than a few unnecessary asides, like the Sansa rape scene, the sideplot with the mutineers, etc).
I think this ‘gitchy feeling’ you describe comes from another place altogether- the overall decline of the acting quality as the series has transitioned from established, talented British actors to the now-grown child actors. Rewatching the first season in particular, I was struck by the superb acting wall-to-wall. That first season is practically a master-class in acting. There is almost no spectacle; there is barely even a soundtrack. The show was carried entirely by its elite ensemble cast.
The following major characters were played superbly in the first 3 seasons- all their characters are now dead:
Eddard Stark (Sean Bean), Tywin Lannister (Richard Dace), Robert Baratheon (Mark Addy), Catelyn Stark (Michelle Fairly), Jeor Mormont (James Cosmo), Maester Luwin (Donald Sumpter)
In contrast, the later seasons become increasingly reliant on the now-grown Stark children. These actors were excellent playing children in limited roles (which is how/ when they were cast). However, as adults, they are not nearly the same quality actors as the all-star cast they replaced. They simply can’t carry the same weight, and the show has therefore become increasingly reliant on spectacle to generate the same level of emotional payoff.
I would argue that the writing hasn’t declined in quality
(other than the few unnecessary asides, and the increase in spectacle). Watching closely how the show is shot allows one to intuit the writers’ intentions, and I’ve been retrospectively impressed by the tightly-knit plotting/ foreshadowing. However, the acting simply can’t deliver this writing with nearly the same level of skill or payoff.
I agree that the ‘gitchy feeling’ exists. But I blame decline in the show’s quality on the actors, not the writers.
I don’t even think Laurence Olivier could have made “You want a good girl but you need bad p***y” work….
see “increase in spectacle”. I agree that there have been some cringe-worthy lines of late. This is what happens when your actors can’t deliver their characters’ intentions with any subtlety- the writers start to resort to blunt instruments
Do you really think its fair to blame the actors for what the writers CHOOSE to write for them? The whole Dorne storyline is a mess and in no way can you blame the actresses D&D hired to portray the Sand Snakes and Ellaria Sand.
The Ironborn storyline is a mess but is that the fault of whoever they hired to be Euron who looks distractingly too much like Alfie Allen’s brother rather than his decades older uncle?
Who replaced Euron’s awesome monologue about his service to the gods with his victims’ prayers with a speech about his genitals and screwing Dany? Answer-D&D!
lol. The acting in the Dorne scenes is beyond terrible; their fake accents don’t even match. I agree that it was a mistake for the directors/ writers to ask the Dornish actors to provide a fake accent- it makes no sense in-universe since they speak the common tongue, and in all other accented dialogues, there is another language present (Dothraki, Valerian, etc). Without a language to ground the accents, they end up mismatched and laughably fake.
Beyond that, I’m not going to walk you through the plot as depicted on the show. It must be judged by its own cannon (not by the books) and you showed last week that you value your head-cannon above the cannon as established on the show.
Or do you still believe that highborn women in the GoT universe are perfectly safe during wartime- completely ignoring the entire Blackwater episode? Where Cersei was so fearful of the city’s capture that she brought an executioner to the Red Keep in case the city fell? And explained the dire fate of women in a captured city to a scared-stiff Sansa?
You’ve obviously decided how you’d like the GoT universe to be depicted, based on your personal understanding (and headcannon from the books), rather than how the show is actually shot. This will therefore be my last reply to your comments.
The people who write most of the show, the executive producers of the show, the creators of the show-Weiss and Benioff chose the actors to portray the characters they create.
How does your argument, that the writers have to be intentionally crappy to accommodate the actors absolve them of the crappy writing, when they are the ones who chose them?? Doesn’t that just make them worse than crappy writers?
With or without the book canon. “You want a good girl…” is a crappy line and its just one of many.
And you can’t judge an adaptation based solely on itself, that’s just not possible. They put Euron on the screen and gave him nonsense.
“Where are my niece and nephew? Lets go murder them!” is absolute crap regardless of whether you’ve read his book counterpart.
You didn’t read anything I actually wrote. Pulling someone’s family into a war is not the same as putting someone directly into the hands of a flaying rapist and murderer.
Thats really obvious and it has nothing to do book canon or my own “headcannon”
TV Euron is pretty unrecognizable from his book counterpart.
Book Euron is a maniac with delusions of godhood and an arsenal of magical artifacts who plans to sacrifice hundreds of his own people to basically awaken Cthulhu. He’s much more dangerous than Ramsey Bolton ever was. It’s also hinted that he’s a former protégé of Bloodraven (aka the Three Eyed Crow). He functions as a sort of Saruman to the Walkers Sauron.
TV Euron is a not particularly competent Viking leader (Yara seemed to have no trouble stealing most of his fleet) who likes to make rapey threats. He doesn’t even have the signature “Crow’s Eye.” I fail to see how that guy is going to be any threat to Dany whatsoever.
There are rumors that he’s still going to unleash some kind of eldritch monster in the next season as Book!Euron seems determined to do, so the changes they made to his character are absolutely baffling
Tywin was Charles Dance, not Richard Dace.
Thanks for the correction!
So i put “Richard Dace actor” into google… and the first result is… Charles Dance.
lol. This what I get for posting without fact-checking
Still, it goes to show how well-established and renowned is Charles Dance that even a google search for my made-up version of his name turns up his correct info. The show really misses his presence
I concur. The best parts of the 5th season -which I just rewatched -are the tragedy of Stannis, and the interactions of Tyrion and Jorah. I had the DVDs out of the library, so I had to watch them quickly -skipping vast scenes I was indifferent too.
But I stopped to watch Iain Glen and Peter Dinklage recite epic poetry.
The tragedy of Stannis was being written by people who hated his character
Entirely possible, but Stephen Dillane still kills it as the character.
Especially considering how much he hated working on the show and how little the writers told him about his character.
He really is a brilliant actor
Feels like a bit more than scapegoating to me. The scene gets part of it’s backlash precisely because it particularly doesn’t fit in the overall narrative, in the ways that you yourself just finished pointing out. So the story, teetering somewhat on the edge of story collapse, has a thread that particularly egregiously fails to make sense for some of the characters, and that entire thread seems to exist for the sole purpose of interjecting a rape scene into the show to be edgy. Sure, people pick on the rape scene rather than the whole story arc, but that’s not just finding a lightning rod for their dislike of the story; the rape scene feels like the whole point of the arc, and the arc feels gratuitous because it doesn’t fit the rest of the tale.
I think if the rape scene served an important role in the plot, and came about as the result of actions that we understood as making sense, it would still have gotten _some_ flak, but it would have gotten quite a bit less.
Been a while since I watched it, but wasn’t the whole point of that scene is that Reek is made to watch it? Sansa wasn’t the object of abuse, it was Reek. Just another notch to put him down.
Both actually.Since both were changed by the abuse.Sansa by finally starting to do something instead of passively following whoever was there,and reek by finally snapping out of it and resisting ramsay.
The show took a different direction from the books in regards to Sansa. (We’re still not sure where that will ultimately lead…) And another character, Jeyne Poole (thought to be Arya) took the fall as the wife of Ramsay.
That said: Is part of the show’s problem that they don’t know where to go with Sansa? That they’re now winging it, without the grounding of the books?
They changed plenty from the books, in part because tv shows can’t have that many characters to keep track of. And so they combined characters and shifted some action from a minor character to a major one. But they had the books for how it all fit together. Without the 6th and 7th books…I think they’re floundering.
That could reasonably be believed. It’s easier to combine characters and trim plots when you know where they are headed and if it will impact things.
For example, The Two Towers has Eomer bring his forces to stop the siege of Helm’s Deep instead of Erkenbrand. PJ knew that Erkenbrand served little other purpose in the books and would be confusing to movie goers, and thus had a familiar character save Helm’s Deep instead. But if Return of the King hadn’t yet been written, he might have been a bit more cautious about jettisoning characters that might prove to be important later.
With ASOIF, this issue is magnified about 100X due to the increased amount of characters and subplots. There is also the issue that the showrunners have a lot more concerns than a writer -budget limitations, making sure actors get sufficient screentime, a lot more aspects to the production than writing that can make hundreds of storylines difficult to keep consistent, etc.
Seems fair; part of the books’ problem is not knowing what to do with Sansa.
Are you saying that the books are sans ideas what to do with her?
They are Insansate.
Continued from here
And then, with much foreshadowing and build up, everyone died in a deep and richly satisfying explosion that brought closure to narratives for miles around.
The End.
You arent even trying now.Where are the rocks?Where is the falling?You cant just kill people with explosions!
Sorry, I sent this off for publication almost an hour ago. Its too late to pull it now.
But if enough people complain, I’ll write an Extended Cut of the ending.
Youll be forgiven only if that extended cut makes no sense,and breaks the story even further,but pats the reader on the back with a token passive aggressive “fuck you”.
After reading a bit on the wiki a couple of years ago, I decided that the best possible thing that could happen for the people of Westeros is for the entire nobility to be wiped out in a single night.
Yeah, yeah, white walkers, but the nobles are by and large terrible.
Actually, all of the viewpoint characters are considered nobles (even Davos, who came from humble origins).
The disaster in Astapor after Dany leaves is a pretty good in-universe example of what happens when you wipe out a civilization’s ruling class and have no preexisting democratic structures to replace them. Say hello to Cleon “the Butcher King.”
Oh man, you’re the dude who did those videos about Mass Effect 3. I loved those. Looking forward to more articles about GoT!
Oh he has done more than that. Much more. Go watch him. Dude is good.
I do agree that the series has stumbled in recent seasons, and a large part has come from the attempts to shift away from the books themselves (as seen with the disastrous Dorne plot).
I actually was interested when they merged the Sansa/Littlefinger plotline and the Bolton/North plotline, since it seemed a good way to condense material, and I could see ways that they could have made it work. They didn’t, as you’ve noted, but I think the potential was there – it wasn’t quite that doomed from the start.
“But I do suspect that some of the dissatisfaction that audiences thought came from that particular scene also come from deeper problems with the narrative.”
I’m… not a huge fan of a statement that seems to be saying, “Even though these people claim they are complaining about this one scene for these reasons, they actually are dissatisfied with the same things that have bothered me, they just don’t consciously know it!”
Like I said, I have plenty of issues with how the plot has developed in the recent seasons and recognize some of those other issues with the narrative. That isn’t the reason why I was frustrated with that scene, though. I think that trying to speak on behalf of others is not doing your argument any favors, and really undermines some of the other points you are trying to make. I’m assuming you didn’t intend that section to come across as patronizing and condescending as it did, but I very nearly quit reading the post right there.
I do think there’s something to be said about lightning rods for resentment, though, and BTongue went out of his way to say the scene itself can still be bad upon the merits it’s usually criticised for.
In casual discussion about why a piece of fiction is good or bad, people will very often highlight particular scenes that they enjoyed or frustrated them, rather than discuss the causes that make that scene the consequence. Classic example: ME3’s ending. You can disagree with BT’s conclusion – that’s why we’re here after all – but the point that humans naturally select foreground details over background when forming an opinion upon something is a valid one.
Just a head’s up: the page’s format is not good for portrait-type images. These magazine covers are gigantic.
They should get a better layout otherwise it is really difficult to see the image. You have to either zoom out or just take your word for it and skip the image.
(The comic is fine, since a comic is followed panel to panel. But if an image doesn’t fit in my laptop screen, I usually just skip them over.)
That said, loved the Glitchy feeling idea. Wasn’t there a Telltale game based on the Bone comics?