I don't know anything about Game of Thrones other than once in awhile people tried to persuade me to watch it by making really weak arguments that it was 'realistic'. I hadn't even realised it had fallen down some cultural memory hole since. This was a cool read though. I'd be interested in reading the piece you hinted at in a footnote on why the dead are the big baddies in media now.
i started reading the books a few years before the show first dropped, because they had a (not undeserved) reputation for being the sophisticated choice within the Swords & Sorcery genre. i didn't read much fantasy because it was all so baroque; ASIF was refreshingly grounded by comparison. that's probably what people meant by "realistic": the moral ambiguity of the characters was interesting, and if you took away the magical elements, it could plausibly pass for gritty historical fiction.
but even the magic was more nuanced: it wasn't a bunch of Merlins zooming around shooting fireballs and lightning bolts. it wasn't like GRRM had written a novelization of his latest D&D campaign. it seemed more like people grappling with powers that weren't entirely under their control: they could muster up some magic under the right circumstances, some of the time—but there was always an edge of uncertainty, of not quite knowing where the energy was coming from or how to direct it. the dragons were dangerous animals and not just big magical pets. some of the necromancy stuff was legitimately dark. granted, the books were overlong even before they became perpetually unfinished, because apparently GRRM doesn't fuck around with an editor. and now the TV show has completely scuttled the whole project. but still—for awhile there, in the beginning, he was cooking with some interesting ingredients.
anyway, thanks for reading! i'll make a run at that zombie essay soon.
If it helps any, I love Howard and Leiber. I'm not less of a dweeb, just a very long way out of date.
Plus I have a aversion to long works of fiction and modern fantasy seems to be all 'the third trilogy in the Chronicles of Neverdark, a prequel series to the eight trilogies in the Tales of Neverdark...'
Odd how something as spartan as Howard's prose led to all that, but I guess that's more from the Tolkien side of things.
My criticism of this essay is down to your use of too many pickle-based metaphors. I got a craving.
Okay, I'll break rank with this comment section full of chads and confess to having been a fellow ASOIAF dweeb for roughly eighteen months c. 2011, when the series was hitting the culture as hard as it ever would--specifically, as soon as Season 2 finished airing and I couldn't wait a year to find out what happened next. Blasted through all five books over the course of one summer, and what a rush, oh, what a time to be alive. Of course the magic couldn't last, and I fell out with the show around Season 5 like many others, remaining abreast of what was unfolding onscreen just enough to eventually revel in the ending's fallout.
All this to say, I've read my share of GOT hot takes over the years, and yours splits off in a pleasantly unconventional direction compared to others. There were so many thinkpieces lamenting the show's inexorable decline from the sociologically-driven storytelling of, as you said, "gritty historical fiction" into a far more conventional battle between the forces of Good and Evil, in which the characters are less constrained by their relative cultural and moral frameworks than by the meta-framework of "fantasy" as a genre. At the end of the day, what the audience really objected to was the feeling of having the rug pulled out--they came for a story that promised to be explicitly and thoughtfully about Power, but it turned into yet another dull story about Fighting.
But as good as ASOIAF-slash-GOT (once) was at laying bare the foundations of Western conceptions of property; hierarchy; morality; and the politics that spring up where these items converge, it never to my recollection dared to suggest that there was a way to avoid playing the eponymous Game of Thrones altogether, since (as you point out) a disorganized and dis-unified Westeros is existentially vulnerable to the threat in the Far North.
You can't tell a story about Power without acknowledging that the pursuit of Power is ultimately driven by both individual and cultural death-anxiety; in this sense, I don't blame ASOIAF for literalizing the ever-looming threat of Death as an unstoppable army marching south with darkness on its heel. At the same time, I think you make a very good point that this decision seems to constrain the possible conclusions for the series to one of several variations on the status-quo. Someone must sit on some kind of throne, in the end; sure the system sucks, but the Night King will turn us all into wights if we refuse to play along, so git.
If a truly subversive ending is possible--and I'm with you in thinking it's just straight-up never going to be written at all, but IF--I think it might lie with some of the powerful alternative magics that the narrative entertains, all of which appear to manifest along the bleeding edge of life and death. The dead can be revived, as anything from their same old selves to mindless revenants, or something in between; human sacrifice brings undeniable results; the process of procreation can be perverted to powerful and wicked ends.
What I’m saying is, the universe of the story clearly fucks with the idea that death is not necessarily absolute, and that it can be navigated or even negotiated with. The malevolent demise promised by the Night King’s army isn’t the only *kind* of end waiting for you out there, as you approach the edges of the known world. Maybe becoming culturally fluent in those new magics is the only way of finally ending the Game and attempting to tell a different kind of story altogether.
Trying to wring just one final idea out of this absolutely desiccated franchise, I guess. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
(Have to go a decade back in the memory banks for this one...) I came close to addressing this originally but deleted it because the comment was already too long. The Westerosi state religion is actually remarkably secular, consisting of the worshipful contemplation of seven archetypes: Maiden, Mother, Crone, Father, Warrior, Smith, and Stranger. The Stranger represents death and the unknown and receives generally negative attention from the populace, although his cult overseas is also the only one of the Seven which appears able to enact real miracles (of a sort). So once again, magic is seen operating almost exclusively along the boundary between life and death.
Westeros (iirc) lacks a strong concept of the afterlife in much the same way modern secular Westerners do: there's some kind of vague aspiration to better things waiting on the other side of the veil, but not a lot of real faith. Death is to be avoided at most costs, or only accepted in cases where you believe your deeds will be sung about by the living. So naturally the fate bearing down on a people who hold this worldview would be a vision of death which is cold and pointless.
Conversely, several foreign religions ask their followers to cultivate intimate relationships with death and are seen to empower incredible feats of magic in the process. In Westeros, magic is believed to have disappeared altogether centuries ago.
Possibly. I wouldn't necessarily use Martin's ability to circumscribe the modern human condition as proof that he buys wholly into its narratives; the very fact that he has designed his world in such a way as to only allow magic to happen in the context of death-deals makes me think otherwise. I think he acknowledges that there is something impoverished about a worldview that rages against human mortality, and he also knows just how bitter a pill that is for an audience to swallow.
Hence back to what R was saying in the OP: Does GRRM dare take his universe to its logical conclusions, uncomfortably contra the grain of modern storytelling convention? Or does he get tired of thinking about it too hard and cash out like HBO chose to do?
The answer, of course, is that he just doesn't publish the last two books at all and chooses to spend the rest of his life at a poolside in Santa Fe instead.
i think you're onto something here... i had thought through it as far as the literary challenge of letting the world burn, but you're right: it's deeper than that. the cosmology of ASIF, as far as I can recall it, is an atheist's vision of a monalitrist (sp?) society. there are competing interpretations of the metaphysical world that range from wilderness shamanism to High Church, but iirc, none of them is really presented as "true." people are brought back from death in a variety of ways. in the best case, they're confused and afraid, not knowing where they were or how they returned; at worst, they're mindless wights bound to the will of the Night King. it is a bleakly existential take on the genre, and i think that's what was so compelling about it. but you're right—if he's ever going to land this jet, he would need to literally and allegorically find a way to overcome death, and find something beyond it. not just the material conditions of the world he created, but the metaphysical reality beyond it: something positive beyond death besides just a howling void. the whole thing is probably too far gone at this point, but like i said—i'm ready to be surprised.
props for managing to steer clear of that whole phenomenon for so long. i wish i was that discerning. still, there is something interesting about doing forensics on these mega-stories (and their metanarratives) after they've had their moment and expired. this one got away from me a little bit, but i think there's something to learn about how stories live and die in our culture.
I respect you for taking this opportunity to really lay into GRRM's choice of headwear--someone had to do it--but that line "I avoid flawed stories" is fascinating to me. Is that really true, Rollins? How could you manage such a thing?
Spooky, but honestly I believe it. Hey, I wanna be Social Dynamics'd, do me: I mostly wear a lot of flannel and I can't stand for my fingernails to get too long, what bad habits should I stay vigilant against?
I don't know anything about Game of Thrones other than once in awhile people tried to persuade me to watch it by making really weak arguments that it was 'realistic'. I hadn't even realised it had fallen down some cultural memory hole since. This was a cool read though. I'd be interested in reading the piece you hinted at in a footnote on why the dead are the big baddies in media now.
ah man, you too? now i feel like a dweeb.
i started reading the books a few years before the show first dropped, because they had a (not undeserved) reputation for being the sophisticated choice within the Swords & Sorcery genre. i didn't read much fantasy because it was all so baroque; ASIF was refreshingly grounded by comparison. that's probably what people meant by "realistic": the moral ambiguity of the characters was interesting, and if you took away the magical elements, it could plausibly pass for gritty historical fiction.
but even the magic was more nuanced: it wasn't a bunch of Merlins zooming around shooting fireballs and lightning bolts. it wasn't like GRRM had written a novelization of his latest D&D campaign. it seemed more like people grappling with powers that weren't entirely under their control: they could muster up some magic under the right circumstances, some of the time—but there was always an edge of uncertainty, of not quite knowing where the energy was coming from or how to direct it. the dragons were dangerous animals and not just big magical pets. some of the necromancy stuff was legitimately dark. granted, the books were overlong even before they became perpetually unfinished, because apparently GRRM doesn't fuck around with an editor. and now the TV show has completely scuttled the whole project. but still—for awhile there, in the beginning, he was cooking with some interesting ingredients.
anyway, thanks for reading! i'll make a run at that zombie essay soon.
If it helps any, I love Howard and Leiber. I'm not less of a dweeb, just a very long way out of date.
Plus I have a aversion to long works of fiction and modern fantasy seems to be all 'the third trilogy in the Chronicles of Neverdark, a prequel series to the eight trilogies in the Tales of Neverdark...'
Odd how something as spartan as Howard's prose led to all that, but I guess that's more from the Tolkien side of things.
True enough. probably any fantasy author wanting to write for my tastes would have to forget almost everything they know about the genre.
My criticism of this essay is down to your use of too many pickle-based metaphors. I got a craving.
Okay, I'll break rank with this comment section full of chads and confess to having been a fellow ASOIAF dweeb for roughly eighteen months c. 2011, when the series was hitting the culture as hard as it ever would--specifically, as soon as Season 2 finished airing and I couldn't wait a year to find out what happened next. Blasted through all five books over the course of one summer, and what a rush, oh, what a time to be alive. Of course the magic couldn't last, and I fell out with the show around Season 5 like many others, remaining abreast of what was unfolding onscreen just enough to eventually revel in the ending's fallout.
All this to say, I've read my share of GOT hot takes over the years, and yours splits off in a pleasantly unconventional direction compared to others. There were so many thinkpieces lamenting the show's inexorable decline from the sociologically-driven storytelling of, as you said, "gritty historical fiction" into a far more conventional battle between the forces of Good and Evil, in which the characters are less constrained by their relative cultural and moral frameworks than by the meta-framework of "fantasy" as a genre. At the end of the day, what the audience really objected to was the feeling of having the rug pulled out--they came for a story that promised to be explicitly and thoughtfully about Power, but it turned into yet another dull story about Fighting.
But as good as ASOIAF-slash-GOT (once) was at laying bare the foundations of Western conceptions of property; hierarchy; morality; and the politics that spring up where these items converge, it never to my recollection dared to suggest that there was a way to avoid playing the eponymous Game of Thrones altogether, since (as you point out) a disorganized and dis-unified Westeros is existentially vulnerable to the threat in the Far North.
You can't tell a story about Power without acknowledging that the pursuit of Power is ultimately driven by both individual and cultural death-anxiety; in this sense, I don't blame ASOIAF for literalizing the ever-looming threat of Death as an unstoppable army marching south with darkness on its heel. At the same time, I think you make a very good point that this decision seems to constrain the possible conclusions for the series to one of several variations on the status-quo. Someone must sit on some kind of throne, in the end; sure the system sucks, but the Night King will turn us all into wights if we refuse to play along, so git.
If a truly subversive ending is possible--and I'm with you in thinking it's just straight-up never going to be written at all, but IF--I think it might lie with some of the powerful alternative magics that the narrative entertains, all of which appear to manifest along the bleeding edge of life and death. The dead can be revived, as anything from their same old selves to mindless revenants, or something in between; human sacrifice brings undeniable results; the process of procreation can be perverted to powerful and wicked ends.
What I’m saying is, the universe of the story clearly fucks with the idea that death is not necessarily absolute, and that it can be navigated or even negotiated with. The malevolent demise promised by the Night King’s army isn’t the only *kind* of end waiting for you out there, as you approach the edges of the known world. Maybe becoming culturally fluent in those new magics is the only way of finally ending the Game and attempting to tell a different kind of story altogether.
Trying to wring just one final idea out of this absolutely desiccated franchise, I guess. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
(Have to go a decade back in the memory banks for this one...) I came close to addressing this originally but deleted it because the comment was already too long. The Westerosi state religion is actually remarkably secular, consisting of the worshipful contemplation of seven archetypes: Maiden, Mother, Crone, Father, Warrior, Smith, and Stranger. The Stranger represents death and the unknown and receives generally negative attention from the populace, although his cult overseas is also the only one of the Seven which appears able to enact real miracles (of a sort). So once again, magic is seen operating almost exclusively along the boundary between life and death.
Westeros (iirc) lacks a strong concept of the afterlife in much the same way modern secular Westerners do: there's some kind of vague aspiration to better things waiting on the other side of the veil, but not a lot of real faith. Death is to be avoided at most costs, or only accepted in cases where you believe your deeds will be sung about by the living. So naturally the fate bearing down on a people who hold this worldview would be a vision of death which is cold and pointless.
Conversely, several foreign religions ask their followers to cultivate intimate relationships with death and are seen to empower incredible feats of magic in the process. In Westeros, magic is believed to have disappeared altogether centuries ago.
This was a very handy comment. Now I know for sure that I will find nothing of value in those books. Cheers!
Possibly. I wouldn't necessarily use Martin's ability to circumscribe the modern human condition as proof that he buys wholly into its narratives; the very fact that he has designed his world in such a way as to only allow magic to happen in the context of death-deals makes me think otherwise. I think he acknowledges that there is something impoverished about a worldview that rages against human mortality, and he also knows just how bitter a pill that is for an audience to swallow.
Hence back to what R was saying in the OP: Does GRRM dare take his universe to its logical conclusions, uncomfortably contra the grain of modern storytelling convention? Or does he get tired of thinking about it too hard and cash out like HBO chose to do?
The answer, of course, is that he just doesn't publish the last two books at all and chooses to spend the rest of his life at a poolside in Santa Fe instead.
i think you're onto something here... i had thought through it as far as the literary challenge of letting the world burn, but you're right: it's deeper than that. the cosmology of ASIF, as far as I can recall it, is an atheist's vision of a monalitrist (sp?) society. there are competing interpretations of the metaphysical world that range from wilderness shamanism to High Church, but iirc, none of them is really presented as "true." people are brought back from death in a variety of ways. in the best case, they're confused and afraid, not knowing where they were or how they returned; at worst, they're mindless wights bound to the will of the Night King. it is a bleakly existential take on the genre, and i think that's what was so compelling about it. but you're right—if he's ever going to land this jet, he would need to literally and allegorically find a way to overcome death, and find something beyond it. not just the material conditions of the world he created, but the metaphysical reality beyond it: something positive beyond death besides just a howling void. the whole thing is probably too far gone at this point, but like i said—i'm ready to be surprised.
props for managing to steer clear of that whole phenomenon for so long. i wish i was that discerning. still, there is something interesting about doing forensics on these mega-stories (and their metanarratives) after they've had their moment and expired. this one got away from me a little bit, but i think there's something to learn about how stories live and die in our culture.
well damn! thanks man, truly. that genuinely means a lot, if you found enough to like in this without being that familiar with the story itself.
i really, really appreciate the support. it's great motivation to keep getting better.
I respect you for taking this opportunity to really lay into GRRM's choice of headwear--someone had to do it--but that line "I avoid flawed stories" is fascinating to me. Is that really true, Rollins? How could you manage such a thing?
ah, good. now i'm not sure whether to be terrified or encouraged. but you've probably deduced which one i'll land on anyway, based on my avatar.
I would be petrified to know what he could do with my *face*
ice cold. in my defense, i *really* need those glasses.
what does Tonic Masculinity have to say about classic menswear? i'll bet i can go a couple rounds with you on that topic.
Spooky, but honestly I believe it. Hey, I wanna be Social Dynamics'd, do me: I mostly wear a lot of flannel and I can't stand for my fingernails to get too long, what bad habits should I stay vigilant against?
ಠ_ಠ Did you read my synopsis or are you really just that good?