The source material deserves most of the blame

Wednesday, May 1st, 2019

Bryan Caplan argues that Game of Thrones has had awful pacing problems since they wrapped up Storm of Swords at the end of season 4:

But the source material deserves most of the blame. What should have happened:

1. Feast for Crows should have lived up to its name. In this book, a horrific winter descends on the North while Stark loyalists fight Baratheons fight Wildlings fight Boltons fight Greyjoys, leading to mass famine and swarms of refugees fleeing south. Meanwhile, Dany fights for control of Slaver’s Bay, and Cercei struggles for control with the religious fanatics. The book ends with Boltons attacking the Night’s Watch, allowing the Others to break through the Wall.

Major deaths: Stannis, Davos, Melisandre, Ramsey Bolton, Rickon, all the Night’s Watch except Jon and Sam, all the named Wildlings, Jorah, all of Dany’s slaver enemies.

2. In Dance with Dragons, the horrible winter continues south, along with swarms of refugees. The Night King takes over the North and besieges Moat Cailin. Cercei kills off her enemies in the Sept Massacre and sends Jaime to reinforce Moat Cailin with technical help from Sam Tarly. It looks like it’s going to work, but Dany (with Tyrion as her Hand) attacks King’s Landing with her dragons, leading to general collapse of the Lannister’s resistance. The book ends as the Others swarm Riverrun and take the Twins.

Major deaths: All of Cercei’s local enemies, Jaime, Cercei, Tommen, all the Tullies, all the Freys.

3. In Winds of Winter, Dany desperately tries to fight the Night King with her dragons and allies as the devastation of the North gets repeated everywhere North of Dorne. Littlefinger (who has long-since married Sansa and killed Robert Arryn) lures the Night King to the Eyrie after obtaining ancient lore to bind the Night King to his will. Meanwhile, all the remaining named characters rally to Dany, fortified by Sam’s technical help. One dragon gets turned undead; the Night King uses him to destroy the Eyrie, killing Littlefinger and Sansa. As the book ends, King’s Landing falls, and the survivors desperately retreat to Dorne.

Major deaths: Littlefinger, Sansa, Tyrion (who desperately tries to repeat his victory at Blackwater Bay), Sam, Varys.

4. In A Dream of Spring, the survivors fortify Dornish defenses. Winter abates, and much of the Night King’s army slowly rots into extinction. The Night King tries breaking the impasse with his undead dragon, but fails due to Arya’s spycraft. This opens the way for a multi-pronged counterattack. Half the remaining beloved characters die on five different fronts. In the end, they force the Night King back beyond the Wall, and prepare for the next Winter. This time, when a Stark says “Winter is coming,” all Westeros believes him!

Major deaths: Half the remaining beloved characters, but probably sparing Dany and Jon to give a little hope for the future.

Furthermore, each of these seasons should have been a full ten episodes. Cutting story-telling for special effects is a rotten trade-off. And never skimp on polishing the dialogue, which is the glory of the first four seasons!

One last thing: The Night King shouldn’t just talk; he should be a cool Satanic figure who bluntly points out the wickedness of Man and uses it to rationalize human extinction.

Comments

  1. Kirk says:

    Let’s be honest with ourselves: George “Rape-Rape” Martin is a mentally ill hack writer who’s symptomatic of what’s wrong with the entire entertainment media in America today. The fact that this sick bastard is lionized, and made so wealthy by the people buying his violence pornography is disgusting. That HBO chose his work to turn into a television show is indicative of the deep corruption that has overtaken our culture.

    There’s nothing uplifting, nothing positive depicted in either the books or the television. You read it or watch it, and the only thing you want to do is find a shower to wash the filth off yourself, because you’ve defiled yourself spiritually just by participating in it–Saying otherwise is akin to someone who acquires child pornography that they’re innocent of complicity with the pornographer’s defilement of those children. You bought it, you read it, you watched it–You made that choice, so you’re complicit in the depravity on display.

    My guess is that Martin is probably like Marion Zimmer Bradley, she who enabled her perverse mate to rape her own children. You read her works, and there’s something there that appears in the rearview mirror, that echoes the depravity of her personal life. So, too with Martin–The sick shit that depraved pervert has written over the years leads me to suspect that there’s probably a trail of abuse and perhaps even actual dead bodies in his wake. Well people do not produce the perverted dreck he does with such alacrity and joy.

    In a generation or two, if this society ever recovers from the degeneracy, Martin’s depravity will be the subject of endless analysis, as well as discussion of how and why society of this era didn’t see fit to even censure his sickness, instead rewarding it with notoriety, praise, and sacks of money.

  2. Ross says:

    I have never watched a second of this stuff.

    And it’s precisely because esteemed people like you who mince no words, using reliable resources like the blog we’re on, making it clear what this stuff is about.

    Thanks Kirk.

  3. E.E. says:

    Mr. Kirk is hella hilarious, even managed to make me — avid consumer of GRRM and Japanese-themed peccadilloes — feel rather ashamed.

    That said, a good rule of thumb for pop-culture phenomena seems to be that fan-fictions are invariable superior. Star Wars, Star Trek, and based on the evidence profferred above, Game of Thrones are all the evidence I present.

  4. Alistair says:

    I’m more familiar with the TV series than the books, which I haven’t read. I understand that the former has toned down the sexual violence a LOT. But a lot of what remains is uncomfortable. Mostly because it doesn’t serve any good dramatic or narrative purpose. You do get the sense of GRRM’s vicarious enjoyment for such. That and the man himself seems a little…creepy…just going through the bio…

    It’s a shame, as there are good elements to the show, at least in earlier seasons. The politics is excellent, and the low-fantasy genre really works here.

    There are strong and interesting characters (NB, Hollywood, here is how to do “strong women”!). There is heroism, or at least goodness, and even many of the antagonists are relatable on some level (though there probably are too many out-and-out psychopaths). The world-building is sub-Tolkien though; GRRM isn’t very original, but can copy-and-paste real-world historical cultures with good effect.

  5. Kirk says:

    Martin has been writing for decades on various TV programs and movies. He’s a well-known as a “go-to” guy for script doctoring.

    Think about that for a minute, and consider what this creature has produced once his “credibility” with the industry was great enough to get away with inflicting his “artistic vision” on the rest of the world, and how eagerly the sick bastards in the publishing and movie industries put his crap out there.

    Frankly, I think he belongs in a mental ward, under restraint and heavy medication. I’m not a fan of mistaking an author’s work for their opinions, but like with de Sade, sometimes they give you a vision into their ids that one cannot but take seriously as warning. I am not going to be one bit surprised if Martin’s personal history doesn’t include crap like what Marion Zimmer Bradley’s real-life background turned out to contain, and that there are real-world crimes he’s committed corresponding to his fantasies.

    You don’t write crap like he has without there being serious issues being present in your mind. I don’t detect a single iota of self-awareness of just how sick his writings are, either–Unlike, say, John Ringo. With Ringo, his stuff is flatly written as “get this out of my head” therapy, and he acknowledges his perversity in doing so. Ringo has admitted to being engaged in a bit of light BDSM, responsibly so. Martin, on the other hand? There is no sign of that sort of “Hey, I know this is a little sick, but I’m writing and doing this to exorcise demons…”.

    I get the feel that the demons in Martin’s head are genuine, and have taken over the asylum. The man is flatly depraved, and, I think, outright evil. Popularizing the crap he has, I can’t consider him anything else.

    When I read fiction, I don’t look for “uplifting”, necessarily. I do, however, want to feel as though I haven’t spent the time reading something as though I was wallowing in a pit of filth and madness, which is pretty much the feeling that I got from reading most of Martin’s work, over the years. I knew there was something “off” about him, back when I first really became aware of him through his book Tuf Voyaging, and about ten pages into this “high fantasy” they’re selling, I began to recognize the same kind of depravity on display.

    Martin is symptomatic of a lot of the mental illnesses I have come to associate with the left-wing’s usual adherents–The desire to play god, to control others, and to make decisions that they are manifestly unqualified to make. Along with a complete lack of accountability for the results of their actions, and the oblivious inability to comprehend the actual effects of their fantasy on others.

    I’ve come to believe that a lot of leftism is simple mental illness expressed as politics. The ease with which they “other”, and immediately characterize everyone that doesn’t agree with them as being inherently and incurably evil…? Even over minor policy differences? Yeah… There is something more than a little sociopathic going on with the majority of them. It’s also likely, I suspect, that you’ll find a high correspondence with personality disorders along the autism scale, because of their inability to empathize with others. You can observe the same thing in a lot of religious zealots, which is why I suspect that Islam and leftism are so sympathetic–They each recognize like mental illness in each other’s adherents.

  6. Jeff R. says:

    I think your assessment may be overly harsh, Kirk. I’ve not read the books, and I only saw the first season of the TV show, but my general impression was that one of the major themes was something along the lines of “corrupt elites kill, exploit, and manipulate the masses in completely amoral fashion to maintain or increase personal power.” In other words, the viewer is supposed to be disgusted by the violence depicted, which is driven mainly by various nobles in their quest for status, and enabled by the strict social hierarchy of this medieval world.

  7. Kirk says:

    Read the books, if you can stomach them. The television is actually toned down, somewhat. Like, by about four times…

    https://tafkarfanfic.tumblr.com/post/119770640640/rape-in-asoiaf-vs-game-of-thrones-a-statistical

    Georgie “Rape-rape” Martin didn’t earn his sobriquet for nothing. This is a sick, depraved human being who lovingly describes everything. You are almost forced to have to visualize him typing with one hand, as he masturbates furiously. Which probably goes a long way towards explaining his low productivity. The man loves him some rape and nihilism.

    You are what you seek out for entertainment. Ancient Rome gloried in the sado-masochistic spectacles of the arena, on the theory that it hardened and inured the public to bloodshed. My theory? They were a bunch of sick bastards that got off on other people suffering. Martin’s readers and viewers ain’t much of an advance.

    One of these days, all this is going to be rich fodder for academic analysis, by some future culture that has either overcome or superseded our current corruption of the spirit. You cannot imagine Martin ever becoming published, let alone being a best-seller, in any previous era of American history. Think about that, for a moment… What does it say about the publishing industry, and the audience it has cultivated?

    Marion Zimmer Bradley’s works are still on sale. Martin receives little or no censure for his lovingly described rape and gratuitous slaughter. I’ve seen grade school kids reading the books, and quite a few parents allow their kids to watch HBO. In a decade or so, you’re going to hear young adults telling the world that their first exposure to sex and/or nudity was watching Game of Thrones with either parental approval or obliviousness. Care to extrapolate how that is going to affect their psycho-sexual development…?

    Martin belongs in a fucking mental hospital, along with most of his enablers, and a fair chunk of his audience.

  8. Jeff R says:

    Okay, so we’re now at the “GRRM destroys Western Civilization” level of hysteria? I guess I’m not going to talk you down off that ledge, so forget I said anything.

  9. Kirk says:

    He’s a symptom, not a cause. The fact that his pornography is popular isn’t his fault; it’s the fault of the people who found it profitable to market, and the essential depravity of the audience.

  10. Kirk says:

    One of the major things that strikes me about Martin’s popularity, along with his depraved works, is how hypocritical the fans are. Martin is an old white male that writes in loving detail about rape and slaughter on a beyond-Biblical scale. Do you hear even an ounce of criticism for that, in the popular media?

    Yet, Mark Twain is under fire for Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer, ‘cos he used the “N-word”.

    The SJW types are hypocrisy personified–They’ve made Martin a wealthy celebrity, staging his rape-fantasies in glorious living color, while selling that product to the public at large. In any other era, just floating the idea of an entertainment like Game of Thrones would have gotten you locked up for obscenity.

    I’m not sure that this state of affairs represents any real improvement. Given the nature of special effects today, I think I’d almost prefer the Roman arena, because at least there, you’d have to watch all the gory details, not just the cinematically-refined version of gory rape and death.

  11. Kirk says:

    I keep coming back to this issue, because it bugs the hell out of me:

    Here’s a thought experiment for you Martin apologists: Imagine that Martin wrote this dreck a hundred years ago, and he gained the notoriety then that he has now: What, do you suppose, would be the “take” on him, today? Would people consider him a master craftsman of the novel, as they apparently do today, or would he be excoriated as depraved example of the patriarchy, a “dead white male” that should be cast onto the midden-heap of history, reviled and forgotten…?

    Seriously, now: What in Martin’s writing makes him any better than, say, Lew Wallace or Walter Scott? Is his prose any more artistic than Samuel Clemens? Is his chosen subject matter any less evil?

    The man is a sick, sick bastard, and the lot of you who buy his works and make him rich are complicit in the depravity. You’re also symptomatic of what is wrong with so much of Western society today, which I’ll not sully the concept by referring to it as a “civilization”. It falls far short of the ideal, I’m afraid–And, will likely be seen as what it is, the corrupt descendant of a more enlightened age. Even the robber barons of the late 19th Century would have had the decency to have been embarrassed to be found reading something like Martin’s most successful work.

  12. Graham says:

    I also haven’t read the books, or Tolkien’s, for that matter. My attempts to do so made me think neither one was all that great at prose, though Tolkien was a bit tiring in a more elevated tone.

    I have consumed the Peter Jackson movies and the Game of Thrones series at great and repeated length and they certainly represent very different takes on a medievalish fantasy world and different attitudes about the world.

    The TV version of GoT has never troubled me. I’m certainly getting the sense the books might have if I had ever tried to struggle through them.

    It does represent a nice counterbalance to Tolkien in one way- I know his secondary work makes it clear that much more has gone on in Middle Earth than just the struggle against the two dark lords, there has been plenty of other conflict, and none of the men or elves or dwarves are free of ambition, lust or conflict. Yet still his work strikes me as assuming all that is just window dressing on the epic moral struggle that unites all history in a common narrative with a beginning, middle and end defined by that struggle. Martin has the epic struggle against the Walkers, but for most of the history of his world and even of this story it was the backdrop to the real, everyday, ongoing, history of humanity.

    Tolkien represents the traditional eschatology of Catholic Christianity rendered in fantastic form. Martin represents, at least on this topic, a world in which history is cyclical or indeed just goes on and on, on its own terms.

    The thing about the later seasons that actually concerns me is that it is turning into the eschatology of the progressive age- the epic moral struggle is introduced again, it is fought by everyone happily uniting together with the dream of ‘breaking the wheel’ and introducing a newer, better, at least by current standards more perfect world, ideally under female leadership across the board.

    We’ll see. I’m still hoping legitimate hereditary succession will put Jon Snow on the throne. No spoilers please, I won’t see episode 3 until tomorrow. I’ve got a version of the story in my head that would make good narrative sense in which he was killed last weekend, but I have avoided finding out.

  13. CVLR says:

    Kirk, I think that Martin’s moral turpitude is even worse than you imagine. When you consume it while young, it renormalizes you.

  14. Kirk says:

    If that’s normal, I’ll happily remain whatever that makes me, thankyouverymuch…

  15. CVLR says:

    With all respect, read it again.

    You become the image of the morality in which you are moulded. Hence why the state is perpetually expounding the benefits of unlimited state-sponsored schooling.

    Something else: I didn’t say it was normal in general, nor normal for me. Though it is true that I’ve spent no little effort developing the ability to simulate it on demand.

    It’s a high tightrope. Fall to one side and be eaten; fall to the other and eat your fellow man. Sharks and zombies, and humanity in the balance.

    2030 here we come.

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