Before I can talk to you about Game of Thrones, I’m gonna have to talk to you about Pro Wrestling for a bit.
In the 1990’s, there was a Wrestling Company called WCW and they had a major storyline involving the NWO (for “New World Order”). The basic gimmick they had was this: They were bad guys who all looked out for each other and they were tight as ticks. They’d cover for each other, cheat for each other, and they did it in such a way that moved a *LOT* of t-shirts.
They’d break the rules and win the match. They’d cheat and win the match. If they were going to *LOSE* the match, they would just get disqualified instead of taking a “real” loss. And, for some reason, this got cheers. The best reason I can come up with is that they were “cool”.
Indeed, they were so cool that people wanted to join them. I’m not just talking about “in storyline”, either. I’m talking about backstage politicking resulting in people joining the NWO because it got them more more cheers, television time, etc, than not being a member… which, of course, increased the amount of juice the NWO had.
And the NWO kept on cheating and winning or, if it looked like they were going to lose, causing a huge schmozz (er, a huge cluster in the ring resulting in a disqualification or other no-contest ending).
While this was interesting and novel for a while (and, seriously, it was), it eventually became somewhat frustrating. One of the reasons to watch pro wrestling, after all, is that the narratives of the various stories get resolved. Week after week, month after month, even PPV after PPV, the NWO storyline never offered something like resolution. It just had more matches ending up without a real finish and more people joining up with the bad guys and the tension just kept building up.
The tension was like a debt… the more and more debt that was established by the bad guys, the bigger and better the payoff of the eventual resolution had to be in order to pay that debt.
Which brings us to how there was a good guy or two. These good guys were able to have matches against bad guys (who weren’t NWO bad guys, mind) and win and win decisively (or, in some cases, lose and lose decisively) and there were a number of matches that seemed inevitable and, finally, the day came when the good guys would fight the bad guys… but even those didn’t work out. There was one team vs. team match that was supposed to be In A Steel Cage (thus preventing interference from outside) and, well, one of the good guys turned out to betray his own team resulting in a beat down of the remaining good guys in a steel cage that prevented anyone else from preventing it… which turned out to be a huge letdown. This increased the debt.
The good guys could never catch a break, even when they finally had something break their way, it turned out to bite them in the butt. The bad guys always had stuff break their way… and even when they lost matches (and they lost a *LOT* of matches), it was due to such things as disqualifications from run-ins or cheating or no-contest finishes that didn’t end up with them losing any face. This increased the debt. The fans were getting ticked. SOMETHING HAD TO GIVE.
So, like, *FINALLY*, there was a match scheduled for Starrcade. The Head Bad Guy vs. The Head Good Guy. This was it. This was the match that we had been waiting *YEARS* to see.
It should have been a 20 minute squash. The bad guy folding like paper against the onslaught of the righteous good guy who had watched the bad guys run rampant. The good guy versus the bad guy in a fair fight. No interference. No cheating. No funny stuff. Just *RESOLUTION*… followed by the good guy winning in a decisive manner that closed out the story. The Bad Guys, when they saw their leader defeated, would reveal all of the cracks in the foundation of their seeming camaraderie, they’d squabble among themselves, and disperse back into their old cliques. The Natural Order Of Wrestling Would Be Restored: The Debt Repaid.
This is not what happened. Without getting into too many details, the match that was supposed to come out and say “THIS HAS BEEN SET RIGHT!” ended up leaving the audience saying “Well… I guess… that was good? I mean, the good guy won, right? Kinda?” And everybody was really, really, really disappointed.
Which, finally, brings me to Game of Thrones.
An entertainment that consistently has the bad guys win, that consistently thwarts the good guys, will eventually be abandoned as a disappointment. From what I understand, the bad guys in GoT are the ones who have the plot armor. Sure, maybe something bad happens from time to time, but their trials and tribulations are *NOTHING* compared to the beatdowns received by the good guys. Occasionally, you see a bad guy see the light and become a good guy… but that tends to be the signal that the newly minted good guy’s troubles are beginning. Worse than good guys dying, many times you will see good guys be shattered and broken and, in order to rebuild themselves, they have to do so by becoming bad guys… thus turning your reason to keep reading into a reason to give up and find a new entertainment.
I know that, in interviews, Martin has said something to the effect of “I want my readers to legitimately fear for their favorite characters instead of knowing that Ned will go on to save the world or (and then he starts throwing some season three spoilers around).” This is all well and good and it’s wonderful to play with the tropes that one’s audience is expecting.
Martin ought to watch out, though. He’s quite a debt to pay off.
I haven’t seen the season finale yet, but I know this: Va gur obbxf, Pngryla pbzrf onpx sebz gur qrnq. Fur qbrfa’g pbzr onpx dhvgr evtug, ohg fur qbrf pbzr onpx.
The “bad” guys aren’t always evil. Mellisandre’s got the best of intentions. Cierce’s just trying to protect her kids.
And the “good” guys aren’t all that good. I fear that Arya’s going to slide into darkness. Dany’s becoming arrogant.
And which side does Theon belong to, anyway? Or the Hound?
The “bad” guys aren’t always evil.
And the “good” guys aren’t all that good.
What does *THAT* do to the debt?
Well, nobody gets up in Willie S.’s grill when his body counts are near 100%.
i think jb turns a good phrase in calling it a “debt” because that’s no doubt how it feels, but it’s a bit depressing. doesn’t it kinda suck that his audience expects a certain kind of payoff in the first place?
Hey, you don’t *HAVE* to pay it.
There’s just a lingering sensation of loss afterwards. I’m sure we can come up with dozens of examples (Mass Effect 3 is the one that most immediately comes to mind) that did (or do) this.
But I’m sure we can also think of examples of a debt being Paid In Full… and how we can go back to those entertainments on an otherwise empty Saturday Night and walk away feeling like our proverbial books are just a little more in balance.
In the case of George RR, the argument could be made that his particular entertainment is not reproducible by anybody else. Hey, if he’s the only game in town, he’s the only game in town.
But WCW went out of business and it was purchased by the WWF for pennies on the dollar. (There is a *LOT* more to it than just the NWO, of course… but the NWO was representative of where it started to turn around. Where the Monday Night Wars turned around was, ironically enough, during an episode that was taped. The WWF had Mick Foley win the title and WCW announced that you don’t have to watch the WWF tonight because, ugh, Mick Foley (?) wins the title. Tony Schiavone joked “yeah, that’ll put butts in seats” but… everybody tuned into the WWF that night to see Mick Foley win the title. And more and more of them stayed every week thereafter until WCW went out of business.)
well, i only have secondhand information on this via the wife but she’s at least under the impression that the work intends to lay bare the whole good guys/bad guys thing as a false dichotomy. so the payoff people seem to expect is obviously not going to be provided. it’s like reading blood meridian and hoping for a happy ending.
unrelated, but how goddamn great would a blood meridian miniseries on hbo be?
Not just that false dichotomy, but also the idea that stories begin or end. This one’s screwy structurally from that POV….magic used to be a thing, but now it’s been gone long enough that it’s just a myth, but oh wait, here it comes again. (Let’s just hope Martin hews closer to The Wire in the conclusion of his cyclical story than BSG’s treatment of similar eternal recurrence).
The “hero” (or the guy you *thought* was the hero) died, and not only did he not win, the story (and life) keeps on going afterwards.
As long as the world is fully-realized and the characters well-drawn with depth so that you enjoy (well, maybe “enjoy” is the wrong word – call it “appreciate” instead, maybe) spending time with them and in that world, that is the thing. There won’t be “one” moral or story at the “end”, there will have been many.
This strikes me as a significant difference from wrestling storylines (but not being a wrestling follower, I could be wrong) – I suspect that they are intentionally sort of broad and simple, with just a few stock archetypes repeated ad infinitum?
dhex,
that may be what the work intends. if so, it’s failing pretty hard.
Cersei: “I can has audience sympathy now?”
Reviewer: “No, everyone still hates you.”
Eh, I am sometimes weirdly sympathetic to TV Cersei.
I know, I know. But she had a hard life! Used as Tywin’s strategic pawn, limited in her options due to Westerosi society’s gender roles!
Plus, she’s just fun when she is in total iceb**ch mode. Nobody can brutally shut someone down like she can (“No one cares what your father once told you”; “Call me sister again, and I will have you strangled in your sleep”). She’s daddy’s girl in that respect.
Boy, Tywin sure screwed those kids up.
Glyph,
I’m pretty sure that’s just because Lena refuses to read the books.
I suspect that they are intentionally sort of broad and simple, with just a few stock archetypes repeated ad infinitum?
If I were to disagree, it would be with the “just a few stock archetypes” part. There are a *LOT* of stock archetypes.
The majority of the storylines involve situations that can be resolved by one guy beating up another, though. That limits the available stories, of course, but you’d be amazed by how many are left.
In Gray and Gray Morality, you don’t have debt.
Or at least, folks don’t care as much.
Did you really care who won Dallas?
A Lannister always pays his debts.
True, but Martin seems to be a Greyjoy and is paying the Iron Price right now.
Where do whores go?
[the sheer and utter hilarity of this line has nothing to do with the novels from which it is pulled. Sometimes the metajoke is better.]
No one in GoT, good or bad, has plot armor. Which is one of its great strengths, in my opinion, since one of the great weaknesses of the sort of fantasy it isn’t is how predictable the eventual fates of the characters are. (Did anyone not know that Snape was going to die heroically?) “Good guys win” isn’t an obligation.
“Good guys win” isn’t an obligation.
Indeed it is not. I suspect, however, that the feeling that it is an obligation lingers in a *HUGE* amount of the fan base. This genre, if it’s famous for anything, is famous for paying its debts.
You know how Shakespeare out-Aristotled Aristotle? His plays were the only ones that actually followed the rules that Aristotle laid out? That took… what? 1900 years?
The United States has out-Campbelled Joseph Campbell.
And, sure, maybe Martin is reminding us that we should never trust a Campbell but that is a dangerous game. I honestly think that the lion’s share of the readership is as enthusiastic as it is because of the (unstated) assumption that the debts will be repaid.
As they weren’t in The Sopranos, The Wire, or Deadwood. The audience may be more grown up than you give them credit for.
Looking back at the Sopranos, what do people tend to say about it? For my part, I tell people “just watch the first two seasons”.
I’ve not yet watched The Wire but I put it in kind of a different category because it strikes me as a didactic criticism of politics, the war on drugs, education policy, journalism, etc. There are different expectations for a show exploring “this is why Baltimore is Baltimore” than there are for more fantastic settings.
As for Deadwood, I was told to watch it because the language was so novel and the characters so complex, then because Swearengen was such an interesting character and then I was told “eh, Season Three is just ‘new situation, everybody looks to Swearengen, Swearengen resolves problem, repeat”.
The Wire is a category unto itself but my experiences with the other two were that people were so excited about them at the beginning and then interest tapered off. I’m more than happy enough to say “that’s because people said ‘this debt will have to be paid off in spectacular fashion!’ before realizing that it wouldn’t be… and just telling people to pay attention to the earlier seasons.”
The Wire really is its own category, I am unaware of anything else like it.
It’s got “the system/society” as its main character, and you spend 5 seasons exploring how/why it got to be the way it is.
(Well, I guess Deadwood is a BIT like that. But Wire is way better. )
Their ratings held up for years, even if in retrospect people prefer the earlier seasons. Deadwood was still very popular when Milch pulled the plug to do John From Cincinnati, and I know people that are still angry about that. Anyway, both ended because their creators decided to do something else, not for lack of viewers.
Then again, Seinfeld was highly rated even after Larry David left, so…
(Also, I love Larry David.)
people were so excited about them at the beginning and then interest tapered off
For me, Sopranos and Deadwood were prone to flagging interest over the long-haul because, frankly, their plots were stretched thin. With Sopranos this was because 1.) no matter how inventively-/well-told THIS mob story was, it was still a mob story, with people getting whacked, and we’ve seen that a million times and 2.) because of its success, HBO extended the run and the writers/showrunners had to do some watertreading in the middle of the series run before proceeding to endgame.
With Deadwood, well, I just feel like “plot” isn’t Milch’s strong suit.
As long as Martin can keep steadily churning out plot I don’t think GoT will fall victim to the issue you note.
Also, (apparently if you want me to comment a lot you just need to post about dragons and wrestling), how much of this audience disenchantment is just normal when confronted with *any* long-form work? I like Infinite Jest, but it’s too long. I love Robert Pollard, but at some point there’s no more brain room for more of his songs, though these later ones aren’t all that different from earlier ones.
Are the later books/albums/seasons unsatisfying simply because we’ve passed the infatuation point, rather than due to any lack of payoff or drop in quality? It’s not you (the entertainment), it’s me, baby.
Their ratings held up for years, even if in retrospect people prefer the earlier seasons.
I submit:
We’ll do the exact same thing with A Song Of Ice And Fire. Sales/Ratings will be strong up to and including A Dream of Spring.
In retrospect, people will prefer the earlier books/seasons.
Like any love affair, the beginning is always remembered the most fondly, before the other person’s flaws became apparent, and our eye got caught by something newer and shinier. From what I have read/seen so far, Martin’s talented enough that I give him the benefit of the doubt, and even utterly failing to stick the landing doesn’t retroactively cancel out the greatness that came before.
Usually, anyway. The BSG fiasco sure came close. It makes the series hard to recommend.
There are a number of love affairs that turn into mature marriages. Maybe not that many… but a non-zero amount.
Do those have things in common with each other?
Glyph,
“As long as Martin can keep steadily churning out plot I don’t think GoT will fall victim to the issue you note.”
… you haven’t noticed the sudden increase in STALLING?
“Where do whores go?”
Do those have things in common with each other?
I know I am being snarky, but brevity. As Louis CK says, even if you find someone you love and make it work in the long haul, the *best case scenario* is that one of you will eventually die and the other will be old and alone.
That is the opposite of a “dramatically-satisfying ending”, and that is *best-case*.
Think of the books/films/TV shows that don’t flag, and with satisfying endings. They often tend more towards the “short” end, than the “superlong”.
IOW, the needed payback isn’t so much for “bad karma”, it’s for “time/effort put in by the audience”.
At this moment I’d tell a new reader of ASoIaF to read the first three and then stop. It’s nothing to do with amorality, since the first three contain some of the strongest examples of that. It’s that in the first three GRRM was in control of the plot, and in the fourth and fifth he seems to have lost that.
Well, it’s good to know I have one more good one to read.
I wonder if in the process of trimming for TV, if the show will be able to tighten any of that back up (if there is enough good material to work with in 4 & 5). They’ve shown a willingness to go off-book where it serves their needs.
Some friends and I have been speculating on that. Book 3 will be two seasons, and if you exclude all the extraneous crap, 4 and 5 combined would be about one more season. 4 cuts like butter:
* No one cares about Dorne
* No one cares about the Iron Isles
* Unless the whole Brienne thing is less pointless than it seems, cut it. If it really matters, she can be moved into place in one episode.
* Jaime is cool, but again can be highly compressed with no loss.
* Arya and Sansa/Littlefinger are cool: keep them.
* Cersia is so-so, but allows for lots of nudity, so TV will expand that.
I like Viking stories. You go down fighting evil — the good do not triumph forever.
OTOH, at some point it turns into some all-too-real version of a squabbling feuding misery of a place where the histor goes ‘A and B killed C in an ambush, the B turned on A and backstabbed him, then A’s relative D burned B and his family to death in their house one night, then E came and fought with D, until F came and slew the remnants of both,…..’, without end.
It’s not fantasy, it’s reality.
So why read Game of Thrones instead of a history of the Thirty Years’ War? Fiction is supposed to have some kind of meaningful plot progression.
So why read Game of Thrones instead of a history of the Thirty Years’ War?
This is the question that shouldn’t linger in the reader’s mind at the end of A Dream Of Spring.
Do you think that it won’t be in many persons’ minds then?
My suspicion is pretty close to Dman’s below: I don’t reckon I’ll ever collect.
Now, there are a lot of reasons to engage with particular entertainments and “the endorphins I got from seeing the bad guys get theirs and the good guys have a happy ending” are only one reason. (“I like complex stories.” “I like complex characters.” “I like the chickens coming home to roost and the stage being covered with bodies and there just being one character left alive and it’s his job to tell the audience to go home because everyone is dead.”)
Given my assumption that, hey, this is a matter of taste, I’m coming at this in such a way to say that George RR Martin is building his story using unstated assumptions on the part of his fans. They’re getting upset about these unstated assumptions being subverted and, yeah, that’s really interesting to watch in real time… but it strikes me as likely to result, ultimately, in people saying “just read the first couple of books” or “just watch the first two seasons”.
The way we do about The Sopranos. Or Deadwood.
oh, not even!
I didn’t sign up to go on a travel-tour of Essos OR Westeros!
Play with my assumptions all you like, Mr. Martin.
But stop STALLING! If you can’t fit the major battle in, CUT STUFF OUT.
Martin’s books are an editorial trainwreck, and that’s why they suck, not because of the plot, but the lack of plot.
So why read Game of Thrones instead of a history of the Thirty Years’ War?
Speaking of debts, that one took a good 300 years to pay off.
Also, I haven’t read any of the Game of Thrones books (though I’m tempted), but if you want an alternative with a debt that is ultimately paid, I highly (highly) recommend Sinkiewicz’s Trilogy (it’s so good, it’s just called “The Trilogy”), comprised of With Fire and Sword, The Deluge, and Pan Michael (Sir Michael, sometimes translated as Fire in the Steppe), about the Khmelnytsky Uprising and the Thirteen Years War (a period known in Poland as The Deluge), which were a fairly direct result of the Thirty Years War. It’s got kings, knights, alliances and alliances broken, betrayal and heroism, love and love lost, epic battles, the destruction of an empire (the Polish-Lithuanian) and the rise of another (Russia), and the ultimate emergence of a true hero. And it’s only partially fantasy.
It looks like there are free ebook versions, but I can’t speak for those translations.
“Fiction is supposed to have some kind of meaningful plot progression.”
that’s a tragically limiting view of a very broad form of human expression.
Don’t ever watch Mad Men if you are looking for meaningful plot progression. Some random stuff happens, some other random stuff happens, people are selfish and venal and occasionally kind, only to slip back into old habits and patterns again. It’s more like a collection of short stories filling out a world of individual “moments”, than an epic hero’s journey. (Though occasionally, and hinted at again last night, I also think it’s one of the longest-form examinations of undiagnosed alcoholism the world has ever seen). Campbell is crucial but he’s not the only game in town.
To JB’s point, will some people be disappointed if the bad guys don’t get theirs, in spectacular fashion? Undoubtedly. Maybe I will even be one of them, if Martin doesn’t handle the ending well, but that will (I hope) not be so much because a “karmic debt” wasn’t repaid, but because the ending doesn’t ring true or make sense (see: Lost, BSG, Fringe).
Sopranos, Shield, and Wire all turned out OK (from a “satisfyingly ‘true’ resolution to the story” perspective). GoT has as much in common with these types of stories, as with LoTR.
Just to be clear, I’m not particularly worried about meaningful plot progression. I generally like it in novels (though I don’t require it), but in other forms of fiction, plot progression often gets in the way (sometimes short stories work better as snapshots rather than as stories, e.g.).
I think dhex was replying to Katherine, but embedding is a pain in the bum.
Also, I don’t particularly like Mad Men, but it’s for reasons that have little to do with its plot progressions or lack thereof (I won’t get into them here, because no politics).
I’ve heard of those but never had reason to dive in. I’ll talk to Maribou about them.
I may wish to switch to them from A Song of Ice and Fire, I tell you what.
Let me know. I read Quod Vadis in the winter, and have been kind of itching to reread The Trilogy, so I may do so this summer.
Because you like taking a fantasy tour of the world, apparently.
I like taking a fantasy tour of Middle-Earth, because Tolkien’s writing stylestrongly appeals to me; I could enjoy reading the man write about watching paint dry.
But Martin doesn’t have Tolkien’s writing chops, so his Tour Guide to Westeros sections tend to be tedious.
And that, my friend, is the other fucking point.
If you don’t recognize the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy in Martin’s books,
you haven’t been paying attention.
Seriously? I’d like to hear more about this theory, because one of the most notable things to me about ASOIAF is that its protagonists are the disadvantaged (albeit still within the ruling classes): women, a dwarf, cripples, an ex-smuggler, a bastard. Their stories revolve around how they respond to that fact. The one major exception to the rule, Ned Stark, proves its centrality by being a Decoy Protagonist.
Its really not reality. Martin like a lot of other fantasy authors also forgot that there were other powers at work besides the nobility. In real life, the Church was a pretty powerful institution that act counter to the goals of royalty and nobility if it was in their interest. What we would call the upper middle class and middle classes were able to exert influence and power because of their economic might. Its why towns and guilds got the right to be self-governing. Even peseants were able to exert political power at times, particularly during labor shortages.
For me, this debt has reached the point where I have given up collecting it. Waiting 7+ year for the terrible book 5 was more than enough for me. I will finish the series by watching HBO, not by reading the books.
Does anyone want to bet me that Martin does not have book 6 out by the time HBO finishes their season 5?
Let’s say that he (somehow) managed to put out one of these every 2ish years. Would that change anything?
No, because they’d still suck. He can’t finish this.
I want my Chtorr!
Not for me either. The books are not that good. 5 was terrible and made me realize that I have wasted my time with this series.
Ahh… but they help set up SUCH GOOD pranks!
…. surely you can guess one or two?
I think this series is quite a bit about debt-paying and obligation, but not so much about “good” guys vs. “bad” guys.
I think in the end there might be more than a little bit of, “we all got it comin’, kid”.
There’s also a “no good guys, no bad guys” thing going on anyway. For instance, is Danerys a good guy or a bad guy? Do you want her to get back to Westeros to make a bid to regain the Iron Throne?
Jvgu Gljva, Prefrv, Wnvzr, naq Glevba nyy bhg bs pbagragvba sbe cbjre bar jnl be nabgure, gurer nera’g nal Ynaavfgref bs novyvgl yrsg gb eha guvatf. Jura jr ynfg yrsg Fgnaavf ur jnf va qrrc, qrrc gebhoyr naq Qnarelf znl or noyr gb erpynvz gur guebar fvzcyl orpnhfr gur bayl pbzcrgrag bccbaragf fur snprf jvyy or gur Veba Vfynaqref.
I had sort of hoped for something more than this as an endgame.