Two of whom I speak are solid midlisters. One is who GRRM wants to be when he grows up.
I’ll stand by my opinions, and I see I am not alone in thinking that GOT is maybe a lot less than the fans and adoring critics think it is - that maybe it belongs closer on the shelf to Da Vinci Code (“Gosh, this is deep, isn’t it?”) than Tolkien.
As for “only two episodes” - whole egg, rotten, etc. There are many series that took from four or five episodes to a whole first season to find their path (B5 comes to mind) but their pilots rarely sucked and they had good points amid the drift. GOT is just a writeoff for me. Clearly I’m out of step with the zeitgeist.
Not to be all book-guy, but that actually was the *one *thing that pissed me off about season 1. In the series, he takes her like a brute. In the book, it’s a lot more ambiguous : Drogo apparently acknowledges (with his limited Westernese vocabulary) that she doesn’t want sex at all by repeatedly making advances, noting her reaction and stating “No.” (which you could interpret as either “I understand you’re not into it, and I’m not interested if you aren’t” or “I don’t like this reaction of yours, stop that shit”). But he still patiently goes for tenderness and foreplay, before the scene “fades to black” with him asking “No ?”. As in “Are you *sure *you still don’t want it a little bit right now ?”.
At least, that’s how I read it. I suppose it’s still on the creepy side. But less so than the full-on manhandling that went on in the series. Further, he genuinely appears to care for and dote on her from that point on, which may or may not be readily apparent in the series.
interesting thread. I’m one of those who tried a few episodes & didn’t see the appeal. nice to know I wasn’t the only one. don’t like the sadistic violence, don’t care if it’s realistic to the medieval type setting or not. Acting, production values, etc all seemed great, but all seemed in service to a story that is going absolutely nowhere. I’m not interested in a rambling history of a nonexistent world. I’d rather have a more coherent story. tried the books. didn’t like 'em either.
All the people I know in real life who also like fantasy fiction love this series, book and tv. tastes vary. glad there’s something out there for everyone.
It’s like a modern-day take on the fantasy genre- it has all the grit, violence and sex of a show like say… “Rome” or “The Sopranos”, but not set in Earth history, and not involving Earth creatures, countries or customs.
Contrast this with something like say… Tolkien, where the heroes are clearly good, and clearly heroic, and the bad guys are clearly evil, and there’s always a right and heroic course of action for the good guys to take, and they know what that course is.
GOT, on the other hand is rife with ambiguity- the characters don’t always know who the good guys are, and they rarely know what the right course of action is, and the heroic course of action is frequently the wrong, or the stupid one.
It’s much more real-life in many ways than the fantasy genre stories that preceded it, and to me, that’s what makes it interesting. I mean, some characters who you think are just right and proper assholes and honorless chumps turn out to be secret heroes, and their terrible acts turn out to be some of the most heroic self-sacrifice in the books. And some of the “heroic” characters turn out to be devious assholes or clueless, naive bumblers.
Of course, the books aren’t at all big on the sex or violence, like HBO is; out of something like 5000 pages so far, I can think of a mere handful of explicit sex or violence scenes. GRRM is far more likely to have it occur off-screen, so to speak. But sex and violence sell, and are hard to portray off-screen with nearly the impact, so we get gushing blood and lots of nude chicks.
I don’t much care for mainline fantasy or “high fantasy”; the best of it bores me and most of what I’ve read seems to be endless retread of the same tropes. Maybe it’s not all Gor, but I have the feeling you could mix random pages from quite a few books and the reader would take a while to catch on.
I’ve never had much appreciation for renfair-type history interpretation; come to me in your authentic woolens and hand-forged mail and badly cured leather smelling like a mule skinner and covered in vermin bites and we’ll talk. An awful lot of otherwise serious fantasy dismisses the whole issue of hygiene, health and medicine or hand-waves it away under “magick.” (And far too many go the other route, putting modern sensibilities in Conan-era characters’ mouths and thoughts. Points to GOT for weaving in a little of that “reality,” but it already fails on so many other issues we’re left with irrelevant boobs and beheadings.)
Among my friends are several writers who are known in the fantasy fields. I tend to read and appreciate their other works and we tend to discuss those genres; much of their fantasy is considered “the good stuff” but is still not to my taste. However, having sampled the hundreds of shelf feet in the genre, a vast amount of it seems to be that retreaded, renfairish, recycled pablum, yes.
I am genuinely sorry to find out GOT falls into that category, no matter how finely drawn some of the character performances might be.
Oh, one hallmark of a renfair setting: scads of Highly Authentic castle or village people busily doing nothing in particular all over the background. You can tell at a glance they’re just doing the visual equivalent of nattering and grommishing; they can’t actually progress on their efforts lest it screw up continuity. GOT has this in spades.
I’d love to have found them to advance the genre past this renfair feel and utterly overdone British accents to authenticate the ancientness. But.
The thing I like most about Game of Thrones is that it sets up what appears to be a very cliche story in the early episodes, then brutally subverts it in later episodes. It departs from standard storytelling (especially television) rules in numerous different ways, particularly with regards to the concept of a protagonist. Which is why you’re 100% going to miss the brilliance of the show if you only watch the first two episodes.
Amateur Barbarian, BrokenBriton, I’m wondering what TV shows do you think are better than Game of Thrones? In a way I’m sympathetic to your cause. Because of the heaps of praise it receives, I’ve twice made a genuine effort to get into The Wire. But both times I found it unappealing and gave up. So I know where you’re coming from. But it’s hard to have a conversation on the matter if we don’t know what works you comparing it to.
A lot of things about Game of Thrones get a ton of praise, but one aspect that I think is a bit under praised is the original music. The music during the big battle in the second season is particularly excellent. It blends two characters themes together while also reving them up and incorporating diegetic war drums.
So, to recap - OP is friends with people who write in the genre. He thinks their writing is better than GRRM’s - but he thinks even their stuff is “pablum”. He dislikes the entire genre. So, naturally, he decides to watch Game of Thrones.
Surprisingly, disappointment ensues.
I just specifically said the opposite. Thanks for playing.
I also said there were many shows I thought I would dislike and on sampling them, liked quite a bit. From all the hype, I thought GOT might actually take a fresher approach to this worn-out genre. It doesn’t. Disappointment ensues. Here are some lovely parting gifts.
I’m not making a comparison, I’m not sure that helps.
My main point - alrerady made - is that the sheer quantity of characters, families, story arcs necessarily mean there is next to zero character development.
Also, every story arc is reduced to bullitt point scenes.
Minor grpe: They spent the entire first season telling us ‘war is coming’, and we seemed to end up with a busted cgi budget because the sea battle went missing.
People will cite examples of character A’s journey from here to there, but it won’t be nuanced, it won’t have any intellectual merit or worth. And then the character will die. This is seen as a strength.
But it doesn’t matter because here we go again … the weekly visit to the whorehouse and the chorus girl lineup.
It’s okay to not like quality writing, acting and production. But it’s not cool to pretend that quality writing, acting and production is shitty because you don’t like it.
Why would you, or anyone, think that you are the only one who doesn’t like something. There is, quite literally, nothing that has universal appeal. Hell, there are people who don’t like bacon!
There is lots of popular stuff I don’t like. I don’t like the highest rated show on TV, for fuck’s sake. There’s popular stuff I do like. And there is niche stuff I like that not many others like (such as 70s/80s progressive rock). It’s natural, and you are never alone in your like or dislike of something. Well, almost never…
I get the confusion. You were saying that you count some writers of fantasy among your friends AND there are shelves and shelves of fantasy pablum at B&N. I hope you can see were I might have been honestly confused for thinking you meant you’ve got friends that are among those that write said pablum.
But anyway, having read a fair amount of ‘high fantasy’ ( perhaps not as much as your writer friends ), I’m of the opinion that Martin’s stuff is a solid cut above average. And having been a consumer of a fair bit of TV, I think the same of the show. Fine if you disagree, as I’ve said - we all have opinions.
But out of curiosity, have you ever talked with your fantasy author friends about Martin’s writing within the genre? Did they have an opinion? I mean like I said I know fantasy fans that just flat-out dislike the books ( or at least elements of Martin’s writing ), but the general gist I get is they are not counted among the pablum, even by people who aren’t me ;).
