Which fictional warriors undergo the most brutal training?

[wintertime]

@Malleus_Incus_Stapes

Yeah, I don’t see how dead puppies are humorous.

I didn’t use the word “humorous”, I said ironic and absurd.

Totally, and I mean totally, different example:

Do you see the irony?

I don’t know what it may signify
That I am so sad;
There’s a tale from ancient times
That I can’t get out of my mind.

The air is cool and the twilight is falling
and the Rhine is flowing quietly by;
the top of the mountain is glittering
in the evening sun.

The loveliest maiden is sitting
Up there, wondrous to tell.
Her golden jewelry sparkles
as she combs her golden hair

She combs it with a golden comb
and sings a song as she does,
A song with a peculiar,
powerful melody.

It seizes upon the boatman in his small boat
With unrestrained woe;
He does not look below to the rocky shoals,
He only looks up at the heights.

If I’m not mistaken, the waters
Finally swallowed up fisher and boat;
And with her singing
The Lorelei did this.

Many people don’t see it at first, but it’s there, intentionally and carefully added by the author to turn the meaning of the poem upside down.

I have to admit, it’s less clear in English than in German and some translations even miss it completely, like this one:

At last the waves devoured
The boat, and the boatman’s cry;
And this did with her singing,
The golden Lorelei.

Badassery? It’s a story about child abuse. The purpose of the passage is to show how broken the Unsullied are, not how tough. It’s a condemnation of the culture that created them. – Alessan

I don’t deny that; but, like in other examples, Martin exaggerates enough to make me wonder – he wouldn’t be the first; the Greek and nordic sagas show a lot of intentional irony in their most gruesome tales; the most haunting book about the Thirty Years’ War, the Simplicius Simplicissimus uses absurd situations and ironic exaggeration repeatedly to describe the indescribable and more than once, you choke on your laughter.

Cervantes used it in his Quijote too, though much milder, and so on.

It’s a very old stylistic device, and I wouldn’t be surprised if Martin used it too, deliberately.

[Grumman]

@wintertime

Take this for an example:

If this is an accurate description and meant sincerely by the author … well, then I know why fantasy, the serious fantasy, has never been a favourite of mine.

It isn’t accurate. “Flashlight” is a disparaging name for the lasguns used by most Imperial Guard infantry. But they do have other weapons, like grenades, flamethrowers, anti-tank microwave guns, and crew-served heavy weapons. And they either deploy into battlezones where their fieldcraft would give them the greatest advantage, or they take advantage of the traditional Imperial Guard strengths of tanks, artillery, tanks, airstrikes and tanks.

[Alessan]

OK, fine. So which other atrocities described in the series do you consider humorous? God knows there are enough to chose from.

[wintertime]

@Alessan

OK, fine. So which other atrocities described in the series do you consider humorous? God knows there are enough to chose from.

Ah, I see why you consider my statement odd: you think that I sat there laughing my ass off, right?

But that’s not what I meant. If you take every word dead serious in Martin’s description, the horror is unmistakable – but you can also see the absurdly disproportionate in the situation and still feel horrified but also estranged enough to be pulled out of the tale and reflect on the situation and its (meta-)content.

It wasn’t exactly humour I felt but incredulity – though not so much that the scene fell apart.

Alright, it’s not that I don’t appreciate a gruesome tale with some grim humor:

After Odysseus had told Polyphemus his name was “Nobody”, he blinded the intoxicated cannibal by drilling a red hot staff in his one eye; the Cyclops screamed in pain, his neighbors came to see what was wrong but Polyphemus shouted: “Nobody is killing me” and they left.

The tale also shows a lot of irony, just one example: Odysseus and his men came to Polyphemus’ cave to steal his sheep to eat them; but the Greek were entrapped by the Cyclops shepherd and were eaten instead but some escaped by clinging to the very sheep they wanted to eat but were safe from the Cyclops.

Just because I appreciate the humorous twist in “Nobody” or the many instances of (situational) irony, doesn’t mean that I’m blind to the horror of the situation or fail to see that Homer had carefully constructed a scene that allowed the listener to develop complex feelings towards the characters, even towards Polyphemus.

His miserable prayer to his father, Poseidon, his tenderness towards the animals, Odysseus’ cunning and careless arrogance to confirm and shout out his kleos after his escape, allow the listener/reader to feel some sympathy even towards the man-eating Cyclops.

It’s a multi-layered, masterfully crafted situation and neither the absurdity of the events nor the irony or the one instance of humor take away any meaning but add to it.

And this is true for many folk tales, Grimm’s Fairy Tales , the sagas, burlesque novels, plays, satires and so on.

You can express the danger of atomic war with a documentary, with grim fiction and with Dr. Strangelove.

But I digress. I don’t mean to say that Martin had anything deep or satirical in mind.

I just don’t think that he is as unaware of the absurdity of the situations he creates as some other authors in the genre seem to be; like I said at the start, I wouldn’t be too surprised if he added moments of estrangement to his books to pull the reader out of the tale for just a moment to give him room to reflect.

Of course, I might be wrong and he takes his fiction as seriously as Orson Scott Card … a chilling thought.

Besides, you seem to be not just curious but actually pissed that I don’t take Martin’s story dead serious. Why is that?

Dragons are born in fire, wights and strange Others roam the lands, murderous shadow babies emerge from unholy, un?sex acts and the dead return to seek vengeance … – will you excuse me when I consider any of that absurd, even funny at times?

It’s entertainment and sometimes the hyperbole of all the events presented strike me as so ironically disproportionate that it is almost satirical.

[Alessan]

The reason I seemed offended is that you seemed to imply that fantasy was naturally less “serious” than other forms of literature

I guess, as a long-time SF and fantasy fan, I take stories as seriously as they are written, regardless of the subject matter - I don’t consider any plot element or world *inherently *funny or absurd, unless the writer intended it to be. I think Martin would agree with me: he’s stated that to him, it’s all just stories. The most outrageous fantasy tale, in his opinion, is just as legitimate as the most earthbound drama.

I suppose it’s a matter of willing suspension of disbelief. If the story is well written and internally consistent I’ll buy anything; you, obviously, think differently.

[smiling_bandit]

@Grumman

It isn’t accurate. “Flashlight” is a disparaging name for the lasguns used by most Imperial Guard infantry. But they do have other weapons, like grenades, flamethrowers, anti-tank microwave guns, and crew-served heavy weapons. And they either deploy into battlezones where their fieldcraft would give them the greatest advantage, or they take advantage of the traditional Imperial Guard strengths of tanks, artillery, tanks, airstrikes and tanks.

Well, this was why I brought up the Catachan specifically. They don’t have too many specialty weapons and don’t have armor much. They are specifically an infantry force with maybe some light recon vehicles.

Mostly, though, their training is done before they get ranged weapons. And it’s done on what’s considered a Death World, so hideously dangerous that you barely support a civilization, and even though with constant, undending warare for the entire population, bec ause anything that cna hold a knife has to have one to survive. Their environment is actually much worse than the Fremen’s.

[wintertime]

@Alessan

The reason I seemed offended is that you seemed to imply that fantasy was naturally less “serious” than other forms of literature

I see. Well, no, I don’t think so; I have encountered some fantasy that was badly written and cliché-ridden – and that’s when I can’t take a story seriously. But there is nothing in fantasy inferior* per se* to any other genre. That’s why I think of The Song of Ice and Fire not as well done fantasy but well done literature.

@Alessan

I guess, as a long-time SF and fantasy fan, I take stories as seriously as they are written, regardless of the subject matter - I don’t consider any plot element or world *inherently *funny or absurd, unless the writer intended it to be.

There we disagree … or we just might because I’m not entirely sure what you mean by “inherently”.

The author, any artist, has no authority whatsoever to determine what I or anyone else thinks about his work. It’s interesting to hear what an author has to say, but it’s not the end of interpretation, just an aspect of it.

Posterity has seen a lot more in Orwell’s *1984 *than he might have intended to put into it (at least, that’s what his few statements after its publication suggest) and we definitely know that Goethe wasn’t aware of many aspects in his Faust I that we nowadays consider illuminative and brilliant (his talks with Eckermann show ample evidence of this).

No author can avoid adding layers of meaning to his work that are not intentional but still can be as important to his temporary or future readers as the intended ones – or even more so.

Likewise, no author can avoid to sometimes fail to express his intentions adequately, at least for some of his readers.

If, for example, an author used hyperbole to describe the exceptional or extreme, he might go too far and achieve an opposite effect that would be accidental and unwelcome if he meant to be taken seriously but would be welcome to express a satirical meaning.

Readers who are used to his style might not even realize the dichotomy but other readers might – and both groups would be right on some level.

@Alessan

I suppose it’s a matter of willing suspension of disbelief. If the story is well written and internally consistent I’ll buy anything; you, obviously, think differently.

I have expressed my love for the Odyssey – if that story isn’t fantastic, what story is?

I can’t even tell you if it’s actually well written because the little ancient Greek I learned, isn’t enough to read the original; and some scholars vehemently deny that the Odyssey is internally consistent, written by one author etc. Doesn’t matter.

What matters, is its brilliance as a work of art that can be appreciated even in translation*.

I like a lot of fantastic tales: the works of Borges, Kafka, Márquez and many more are favorites of mine. Of course, this isn’t fantasy. But their stories were meaningless if I couldn’t suspend my disbelief. A lot.

---

• And its meaning for European culture which is so extensive that you could read your entire life studies about its influence on philosophy, mythology, all the arts and so on. But any knowledge in that respect isn’t necessary to love the work as a piece of art.

[Alka_Seltzer]

The Grand Old Duke of York was pretty harsh on his Ten Thousand Men.

[Elendil_s_Heir]

Big deal. They just had to rest a bit. The Unsullied had to kill their puppies!