I'm late to the party on this. What else is new?
So, well, I hate George R.R. Martin for being a lazy self indulgent asshole who doesn't have enough talent to finish what he's started, and apparently isn't going to even try.
But I still love A SONG OF ICE AND FIRE. (If you're literate, you know what A SONG OF ICE AND FIRE is. If you're not, go fuck yourself.)
I'll admit, the last two books have shown exactly what I feared we'd see as Martin incrementally progressed further and further into this vast and uncontrollable plot... which is to say, the further he gets, the more he just makes up stupid shit because he simply cannot keep a handle on this thing. (Like suddenly, there's a prophecy that Cersei has known about since childhood that a younger, prettier queen will eclipse her glory, and also, Cersei will one day be killed by her 'volonquar', which means, brother. And, like, nobody who's reading this thing is smart enough to realize, he doesn't mean Tyrion, he means the OTHER brother. Cuz, you know, that's ironic and shit.)
Yet, still, the first book (the actual A GAME OF THRONES) is probably the best fantasy ever written. Probably. And the next two books were awesome, too. And there's a lot to love even in the most recent two, although the latest one is so full of absolute unabashed pointless meaningless plot padding drivel, as Martin works frantically to crank out copy while never advancing the story to the point where he actually has to start resolving all his plot lines, because he CAN'T, and he knows it... anyway.
So I've read the books, and mostly love them, hate George R.R. Martin for taking my money and not making the slightest effort to give me what I've paid for in anything like a timely manner, and... aaaaaaaaaand....
...I absolutely LOATHE, I mean, LOATHE, the HBO 'adaptation' of these books.
Why? Because it SUCKS, that's why. Because despite Martin's (no doubt contractually obligated) assurances to the contrary, the fucking story ISN'T there. Because the producers are asshats who make creative 'decisions' on this show based on things like, wow, we really like the actress who plays Kyra, so let's make her part much much bigger. And don't Ari and Tywin Lannister have great chemistry? So let's write in more scenes with them and get rid of the entire Harrenhall story arc. And for absolutely no reason anyone will ever understand, let's marry Robb Stark off to some Valerian healer bitch who isn't even IN the books. And then murder her.
So I hate hate hate hate HATE this HBO show. And lately I've been watching it, because my wife likes to watch it and I'm always in the room late Sunday night when she does.
So all this season, I've been vaguely aware that the Red Wedding was coming up, and, well, I had MY Red Wedding trauma like 13 years ago, so I was just kind of vaguely curious as to how much of the original material they'd leave in.
Turns out they left in pretty much all of it.
And now, apparently, the entire world... at least, the entire world of people who think they like this story but who have never bothered to READ this story... has freaked out about it.
And it's awesome. Seriously. Your tears, they taste so sweet to me.
13 years ago, everybody who reads this series, which was immensely popular at that time, had a simultaneous sad. And nobody gave a shit. The world did not care. Because, people who read, hey, who gives a fuck about them?
Now, a couple of million sub literates have completely lost their shit over a TV show, and it's big, big news.
And all I have to say to all of this is:
Ah ha ha hah ha ha ha haaaaaaaaaaa!
http://io9.com/the-100-best-tweets-about-last-nights-game-of-thrones-511003444
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So this Boy Scout, couldn't have been older than eleven, is holding up this kinda chubby looking Scotch Pine. It was.... ehhhh... okay...
You're a stronger man than I, Doc. I only managed to get a third of the way into A Clash of Kings before the sense of standing waist-deep in a trench full of shit, watching sixteen hundred jackals fuck each other to death, got too strong to ignore. My objection was visceral, like yours to H*rry P*tt*r, but if I'd articulated it in any medium as crude and clumsy as mere language, it would've gone something like this:
ReplyDeleteFuck it. Every character I like either gets killed (cf. Eddard) or has to abandon the qualities I liked her for because they would have gotten her killed (cf. Arya). Daenerys has been an exception, so far, the handful of times we've seen her, but she's on another continent, and even so, there's no guarantee that she'll be able to stay likable while surviving, especially not once she gets to Westeros.
So I put ACOK down and backed away from it slowly, trying not to make any sudden moves. When I heard about the Red Wedding, I became even more convinced I'd made a good move.
You gotta roll with that shit, though. I mean, seriously. No writer has a contract with you that he or she will leave characters alive and/or unharmed just because you love them. In fact, the most memorable stories are the ones where characters we have come to regard as real people, even real people we like, die. I don't object to Martin killing characters I love.
ReplyDeleteI do object to obviously bad, self indulgent writing clearly intended for no purpose except to put off reaching a stage in the story that the author does not know how handle. And I especially object to a writer taking my money and goofing off with it.
I'm not one of those who insists that Martin should spend every waking moment working on ASOIAF. I'm not that unrealistic. But I'd like to see him working on it a great deal harder than he obviously is. I'd like to see him show some discipline and act as if it's important to him to fulfill the contract he's made with us by taking our money for a story he hasn't finished yet.
It was very hard for me when I first read the Red Wedding sequence all those years ago, and I still prefer to skim it rather than read it in depth. It's hard on me. I had a lot of emotion invested in Robb, maybe even more than I had invested in Ned. But Martin bought an enormous amount of verisimilitude for his setting by letting those characters die. I can respect that.
As to Arya having to abandon qualities you like because those qualities would have gotten her killed, with a character that age, that is called 'growing up'. Yeah, she's had to do it pretty fast, but that's the way of things. While no individual Stark is safe in this book, the Starks, collective, are clearly the heroes of the narrative. One of them is going to end up as the Stark In Winterfell, and the Stark In Winterfell is going to end up saving humanity from the White Walkers. That is clear to me at this point. And you don't get to be the Stark In Winterfell by playing wooden swords with the butcher's boy. The Starks are heroes, but to be the kind of heroes they have to be, they can't be children.