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PaperclipPerfector  19d ago (text post)   30917 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of December 2, 2024

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It seems hard to deny that A Song of Ice and Fire is a nihilistic deconstruction of high fantasy (Lord of the Rings and its literary descendants). You can't blame this on the adaptation. Twincest was in the original. The Red Wedding was in the original. Ned Stark being true to his morals resulting in not only his death but disaster for Westeros was in the original.

Martin himself is also a blatant culture warrior, having been involved on the establishment (winning) side of the Hugo "puppies" battle. My impression of him is he's got an ego the size of Achilles and holds everyone else (particularly including other writers and SF&F fans, most particualrly his own fans) in contempt.

Right but neither the red wedding nor twincest actually work out for the perpetrators. The Frey's are being slowly murdered by outlaws in the riverlands. Cersei is on trial by the faith of the seven for fornication, and Jaime currently hates her. Meanwhile Ned's former vassals are marching on Winterfell to save his "daughter" from unwanted marriage and sexual violence.

No disagreement with you there. George's twitter is pretty bad.

neither the red wedding nor twincest actually work out for the perpetrators

A major attraction of the book series was seeing how the situation would get even more and more fucked for pretty much everyone. I consider it less nihilistic and more a semi-gleeful entertainment to be enjoyed with virtual popcorn, but maybe that's just me. Ned Stark's fate was a brilliant way to drive home the point that anyone could die at any time, even people who would in other works be protected by being considered protagonists. "Truly anyone can die and almost nobody has plot armor" may not be a big deal nowadays (because so many people have been influenced by Martin), but it was very much different from the norm when the first book was published in 1996.

I would say that it the eventual abandonment of this "no armor" stance is what made the books (and by extension, show) weaken so dramstically. By book 4, there is no one left to die: Bran, Arya, Tyrion, Jaime, and most of the other good characters could no longer be killed because they were needed for the end game, but the books continued to introduce an unending cast of disposable, boring POVs (e.g., everything to do with pirates, the stupid Lady Stoneheart plot). Even Jon Snow's resurrection was predictable.

You aren’t entirely wrong. IMO having Jon Snow be safe and Tyrion probably but not quite guaranteed safe was fine, but the rest should have been as disposable as everyone else. Also agreed about the extra plots.

Right but neither the red wedding nor twincest actually work out for the perpetrators.

Nothing works out for anyone. It's nihilistic. Probably one of the reasons Martin hasn't written more is the only thematically appropriate ending is "rocks fall, everyone dies".

The twincest produces the insane Joffrey, in addition to its other issues.

I reject this framing completely. Is Macbeth nihilistic? Romeo and Juliet? King Lear? Just because it's a tragedy doesn't mean that the author and the writing don't believe in anything.

Wrong Shakespeare plays; you missed Hamlet. Where the White Walkers (or at least Norweigans) do indeed take over Denmark.

The last episode of the show that I watched was the one where the wall is finally breached. My headcannon is that everyone died after that. The End. I have not and will not watch the next episode. It would be a fitting end to Martin's story.

I actually pissed him off enough to get him to reply to my comments multiple times on one of his LiveJournal posts many years ago. The post was something about feminism, I don't recall the details though. The man is most definitely a culture warrior, and a terminally online one at that.

He's also probably the sole driver of traffic to LiveJournal unless he finally moved on at some point.

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