"WINTER IS COMING!"

Eddard Stark (Game Of Thrones, season 1)

I wouldn't get comfortable Sean...

Again, I appreciate that I'm behind the times, and almost everything worth saying / hearing about the Game Of Thrones TV show has already been said and heard. Still, that's never stopped me before now, so why change?

Based on the books "A Song of Fire & Ice' by George R.R Martin, blah blah blah... You already know all this so I won't bother. I'll just cut to my point and tell you about what effect Game Of Thrones has had in my household... Incidentally, Game Of Thrones is a much better title than A Song Of Ice & Fire.

Last month I was lent the first season, so in my household an episode (or two) got watched every night. I'll say this for Game Of Thrones, it's very addictive- and very well acted (mostly), special praise for Sean Bean, Peter Dinklage, Jack Gleeson and Ian Glen. I thought it was alright / watchable, but my partner got into it in a big way, and in truth it was because of her that we watched it all so damn quick. Next we borrowed season 2, and this is where things hit a snag...

For anyone who doesn't personally know me, 8 months ago my son was born. This sort of thing, I'm told, can change a man. It certainly changes a woman: my partner has become a lot more maternal, and things in films and on TV that wouldn't normally effect her so dramatically are making a bigger impact now.
So imagine, me, her, and beside us our sleeping 'bundle of joy', all tucked up in bed with Game Of Thrones season 2 playing on the lap top... Baby and child death 'in spades'. 
Never a pleasant topic at the best of times, but a little worse when this is enacted out on a city-wide scale by merciless soldiers. And did the show have the good taste to simply hint at what was taking place, or was it all up on screen, in a fairly graphic manner? Game Of Thrones is not known for it's subtlety, and as a cynic I'd say that a lot of it's success is reliant on the gratuitous and voyeuristic nature of it's content. Just for good measure, the episode ended with one of the heroic characters unable to save a new born child being sacrificed to monsters. So, it was all smiles.

This, understandably, depressed my partner. That night, I thought it best if I do a bit of reading on the topic, just to see what else we would have in store on a a similar topic. What I discovered was worse in many respects...

Big, thumping, terrible spoilers ahead. DO NOT read if you want to be surprised by the outcome of the books and / or TV show.

It's very, very morbid. Almost every likeable character meets a grisly fate, leaving just the grotesque villains fighting it out amongst themselves. So far as I can tell, Snow (who I suspected of being the overall 'leading character') is killed by the Night Watch, while the real heir to the throne, bastard son of the murdered King, is also killed (so there goes the red-herring of a positive outcome), and the 'Imp' Lannister (whose dry wit provides the only laughs in an otherwise grim-faced world) is banished after being framed for murder and is also betrayed by the woman he loves. Rob Stark (son of executed Ed Stark, and last remaining 'likeable character') is likewise assassinated. That leaves us with nothing but bastards left to root for. So, with a heavy heart, I attempted to explain to my partner that she probably wouldn't enjoy watching the TV show. She pressed me for details and reluctantly I explained to her the ins-and-outs of my research. In the end, she agreed that it was probably best to quit Game Of Thrones now, before getting too hooked- and subsequently depressed.

Now, I know that's an odd story to share on this blog. I broke perhaps the biggest rule in storytelling, I cheated and looked at the ending. I'm not proud, but it was done with good intention. Me and my partner spoke at length about how we felt about this, and I've decided to try and articulate our joint issues with this story.


1/ Far too many characters:
Season one felt epic. That's to say- there was a lot going on, and a large selection of characters to follow. I'm not a stupid person by any means, and I follow most stories, but even I struggled sometimes to differentiate the different characters and their goals. This probably wasn't helped by the fact everybody in this world is shopping for clothing at the same place, and black is this seasons must-have colour.
So imagine my surprise when, in season two, we get introduced to a bunch more people! Aside from complicating things further, this had another unwanted side effect: it meant waiting longer between all the different segments to get back to the characters that I wanted to follow.
As someone aspiring to write fiction myself, I think there comes a point when writers need to reign themselves in. Sure, it may all be exciting stuff, but one story can only support so many characters- even sprawling epics such as this. Things can easily become too unfocused. By the 5th book George Martin is writing from 31 different viewpoints with a total cast of characters that numbers over 1,000. Come on, really? Say you're a fan of all these books, surely anyone would have to admit that perhaps these characters would be better served by writing a separate story? Either way, it will be interesting to see how the TV show copes with this, I'd imagine there will be some simplifying...
Notice how I'm rarely using anybody's names in this blog? That's not to be spoiler-free, it's because so few of them stick in the mind amongst all the others.

2/ Too much back story:
Fantasy, on the whole, suffers greatly with this problem- even Tolkien, who I admire greatly, desperately needed an editor. Authors turn to history for a few different reasons; it provides a sense of time and place, creates the illusion of reality, and it fleshes out your characters. Thing is, they have a tendency to go too far. This is one such case. Almost half of the back story bought up in the TV show is meaningless, and it grows tiresome having to work out which bits are relevant and what else is just 'flavorful'. Obviously, the bigger the book, the more you can include comfortably, but, so far as adapting for the TV series, more could have easily been trimmed out.

3/ No concise storytelling:
Closely related with my nag about too many characters, far too many stories are being told. No story should ever require a cast of 1,000 characters- if you need 100 then you're doing something wrong! For every major character there is another major plot, and in the end it's easy to loose focus of what the story is actually 'about'. I know a good few people who have read these books, all have confessed to wanting to skip past large chunks of story to get back to the parts that interested them the most. No story should make you want to skip ahead- if it does then chances are it shouldn't be in there.  Christ, I felt that way in season 1, how would I feel by season 3? I'm told that by book 4 of the series the "woman with the dragons" hasn't even arrived in the same country as everybody else, another prime example that too much is going on: huge strands of the story have yet to even touch, let alone entwine into a satisfying whole, and the author is only meant to be writing one more book: it's like Lost all over again.

5/ Gratuitous:
yes it is. I've heard people argue otherwise, but answer me this then? If the sex isn't in here for cheap titillation, then why are all the female cast shaved 'down there'? Hardly a realistic choice, is it? And fine, show violence, show us how barbaric the world is, but dangling a dead blood-stained baby copse in center camera is a step too far, even for my liberal tastes.

4/ Too depressing:
Let's face it, it is. It's all drudgery and evil. So few of the characters have any redeeming traits, nobody comes out of this with clean hands. I was always taught that unless you care about the characters then you won't care what happens to them- as is true in the case of most of today's horror films. Now that most of the 'likable characters' have been written out (in one way or another) it's hard to care who succeeds and who fails. All you're left wondering is "how will this bastard get what's coming?"
If we do come into a 'hero' character, then it's unlikely to be anybody from book 1, which is another no-no in narrative terms, and further proof that this thing has got wildly out of control. An argument can be made for authenticity, that real life is devoid of 'heroes', that we are all 'wolves of different shades', but correct me if I'm wrong, but that's partly why we enjoy stories? I appreciate that's not a complete truth, but it's a good gerneralised point, and possibly one for another post. Nine hours (a typical season's running time) of torture, murder, rape and infanticide is too much. And, on top of that, there is no 'ray of light', no hope of a good outcome- for the world or any of the characters. That is the real kick of Game Of Thrones: it's a harsh world beyond saving, filled with irredeemable characters. Even the "dragon woman", whose probably one of the more sympathetic characters of the series hardly qualifies as a hero- her 'road to home' will be paved by a million bloody corpses.

5/ Originality:
There's very little that isn't rudimentary fantasy-setting here. We've seen this all before; knights, forests, mountains, tribes, etc. Martin's gifts are a good command of prose and very well rounded characters, but not his generic setting- at least in this instance. It's a mix of the English War Of The Roses and the Dark Ages, all very familiar troupes of the genre. Perhaps the only real original feature here is the inclusion of longer seasons, but that's hardly ground-breaking. I honestly struggle to see how these books became such a success, if not for the author's popularity.



Carlisle's FINAL WORD:
In the end, Game Of Thrones is easy to admire, but difficult to like. Depressing people is easy, nor is it intellectual or deep, and to think so is immature and emotionally stunted. Affirming life is the true challenge, and a challenge that Game Of Thrones / A Song Of Ice & Fire doesn't even attempt. What we're left with is a sprawling soap-opera style fantasy, a cross between Lord Of The Rings and Eastenders.
Will the TV show remain popular enough to complete its epic cycle, and if it does will it be remembered in decades to come as a classic, or as a "what were we thinking" show like Lost?
On another not, and hoping not to sound too morbid (although that would seem strangely fitting), let's hope George R.R Martin manages to finish the final book, because he ain't no 'spring chicken' and he normally keeps people waiting for about 5 years between each installment... What's worse, a disappointing and unsatisfying ending, or no ending at all?
Here's hoping that I'm wrong on all counts: the book gets finished, a heroic figure saves the land and becomes a just ruler, all the villains meet a deserved fate, and the TV show is remembered fondly as a classic, difficult to watch at times but worthwhile in the end...


Hope is a good thing, easily overlooked but absolutely necessary...