Guest Blog: Winter is Coming. So?

Personally, my thoughts on Game of Thrones is that it's a Lord of the Rings parody that got turned into a snuff film by mistake.

Dave's opinion is more nuanced.

~Declan



David Morris

DavidB226Morris@aol.com

June 12, 2018

Winter is Coming. So?

My Problems With Game of Thrones

For Declan's Blog Exclusively

Greetings. My name is David Morris. I have known Declan Finn personally for well over a decade, since he helped me edit some 24-Alias novels. We don't always agree politically (I'm a centrist libertarian) or on television, but we have mutual respect for our abilities as writers. For that reason, he has gracious allowed me to guest post this piece at his site.

A basic introduction. While I have written a formidable amount of fanfiction for the last two decades, the majority of my writing over that period has been based in television criticism. In that sense, Declan was instrumental in getting me my first professional piece at the now (mostly) defunct Examiner.com. Since that website stopped publishing television reviews, I have posted at two website - medium.com under my pen name David B Morris., and at my own personal blog davidbmorristvbonaza.blogspot.com (Yes, I know its misspelled; I didn't do a spellcheck, and by the time I registered it was too late. C'est la vie.)

The article you're currently reading represents my five hundredth post at the latter. In recognition of this, Declan has graciously allowed me to do a special guest post at his website, commemorating a series that I am sure everybody at this blog has a reason to despise: Game of Thrones. I appreciate his generosity at allowing me to make this posting on his website. It is my fondest wish that, having read my article, you will go to both my websites and start following me. I can't always promise that my choices in television will be entirely to your liking, but that's the job of a critic.

This piece will also probably be fairly longer than the majority of the pieces I usually write. Considering the length and breadth the series takes up, there's a certain logic to that, too. That said, most of what I know about Game of Thrones comes second-hand, so if I get any names or plot points wrong, they're my mistakes, and I hope you don't hold that against me.

As I have mentioned in my column and blog many times, all of my criticism takes a narrow view. The shows that I recommend are only series that I have time to watch. At my most active, I can watch maybe ten percent of all the series currently on the air, and as a result, many, many good series have fallen by the wayside. I never got into Downton Abbey, I only sporadically watch NCIS, and there are so many streaming services that I barely can watch a few key ones on Netflix and Amazon.

But there are some very popular series that, even given the fullness of opportunity, that not only would I never watch, when I hear what they are about and what happens on them, I am frankly appalled that these are the series that my fellow viewers have chosen to embrace. Even worse, I wonder what it says for the public that so many of them worship these series. Today, I'm going to discuss one such series that has already infected its network, the audience, and frankly the world for reasons that I can't comprehend: Game of Thrones.

Now, I'll be honest. Initially, I chose not to watch Game of Thrones out of any political or artistic reasons. When it premiered, Sundays at 9, I would, usually and faithfully be watching The Good Wife with my mother. Political points of view aside, it was a truly brilliant written, acted and often extremely funny, courtroom drama that absolutely represented the best of what network TV could do. In fact, I would spend many articles raging why the Emmys would choose to overindulge one series and practically ignore the other. (End of digression)

I know, that's a weak excuse. Even though streaming was still in its infancy at the time, HBO makes a habit of repeating its original series so many times after the premiere that I could've chosen to watch the initial episode of Thrones at any time after the initial premiere. The major reasons I chose not to watch it were even simpler. I didn't know anything about the books they were based on, I had major problems with any television series based on fantasy, and it sounded too much like a mix of period piece and swords and sorcery for me to even consider quality TV.

A couple of words about George R.R. Martin. At the time, I didn't know what a polarizing figure he was among the sci-fi community. I only knew him through his work on the 1980s incarnations of The Twilight Zone and Beauty and the Beast, and the odd sci-fi story I'd read, none of which I'd found particular impressive. Furthermore, as much as it's easy to blame him for a lot, at least some of the blame must go to showrunners and head-writers David Benioff and D.B. Weiss. Indeed, a good argument can be made that much of what happens on the series is more their fault then it is Martin's, particularly in the later seasons where (presumably) they have begun to depart rather largely from the published books. This doesn't absolve Martin, particularly as Benioff and Weiss stuck pretty close to the spirit and text of the novels, but let's at least to be willing to put some of the blame where it belongs.

But even if I didn't have all the baggage that pertains to Martin and the world of Westeros that many people, the fact is, most of my problems with the series would still be there. How much of this you want to blame on Martin or the show's writing staff is open to debate, but the fact the problems are there, and frankly, I think they would've been insurmountable. Let me state them for the record, and explain my problems with them purely as a television critic.

1. The cast is too large. Now, almost immediately I must quantify this. I don't have a problem with series with large casts. The New Golden Age of Television works as well as it does, because of large, multi-talented casts. It would take an entire article to go through these great series, so I'm going to limit it solely to HBO dramas.

OZ, the prison drama that basically started the revolution, began its run with more than a dozen regular members and nine semi-regulars, and would expand with each successive season. Deadwood had nearly twenty lead actors to start show and managed to do a fairly good job expanding all of them in its (unfortunately) too limited run. And of course, the gold standard for great television, The Wire, had one of the most sprawling cast in the history of the medium, starting with two dozen lead actors, and often putting in a whole new group of regulars with each new season.

But the difference seems to be, each series was run by a genius, who knew how to keep things from spiraling out. Oz was in a claustrophobic setting, and there was a fairly high death rate. Deadwood was limited almost entirely to the breadth of the town, and made its missteps when I tried to give too much room to new characters. And as Simon and his co-writers constantly said, The Wire was the Great American Novel with the central character being Baltimore.

Game of Thrones, in the meantime, seems to deal entirely with so large a realm that it needs a map over the credits to tell you where everything is. And it keeps jumping about from location to location so frequently that its nearly impossible to figure out where the hell you are. There's also the fact that each season so far has been ten episodes a year, as opposed to the usual thirteen for HBO, so that even this close to the series end, its hard to tell who exactly the main characters are. (I read one article a couple years back saying that even the biggest characters on Thrones are often limited to no more than forty minutes of screen time per season.) Again, I have no problems with ensemble shows in general, but even in previous ensemble shows, at least the major characters would interact occasionally. In many cases, most of the major characters didn't start interacting until Season 5, and that's mainly because Benioff and Weiss diverted from the text. I know sometimes you need a chart to keep characters clear; Game of Thrones would seem to require a wall.

That's a huge burden for any series, and that wouldn't bother me so much, if not for the second point:

2. Characters keep dying, and they keep dying horribly. Again, I don't have a problem with series where characters are killed. A fairly solid argument could be made that's part of what makes the New Golden Age so special: no one is safe. (Declan may have problems with this, but even he admits it works at times: his favorite season of 24 was Day 5, and that's the day which by far had the highest body count.) And indeed, so many of the great shows of this era - in addition to the ones I've mentioned, I'll add Breaking Bad and Lost - work so well because when the death comes, it stings a lot.

What I have problem with our series where the characters seem to die arbitrarily or for the sole purpose of shock value. This isn't the sole property of Thrones, either: Shonda Rhimes seems to be even bloodier, and I've had major issues with series like Sons of Anarchy that seem to delight in killing people unpleasantly. What makes Game of Thrones particularly unpleasant is that it seems to revel in killing off its very large cast in particularly unpleasant way often before we even get to know them. It was one thing when Ned Stark got killed, the series had built so much around him in the first season, you almost forgot what was in the book. But from this point, the butcheries just seem to come constantly and using all the gore that HBO can get away with. Indeed, they seem to delight in following characters for an entire season, and have you get attached them, and then mindlessly slaughter them in as public a way as possible. (It probably goes without saying, but if you get a wedding invitation in Westeros, don't RSVP.)

All of this has a level of reaching the kind of detachment you need to get through your typical teenage slasher movie, which would be fine. Sometimes you need that to get through some dark series. Except it now seems that the whole point of the series - the battle for the Iron Throne - is solely go to depend on which character is still alive after all the slaughter. Now, I know battles for thrones can be bloody, but this is ludicrous. Frankly, I'm amazed so many people are still taking it seriously. Or maybe that's not why they watch. Which brings me to my final problem:

3. The copious, ridiculous sex. Declan and I had a running gag about a similarly blood and sex soaked HBO series. We said that the real difference between True Blood and porn is that porn has less nudity. You could substitute Game of Thrones and not have much a debate. Of course, the major difference between Thrones and Blood is that in Thrones, the majority of the sex is incest, half the time known, half the time it is unknown, and all if it pretty violent. Hell, the pilot opened with a scene where the Lannister twins were spotted having sex, and the more onlooker was thrown out a castle window! It's gotten a lot worse from there,

And even when the people who are having sex aren't related (which is the other half of the sex) it can get pretty darn perverse. If there's a field for this kind of sex (and given the mass popularity of the novels and the series, its probably a lot bigger than we'd like to believe), at least, its not doing anything radically new, even on the levels of TV series. (There've been two series on the Borgias that came around the same time, and I think True Blood as well had a fair amount, though again, that's just rumor.) What is the most horrifying part of the sex is the brutalization of women. Now, you would\think in this new era of female abuse there'd be some mass outcry for the way that female characters on this series have been debased and often brutalized. There was a fair amount on controversy when one of the surviving Stark children, barely in her teen, was essentially raped on her wedding night. But it didn't last very long, mainly because not that long afterward all everybody cared about was whether or not Jon Snow was alive or dead.

One could make the argument that this shaming of women is part of time and place, but since we don't know when or even where this series is taking place, that holds very little water with me. It doesn't seem to bother millions of other fans, and that troubles me even more. Not quite as much as the untold millions who worship Shonda Rhimes or The Walking Dead, but it is very troubling.

However, I will be honest. There is one thing about Game of Thrones that I admire. It is simultaneously the biggest and smallest thing about. I speak, of course, about the magnificent Peter Dinklage and his work as Tyrion Lannister.

Unlike the majority of viewers, I had actually heard of Dinklage before his work on this show. He is a formidable and charismatic actor who, but for his stature, would have been a superstar actor in a field. As it is, he had already managed quite a remarkable career in the independent film industry, most memorably in The Station Agent and Find Me Guilty. The matching of him with this kind of fantasy role should've been a no-brainer, but Dinklage, prior to this series, avoided these roles because he didn't want to be typecast. Indeed, he made it very clear when he was cast in the role of Tyrion that he didn't want to have to grow the conventional beard associated with so many fairy tales. When he finally had to grow one, he made it clear it was going to be that of desperate fugitive, not a cuddly dwarf.

Dinklage is by far the best thing about this series. He plays Tyrion like Richard III melded with Frank Urquhart/Underwood, with the drinking and whoring of Falstaff thrown in. From the beginning of the series, he has been one of the more magnificent schemers - he's literally the red-headed stepchild of the family, and he knows the only way he's going to get power is by manipulation. For that reason, he is generally loathed everyone, and the feeling is mutual He is probably the only character on the series one feels even the remotest amount of sympathy for, even though he would probably disdain the viewer for doing so.

And of course, he is responsible for the one truly glorious moment of the show. In season 4, after months of being suspected of the murder of his nephew, he goes before the court, and yells out: "I did not kill Tyrell Lannister, but I wish to God I had! His death brought be more pleasure than a thousand whores!" You could hear the ping of brilliance in that moment, mainly because it was surrounded in the filth and noise and bloodshed of hundreds of other beastly acts. Now, I'm not saying that Dinklage deserved the Emmys he's gotten for Game of Thrones, but he deserves to get awards for something, and if this the only way to get them, I can't begrudge them that.

But for all that, Game of Thrones is almost entirely a bloody, disgusting orgy of violence that even for HBO represents the worst elements of pay cable with little of the benefits. I'm inclined to give the network some credit because I know its because of popular shows like Thrones and True Blood, HBO has been given the latitude to experiment with less showy dramas and comedies. We probably wouldn't have gotten The Deuce or Big Little Lies or Insecure or any of HBO's other brilliant experimental series without these monstrosities.

What bothers me is that HBO seems to be its future is Game of Thrones. The series is scheduled to come to an end in the summer of 2019. But there are at least four other prequel or sequel based series being planned, and one is already in production. Is this going to be what HBO looks like in the 2020s, with half of its schedule devoted to Westeros?

The world of television has been expanding exponentially in the new millennium. For the most part, I consider this a good thing, as it has allowed for truly magnificent programming. And HBO must be given credit - a lot of it -for leading the charge. But HBO lost its place at the top of the pyramid when it expanded its reach beyond its grasp ten years. Could winter really be coming, not only to Westeros, but to HBO? There are plenty of other services more than willing to take the crown. Indeed, AMC, Showtime, and Netflix have spent most of the past ten years showing they have the imagination and the will to do so. I really hope that the network that showed the realism of Sopranos and Six Feet Under and so many other great series hasn't decided its future lies with dragons and Wind Walkers. That would be a fate I'm not even sure Jon Snow would want to come back for.

Dave's Blog

Honor at Stake & Demons are Forever

The Dragons are coming.

If you don't have your ballot filled out already (either IRL or in your head,) here's my list. It includes the lists of other people, so there are options.

Just remember to vote.

Taking the Faith into All Walks of Life

Yes, I know, Declan is back. But, I have one more guest post that I couldn't squeeze in while he was on vacation. Ann Seeton reminds us that being faithful Catholics isn't always so easy. Do it anyway.

We are to be salt and light. We are to bring Christ into the places we go and into our own activities. It is a given and we expect ourselves to do it, and yet, what does it LOOK like?

I used to think that bringing Christ into places like Church was easy. That is, until I discovered that God has some fairly plain directions for how we are to live. Even with the Church clarifying the whys and hows, there are some things you cannot say in Church unless you want to be on the bottom of a dog pile of angry people.  Why is that?

If we run such risks when talking about the Faith with fellow Catholics, then how on earth do we bring the Faith with us into other places? Like work, or school, or a club based on a mutually loved hobby?

We all know the theory: You have to BE the Catholic you are even if your workplace bans that crucifix you love to wear, or the rosary hiding in your pocket. You have to see Christ and serve Christ in each person, no matter if they are hostile to the Catholic faith or do not care one way or the other.

Yet, it isn’t that easy. Lets begin with the hostility.

Hostility to things Christian is pretty common these days. We see it in the courts. We see it in the news. We see it worldwide. The obvious evils of rape, murder, enslavement, and martyrdom are easy to see, easy to condemn, and, from our safe homes in the US, ought to be easy to speak against.  So, what keeps us quiet?

We also see it in the subtle (or  not so subtle) idea that if you really believe all that Bible stuff that you must be less than sane. Or in some circles, if you believe all that Catholic stuff you must be uneducated, ignorant, and stupid.  The peer pressure in our society can be fierce.

The pressure to conform even in Christian circles can be over-whelming when mostly Catholic persons merely hold the details of the faith as a comfortable fairy tale instead of historical fact and present reality. Something that we hold in common but do not act upon or allow to influence our daily lives.

I think the fear of disapproval silences us more often than not. Humans are social, we live in groups: families, communities, parishes, clubs, and work-places.  We want to cooperate with others in our activities.  Sensitivity to social approval and disapproval is part of what makes group cooperation possible. It has always been difficult to part ways with our peers.

AS long as a generic Christianity was the norm for the American culture, speaking up was expected and approved.  The community agreed on most truths of Christianity and the superior value of those beliefs.  But there were always exceptions, weak places that could be attacked and we live with the results.

Truths taught by the Catholic Church are loathed and hated by all the fallen angels.  Those truths, and anyone who holds them, must be attacked in whatever way possible with an eye to driving those beliefs underground and silencing anyone who would defend those truths.

The purposeful activity of the demons is to convince people to reject part or all of the Faith, view it as a nice fairy tale, or reject it as intolerant. The source of all heresies, including some heresies that are now called religions, is in the whispering of the demonic. Finally the Reformation where apostolic authority was rejected in favor of whatever layperson’s opinion happened to be popular was demonic no matter how many history books hold it up as a great leap forward for human rights.

Our Founding Fathers were so eager to avoid the religious civil wars of Europe, they created a form of tolerance that could be exploited to go from each Christian is free to worship as he sees fit, to all religions are equal, to every idea is equal.

The rejection of the concept of objectively knowable truth, which in a small dose allowed bickering factions of protestantism to live together, is the root of relativism.  Catholics felt it first and always, that pressure to let go of the absolutes of our Faith, teachings God gave us through the Church, and to accept heresies as equal to orthodox teachings. Holding to an absolute is held to be rigid, judgmental, and extreme.

We are children of our own age, and suffer from this relativism, making the deliberate study of the Catholic faith and some serious examinations of ourselves, essential to our ability to carry Christ into where we go and what we do. Relativism is so ingrained in our culture we hardly see how we ourselves fall victim to it.

An example:  One day you are at a party and an excited person says “oh my g--” do you speak up or do you let it pass? Our culture says that avoiding offense is a high priority. The pressure is on, do you speak up? If you speak in private, how will it be received?  The person may thank you and try to do better, or not.

There is a new policy at work. It contradicts what we, as Catholics, hold to be true. Do we approve the new policy to avoid being called judgmental or rigid? Do we respectfully decline to approve? There was a time when disagreeing was OK, but not anymore. Now, it can get you fired and blackballed.

Today, the same peer pressure that used to reinforce the Christianity in American culture is being used against Christianity. The same tolerance that declared all interpretations of Christianity acceptable has morphed into a demand that any and all beliefs be accepted as equally valid.  The flaw in the plan is now the cudgel for everyday martyrdoms.

The Rosary is my response.

For good books with a solid Catholic base, check out the Love At First Bite series:

   

I am Finn’s Firebrand

Shawn Hoge Remfrey is today's guest blogger with this fun tribute. I'm sure we can all relate. 

Finn's – of or belonging to Finn
Firebrand – someone who promotes radical change, a burning piece of wood

I am a possession.  Not only that, I’m on fire.  *cue music*

I am part of Finn’s crew, his posse.  That’s how we roll.  Alright, that sounded lame even to me.

The fact is, I don’t even remember how I became a Firebrand.  I’m pretty sure Declan bought me somewhere.  Probably an antique store shoved in the back under the old books.   Hopefully he kept the receipt, just in case he needs to return me.

Being a Firebrand comes with lots of perks.

I know more about AR-15s than any of the kids on my block.  Not only that, I’ve gotten to have several dreams where I take out vampires with a Hello Kitty decorated gun.

I get to relive my Babylon 5 joy.  I’d forgotten how much I wanted a bed just like Delenn’s.  I still want one, but I haven’t gotten around to finding someone to build it for me yet.  You’d think she’d have a lot more swelling in her feet than she did.

I get behind the scenes footage as Finn prepares his books.  I get updates on where he’s going to be and when so that I can properly stalk him.

I have a front row seat to Finn’s sense of humor.  It’s witty and dry and cracks me up.  I’m still laughing over Rumors Bargains & Lies from January.

Being a Firebrand opens me up to the possibility of intelligent debate.  I don’t normally join in. Perhaps I’m not intelligent.  Perhaps I just haven’t found the right debate subject yet.

Being a Firebrand is a lot like being a Wonder Twin, except there are more of us.  Firebrand powers…activate!  Form of…

ummm...a Vatican ninja? 😁 If you want to get in know, join Finn's Firebrands on Facebook or sign up for Declan's mailing list. Psst...you get free goodies in the mailing list. 

For good storylines with some great romantic tension, check out the Love At First Bite Series

Generic Shoujo Garbage, I Think I Love You

Today Jon Del Arroz is filing in for Declan while he's on vacation. Be sure to check out Jon's book Star Realms: Rescue Run and blog.

This last weekend, I discovered a Japanese drama by the name of Good Morning Call. The premise is that two high school students thought they separately rented their own apartment, with the intention of living alone. When they arrived, they found the place had been double rented. The reasons they can’t back out are thin, but that doesn’t matter as the story progresses. Epic trope-filled relationship drama ensues, filled with love triangles and evil popular girl clubs.

It sounds ridiculous, doesn’t it?  Shoujo is a whole manga/anime genre dedicated to this kind of storytelling.  It’s aimed at a young teenaged female audience and actually can come in all shapes and forms. A great fantasy series, Fushigi Yuugi, is a tale from the 90s where two middle school girls get transported back into a magical ancient China. While a plot does whirl around them, what’s most central to the story is the relationship between Miaka and a brooding man who has taken it upon himself to be her protector. It goes through all sorts of stages as other characters try to date Miaka, including the Emperor, but their souls are destined to be together.

I find myself loving the trope of that brooding man who deep down will protect the woman at any cost, even if he’s stoically focused on whatever his actual problems are.  It’s fun watching the female protagonists pick away the layers to find out the trauma that brought them to this point. In Good Morning Call, Uehara’s parents died in an accident when he was young, and he quite literally has to fend for himself with little to no support. Tamahome in Fushigi Yuugi has a similar story, as he appears greedy on the service, but in truth is solely providing for little brothers and sisters in his family who are dirt poor and have no one else to help them. As the women in these stories uncover these layers, they  are justified in their intense love for these men who, at the beginning, appear to be selfish idiots.

The main focus in these stories is always about coming into your own and discovering love. And that’s what makes it so exciting. That intense emotion that we had as teenagers IS silly, and causes us to do the most ridiculous things. While a lot of this anime can come across as immature and trite, it creates fun because of that. The way that these shows blend comedic humor in situations, with intense love pangs, and very often tragedy that accompanies it, actually pushes the full emotional spectrum and creates more three-dimensional characters than a lot of western stories.
At the same time, almost all of shoujo stories are heavily trope-filled. I can predict almost every episode of Good Morning Call as it gets into the opening scenes of an episode. It completely relies on the character moments and your love of the characters to make the show work, as do most of these series. Nana was a series that had a lot of the same scenarios: girl going out to live on her own for the first time, trying desperately to find love, looking in the wrong places and ending up in some awkward situations. It still stands completely distinct because of how the unique characters interact in other ways.

My favorite in the genre is an anime called Your Lie In April. We have two high school students, but this one is actually from the male perspective. He’s a dorky kid, and finds a blonde goddess who plays music on such a high emotional level that it floors him. He’s also got a hang up in a trope where his mother died (typical to find orphans in these shows) at a young age, and she was the reason that he played the piano, consequently leading him to never play since. His love for this girl is so pure, and comes out through his music, which she prods him into taking up again. She pushes him to excellence, and he overcomes his mental blocks through love and through playing. It’s really beautiful, and there is quite a bit of tragedy in it which I won’t spoil as the show  makes for a satisfying, cathartic experience.

In my own writing, I’ve pushed the boundaries in science fiction and fantasy of how much romance plays a central role to the story. Some have criticized me for that, but I find that these types of human connections transcend situations and genre, which makes it fun to focus on. These shows, while often trite and silly, do firm up those relationship elements to an extent where it helps to create very real characters.

Declan himself pushed the boundaries of vampire horror in Murphy’s Law of Vampires with his own take on the relationships of the dead. It’s really fun to watch, and in our genre, I find that these tropes are not explored nearly enough. You, dear reader, may want to check out some shoujo yourself to connect with feelings you haven’t explored in years, or to find a way to add some depth to genre writing. I’ll be here to chat and be a shoulder to cry on when you finish watching any of these series.

Check out: Fushigi Yuugi (Fantasy), Aria (science fantasy), Your Lie In April (Modern, light supernatural), Nana (Modern, no supernatural)





Don't forget to sign up for Declan's mailing list. His short, Bad Date is still available for free to new subscribers.

For good storylines with some great romantic tension, check out the Love At First Bite Series