Game of Thrones - Latest Report

About three-quarters in, and I've had to eat my words with one of my friends who likes giving me crap.  I like this damn book.  I don't know why.  No, I do know - Tyrion.  And Daenaerys.  I still don't like Bran.  DON'T GIVE ME THAT.  Yeah, he's paralyzed.  You think he wants your pity?  He doesn't have mine.  He's not going to die.  You can practically see the plot armor.  He's probably touched by the gods, too.  My hypothesis is that he is the seven-year-old kid that seven-year-old Martin wished he had been - bold and adventurous, staying strong through heavy burdens, chosen for a special destiny.

Samwise Gamgee Samwell Tarly, on the other hand, is Martin's author avatar, where he admits "This is what would really happen if I were in one of my own stories."  To be fair, that is what would happen to most of us.  I mean, I fence, but I know modern Olympic-style sport fencing.  I'd get slaughtered.

Speaking of being slaughtered, I know Martin has a reputation for killing popular characters, but so far the only characters to die have just made me think "expendable tourist." (OMT)

I just know he's going to kill Tyrion.  Tyrion is the only character who is not boring or a complete asshole.  Tyrion has his own priorities, and isn't wrapped up in being noble and saving the realm.  And he's a badass dwarf.  How many fantasy stories - any stories - have a badass dwarf that that isn't from a dwarf-people?

I just realized that Martin was having a joke in that one scene where Tyrion was forced to fight with an axe...

Tyrion looks out for Tyrion, and Tyrion keeps himself to his standards.  He's not bad.  He's not good.  He's just himself, and I think it is more important (and interesting) to be yourself than to try to be what you're supposed to be.

Dany has that going for her too.  She's supposed to be the meek, submissive child-bride, but then she decides she's taken enough crap, and she's going to take over the kingdoms.

Arya is not this type of character.  Sure she learns to use a sword and defies her role as a gentle lady, but she is still concerned with being noble and good and whatever.

Still, I haven't been swearing at the book much at all anymore.

Just a few more little complaints.

1.  The f'ing "Common Tongue."  There is no language in the history of language that has ever been called the "Common Tongue."  If one particular country that speaks one particular language becomes a really big trade powerhouse, then that language becomes dominant in the world and people learn it as a second language to communicate with many cultures, rather than trying to learn three or four languages.  Even Esperanto had a proper name - and look how many people speak it now, anyway.  But somehow, fantasy writers are too lazy to come up with an ethnic name for language, so they call the language of the patriarchal white pseudo-Europeans the "Common Tongue."

2.  The king is never evil.  Seriously.  When a kingdom goes to shit, it's always the evil queen, or the evil minister, but evil kings are fought in battle - they don't actually run kingdoms. Kings can be weak or misled, but never evil.

It doesn't sound like I'm actually enjoying the book much, does it?  I'm not.  I just can't stop reading it anymore.  And I was sad when Lady died.  Then I was pissed because Arya had to lose Nymeria, and it was like "Oh, right, none of the girls get to be followed around by a big badass wolf, even though the three-year-old boy gets one."

And then Tyrion got thrown in a dungeon, and I was quite distressed about that, because shoot, Tyrion's the best part of this book.  And I've been catching myself having "What's going to happen next?" moments, like after Robert dies.

Maybe a final post on this once I finish the book.  Or maybe I'll find something new and interesting to blab about.

Queering Epic Fantasy - Anthony vs. Martin, Part 2

I didn't even get to the queer stuff yesterday, did I?  I probably won't get to it today either.

I'm going to talk about food.

I am also going to cheat on my five-chapter limit, but it's for good reason.

Here is Martin's description of a feast:

"The Great Hall of Winterfell was hazy with smoke and heavy with the smell of roasted meat and fresh-baked bread.  Its grey stone walls were draped with banners.  White, gold, crimson:  the direwolf of Stark, Baratheon's crowned stag, the lion of Lannister.  A singer was playing the high harp and reciting a ballad, but down at this end of the hall his voice could scarcely be heard above the roar of the fire, the clangor of pewter plates and cups, and the low mutter of a hundred drunken conversations."

Here is Anthony's description of a feast:


"The great hall of Calavere had been decorated to resemble a winter forest.  Boughs of evergreen and holly hung from soot-blackened beams high above, and more had been heaped along the base of the walls.  Their icy scent mingled with the smoke of torches.  Leafless saplings stood in the corners of the hall, to suggest the edges of a sylvan glade, and even the tapestries on the walls added to the illusion with their scenes of stag hunts and forest revels, woven in colors made dim and rich with time."

What I'm getting from this is:  If you are going to write epic fantasy, and you have to describe a feast, you must always start with "The great hall of X..."

But seriously.  Where would you rather be?  Winterfell or Calavere?  My take on Martin - and one of the reasons I don't like him - is that his fantasyland is very generic.  Who is the singer and how did he get there?  What is he singing about?  Who cares?  It's a medieval feast, and they have bards and shit there, don't they?

It looks like I am going to get to queer stuff today after all.

One of the reasons Anthony is much more detailed in his description of castle life is because he has quite a few female characters.  The king's ward practically runs the castle - including preparations for feasts.  Who put together the Winterfell feast?  The wife, whatsername, Catelyn?  She doesn't seem to have much imagination.  Or maybe it was planned out by a man.  That would explain a lot.

Martin's female characters are annoying me five chapters (and one episode of the show) in.  We have the supportive wife, the victimized child-bride, and the tomboy princess (though I have heard that the child-bride takes a level in badass later, so I promise I'll read a few more chapters after this rant).  So - we have one woman whose strength is being married to a strong man and making him stronger, we have one woman who is completely dominated by the heteropatriarchy, and we have one who takes on a male role in order to gain power.

Anthony's world is also quite male-dominated, but he uses the patriarchy to ask questions about power and gender relations.  He has not one but two queens, neither of which rule over a matriarchy.  He has no crossdressers.  And yes, the Witches are a big equalizing factor in his world, but it is not so much a matter of giving women power as giving women space.  Martin has yet to pass the Bechdel test.  Okay, so Anthony takes until chapter 9, and then it's a cryptic warning and not really a conversation, but once you get more than one female character, he really takes off.

So the reason I like Anthony and not Martin is that Anthony's writing is queer.  I'm not talking about his order of gay knights, or his gay protagonist, or his representation of every letter in the LGBTQetc. acronym.  Anthony is queer because he gives attention to issues of power and privilege, so that his almost stereotypical quest arc becomes fresh and exciting because it is seen through a different lens.

Now it's time for five more chapters of Martin.  Maybe I'll have another rant by then.

Queering Epic Fantasy: A critical comparison between "Game of Thrones" and "Beyond the Pale." Part One.

If you're read any of my other posts on this blog, you know that I am obsessed with this obscure fantasy series by a guy named Mark Anthony (not the singer) called "The Last Rune."  I am not unbiased.

But I can't stand Game of Thrones.

I don't know why.  Sure, he has a massive cast, and I can't seem to care about any of them, and everyone in the prologue dies, and it's very hetero-European-centric.  And it doesn't have a Dark Lord, while Anthony does, and there are certain storytelling conventions that make me think that Anthony was in some ways influenced by Martin (it's plausible - Thrones came out in 1996 and Pale was published in 1998).  And we certainly cannot disregard the effect of nostalgia goggles.

So what is so different about the two books?

I have only read the first five chapters of Thrones, so I will limit my text citations of Anthony to the first five chapters of Beyond the Pale.

Let's start with the first line of the prologue.

Thrones:  "We should start back," Gared urged as the woods began to grow dark around them.  "The wildlings are dead."

Pale:  The derelict school bus blew into town with the last midnight gale of October.

What can we deduce from this?  Well, Thrones tells us immediately that there are going to be weird names of pseudo-European fantasyland tradition.  Seriously, have you noticed that nearly every fantasy novel has a character named "Gareth"?  "Gared" tells me that he is going to do a lot of re-spelling, which is possibly even more annoying than scrabble-bag names.

What else?  Starting the story at dusk gives a sense of darkness and foreboding and spooky things; like the start of a horror movie.  But WTF is a wildling?  That's not explained until the next chapter; instead, the author spends a great deal of time describing the characters' clothes.

Now in Pale, we see we are in the real world with school buses and Octobers.  We can see the scene, instead of trying to imagine some dude named Gared in some kind of wood with some other people.  The question that keeps you reading, then, is not "What is going on?" but "Why is the school bus blowing into town at midnight?"  Obviously, Martin does not have that luxury, but half the time I feel like he does not explain things enough, and the other half I am frustrated by him giving too much detail and name-dropping.

The rest of the prologues are as follows:  In Thrones, the viewpoint is actually held by Will, but they all get killed by spooky zombie-things so it doesn't really matter; you never really get a sense of the characters, so you don't really care that they're dead.  In Pale, a creepy preacher-like figure oversees a troupe of faerie-like beings raise a tent (for some reason my mental image always looks like that one scene in Dumbo) to host "Brother Cy's Travelling Salvation Show."  You can tell no one here is a real viewpoint character; they are kept distant, mysterious, not someone you connect to but someone you wonder at.  The prologue is quite different from the rest of the chapters; which is why it is a prologue and not a first chapter where everyone dies.  Also, the preacher reappears in chapter two, so he isn't completely forgotten.  He's relevant, just not a viewpoint character.

Now for the first line of Chapter One.

Thrones:  The morning had dawned clear and cold, with a crispness that hinted at the end of summer.

Pale:  Sometimes the wind blowing down from the mountains made Travis Wilder feel like anything could happen.

There's no contest here - a description of the weather, or an introduction into the main character's soul.  Ugh,  okay, I'll try for less bias.  Autumn signifies dying things, and adds to the foreboding of the prologue.  The chapter also details a seven year old boy witnessing his first execution, and so it can also signify and end to childhood innocence.  But that's a cheap metaphor.  Wind as a vehicle for infinite possibilities is not something you see every day.

Now, in the first five chapters of Thrones, there are five different viewpoint characters; I believe there are a total of seven in the book.  In the first five of Pale, there is one, with a total of two main ones and a few glimpses of others in the climax toward the end.

On page one of Thrones, we are introduced to six characters:  Bran, Robb, Mance Rayder, Old Nan, Jon, the man that gets killed.  On page two we get Eddard Stark, Theon Greyjoy, Jory Cassel, and Robert.  Also, I can't find anywhere that explicitly says that Robb is Bran's brother.  Yes, there is a character list in the back, but I'm trying to get into the story, and I'm trying to focus on Bran, and there are all these names distracting me.

Pale does not introduce anyone besides Travis until three pages in, for a total of three:  Travis, Moira Larsen, who is not important, and Max, who is.  Moira Larsen is introduced as Travis, a saloonkeeper, is worried about being late for work and having to face irate patrons.  Max is his one employee.  I'm still fuzzy on who half the names in Thrones are.

I think the fundamental difference in the structure of the two books is that Martin takes a broad sweep of his story, introducing the setting and the people, and telling the story after the stage has been set.  Anthony introduces Travis, and pulls him into the story once we know him.

Anthony is also quicker on the action.  By the end of chapter five, we have already had our first incident, complete with fire and danger and strange beings.  Prologue of Thrones does not count as an incident because it doesn't connect to a recurring character.  Five chapters in, it looks like some kind of fantasyland family drama.  It's a soap opera.  The characters are shallow enough.

I have so much more to say on these books.  So much that I think I'm going to break it up into multiple posts.  Tomorrow:  Feasts and castles!  After that, I might actually get to the queer theory component.