I don't really think Game of Thrones is that dark.
I don't really think Game of Thrones is that dark.
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I haven't read/seen it, but what I've heard second-hand doesn't seem that bad.
ReplyDeleteYeah, me neither, and Cormac McCarthy is what usually comes to mind when people say it is.
ReplyDeleteIf there's hope, it's not dark.
ReplyDeleteThe Descent is dark.
No Country for Old Men is dark.
Blood Meridian is dark. Or Albert Camus' The Stranger. Saramago's Blindness. Etc.
ReplyDeleteYeah. There are certain giant robot anime series from the 1980's I want to show people when they complain about "dark."
ReplyDeleteGRRM is fairly transparent in his emotional manipulation, even if the rug yankings come as a surprise, you're still fairly sure they're gonna be there, like jump scares in a run of the mill horror movie.
ReplyDeletePeople go "ooh everything's so grim now" and I wonder, didn't everyone else have to read 1984 in high school? Or Elie Wiesel? Or All Quiet On The Western Front?
ReplyDeleteIf GRRM is miseryporn, it's softcore ;D
ReplyDeleteI probably would have liked "The Road" even more if the kid had just been left alone.
ReplyDeleteOr if the end of "City of Men" just ended with a drifting boat.
I find myself calling bullshit on GRRM and McCarthy in equal and related measure.
ReplyDelete1984 is sci fi, so's Kafka's The Trial, Blindness is a what-if fantasy. Lots of this stuff might count as "genre".
ReplyDeleteBut yeah, the high fantasy of Tolkien and Lewis, that stuff's quite optimistic - and wonderfully so, thinking about those poor fuckers freezing and starving in foxholes.
It's been two generations since a major world war, fictionally speaking I think our times are far more defined by fluffy butterfly stuff like Twilight or Dan Brown than anything that came out of the post-Depression introspection.
Lex Larson Really? I feel like the quality of writing alone is a huge distinction.
ReplyDeletekirin robinson Sure, McCarthy is more eloquent at showing readers his poor story choices... but that's not exactly praise.
ReplyDeleteLex Larson GRRM is suuuuch a TV writer, I mean you can practically see his plot whiteboard being laid out as he bounces around his cast. McCarthy all I can see is that the dude's bed must just be surrounded by dog-eared books.
ReplyDeleteAs for story choices, I find McCarthy's really resonate, so perhaps it's a matter of taste? I dunno. :)
kirin robinson As I said in another thread Daniel Swensen posted, I gave up on the Song of Ice and Fire series after book 2 because I'd grown weary of the brutality aimed at female characters and the dull slogs through screenplay-ready descriptions of sigils and wardrobe.
ReplyDeleteOh... and as for McCarthy's story choices. I don't think his stories show an understanding of what really bad people are actually like. What a Viet Nam vet who survived the Tet Offensive is actually capable of. Of how a child would be treated in a world where society has collapsed. If there's anything my awful childhood and family taught me, it's exactly how terrible evil people behave, and his stories ain't it.
ReplyDeleteLex Larson I enjoyed the Ice&Fire books in a kind of pulpy way but I didn't think they were compellingly written or anything (I didn't get past book 3 myself).
ReplyDeleteI fully admit I don't know what a Vietnam Vet who survived the Tet Offensive is actually capable of. Or how a child would be treated post-collapse. These seem like unknowables to me, truth always being stranger than fiction and all that.
I guess that sounds like a cop-out? Verisimilitude, I think, can be pretty fickle.
ReplyDeleteI didn't use him as an example because he's not that famous, but my actual favorite "dark" author is David Drake, actual Vietnam vet and not afraid to show how awful war actually is.
ReplyDeletekirin robinson I am judging McCarthy's story choices within the frameworks/worlds he built. He lacks internal consistency. His choices and those of his characters don't make sense within the boundaries he set for those worlds and characters.
ReplyDeleteLex Larson ah! Well that may be it, I find myself appreciating his unexpectedness and lack of consistency. It never feels quite so laid out as a TV show whiteboard.
ReplyDeleteBOTH are bad storytelling! I refuse to rate one as slightly worse than the other. BOTH. ARE. BAD.
ReplyDeleteRight, it doesn't work for you, there's dissonance there. I get it. :)
ReplyDeleteDoes Lex Larson have strong feelings on this? Just checking. Not sure. ;-)
ReplyDeleteBrent Newhall Actually, they're valid opinions and ideas. I'm actually not emotional about this in the slightest. What is irksome is when others want me to validate their opinion when I don't agree. What you see is me continuing to maintain my stance, not "strong feelings."
ReplyDeleteIf I were having strong feelings, you wouldn't need to check; you'd know.
Lex Larson I hope you don't think I was looking for opinion validating! I was honestly curious whether you saw a distinction or not, and you answered that for me, it's all cool.
ReplyDelete