Get rid of the dark lord!

[Jabrosky]

Nope, sorry, I don't buy that. Good fantasy has always had those things.

The real difference with GOT seems to be that everyone in it treats everyone else badly and everyone has lots of sex and then goes around killing each other. I think it makes modern people feel better about themselves.

I take it you're not a GoT fan, are you?

(I tried reading the first book and couldn't get into it. I think a major part of the problem was that the novel felt really unfocused, what with all the viewpoint switching and apparent lack of a unifying plot.)

I think any story with one-dimensional good and bad guys will be received as poorly characterized regardless of genre. There's a difference between a story have a clear-cut moral theme and having every character be one-dimensional in alignment.

 

[Caged Maiden]

One of my novels is simply about social reform. One religious leader is corrupt and unpunished because of how the laws work, so my MCs work to change the laws so that kind of corruption can't occur again. He isn't a dark lord in any way, nor does his reach stretch beyond the city. That's probably the closest I've come to writing an actual dark lord. Well maybe not...

I have a novel that has an empirical-type mage who does use dark magic to capture a city. But it isn't his own magic. He's using an enslaved dragon to bring a city into darkness and create fear. I guess that's kinda dark-lordy.

Most of my stories tend to be local conflicts. not wars or even battles, but quests and individual motivations that meet with obstacles. One is a coming-of-age story, another is about loyalty, family, and personal truths. It really depends on how you look at it. I guess some of the antagonists I've written could fill the dark lord shoes, but really, none of my power level is on par with Sauron.

I think the best stories are ones that explore those things which make us human. Things like love, betrayal, fear, paranoia, obsession, validation. I try to write stories that have "small" consequences. If my characters don't succeed, the world would go on. But their lives would be ruined. Maybe it sounds inconsequential, but for me, it's just the way I prefer to write. My ideas are neither unique nor truly epic. I write real people who have to make tough decisions and find the personal strength or get strength from their allies, to accomplish things they didn't know they could. I think every one of my characters has skeletons in their closets, weaknesses that make them vulnerable, and needs that drive them to sometimes stupid distraction.

If you're looking for non light vs. dark conflict, try gray-scale characters with opposing goals. One wants to make something happen and the other wants to keep it from happening. It's simple, really. That basic concept is solid, all you need to do is throw some unique ideas into the mix and it becomes a great story. For one of my stories, I took that simple concept (no antagonist in the book) and threw my young man, aspiring paladin and threw him into an adventure with a blind priestess who sees the world exactly opposite of my hero, and a wild-man hunter who hides his werewolf nature behind a gruff exterior. The characters themselves are the conflict. While they try each other's patience around every turn, the longer they journey together, the more their goals align and the more they realize working together might benefit everyone.

 

[Feo Takahari]

I think any story with one-dimensional good and bad guys will be received as poorly characterized regardless of genre. There's a difference between a story have a clear-cut moral theme and having every character be one-dimensional in alignment.

It seems like what happens is that fans latch onto the one character who seems to have depth. That's the primary appeal of Han Solo in the light and dark of Star Wars, and the primary appeal of Severus Snape amongst the largely one-sided characters of Harry Potter. (And boy do they get peeved if you try to take that depth away. Remember, Han shot first!)

 

[Penpilot]

(I tried reading the first book and couldn't get into it. I think a major part of the problem was that the novel felt really unfocused, what with all the viewpoint switching and apparent lack of a unifying plot.)

Yeah, I thought that too in my first attempt at reading the first book. But once you get into the characters, all of them, things will pick up, and the unifying plot is really slow to appear and arrives with a whisper. Again it's all about the characters and the drama and the external things like war take more of a back seat.

 

[Steerpike]

Yeah, GoT definitely has an overarching, unifying plot. You have to put the pieces together, especially really on.

 

[Terry Greer]

Nope, sorry, I don't buy that. Good fantasy has always had those things.

The real difference with GOT seems to be that everyone in it treats everyone else badly and everyone has lots of sex and then goes around killing each other. I think it makes modern people feel better about themselves.

I wouldn't agree with that- there are good pockets of humanity in GOT that treat each other well (The surviving Starks, Tyrion, Sam and Denary's - who is shaping up to be the one we want to root for). However the brutality of it all is obvious (based as it is on a lot of real history) Ed Stark is killed precisely because of his unwillingness to 'play the game'.

Most fantasy books have had those things sure - but it was always the fantasy elements that took center stage, and a lot of the conflict tends to lack bite - that's not the case with GOT. However, there are a lot of Fantasy books out there and I'm sure there are other examples that are just as strong - I just haven't come across them.

In truth I'm happy with both approaches really, one of my favorite fantasy authors is Jack Vance - the world and the fantasy elements are center stage in his dying earth stories (despite there being some fantastically sneaky and amoral characters such as Cudgel the clever), but I can't see the books ever appealing to a wide audience outside those who like the genre as there's (sadly).

As for sex - I totally agree - unless you include series such as the Gor books its traditionally been handled in a very coy and superficial way - and its that which has almost certainly opened the door a bit to some audiences.

Personally I'm always a bit uncomfortable with sex scenes in novels - but there's no denying their power when handled well. However what constitutes acceptable to an individual reader is sure to vary enormously.

 

[Mythopoet]

Again it's all about the characters and the drama

Which is precisely why I hated it.

Don't get me wrong, I LOVE character driven stories. Dune, for instance, is one of my all time favorite books. Totally character driven. But I would hold up Paul (or Leto II or Jessica or Alia or the Baron Harkonnen and on and on) to any character from ASOIAF and the latter would just, in my opinion, look small and pathetic in comparison.

It's not the character driven nature of the books that turned me off. It was the characters. It just boggles my mind that so many people love the characters of ASOIAF. They're almost entirely all horrible, horrible people or will be by the time the series is done breaking them. Either that or dead. Anyone with an ounce of goodness seems to either get killed of or ruined. I'm sure there are still "pockets of humanity" but, frankly, that's not enough. Martin is too eager to portray violence and horror and darkness and evil but seems loathe to balance it out with any of the goodness and heroism and inspiring light that can also be found throughout the history of humanity. Why? Why is he so obsessed with all the bad things about humanity in our history and why doesn't he see all the good?

I was watching an episode of Attack on Titan last night where one of the main characters who has suffered unspeakable horrors and trauma in her short life says "This world is cruel... but it is also beautiful." Wow. That's a great character. The characters in ASOIAF can't even compare.

 

[Jabrosky]

Martin is too eager to portray violence and horror and darkness and evil but seems loathe to balance it out with any of the goodness and heroism and inspiring light that can also be found throughout the history of humanity. Why? Why is he so obsessed with all the bad things about humanity in our history and why doesn't he see all the good?

A lot of history books fixate on humanity's conflict-driven side, such as wars and power struggles. In that respect they're not much different from fiction. Consequently, we grow up with this cynical view of the human past that emphasizes bloodshed, repression, and other nastiness, and series like ASoIaF appeal to that prejudice. This is probably where the perception that the series resembles real history comes in.

 

[Steerpike]

To me it's more a stylistic or thematic choice. The extent to which GRRM focuses on the darker aspects of human nature isn't more realistic than books that bias in favor of honor and nobility. Neither is truly realistic. It just comes down to what you like. I like both types of story, and there are plenty of each to choose from. My favorite Abercrombie book makes GRRM look like CS Lewis. There are characters I like well in GoT. Martin does a pretty good job with characters, be they good or b bad.

 

[Terry Greer]

Why is he so obsessed with all the bad things about humanity in our history and why doesn't he see all the good?

That's fair enough - not every book is to everyone's tastes.
I would say though that perhaps he concentrates on those aspects precisely because they're not normally handled in fantasy books.

And again - they're not all douchbags - not by a long way - we get true nobility to cheer in the form of Brienne, and Tyrion as well not to mention Jon Snow and Denerys and there are many more who are trying to do good (Even Varys who puts the Realm before everything - and understands the cruelty and how to deal with it). It just takes a while to figure out which character's you're rooting for.

But there's no reason why everyone should like it - we all draw the line on what we enjoy and why in different places.

 

[Gurkhal]

Big Asoiaf fan here! A heart of gold and crimson that beats for the lions of the West is what I've got.

Anyway when looking at the huge amount of sources for conflict among humans without a dark lord I'm almost lost at this being an issue at all. Power struggles within and between kingdoms can work just as well as racism, hatred, love etc. to explain why certain people are at odds with each other.

 

[Penpilot]

It's not the character driven nature of the books that turned me off. It was the characters. It just boggles my mind that so many people love the characters of ASOIAF. They're almost entirely all horrible, horrible people or will be by the time the series is done breaking them. Either that or dead. Anyone with an ounce of goodness seems to either get killed of or ruined. I'm sure there are still "pockets of humanity" but, frankly, that's not enough. Martin is too eager to portray violence and horror and darkness and evil but seems loathe to balance it out with any of the goodness and heroism and inspiring light that can also be found throughout the history of humanity. Why? Why is he so obsessed with all the bad things about humanity in our history and why doesn't he see all the good?

I'm guessing you didn't get too far into the story, so yes, in the beginning he sets up a cruel and unforgiving world inhabited with some despicable characters. But that's just the set up. These seemingly despicable characters aren't immune to the harshness of this world. As we learn about their motivations and they suffer consequences, they change not only as characters but in the reader's eyes. This isn't to say their sins are forgiven or excused, but they're understood. The evil they committed was not out of evil bat-shit craziness but for understandable reasons, like love.

And for some characters, they get their just desserts.

Two characters I absolutely hated at the beginning, Jamie Lannister and Sansa Stark, turned out to be a couple of my favourites. Why? Because they changed. I wanted to strangle Sansa, but she learned from her mistakes. She grew and she's shown that just because someone is physically weak doesn't mean they can't be strong. That no matter how difficult the situation, how you handle it is what matters.

For Jamie, a character that committed one of the biggest A-hole acts in the series, he shows just because a character commits a monstrous act doesn't mean he's a monster. There's honor in him and there's darkness. That's what a lot of the characters are like in ASOIF. That's a part of what makes them interesting. None of the characters are "Heroes". Heroes end up with their heads on pikes.

In the world of ASOIF there's not the naive notion that good always triumphs because nobody is wholly good, just like in real life. There are only victors, and they're the ones who write history, and that's where "Heroes" come from, at least in those terms. Peel back the curtains on some of the biggest good-guy heroes in history and a lot of times you'll find some of the biggest SOB ever born.

 

[Malik]

^^ This.

Malcolm Reynolds, in the Jaynestown episode, says,

"The way I figure it, any man who ever had a statue made out of him had to be one kind of son of a bitch or another."

Truer words were never said.

 

[Steerpike]

^^ This.

Malcolm Reynolds, in the Jaynestown episode, says,

"The way I figure it, any man who ever had a statue made out of him had to be one kind of son of a bitch or another."

Truer words were never said.

I love that episode.

 

[Mythopoet]

None of the characters are "Heroes". Heroes end up with their heads on pikes.

In the world of ASOIF there's not the naive notion that good always triumphs because nobody is wholly good, just like in real life. There are only victors, and they're the ones who write history, and that's where "Heroes" come from, at least in those terms. Peel back the curtains on some of the biggest good-guy heroes in history and a lot of times you'll find some of the biggest SOB ever born.

Yes, that's the problem. This world is actually, really, full of heroes. They don't often make it into the history books, but they fill history nonetheless. Because in the real world there is plenty of reason to believe in good triumphing over evil. Good actions are rewarded much of the time, even if it's not in the ways we expect. But in Martin's cynical world there's no real reason to pursue good. The best you can do is survive. I object to such a world on principle. And it saddens me that so many people relish it.

 

[Steerpike]

I think you guys are projecting way too much on the readers of any given type of work. On the one hand, readers who like traditional good v. evil stories are naive, while on the other hand if you like GRRM's work you're relishing in cynicism. Both are nonsense, in my view. They're two different types of stories, both perfectly capable of being done well and being enjoyed by a wide variety of people (of whom very little can be said based solely upon their enjoyment of a particular work).

In addition to fantasy, I also enjoy horror, another genre where people tend to make unfounded assumptions about the reader. But I'm as likely to watch a Disney cartoon like Tangled, so now what?

I think people just need to acknowledge there are different tastes and that there is nothing wrong with that, rather than spending so much time validating their own choices with pretended objectivity. What is it a about the culture around things like books and gaming that compels people to try to turn subjective preferences into an objective reality?

 

[Feo Takahari]

Okay, person who's never read GOT here, but a big part of why I'm staying away from it is that when folks talk about it, they tend to talk about all the rape and torture and murder. Like, Madoka Magica is a story about selfishness and shortsightedness, and it can be quite cynical, but it only shows blood once, and even its more disturbing scenes aren't graphic or gross-out. And Paranoia Agent is a story about people lying to themselves, and it's definitely cynical as all hell--it goes so far as to imply an rape, but doesn't show it, because showing it wouldn't be necessary for the story. I do think there can be value and purpose in depicting the worst of human excesses, and I've done so myself in some of my stories, but dredging through so many of those excesses at such length doesn't sound like something I'd be able to get through. (Granted, I've heard people say the series has a running theme that trying to rule like Caligula will inevitably get you overthrown or assassinated . . .)

 

[Jabrosky]

Yes, that's the problem. This world is actually, really, full of heroes. They don't often make it into the history books, but they fill history nonetheless. Because in the real world there is plenty of reason to believe in good triumphing over evil. Good actions are rewarded much of the time, even if it's not in the ways we expect. But in Martin's cynical world there's no real reason to pursue good. The best you can do is survive. I object to such a world on principle. And it saddens me that so many people relish it.

When it comes to history, there is always the problem of what constitutes good and evil in a given time and place. Very often you have people doing things that they considered righteous even if they seem evil to our sensibilities. That's moral relativism for you.

That said, I'm in favor of stories with clearer-cut morality myself. There's no rule saying the morality of a fantasy setting has to perfectly mirror that of any real historical society.

 

[Steerpike]

When it comes to history, there is always the problem of what constitutes good and evil in a given time and place. Very often you have people doing things that they considered righteous even if they seem evil to our sensibilities. That's moral relativism for you.

That said, I'm in favor of stories with clearer-cut morality myself. There's no rule saying the morality of a fantasy setting has to perfectly mirror that of any real historical society.

Yeah, it's kind of funny the extent to which I've seen some people say that fiction set in a fantasy world can't include moral absolutes, good and evil races, and the like if it is intended to be serious or realistic. Those statements presuppose that development as it occurred in our world is the only logical possibility, and I don't think that point of view makes a lot of sense.

 

[Jabrosky]

Yeah, it's kind of funny the extent to which I've seen some people say that fiction set in a fantasy world can't include moral absolutes, good and evil races, and the like if it is intended to be serious or realistic. Those statements presuppose that development as it occurred in our world is the only logical possibility, and I don't think that point of view makes a lot of sense.

While a perfect utopia probably wouldn't allow for much conflict, it might even be a fun world-building exercise to take a historical setting that interests you and modify it so that its values better fit your own. Take the stereotypical medieval setting for example. You could keep the chivalric knights in shining armor, the big stone castles, and everything else you like about that place and period, but what if you had a democratically elected leader instead of the traditional feudal monarch?