The senseless character death and sex was what made the originals crap, and that’s the part the show kept.
While im generally in the “fantasy should be to make things different from reality” camp, I can respect an author who isn’t afraid to kill off a major character outside of a plot climax, as long as the character gets to do something first.
I have a significantly larger peeve with authors who spend a lot of time building up characters and their personalities, only to kill them before they can do anything. Im looking at you, Ed Greenwood.
Has anyone ever read David Gemmell’s Troy trilogy, by chance?
Can you elaborate on the retcons Kelthar? I am not that big on Tolkien.
This is going to be many responses if I want this done right…
I 100% agree with TBO’s post. This is getting old.
So he retconned Hobbit? That kind of makes sense, since it started as a story for grandkids if I am not mistaken.
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What Kelthar said.
It might be the thing that you prefer the gritty, grounded stuff.
In general I also have the problem of being too edgy for some fantasy fans because I am not into Tolkien (besides movies and I donappreciate what he’s done for the genre) and I lost interest in Potter long time ago. That stuff is freaking overrated, but hey… it made kids read, so there is that.
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People that consider Amon meh usually have the excuse of not being that into lore.
People that consider Amon a good character are usually watched from safe distance.
People that consider Amon great character are usually considered lunatics that make me and Mar take arms.
@Phlynch
Well, you’re right about the popular vote, but how do you justify the focus on emotions then?
@Gradius, Kelthar, TBO, Mar
Remember the guy who saw shades of grey in Amon? Discussion with him was just sick and wrong.
@Gradius
No need to go for insults. Also do realize that target audience for SC2 were people who want to play RTSes. You know my hatred for Safe Haven, but I will still acknowledge that the gameplay of the mission is pretty good.
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About the matter of retcons…
It’s hard to take an absolute stance on them, simply because as an Author you always rewrite your story several times before publishing it, and after publishing it you often feel like “Oh, I should have done this or left that” which can lead sometimes to cringe. Then you have to take into account your publisher who meddles with your story, sometimes to the point of making your work unrecognizable for you. Given those circumstances, one may be forgiven for wanting to modify their already published works.
However, you can’t modify your work at your whim, because by then you have people who bought your work and were invested in it, and by retconning stuff you basically cancel their investment and make it harder for them to enter it again because you’ve taken it from them once, why wouldn’t you do it again ?
At the end of the day a retcon is a writing tool. It can be pretty useful but many have mishandled it.
I think the only time a retcon is always bad is when you suppress access to the original version. You’re not just rewriting your story by doing so, you’re rewriting History, and that’s quite… dirty to say the least.
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Never read or heard about the guy until now, it seems I shoulf consider it a blessing.
@Mar thank you mon ami
Also cool to now about that medieval inspiration.
Just know that feelingses don’t work here as a currency. Arguments does. If you think GRRM is a talentless hack, go ahead, but explain it.
Just saying, but that kind of defies the logical explanations for later seasons being trash that was well acted.
What TBO said, what TBO said again…
Those two ignorant di^kwads ruined the work of the whole crew. Them getting nesr any franchise is the only actual affront here.
I’d say that both of these thing are quite pointful, excuse me valuable, if you ask me. Killing and porking (and making money) makes the world go around to this day and back in the day it was true twice as much.
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All this fantasy talk… I should finally get to Malazan book of the fallen.
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Well, I believe the later seasons, especially the last one, included very few ideas from Martin at all, good or bad.
They had the blueprint, but they used different parts than the manual said.
Inconsistencies make it harder to suspend disbelief and take away from the author’s credibility. Look at StarCraft. Few people are invested in the story anymore because they know anything is subject to retcon.
Sure, you have to do it sometimes and it can even improve your story. But there is absolutely no reason you should opt for it when building your story from the ground up.
Unless you really think inconsistencies in general are just a nice thing to have, which is ridiculous, then yes, it’s black and white.
No, I don’t care that a story with a retcon was done well at some point. You’re acting like it’s good because of the retcon itself rather than everything else that made it up.
Characters are your main tool for telling the story, and as such are a valuable resource for the storyteller. If you kill one, you need to be sure their death achieves more than they could if left in the story.
Killing characters for shock value doesn’t achieve anything but shake the audience’s faith in your ability to write a satisfying conclusion.
As you said, the point of writing is to get your audience to feel something. In some cases, you want them to feel tension and concern, and showing that characters are not necessarily safe outside of the ultimate resolution of the story is an exceptionally effective way of invoking those feelings. Its a tool which can be used well or poorly, but I respect people who try it even if it doesn’t always pan out.
The point of writing is to make people feel something, but the audience only trusts the writer with those feelings because they expect a satisfying ending to that emotional rollercoaster.
If you kill off everyone worth rooting for, it’s impossible to have that satisfying ending because no matter who survives the audience has still lost.
Why? Do you think a story is only satisfying if nobody dies? Do you think LOTR is a bad story because it killed Boromir? Star Wars is bad for killing Darth Vader? If you aren’t getting invested in the characters who survive, that is an entirely separate problem to having other characters killed.
As I said, its a tool which can be used well or poorly, and its up the writer to make sure he is doing it as well as he can if he intends to use it.
Again, if you kill a character, you should be sure that killing them achieves more than leaving them alive. That means there are points when killing characters is appropriate.
But characters are still the main tool for telling your story, so if you kill off every character who actually deserves some kind of happy ending, you’re left with a cast of unlikable asterisks and there’s no way for a satisfying conclusion to that.
Imagine LotR but the only one left alive in the end is Golem. Is that a good ending? Has the writer rewarded your emotional investment? No, not even close.
Shows like GoT and Lost practically run on that though. Anyone who’s a remotely likable person gets killed for shock value, and the one who live aren’t worth rooting for because they’re all awful human beings.
Not being afraid to kill off your characters doesn’t make you new, brave, and bold. All it does is betray your audience’s trust that the ups and downs you’re putting them through will end on an up.
I never thought the character deaths in ASOIAF were pointless. They all served the plot, Neds beheding for example kicks off a war and illustrates just how much of a uncontrollable monster Joffrey is, while also solidifying some of the major themes of the series, I.E. Fudualism was actually the worst and righteousness on its own isn’t sufficient to secure victory.
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Given that nobody said anything about killing every character, im not sure what point youre trying to make. GRRM can kill lots of characters because he has a large cast of well developed characters. He puts in the work to make sure he can kill these people and still have characters left to work with. If Tolkien had made the Fellowship 30 characters instead of 9, I guarantee you there would have been more casualties than just Boromir.
Extremely well said.
And most of them are horrible people who you can’t feel good rooting for.
When your cast is full of amoral asterisks and you kill off the few people with a conscience then there’s no one left in your story to care about, and it’s impossible to have a satisfying ending.