6 ms·

With the new Game of Thrones spin-off coming out, I was just re-reading some of the author’s hilarious posts on how ridiculous and shallow the show/book were wh

by danso 4y ago

With the new Game of Thrones spin-off coming out, I was just re-reading some of the author’s hilarious posts on how ridiculous and shallow the show/book were when it came to logistics [0]. Glad to see Bret Devereaux’s popularity growing; his deep dive posts feel like a welcome throwback to the golden age of blogging [0] https://acoup.blog/2019/10/04/collections-the-preposterous-logistics-of-the-loot-train-battle-game-of-thrones-s7e4/ https://acoup.blog/2019/10/04/collections-the-preposterous-l...

driscoll42 4y ago
I just started reading Bret's blog in the past couple weeks with the LOTR posts. Was quite the rabbit hole that I still haven't come out of, love the blog! Anyone with an interest in history should check his blog out.
the_af 4y ago
I like this blog, but "ridiculous" and "shallows" are not words I would use to describe escapist fantasy fiction. It simply has goals that are different from history documentaries. It thrives in fantasy stereotypes whose intersection with history is flimsy on purpose; these are stories about dragons and magic, after all. This is not Braveheart being hilariously erroneous while at the same time purporting to be about real history, only "slightly" exaggerated: Game of Thrones completely disregards the real world, and because this is on purpose, I think criticisms from "realism" are unwarranted -- unless being done just for fun, like this author seems to do [1]. Besides, it's a sliding scale: Game of Thrones, by real world standards, is probably more realistic in its unreality than, say, Lord of the Rings. Neither is wrong to be unrealistic, being more parables or entertainment than actual history. Of all the criticisms to be made of A Game of Thrones as literature, I think "being shallow" is not one of them. --- [1] https://acoup.blog/2019/05/28/new-acquisitions-not-how-it-was-game-of-thrones-and-the-middle-ages-part-i/ https://acoup.blog/2019/05/28/new-acquisitions-not-how-it-wa... > "Finally, before we dive in, two final caveats. First, this is not a criticism of George R.R. Martin’s world-building. There is, after all, no reason why his fantasy world needs to be true to the European Middle Ages (we’ll talk about known/possible historical inspirations as they come up). I do not think Martin set out to design a sneaky medieval culture lecture in fantasy novel form, so he cannot be faulted for failing to do what he never attempted."
- dtheodor 4y ago
  > Game of Thrones completely disregards the real world, and because this is on purpose, I think criticisms from "realism" are unwarranted This is not true, any work of fiction needs to be believable within the bounds it sets for its world. Those bounds are extended to include dragons and magic, but no more. The rest of it should be as close to the real world as possible. There's a term for this, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Verisimilitude_(fiction) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Verisimilitude_(fiction)
  - the_af 4y ago
    > There's a term for this, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Verisimilitude_(fiction) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Verisimilitude_(fiction) Yes, I'm aware of this term, back from when I read Tim O'Brien masterful Vietnam War novel, "The Things They Carried" (which I recommend if you haven't read it). A Game of Thrones has plenty of verosimilitude. The thing about it is that's about feelings, the emotions in the reader. If you read it and something takes you out of the moment -- "wait, this makes no sense! this character would never do this!", "dragons!? nobody ever mentioned dragons before!", "what, one man defeated an army of hundreds single-handedly!?" -- that breaks verosimilitude. But within AGoT, very few things do this. It's self-contained and, within the span of your reading it, self-consistent. It won't resist a medieval history scholarly review, but then again, it's not meant to, and neither is it "shallow".
- kemayo 4y ago
  Martin's goal was clearly a sort of political realism (e.g. a lot of what's going on is heavily inspired by the War of the Roses, a real historical scenario), so complaints about how something was politically unrealistic are probably most relevant. He's very concerned with "people really act this way" or "people really fight over things like this", and not as much with "people can really build a 700 foot tall wall with medieval technology". (That said, the specific article danso linked to is actually one where being nitpicky about logistics makes plenty of sense, because the show chose to make the entire episode about logistics. Once you make a topic the centerpiece of an episode, you'd better get it right. :D) It's also worth separating Martin's goals and the TV showrunners' goals. In some ways this is where a lot of the criticism of the last seasons of the TV show come from, as the showrunners had to break out on their own without Martin's plot to rely on. This changed the implicit priorities of the show, and the audience noticed and weren't thrilled. Perhaps best exemplified by the last part of the show where the surviving lords of Westeros elected Bran as king "because he had the best story". (Though there was also the way that armies started basically teleporting around, because although Martin didn't care that much about logistics, he still did care a bit.)
ren_engineer 4y ago
GRRM wasn't even involved with the show at this point, the books don't have anything as bad as the show in terms of travel time where they completely stopped caring about things in the last 2-3 seasons
legitster 4y ago
I am too much of a grumpy realist to enjoy fantasy books anymore. Magical cursed dragons I can handle. But anytime there's like, a giant fortress city in a wasteland with no agrarian economy I get thoroughly distracted trying to imagine how much food they go through.

by danso 4y ago

driscoll42 4y ago

I just started reading Bret's blog in the past couple weeks with the LOTR posts. Was quite the rabbit hole that I still haven't come out of, love the blog! Anyone with an interest in history should check his blog out.

the_af 4y ago

I like this blog, but "ridiculous" and "shallows" are not words I would use to describe escapist fantasy fiction. It simply has goals that are different from history documentaries. It thrives in fantasy stereotypes whose intersection with history is flimsy on purpose; these are stories about dragons and magic, after all. This is not Braveheart being hilariously erroneous while at the same time purporting to be about real history, only "slightly" exaggerated: Game of Thrones completely disregards the real world, and because this is on purpose, I think criticisms from "realism" are unwarranted -- unless being done just for fun, like this author seems to do [1]. Besides, it's a sliding scale: Game of Thrones, by real world standards, is probably more realistic in its unreality than, say, Lord of the Rings. Neither is wrong to be unrealistic, being more parables or entertainment than actual history. Of all the criticisms to be made of A Game of Thrones as literature, I think "being shallow" is not one of them. --- [1] https://acoup.blog/2019/05/28/new-acquisitions-not-how-it-was-game-of-thrones-and-the-middle-ages-part-i/ https://acoup.blog/2019/05/28/new-acquisitions-not-how-it-wa... > "Finally, before we dive in, two final caveats. First, this is not a criticism of George R.R. Martin’s world-building. There is, after all, no reason why his fantasy world needs to be true to the European Middle Ages (we’ll talk about known/possible historical inspirations as they come up). I do not think Martin set out to design a sneaky medieval culture lecture in fantasy novel form, so he cannot be faulted for failing to do what he never attempted."

dtheodor 4y ago
> Game of Thrones completely disregards the real world, and because this is on purpose, I think criticisms from "realism" are unwarranted This is not true, any work of fiction needs to be believable within the bounds it sets for its world. Those bounds are extended to include dragons and magic, but no more. The rest of it should be as close to the real world as possible. There's a term for this, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Verisimilitude_(fiction) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Verisimilitude_(fiction)
- the_af 4y ago
  > There's a term for this, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Verisimilitude_(fiction) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Verisimilitude_(fiction) Yes, I'm aware of this term, back from when I read Tim O'Brien masterful Vietnam War novel, "The Things They Carried" (which I recommend if you haven't read it). A Game of Thrones has plenty of verosimilitude. The thing about it is that's about feelings, the emotions in the reader. If you read it and something takes you out of the moment -- "wait, this makes no sense! this character would never do this!", "dragons!? nobody ever mentioned dragons before!", "what, one man defeated an army of hundreds single-handedly!?" -- that breaks verosimilitude. But within AGoT, very few things do this. It's self-contained and, within the span of your reading it, self-consistent. It won't resist a medieval history scholarly review, but then again, it's not meant to, and neither is it "shallow".
kemayo 4y ago
Martin's goal was clearly a sort of political realism (e.g. a lot of what's going on is heavily inspired by the War of the Roses, a real historical scenario), so complaints about how something was politically unrealistic are probably most relevant. He's very concerned with "people really act this way" or "people really fight over things like this", and not as much with "people can really build a 700 foot tall wall with medieval technology". (That said, the specific article danso linked to is actually one where being nitpicky about logistics makes plenty of sense, because the show chose to make the entire episode about logistics. Once you make a topic the centerpiece of an episode, you'd better get it right. :D) It's also worth separating Martin's goals and the TV showrunners' goals. In some ways this is where a lot of the criticism of the last seasons of the TV show come from, as the showrunners had to break out on their own without Martin's plot to rely on. This changed the implicit priorities of the show, and the audience noticed and weren't thrilled. Perhaps best exemplified by the last part of the show where the surviving lords of Westeros elected Bran as king "because he had the best story". (Though there was also the way that armies started basically teleporting around, because although Martin didn't care that much about logistics, he still did care a bit.)

ren_engineer 4y ago

GRRM wasn't even involved with the show at this point, the books don't have anything as bad as the show in terms of travel time where they completely stopped caring about things in the last 2-3 seasons

legitster 4y ago

I am too much of a grumpy realist to enjoy fantasy books anymore. Magical cursed dragons I can handle. But anytime there's like, a giant fortress city in a wasteland with no agrarian economy I get thoroughly distracted trying to imagine how much food they go through.