Does Enjoying GRRM Make Us Sociopaths?

[Guest Raidne]

Indeed. And when that happens, it's not actually tragic anymore.

So, the most tragic and depressing book I've read lately is actually based on a factual event, and is kind of only loosely fiction. It's sort of a fictional memoir of the Vietnam War. So, certainly it's true to life. Yet, you know, there is so much happiness in life as well, yet it's really, really boring to write about.

It's the same principle by which nobody wants to hear about how awesome your marriage is.

I guess there's just no conflict in happiness, and stories without conflict are boring.

[Errant Bard]

I guess there's just no conflict in happiness, and stories without conflict are boring.

We now have technically looped back to first page. GOTO: "Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way." :P

[Liadin]

ASOIAF is grim, but I'm not sure where all these tragedy-comparisons are coming from. We don't know how it ends yet! Probably it will be bittersweet like most adult fantasy. And the body count is comparatively not that high*, it's just the characters that died weren't ones people were expecting.

* So I read lots of Amazon reviews before picking up the series, and they harped on and on and on about how many major characters died. Thus, far from being shocked when major characters died, I was continually astonished when they survived their predicaments. I assumed Bran to be dead when he fell from the tower, and Davos and Theon at the end of ACOK, and I was certain that Tyrion was for the axe in ASOS. I was astonished when Jon actually became LC and relieved when Arya was not raped after being captured by Gregor's men. The way people talk about it sometimes you'd think no author had ever killed a major character before and that nothing positive ever happens in the books--bullshit.

[Old Nan]

What Lyanna said. And also: we like to experience stuff vicariously. We would rather read about people having a terrible time in order to 'see how it feels' than experience it for ourselves.

This, of course, presupposes a privileged, happy viewpoint for the reader, something that was asserted once already in the thread. Not all of us are upper-middle class looking to 'slum.'

A lot of 'happy' stories - on TV, in books, in film, whatever - are wish-fulfilment stuff that is usually completely unbelievable.

It isn't hard to believe things. I can believe ASOIAF. I can believe WOT. I can believe Bakker. I can believe the Belgariad and the Bible and Darwin and Nietzsche and Locke. I can't believe that so very many people are such unrelenting skeptics. And what's wrong with wish-fulfillment? Nothing, I say.

[Morrigan]

Because happiness doesn't exist without its counterpart. Even carebearland has to have problems for anyone to even care. Disney films always do have some sort of big bad and bad things happen.

Now, because Mufasa is assassinated in "The Lion King", does it mean all those who watch it "take pleasure in negative emotions"? Like hell. No. It's the same for ASOIAF, nobody takes pleasure in "negative emotions", it's just that these things bring the good emotions in sharper view, when they happen.

And alternatively, it may carry a message. Your wife needs to read Brave New World.

I was about to say, "Your wife needs to read your divorce papers because she's an uncultured idiot", but that would be kind of mean... so, yeah, this, I guess. :P

Seriously, as others have said, most great works of literature are extremely dark and bleak, how sheltered can you be as to think ASoIaF is not only extreme in this regard, but that you somehow suffer mental health issues for appreciating and enjoying it? *facepalm*

[undertow]

Am I the only person here who doesn't find Martin to be especially dark?

[Horza]

You aren't.

[davos]

* So I read lots of Amazon reviews before picking up the series, and they harped on and on and on about how many major characters died. Thus, far from being shocked when major characters died, I was continually astonished when they survived their predicaments. I assumed Bran to be dead when he fell from the tower, and Davos and Theon at the end of ACOK, and I was certain that Tyrion was for the axe in ASOS. I was astonished when Jon actually became LC and relieved when Arya was not raped after being captured by Gregor's men. The way people talk about it sometimes you'd think no author had ever killed a major character before and that nothing positive ever happens in the books--bullshit.

First, if going in you were prepared for a total blood-bath the series might not come across as such. For most of us though, when we read if for the first time we were not expecting GRRM to actually kill major characters. When when Ser Ilyn Payne actually takes off Ned's head most of us were at the very least surprised. We were expecting some last minute out, for him to be sent to the wall or some-such. GRRM is willing to let you like a character, to get you inside a character's head and get to know them well, and then kill them or have horrible things happen to them. Which makes those times when good things happen, when character's do survive situations when there seemed little hope all the more believable. You know he's willing to let the worst happen, that if it fits his vision that he's willing to let his world be brutal and harsh. So you know that the danger for a character is always real, that while you might think someone is going to make it out ok, that with GRRM you can not count on it absolutely.

[Liadin]

First, if going in you were prepared for a total blood-bath the series might not come across as such. For most of us though, when we read if for the first time we were not expecting GRRM to actually kill major characters.

Indeed. It was my own fault for reading too many reviews; I feel like I missed out on the "real ASOIAF experience." ;) These days I try to limit my pre-book review-reading strictly to the number I need to read to decide whether or not to pick up the book.

Still though, it's not like killing major characters is unheard of in fiction, even in epic fantasy. If you were expecting another Jordan, I'm sure it would come as a shock, but it's not all that unusual for fantasy authors to have a major character tragic death scene toward the end of a book, complete with last words and so on. The abrupt manner of Ned's and Robb's and Catelyn's deaths (not always even placed at the climax!) surprised me more than the fact that they died. But then, a lot of that is probably based on my reading experience, which tends toward trilogies and shorter; the huge epic fantasy series do seem less prone to killing off characters.

[davos]

till though, it's not like killing major characters is unheard of in fiction, even in epic fantasy. If you were expecting another Jordan, I'm sure it would come as a shock, but it's not all that unusual for fantasy authors to have a major character tragic death scene toward the end of a book, complete with last words and so on. The abrupt manner of Ned's and Robb's and Catelyn's deaths (not always even placed at the climax!) surprised me more than the fact that they died. But then, a lot of that is probably based on my reading experience, which tends toward trilogies and shorter; the huge epic fantasy series do seem less prone to killing off characters.

You bring up another issue as well. When GoT was released back in 1996 the typical epic fantasy market was very different. Jordan, Eddings, Brooks, and myriad of Drangonlance books among others represented the norm of the genre. Yes, there had been Tad Williams'

excellent Memory, Sorrow and Thorn but that did not push the boundries significantly. It was a far more literate, thoughful approach to epic fantasy than was usual for the genre. It played with the tropes some but it didn't out and out shatter them. Outside of that and a few exceptions that while strong works failed to have an impact on the field, epic fantasy was stuck in a rut of predictability. Then you pick up Game of Thrones and find all the rules thrown out the window or at the very least subverted. While ASoIaF still stands out as the best in the field by a good margin, the genre has changed, thanks in no small part to that work itself. Its shown publishers that epic fantasy can be more complex, more mature, more realistic (odd word to use with fantasy but it communicates something meaningful about ASoIaF) and would sell. It showed other writers that they could explore new places within the genre and have a chance of actually having their work published. If I came fresh to the series today and had done a great deal of other reading in the genre, I would still find it to be brillaint but it wouldn't quite have that same initial jarring, cold bucket of water thrown in my face feel that I had the first time I read GoT.

[Liadin]

Ah, that's a good point. I only first read it a couple of years ago.

[Swense]

Martin is not exceptionally dark, he sets his fantasy stories in a world that feels more or less real, in terms of people's actions and their consequences.

Dark often has the same effect as obscenely optimistic in scaring people away. W40k feels fake because of it's exceptional darkness, whereas Disney stories feel fake because of their exceptional happiness.

[Cantabile]

I think the question of why we as humans require conflict in stories, and find it easier to be emotionally affected by a character's tragedy than their bliss is a fascinating philosophical, psychological, and cultural anthropological question in itself, but I suppose that's a thread for another time.

The point about everything in moderation is a good one. One problem I personally found while reading SoIF is that by Storm of Swords the pattern of tragedy, or a character trying so hard to achieve/reach a goal only to fail, became a little too bvious, to the point that I felt no surprise when Arya reached her mom after such tribulation only for Cateline to be killed at the time, and for circumstances to prevent Arya from seeing her. Too much tragedy can be dull just as too much wish-fulfilment is, in that there's no surprise when it happens.

What one seens as "fake" though seems to do more with the reader's social and historical awareness than the author's world itself though. I've seen all too many sheletered suburbanites who feel that dark works are unrealistic simply because they're completely oblivious to the stark horrors not only of past history, but the present. I had a friend who when reading Prince of Nothing complained to me that one of the torture scenes seemed "over the top" and "hard to relate to", but all someone has to do is pull up a wikipedia article on torture to shatter that bubble and realize how damned macabre our species truly is.

[Old Nan]

I had a friend who when reading Prince of Nothing complained to me that one of the torture scenes seemed "over the top" and "hard to relate to", but all someone has to do is pull up a wikipedia article on torture to shatter that bubble and realize how damned macabre our species truly is.

But what makes the bubble artificial? You seem to be saying that the viewpoints of people who are not jaded and "shattered" are not "truly" worth considering. And you wonder why this makes you sound a sadist?

[Horza]

Thinking that the viewpoints of people who don't realise that much worse stuff happens everyday than what they read in fantasy aren't particularly well informed is sadism how?

[Old Nan]

Worse in what way? Most people do not have and never have had such sensitivity. Informed in what way? Why is it the duty of the reader to consider the lives (I'd say perspectives, but it isn't about perspective to say people who've never had a bath in their life must feel filthy) of others?

[Horza]

I think Cantabile is pretty clear, I'm asking you what is sadistic about what he said.

[Old Nan]

The implication that one finds some sort of enlightenment through "tru[e]" "awareness" of "macabre" "stark horror," which can be found by "shatter[ing] th[e] bubble" of the "sheletered" (sic) and "oblivious" who "complain" about them.

If anything, I'd say the capacity to feel "stark horror" is one of the defining qualities of the sheltered, and trying to enforce that feeling upon others is certainly sadistic, among other things. Horrors are very rarely horrifying for long to those experiencing them, in a beautiful example of the adaptability of our race–why then should we who do not experience them be horrified?

It's fashionable slumming, and nothing more.

[undertow]

...I felt no surprise when Arya reached her mom after such tribulation only for Cateline to be killed at the time, and for circumstances to prevent Arya from seeing her. Too much tragedy can be dull just as too much wish-fulfilment is, in that there's no surprise when it happens.

I always thought Arya was a wish fulfillment character

[Wras]

Forgive my ignorance, but I don't think I'm properly grasping the term "wish fulfillment", despite seeing it used in context several times. Anyone care to elaborate just a tad?