Rants and Visual Rhetoric
For starters, if I hear the phrase "Kissed by fire" once more, I'm going to punch ADWD in the face. I don't know exactly where its face is, but I assume it's somewhere on the front cover. We know they have the word red in their vocabulary, and it seems like every guy with red hair in these books is noted as having, oddly enough, red hair, but for some reason every stupid fucking time a woman with red hair appears in front of Jon Snow I have to be told in italics that he is thinking she has been kissed by fire, because that's clearly the first thing on his mind every single fucking time she appears on page.
Kissed by fire is the new You know nothing, Jon Snow.
Which of course was the new Gods be good, Ned. Or maybe the new It is known. I can't tell anymore. They all blend together into some sort of festering pool of unnecessarily repeated catchphrases.
All of which just tells me that someone out there hates me.
I've been struggling for days trying to figure out how to properly express my feelings regarding ADWD. My mother, I think, put it best when she simply said, "And every Daenerys chapter is the same. The more I think about it, the more I don't like those chapters. In fact, I don't think I've ever really liked her chapters."
Mom is awesome.
But ADWD continues the trend of the past two books of giving me plotlines and characters I just don't care about, ad nauseum, and putting most of the narrative back at square one by having many, many complicated events take place that pretty much don't matter to me. But why don't they matter to me? That is the real question. I've spent how much time reading how many thousands of pages, and I remember really enjoying a large portion of this series at some point. How, I asked, can I come to grips with this disillusionment?
The answer, of course, is graphs.
So here is a graph I made of POV chapters over the five books in the series. It illustrates trends in how many POV chapters are given to each character. Books are numbered 1-5 for ease of reading.
Well now...that's a fine looking narrative structure if I've ever seen one! Realizing that this graph, while obviously attractive and helpful in understanding the assfuckery that is the structure of this series, is not getting to the heart of the matter, I reduced it to the main characters, those whom were given POV chapters in the first three books. (You know, back when this thing seemed to have a sense of rhythm, consistency, and pacing.)
So if we look at the above graph, we can note disturbing trends in the reduction of perspective in ASOIAF, particularly among adolescent narrators and those of lesser social status. (Sorry, I wanted to sound like some sort of fantasy sociologist or something for a minute. Also, I have just copyrighted the name FANTASY SOCIOLOGIST and I own all the rights to any screenplays, novels, short stories, poems, or newspaper circulars concerning matters pertaining thereof or thereto.)
So in short, I'm annoyed that the characters we were introduced to and followed over three books are getting short shrift. What I think is worse, however, is that it seems like we are getting increasing POV chapters from characters that are all, sociopolitically speaking, fairly similar. To have a cast of characters like Jon, Sansa, Dany, Arya, Bran, and Eddard all narrating from different points of perspective gives a nice roundness to the story. You get little kid ideas, you get old battle-hardened lord stuff, you get a tomboy, you get a princess, etc. Sure, Catelyn is unnecessary and stupid, and Dany and Sansa pretty much act like naive idiots most of the time, but you have to take the bad with the good. Even adding Jaime and Sam gives you some good perspective outside the family, but part of the enjoyment of the structure was that everyone was against the Starks, so leaving other POVs out gave you a higher sense of threat and danger.
And now, I feel like more and more, I'm being put in the shoes of men with power and swords. Selmy, Victarion, Jon Connington, Quentyn Martell. They may have some diversity in their ages, but they all seem to pretty much act the same way, i.e., I'M A MAN AND I HAVE A SWORD AND A DUTY AND I WILL TAKE WHAT I WANT. We can probably throw Asha in there too. Seriously, I couldn't give a fuck about the people at the top. The people at the bottom, the ones who are getting fucked over and actually have depth, are the ones that we've invested in. And it seems like, as this continues on, I can't tell a real difference between most of these people.
Kissed by fire is the new You know nothing, Jon Snow.
Which of course was the new Gods be good, Ned. Or maybe the new It is known. I can't tell anymore. They all blend together into some sort of festering pool of unnecessarily repeated catchphrases.
All of which just tells me that someone out there hates me.
I've been struggling for days trying to figure out how to properly express my feelings regarding ADWD. My mother, I think, put it best when she simply said, "And every Daenerys chapter is the same. The more I think about it, the more I don't like those chapters. In fact, I don't think I've ever really liked her chapters."
Mom is awesome.
But ADWD continues the trend of the past two books of giving me plotlines and characters I just don't care about, ad nauseum, and putting most of the narrative back at square one by having many, many complicated events take place that pretty much don't matter to me. But why don't they matter to me? That is the real question. I've spent how much time reading how many thousands of pages, and I remember really enjoying a large portion of this series at some point. How, I asked, can I come to grips with this disillusionment?
The answer, of course, is graphs.
So here is a graph I made of POV chapters over the five books in the series. It illustrates trends in how many POV chapters are given to each character. Books are numbered 1-5 for ease of reading.
Well now...that's a fine looking narrative structure if I've ever seen one! Realizing that this graph, while obviously attractive and helpful in understanding the assfuckery that is the structure of this series, is not getting to the heart of the matter, I reduced it to the main characters, those whom were given POV chapters in the first three books. (You know, back when this thing seemed to have a sense of rhythm, consistency, and pacing.)
So if we look at the above graph, we can note disturbing trends in the reduction of perspective in ASOIAF, particularly among adolescent narrators and those of lesser social status. (Sorry, I wanted to sound like some sort of fantasy sociologist or something for a minute. Also, I have just copyrighted the name FANTASY SOCIOLOGIST and I own all the rights to any screenplays, novels, short stories, poems, or newspaper circulars concerning matters pertaining thereof or thereto.)
So in short, I'm annoyed that the characters we were introduced to and followed over three books are getting short shrift. What I think is worse, however, is that it seems like we are getting increasing POV chapters from characters that are all, sociopolitically speaking, fairly similar. To have a cast of characters like Jon, Sansa, Dany, Arya, Bran, and Eddard all narrating from different points of perspective gives a nice roundness to the story. You get little kid ideas, you get old battle-hardened lord stuff, you get a tomboy, you get a princess, etc. Sure, Catelyn is unnecessary and stupid, and Dany and Sansa pretty much act like naive idiots most of the time, but you have to take the bad with the good. Even adding Jaime and Sam gives you some good perspective outside the family, but part of the enjoyment of the structure was that everyone was against the Starks, so leaving other POVs out gave you a higher sense of threat and danger.
And now, I feel like more and more, I'm being put in the shoes of men with power and swords. Selmy, Victarion, Jon Connington, Quentyn Martell. They may have some diversity in their ages, but they all seem to pretty much act the same way, i.e., I'M A MAN AND I HAVE A SWORD AND A DUTY AND I WILL TAKE WHAT I WANT. We can probably throw Asha in there too. Seriously, I couldn't give a fuck about the people at the top. The people at the bottom, the ones who are getting fucked over and actually have depth, are the ones that we've invested in. And it seems like, as this continues on, I can't tell a real difference between most of these people.