Day: May 21, 2019

Yesterday I wanted to talk about GoT, but I really wanted to talk about story and expectation. Specifically, I am concerned about the relationship between success and fan service–particularly in continuing or long lasting series. I worry that the mountain of responsibility in the age of social media is shifting towards doing what the fans want vs. the author exploring and realizing their own arc. What is responsible for the shift? At least here in America the answer seems to be privilege based expectation and social media.

I remember the end of the Harry Potter series as it came out. This is back in the day when the movies were released after the books mind you. The ending landed with a thud, because it did not match fan expectations. Except JK Rowling wrote that ending and stuffed it in a vault years before she finished the books. In other words, the story came from that place where it started, not from the support and attention of the millions of fans who bought the work. This is important because the place where the story started is, IMHO, what brought readers to the page in the first place. To devolve into Fan service is to betray your own story.

Yet here we are in an era where that is not only expected but accepted–especially in TV drama where the work is not often written by a single writer but a room of authors who change as often as the seasons over the years. I don’t want my big work to be like that. I want to create it in isolation as a response to the zeitgeist. I want to put it out there and let it be as it should.

Not as the fans decide they want it when they decide to take ownership.

Some Thoughts:

1. 365 days in a year means I am pushing about 45 days until 3.0 is over. I’m on a new exercise routine and trying to stick to a new writing routine. All of this last minute stuff means that I have not really changed all that much. It isn’t the best look.
2. Several Amber Alerts here lately. Bad things, man…

Here’s the thing that worries me about ‘the moment’: If you don’t subscribe to it (meaning shape your message to identify with it) then somehow you are suddenly lacking.

I should start at the beginning.

Game of Thrones is a fantastically old outline that was written by a fairly misogynistic author named George RR Martin. He thought up the ideas of how the story would end decades before the arrival of the me too movement and present energy on female leadership and positive roles. He did this and then they made a really famous show that landed smack dab in the middle of the ‘Ms. Marvel’ era. So, what I am saying is there ought to be no expectation that it ends in a way that promotes the roles we have come to realize are more positive for women. That is the equivalent of asking Mrs. Brady to act differently because now we want her to or to expect June Cleaver not to treat her husband in the fashion that seemingly fit her needs and desires of the era.

So, I am saying not to expect GoT to be a reflection of the now. In a larger sense I am saying not to expect writing–especially fiction–to be a mirror of the world we live in. Fiction is a lens into possibility. Fantasy and Science Fiction are both nakedly reflective of the worlds we either want or fear and often of both. They are ‘Black Mirrors’ if you will, and not meant to be Fan Service of an idea of ‘the way it is now’

So, what led to this argument? I saw an article post on CNN about how GoT missed its moment to be something amazing by shaping the lead female into something that everyone wanted her to be. I find that argument to be deeply immature and relatively stupid. If anything, GoT showed us solid character journeys and in one such journey we did get to see a woman become that woman. In truth more than one reached her place in that sense. Still, we aren’t talking about them. We are talking about the one ‘we care about’ the one that ended far far worse.