Juho Pohjalainen's Blog: Pankarp - Posts Tagged "game-of-thrones"

Peal has died once so far. Gone beyond the veil, yet come back thanks to a quick medical intervention. He doesn't recall much of the experience.



According to my notes he's going to go through this sort of a thing at least once more, possibly twice, before it finally sticks.

Here's the question: does this give him any power over Death? Does it mean he can avoid its cold grasp and keep himself alive through even the worst of it?



Or does it mean Death is really pissed off at him and will take special interest in him, make sure that he dies and stays dead, Final Destination style?

That's the nice thing about writing fantasy. Either one could be true. Or neither.

Picture a gritty low-fantasy kingdom, the likes that have come back in vogue these past couple decades. Everything's dirty, all the lords are bastards, war everywhere, women get violated, heroes die quickly. Everyone is miserable. Game of Thrones, am I right?




Nope! It's the Dark Lord's Shadow-Realm, where he ever plots the demise and downfall of the good peaceful folk that thrive beyond his borders!

We're being told that it's "realistic". That it's how things actually are, outside of lurid fantasies and escapism. That true change is impossible, that you have no power to do anything, and that if you try, you'll die miserable. Being good sucks, villains always win.

And that's precisely what the Dark Lord would want you to think. I bet he'd style himself as the High King or some shit, too, and all his minions and lackeys are Knights and Dukes and other such shiny respectable titles, to further legitimize himself and to mock the truly good people, drive home the point that they're no better than he is. What if they complain? Why, they're the Dark Lords actually! So everything's muddled up and twisted and nothing makes sense anymore.



When he's inevitably defeated and the actual heroes march in to save the day and bring freedom and justice and true equality, the Dark Lord's downtrodden subjects will be leery and suspicious and wonder just what the catch is. So beaten and broken they are, they can't even recognize the true goodness when it comes their way. It will be a long and rocky road to bring them around. Some will never be convinced.

These are some of the things I've been thinking of for this year's NaNoWriMo, which I'm still writing. I feel like it could make for an effective twist: the readership of today has been conditioned to expect their grit and grime and low-fantasy, and what with how close the two concepts come, it'd be quite easy to pull the rug on them. Turns out it's all pretty bad and that we shouldn't tolerate it.

And perhaps we don't need to. Perhaps we can fight it for real.