One hears theories as to why Game of Thrones, at one time the most famous and celebrated series in our genre, will never be finished. Writer Devon Eriksen offers a theory that rings true.
The words below are his.
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https://x.com/Devon_Eriksen_/status/1831714435549057245
Here’s what Song of Ice and Fire actually wants to be, and why George can’t finish it.
The Song of Ice and Fire isn’t actually supposed to be dark, Machiavellian, hopeless, or a subversion of Tolkien at all.
It’s just supposed to start that way.
The details may be complex, but the formula is simple. Low-fantasy version of the British Isles, torn apart by multi-sided Machiavellian power struggle, loosely based on the War of the Roses.
Things are bad because of Machiavellian power struggle.
In the background, subtle hints of external, magical, otherworldly threat. Warring factions scoff and ignore it as first. Enter the high-fantasy tropes; prophesied hero emerges to unite the morally-grey factions into an unambiguously-good pro-civilization force to confront and defeat the unambiguously-evil threat to all life.
Full transition, in the end, to epic Tolkienesque high fantasy, played straight rather than subverted.
Heroism triumphant, humanity triumphant, realm unified in peace and prosperity.
Roll credits.
Were the story to be completed thus, completed as it wants to be completed, as it yearns to be completed, every dark, gritty, Machiavellian moment would be fully justified.
Every chapter and scene filled with thugs and villains and no heroes at all would be fully justified.
Because they would merely serve to emphasize the rarity of heroes, and the need for them.
Because they would make the arrival of a true hero that much more satisfying when, late but not too late, he arrived.
ASOIAF doesn’t really want to be a subversion of Tolkien at all. It wants to be a path out of darkness and into light. It wants to be a study in how Tolkien is deeply relevant, even to a gritty, morally grey world.
This is what George knows it needs to be.
But George cannot write it.
Why?
Because he’s a socialist. And a boomer.
Socialism’s motivational core is envy, and its one underlying rule is “thou shalt not be better than me”.
The boomer’s single guiding principle is “whatever makes me feel pleasure right now is good, and whatever makes me feel bad right now is evil”.
Take these together, and you get someone who has a real problem with heroes. Heroes are, by definition, the best of us, at least on some dimension, and if your underlying motivation is envy, standing next to one is gonna make you feel bad.
This means that socialists, boomers, and socialist boomers tend not to want to believe in heroes and heroism.
They want to convince themselves that anything which appears good is secretly evil, actually, and that anyone who makes them feel or look bad is obviously evil because reasons.
So when they see a hero, they tend to call him a fascist.
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