Thread by @petersagal

So, as promised, a lengthy thread on #GoT, @GRRMspeaking, and the nature of narrative, as inspired by Mr Silvermint's thread (which I RT'd earlier), specifically this passing notice of the character's "past choices." LET US BEGIN. (Cue Patriarchy Jingle.)

https://twitter.com/DSilvermint/status/1125856108386471936

Anybody who has heard me gas on about GoT, either on #NerdetteRecaps or in person, knows that I am obsessed with a central question: what makes this story, both in the books and then as translated to the screen, so incredibly compelling?

Yes, it's the epic fantasy setting and the scheming and the sex and the dragons and the sword-fights, not to mention, GRRM's own extraordinary chops developed during a 20 year writing career before he began the first novel. All necessary but not sufficient to explain it.

I once was lucky enough to meet Benioff and Weiss (thank you, @clmazin) and I said to them: I will only ask one nerdy GoT Q: what makes the novels so incredibly good? And they said, "Well, the characters." Yes, but what makes the characters so compelling?

Maybe it's this: it's that each character has a vivid, complicated past, and they live with that past every moment. It controls their attitudes, reactions and actions. Most obvious example: the Hound. He wears his scars on his face, and they inform everything he does.

But it's true of all of them. Jaime, when we meet him, seems a monster, and he sleeps with his sister because that's what monsters do. But in Bk 3, in his POV chapters, we learn that Cersei was his only companion growing up. She gave him intimacy and love and sex (quite well!)

So if that's his past, well, his more recent choices (do anything to protect her/be with her) make a lot more sense. They seem more human. More real.

Now, consider the standard Western model of narrative. It's almost always about the act of becoming. Heroes start blank, gain experience/wisdom, and change.

Michael Corleone becomes the Godfather
Luke becomes a Jedi.
Harry becomes a great Wizard.

It's a deeply rooted model, and for a good reason. It's the Hero with A Thousand Faces. It is about the possibility of transformation. It's about rising out of our origins.

Except most people don't. Most people, most especially *ourselves as we see ourselves,* are not "blank." We are not Michael Corleone, who grew up in the Mafia but somehow (at the opening of the film) seems untouched and unaffected.

We are Fredo, or Sonny, who were steeped in that life and can't escape everything they learned along the way. Freud told us that we are impelled by subconscious memories, but he was wrong: we remember everything that mattered, just as the Hound remembers that brazier.

Do we learn the right lessons from these experiences? Do we remember them accurately? Do we put the blame where it belongs, understand the key difference between the old memory and the present situation? Almost never.

So maybe that's the "secret sauce:" the thing that first made the books and then the TV show the center of the world's largest cult: that every character carries with them the long, complicated chains of their past, which constrain them. When they break the chain, we applaud...

Because we know, from our own lives, how incredibly hard it is.

Thank you for coming to my TED talk.