Why do I like A Song of Ice and Fire?

{SPOILERS}{SPOILERS}{SPOILERS}

I recently found myself trying to explain to my wife, and to my father (who couldn't get into the books) what it is I like about GRR Martin's stories. And that got me thinking...Why do I like it so much? It's not the sentence-by-sentence writing -- not that I think Martin is a bad writer, but, by and large, I don't find the language especially beautiful. It doesn't, for me, have the musicality of, say, Tolkien's writing. No sentence from ASoIaF has stayed with me like the end of Return of the King : " [The] sails were drawn up, and the wind blew, and slowly the ship slipped away down the long grey firth; and the light of the glass of Galadriel that Frodo bore glimmered and was lost. And the ship went out into the High Sea and passed on into the West." Then again, as Martin has said repeatedly, he's not trying to be Tolkien...He's trying not to be Tolkien.

And why do I love the Lord of the Rings? Well, the writing certainly, but let me scamper to another quotation, this one from Nietzsche. In the words of The Immoralist, "From time to time grant me a glimpse, grant me a single glimpse into something perfect, something completely developed, something happy, powerful, triumphant, from which there is still something to fear! A glimpse of a man who justifies humanity." Perhaps ironically, given the influence of Tolkien's Catholic faith on The Lord of the Rings, Tolkien's great work does just this for me. It grants a vision of beauty for beauty's sake, nobility for nobility's sake, and justice for the sake of justice. Martin doesn't do this, and (I think) he doesn't mean to; he intentionally denies his readers a glimpse of something that justifies humanity, and this is part of the deep allure for me -- But more on that later.[1]

A glimpse of a hobbit that justifies humanity...

So far I've only succeeded in identifying the features I like about a different series than ASoIaF. I'd say there are three general reasons: Firstly, Martin is skilled at seeding his books with mysteries for the reader to identify and solve, and it's a great deal of fun to try to figure out where the books are going and which clues you've missed on the last reading. Secondly, Martin is an impressively subtle world-builder; he lends his world and characters an inner logic without having to spell it out all at once. Finally, he plays on fantasy-readers' expectations of a glimpse of something splendid and perfect; what I find remarkable about his books is that he dashes that hope again and again, but never wholly breaks it.

But to start with, the books are fun. On an obvious level, if you're into sword-fighting, quippy banter, magical creatures, fantasy-stuff-etc, Martin's books deliver. Beyond that, and what I think makes them relatively distinctive among fantasy lit, they are mystery novels of a kind. The first one, Game of Thrones, is explicitly structured as a murder mystery, with Ned Stark trying to figure out who killed Jon Aryn. And that's not the only mystery. We want to know who Jon's parents are, what the Dornish are up to, what happened at Summerhall, and what Howland Reed is doing. Reading the books, especially rereading them, I feel like I'm playing a game of Clue (The Classic Detective Game), sorting theories against the available evidence[2] (Lyanna, in the Tower of Joy, with Prince Rhaegar....Stannis, in the Pavillion, with the shadowbaby). As with a good game of Clue, it's not just a matter of finding evidence; you have to see through lies and half-truths. The characters in the book don't want to share their information with each other, and since all the storytelling is structured by POV chapters, most of the information you get is filtered according to the interests of one character as they address another -- and according to that character's own foibles, deficiencies, loves, and hatreds. This is why Ned Stark would be terrible at Clue; he's show everyone his cards and offer to cooperate. But when you play the game of Clue, you win or you die...

It doesn't hurt that Martin is good at creating sympathetic characters. True, Joffery isn't exactly sympathetic, but you'd have to have a heart of stone not to pity him, at least -- Fathered by an alcoholic manchild who wields supreme power, sheltered from all repercussions by his mother and his station, Joffrey is killed on his wedding day for being more or less the kind of person his parents made him. Same with Viserys: He was a cruel, narcissistic idiot, but was also a teenager and a product of his experiences, and he died horribly with no one left who would mourn him. At any rate, though, most of Martin's characters are a lot more sympathetic than Joffrey or Viserys, but they're more than that -- They're personable. Who wouldn't want to spend an evening in a bar with Tyrion, or Bronn (who's a terrible person) for that matter, or a night walking The Wall with Jon Snow? And I think it's important to the mystery-aspect of the series that so many of the characters, even ones who aren't good, are personable. I find myself attached to these characters on a personal level, and that feeds my desire to know what is going to happen to them.

What I've said so far -- The books are fun. They're fun because they have swords and stuff, and they're fun because they pull readers in with mysteries about characters they like. Another aspect of Martin's series I admire is his world-building. Of course, you don't have to like world-building, but it's an aspect of most high fantasy, and Martin pulls it off with surprisingly subtlety. I'd point, as an example of this, to the piecemeal way we get information about the children of the forest. We first hear about them from Bran's POV, when he mentions that his father "would sit before the fire in the evening and talk softly of the age of heroes and the children of the forest." In the next few chapters, we learn, mostly by oblique references, that the children disappeared a long time ago, and that they have something to do with weirwood trees. Later on, a story told to a Bran indicates that humans stole the children's land. The information stream is gradual, and more importantly it's integrated into the storyline. We get hints about the swamping of the land-arm to Dorne through a description of Moat Cailin. Over time we learn that the children have something to do with magic, and something to do with Bran. Martin works his mythology into the narrative in a way that, by and large, doesn't interrupt the narrative.

I'd be surprised if I were the only fantasy reader who sometimes sees a mythology section coming and skips it for later...It's not that I'm not interested, but I want to see what's happening with the story, not get bogged down in five straight pages of made up history that reads like the KJV. What I really like about Martin's writing is that he provides world-building information as part of his narrative, and he repeats and reinforces that information organically. When Bran finally meets the children of the forest, I don't have to thumb back to a single section near the beginning of the books where we get a bunch of information about them in an epic poem of dubious aesthetic merit.

So there it is, I'm a sucker for world-building, and I think Martin does it well. Add to this that world-building information tends to eventually become important in high fantasy works, and Martin does it in a way that can actually be absorbed by the reader, rather than thumbed-over, or half-remember a thousand pages later.

I said there were three reasons I like the books, though. Martin writes a fun mystery; he's good at world-building...and what? Well, maybe the biggest reason I like ASoIaF is that GRRM is magician at shattering his readers' hearts. More than that, he's good at channeling and frustrating his readers' hopes, and that's what renders certain parts of his books genuinely moving to me.

The world of Westeros is grim, and dark and dangerous, but it's not hopelessly grim. Were it so, Martin's books would not be so brutally sad, nor would they be so interesting. This is why A Song of Ice and Fire does more for me than, for example, the recent DC Comics films. On a certain level, I like Nolan's Batman Trilogy, but it doesn't move me. His films are so resolutely grim that they make me steel myself, rather than open myself up to any pathos their narrative could engender. By the time Bane lays waste to Gotham in the third film, it just doesn't touch me; I know what to expect and I'm ready for it.[3]

Martin pulls us along with hope, like asses after a carrot, or opera-goers after the Tristan Chord.[4] In the first book, before we know how far GRR is willing to go, we have hope that Ned will out the truth, and everything will be set right; he is beheaded. Next we hope Tyrion can bring order to King's Landing and control Joffrey; he is mutilated and cast from power. We hope that Oberyn can denounce Clegane and save Tyrion, and that Robb can learn from his mistakes and become a good king; they both die. Perhaps we hope that Daenerys will ride her dragons across the narrow sea and restore peace to the realm that might have been hers, but so far everything the Dragon Queen touches turns to blood and chaos.

Something still capable of arousing fear...

Even when Martin gives us what we want, it doesn't feel the way we expect. Theon gets his comeuppance, but it's so horrible we wouldn't wish it on anyone. We want Tyrion to overcome his father, but how does that happen? Tyrion murders Tywin on a privy, and then kills the woman he loves before going into exile.

Martin's talent, however, isn't for writing darkness, though he clearly can do that. It's for making us hope when we know better than to hope. Like Tyrion with Shae, we know better, but we fall in love anyway, and we do it over and over. If the night is dark and full of terrors, Martin's talent is for making his readers believe that there is a sword in the darkness, a light that brings the dawn, and a hero to be reborn, even as he leads his readers unrelentingly into a long dark. It's precisely because Martin makes his readers wish and hope, rather than steel themselves, that the red wedding, and Ned's death, and even Joffrey's assassination, are so sad. Winter is coming, but what I find remarkable about Martin's writing is his ability to instill in his readers the hopes of the children of summer.    

---

[1] It's also worth noting that it would be difficult for Martin to incorporate such elegance of language, given the way he structures his story into POV chapters. It would be absurd, and bad writing, if a teenaged Viking prince, a northern lord, and a smuggler-turned-illiterate-knight all had an inner monologue that sounded like the refined prose of an esteemed professor of linguistics.

[2] Actually, I'm horrible at Clue. GoT is a lot more fun for me than Clue, but similar in principle. I imagine that people who are good at Clue feel about it the way I feel about ASoIaF theories.

[3] I get the sense that Nolan's trilogy, among other contemporary films with aesthetic aspirations, mistake grimness for aesthetic merit. Of course, terrible things may be aestheticized effectively, but horror and sorrow aren't prerequisites for beauty or sublimity, else Mozart's Night Music would be rather trivial.

[4] This refers to a musical tension which Wanger maintained throughout his opera Tristan und Isolde, and which is never fully resolved until the death of the lovers at the very end of the opera. The aesthetic goal of this compositional choice is to evoke longing by constantly bringing the music close to a resolution which is then denied. 

Game Profile: Super Mario 3D World (Wii U)

Since I rarely play games in time to properly review them, I occasionally take a post to discuss whatever games I am playing at the moment, and create a "review," of sorts, that may or may not convince someone else to play it or not play it. These games may be recent or old - either way, you get to hear about it from what I hope is a different perspective.

Mario has gone on many adventures by now, and despite the fact that these games tend to follow the same kind of dynamic (run and jump to get places, pick up power-ups here and there), most of them feel incredibly unique. Sure, some feel like retreads (New Super Mario Bros. U feels like leftover levels from New Super Mario Bros. Wii) and others don't always feel like genuine Mario experiences (Super Mario Sunshine, as good a game as it is, just doesn't always play like you'd expect a Mario game to play), but on the whole, when you go into a Mario game, you tend to expect something different.

Super Mario 3D World is no exception - pulling its gameplay style from Super Mario 3D Land, this game manages to present some wonderfully innovative gaming experiences. From the multitude of stages, to fighting Bowser in his car that looks like a product of Pimp My Ride, to the chaos of multiplayer (seriously - it's harder to play multiplayer than it is to play alone), this game offers a continuous barrage of things to catch your interest. Just when you think a series of levels feels the same, over and over again, you get hit with something completely different, forcing you to adapt to face the new challenges.

That doesn't mean the game is particularly difficult - overall, if you care mostly about the main game (excluding the extra worlds at the end), and you consider yourself an experienced gamer, then you'll have no trouble finding your way to the end. If, however, you are the level of gamer that our little foster daughter is, you might find some levels are rather vexing. The game does offer its share of challenges, and for experienced gamers, those challenges don't come until the end, but overall, this is not the hardest Mario outing (that, in my opinion, belongs to the real Super Mario Bros. 2, known as The Lost Levels here in the US).

The game, like pretty much every Mario game these days, follows a map screen in which levels pop up each time you beat one. Sometimes you've got a single path to follow, and other times, you have a couple of choices. To avoid spoilers for those that haven't played it, there are a bunch of worlds, and each time you beat a castle, you move on to another world. Each level has its own care of collectables - the typical ones have three green stars and a stamp. The stamps can be used to post messages to the Miiverse, Nintendo's attempt to make gaming into social networking (really not my thing). Once you beat enough levels in the game, you start being able to see with which character you beat the level, meaning yes, in order to unlock everything in the game, you need to beat every level with every character. If you play primarily alone, like I do, then that means you essentially need to play through the game 5 times (so far, I've only bothered to do that in world 1). Notice I said five times, as opposed to four - there is a hidden character much later in the game.

I do primarily play alone, even though the little lady is more than happy to play with me, but in order to effectively play this game with others, you need excellent communication and the ability to coordinate your movements almost effortlessly. Unfortunately, that's just something I cannot do with our little one, try as I might, but I could see it working well with the right group of friends. I worked through New Super Mario Bros. Wii with my brother and a friend, and we managed to coordinate extremely well most of the time, rarely giving in to the temptation to put ourselves in a bubble and let one person advance while the rest of us get dragged along. I think that the temptation to do that in Super Mario 3D World would be greater, mind you, but the levels are not impossible to do together if the group practices coordinating and timing things effectively.

Even if parts of the game aren't that tough, the game is quite long, even before you go through and do every level with every character. I myself am a completionist, so if I miss any items on my first play through a level, I play it again right away to get what I missed. If that isn't your strategy, you'll find some levels blocked off because you don't possess enough green stars. I am also unsure of how exactly to unlock the extra worlds - I imagine you need all of the green stars, or to get to the top of each flagpole at the end of each level - because I made sure to get everything in each level before moving on.

Some fun breaks from the main action involve Captain Toad - you get to play as him on some levels in which the play style changes considerably. You need to follow a 3D path in what amounts to a level shaped like a cube, without jumping, but hitting switches to unlock other paths and changing the camera angle to see all of your options. The levels are fun, and I am under the impression that the game Captain Toad: Treasure Trackers is essentially this style of gameplay the whole time, so that is a game I might make the time to check out at some point. The little lady would certainly enjoy that game, and it would probably be more on her gaming level than Super Mario 3D World.

What impresses me most about Super Mario 3D World is that when it does get difficult, it gets really difficult. The extra worlds can get insanely hard, especially if you want to collect everything, and after about fifty to sixty tries, I still haven't managed to beat the very last level in the game. I recently started going back to play through the other levels as the other characters as a break from the frustration of the final level, going back and making attempts at it when I have the right items in my possession. I hope this eventually does the trick, because after all, I need to complete that level five freaking times in order to unlock everything. Thanks, Nintendo.

As usual with Nintendo titles, the sound, music and visuals are clever and beautiful. The music reflects the light-heartedness and fun of the game, while the visuals are cartoonish and bright (unless it's one of those underground levels, then sometimes you are puttering around in the dark). There are levels in which you need to watch the shadows on a wall to get the whole story, and some that keep the camera above you as you navigate a maze-like area. It's no Super Mario Galaxy in terms of the scale of each level - it's as if original, platforming Mario levels have been stretched into 3D - but it's still great to look at.

Overall, this game, like nearly every Mario title before it, is an instant classic, one that captures one's attention quickly and never stops throwing creative challenges into the mix. From platforms that appear and disappear based on the beat of the music to bodies of water that move in the air, forcing you to jump between them, this game does what a game is supposed to do: challenge you repeatedly and make you marvel at the world in front of you. The creativity on display in this game is quite impressive, and if you still haven't picked up a Wii U, or have a Wii U and somehow missed this game, you need to alter your priorities.

And if I ever beat that final level, you will all be the first to know. Well, second to know - anyone within a several-mile radius of my location will probably hear the screams first.

Somebody Make This: Cooperative, Multiplayer Avengers Game

Imagine this: both HYDRA and AIM, evil organizations from the Marvel universe, are fighting each other in New York City, with SHIELD jumping in not only to fight off these two, but to keep the Avengers from interfering. The Avengers are scattered throughout the city, some tackling HYDRA, some tailing AIM, and some fending off SHIELD. They each have their own tasks but must come to the aid of others when they can. It's a crazy, hectic situation, the Avengers needing to stay coordinated and communicate.

Well, if you can't imagine it, you can simply watch Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes episode titled "Hail, HYDRA!" That's the premise, and it's a doozy - a fun episode that shows just how entertaining the show can be and the kind of mayhem it can present. The movies cannot touch this kind of character collision - too many actors, too many contracts, too full for even a 3-hour movie. And do you know what else would be able to handle an epic battle of this magnitude?

A video game.

I know - there's LEGO Marvel Super Heroes, but it doesn't have the cooperative aspect or the multiplayer aspect. As much as I have talked up that game in a previous post, the thing I have in my head is much, much more than what that game manages to accomplish. There's also this Avengers: Battle for Earth game, but it's a fighting game, not the type of large-scale treatment the Avengers really deserve. These guys need something big, something epic ... something Hulk-sized.

Here's what I've got:

The gameplay covers a map - let's say New York City, but other Marvel locations could work (maybe Wakanda, maybe another city). There is chaos all over this map - maybe HYDRA trying to steal something somewhere, maybe another super villain breaking in somewhere else - and you and a team of Avengers is scattered, trying to handle all of the problems. Whether the multiplayer action occurs online or in your TV room together (I prefer it all happening together - more fun, better communication, better gaming environment), it is up to you and whatever Avenger you have chosen to save the city. You need to coordinate, obviously - you can't all go to the same crisis and ignore the others - but you also need to work together to accomplish every task.

There could be missions to complete, or maybe you get some sort of rating after you have saved the city. You could compete with others to get a better rating. There could be some sort of story mode, but it would need to feel unique somehow - it can't feel tacked-on like the Star Wars Battlefront story modes. It needs to somehow build on the multiplayer mode, but I haven't thought of any good ideas about that yet.

But more on the gameplay, since that is the most important aspect. SHIELD could play an important part in this, and even be playable - how about taking advantage of that wonderful touch-screen controller for the Wii U and letting someone use that to pilot the Helicarrier? They could keep track of where all of the action in the city is, tell the other players where to go and who is there. They could even call in recruits from SHIELD or (and this is where things get crazy), they could even call in Ultron recruits. The Avengers cartoon does a great job of introducing Ultron as an army of robots that help the Avengers fight off an alien invasion, and soon afterwards, Ultron turns on them. What if you had the option of using Ultron in this game, and sometimes, but not all of the time, Ultron turned on you and you had another problem to solve? Oh man, if this game had that kind of depth, it would be epic.

Let's build on that - what if you and your friends were sitting in the living room, playing this game, and online, somewhere else, was another group? One group could be coordinated by HYDRA and the other by SHIELD, and you would fight each other over the internet, not knowing what the other group is planning. That is definitely one of the best multiplayer ideas I have ever heard.

Now, some of this gameplay does sound like Star Wars Battlefront, but those games were always clunky and unrefined. This needs to be almost flawless in its execution or it'll be a let-down. I know it would never, ever happen, but Nintendo could destroy this (in a good way). Shigeru Miyamoto once said he would never put multiplayer in a game unless it was better than Mario Kart (a high standard, to say the least). This could be exactly what he's talking about, and nearly every single Nintendo game I've played does play smoothly, especially in multiplayer mode. This is a game that needs the kind of care and attention Nintendo tends to give games. This is, of course, a dream, but it's nice to dream sometimes.

There would, of course, be a wide variety of heroes to choose from: Hulk, Iron Man, Captain America, Hawkeye, Black Widow, Antman, maybe the Wasp (since I got my inspiration from the cartoon), and definitely Black Panther. You could also play the game from the villain's side and play any number of Marvel villains. I imagine DLC would happen at some point, with more locations and characters available to unlock. This could be a pretty big deal, if it were done well.

And while I am thinking on an incredibly large scale, why not make one of the locations Asgard? The little lady and I, continuing to plow through the Avengers cartoon, just watched the Avengers thoroughly thrash Loki and his army of monsters. How about defending, or taking back, Asgard from Loki? What about somehow incorporating all of the other nine realms? Maybe SHIELD cannot coordinate here and you need to find other ways to coordinate your efforts and prioritize different parts of Asgard as you fight off the enemy threat.

I'm sure I haven't even scratched the surface of all of the possible Marvel locales that could be involved in such an undertaking - I am limited to what I know from the movies and the cartoon. Those who read the comics may have a better handle on how this idea could be broadened or refined, and what sorts of things to include. The game would need some significant development time - it would need to be tested and retested to make sure it all works flawlessly - but I have no doubt that this game would be a pretty big deal if it ever actually happened.

Why no one has managed to try putting something like this together, especially in the wake of continued success of Marvel movies at the box office, is a complete mystery to me. I suppose the idea might be out on the internet somewhere, if I broaden what websites I check regularly, but maybe it isn't, not on this scale. Come on, people - talk this one up. Someone needs to make this happen, because it could easily be one of the biggest games to ever grace our wonderful gaming world.

The Appeal of the Gaming Audience

My brother, and several of my friends, used to enjoy watching me play video games. For a while, it was whatever the most recent Zelda adventure happened to be, or Mario Golf for the Nintendo 64 (although we spent about half the time playing that one together). One of my best friends growing up would ask me to complete parts of games for him, a task I found both flattering and annoying. Why would someone want to have someone do part of a game for them? I never understood it, and still don't, now that our youngest foster daughter asks me to do the same thing on a regular basis. "You do it, it's too hard!" she exclaims, but then, twenty tries later, she gets it.

I would say I never understood this will to watch someone else play a game, but now that I think back on my childhood, that would be a lie. Another of my childhood friends was a PC gamer, through and through (not my style - I need that controller, sitting comfortably in my muscular, sweaty hands), and about half the time I went over to hang out with him, I'd end up watching him play whatever new PC game his parents happened to buy him. Incredibly early on, it was Mech Warrior. Eventually, it was Civilization: Call to Power. I remember discovering Half-Life while at that friend's house, one game that I got into watching and helping out with. I helped out very rarely, I found, but managed to come up with strategy in that game that actually made my presence more than just that of a spectator. So, I do kind of get it - watching someone play a game can be entertaining, given the correct formula.

As it turns out, I require a very specific formula to enjoy watching someone plug through a game. I have discovered this is more detail lately due to keeping Twitch running on my computer while I do things like plan out lessons, grade, and, since it is now the summer, write a letter to one of my friends (this particular friend is in prison and has no access to the internet, so no snide remarks like "What, people still write letters?"). I have a tough time simply watching someone play - I need to be doing something at the same time. Moreover, the type of gamer that holds my interest is, at it seems, tough to find. Many people tune in for the speed runners, or so that they can find people with whom to play games online. The games that get the most viewers - those massive, multiplayer games like League of Legends and World of Warcraft - do not interest me in the slightest.

So, what does hold my interest? You probably didn't ask, but here I go anyway.

Firstly, as I stated above, I tend to avoid speed runs. I will tune in for some, because hell, some of those people are crazy good. It takes hours and hours of playing the same damn thing over and over again to get good at that, and additional hours watching others to get ideas. While that, on some strange level, impresses me, it makes me feel like the fun has been sucked out of some really great games. Why speed run The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time when it is such a great game, with a solid story and a world of depth to discover? It's one of those games in which I discover something new each time, so rushing through it seems almost criminal. So much care goes into games, from a wide variety of sources, so speed running, while occasionally impressive, just doesn't do it for me.

Now, what if someone uses a gimmick? The first time I tuned in to someone playing Luigi's Mansion on Twitch, I smiled to find out that the individual playing was racing one of his buddies. Audio from both of them fed into the channel (the friend had a separate channel running as well) and the banter was fantastic. Listening to them talk about parts of the run that were challenging was fun, adding something to a speed run that makes it a lot more interesting to watch.

Or how about playing through a game blindfolded? Oh man, I know people always cry "Fake!" at things like this, but this man playing through Super Mario World blindfolded feels so genuine to me. He fails here and there, despite what appears to be incredible timing. True, this is an attempted speed run, and he skips some amazing parts of the game to get it done (not playing through the Valley Fortress seems too easy), but he's freakin' blindfolded! I mean, how often are you going to see that?

Despite running into the occasional gimmick, I look mainly for people doing casual play-throughs of games, and usually games that I have played through myself. I hate spoilers with a burning passion, so I avoid games I have even the smallest inkling of an interest in playing. Casual play-throughs can be boring beyond belief, especially if the player isn't even miked-up (seriously - why would you do a casual play-through on Twitch if we can't even hear your voice?). But, I run into those gamers that manage to give a good commentary and remain committed to interacting with the people watching. I am not that annoying guy in the chat room that talks all about how I know what's going to happen, or about how hard it's going to be when they get to such-and-such a point - that's just being a troll. No, I sometimes ask if they've played through or not, and maybe talk about some points I enjoy, or engage in the friendly banter from the others in the chat.

Sometimes, I even make a stupid joke, as I am apt to do, just to test the flavor of the place. No response usually means I am out of there - who needs a bunch of gamers that take themselves way too seriously? I like to goof around, and once I find others that know how to do the same, I am totally down to hang out for a while. In Super Mario Sunshine, there's that Shine Sprite you get by destroying monsters that are messing with a ferris wheel and making it spin faster than usual. I pointed out quickly that it hardly seems to be moving too quickly - maybe they improved the ride? Getting the person playing the game to laugh is always a good sign, and I think I might have caught the gentleman playing that game off-guard by pointing that out, because he seemed to find it hilarious (let's get real - it's just a mildly amusing little observation). I enjoy interactions like that, where we can just hang out and talk about games.

As I have had these thoughts over the past year, after I started hanging out on Twitch semi-regularly, it did occur to me that maybe that's all my friends ever wanted - to hang out and talk and have fun. Somewhere along the line, they figured out that hanging out while I play games is fun, and I tended to agree with them, even if I initially scoffed at their suggestions. Watching someone play a game can be entertaining if you have the right mix of people. That was demonstrated to me quite clearly earlier today while I surfed Twitch. I found a group of guys watching one in their midst playing The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess, and listening to them issue commands at the one playing sounded eerily like my friend's basement did when I was younger. That is, until one of them dropped the n-word (they were all white, by the way) and I tuned out, because I don't enjoy watching a bunch of racists have a good time.

But that's what it comes down to - having fun with your buddies, having a few laughs, and maybe figuring out some of the more complicated bits together. The social aspect is what's fun - the game just happens to be a medium over which that interaction occurs.

I have tried, over the last several months, to try broadcasting my own gaming over Twitch, with mixed success. I gathered a bunch of followers while playing Metroid Prime, and a bunch of them stuck with me into Metroid Prime 2: Echoes. I also picked up a few playing clumsily through every difficulty level of Mario Kart 64. People seemed to enjoy themselves, and I tried to provide a steady diet of ridiculous observations as well as tried to interact with my viewers and engage them a bit. It was fun, but given that my wife and I care for two foster children, I don't have much time to Twitch much anymore. When I had viewers, though, it went well, and I enjoyed the process immensely, kind of like I enjoyed gaming while hanging out with my friends year and years ago.

So, after spilling all of these ridiculous thoughts out of my hands and into the computer, the next time I am hanging out with my siblings or friends and one of them says, "Hey, let's watch you play a game," I might just do it. Gaming, as it turns out, doesn't have to be the anti-social endeavor it is often made out to be. I spent years having fun with my friends while gaming solo, as well as hours upon hours of playing games with them, sometimes late into the night. Having an audience doesn't need to be an open display of narcissism or an opportunity to show off - maybe the whole idea of having an audience, like it is in sports, is to engage with others and enjoy their company.

Having said that ... you should all follow me on Twitch. My name is rcbean, and having followers makes me feel important.

The Appeal of the Suicide Squad Trailer

As I have mentioned several times by now, I don't read many comic books. I know, every time I mention it, someone's head probably explodes, and someone else probably ignores everything else I have to say. It's not that I haven't tried - the most recent attempt was Watchmen, and I made it through, damn it - but the medium doesn't get my gears running quite like others do. Video games? Aw yeah, that gets me pumped, especially if it's a new Zelda title, or some unexpected random genius from the minds at Nintendo. Movies? Throw me in to an action movie or an art-house film - either one can get me excited (unless the art-house movie turns out to be pretentious garbage). TV? With my limited time (I am a teacher with two foster children, after all), I find it hard to get into many shows, especially the new ones where I need to wait until the next week to catch the next episode (thanks, Netflix, for helping busy people like myself). Nonetheless, I get into shows when the time permits, and I always want the time.

Comic books, though? Sorry guys, although I will keep trying, I promise.

My reason for bringing this up today is the Suicide Squad trailer that recently premiered at Comic-Con. Yes, I know - this news is at least a week old, so why bring it up now? Because I have had to watch it several times during that span of time to really get at why, as someone that knows very little about these characters, I want so badly to go see this movie and for this movie to be good. Sure, I know a few - anyone that doesn't know The Joker probably lives in another dimension (and anyone that doesn't have an opinion about the new Joker ... yeah, I haven't found any of them yet), and Harley Quinn is notable because I play Batman: Arkham City (I also periodically watched the 90's Batman cartoon). Overall, however, these guys are quite new, even if I know some of their names. The biggest challenge in these comic book-based movies is getting those that know nothing about the comic on which the movie is based to go and see this movie. I know very little here, so here's what I find so goddamn fascinating about this trailer.

It starts out with eerie music and those rotating, clicking logos. That music really does it for me - it lets me know that something here is off, and man, when things get off in superhero movies, I am all in. Too often, we get the typical hero doing the typical heroic thing. Even the Marvel movies, as awesome as they are, stick with some tired stereotypes (although, in their defense, they had to do this in order to effectively give some of them origin stories). The hero is powerful and has his or her heart in the right place, but has a bad attitude? Yup, all over the place. Nobody understands the hero, so some people think he's the villain? Yes, between Batman and The Hulk, we've heard that a lot. Even though those sorts of stories can be done well, I crave something new and different. This music lets me know right away that maybe, just maybe, something is going to be different this time.

And it is - we've got three people talking about some horrible, heinous villains they have locked away (rather, put them in a hole and "threw away the hole" - what a line). We know right up front that these guys aren't going to be model citizens, and that no one expects them to live up to any sort of standard of goodness. They want to recruit them to save the world, and if they don't? They're bad guys - can't blame us! The thing the TV show Dexter does really well is present characters that are neither good nor bad - they all have shades of gray, even the ones that are supposed to be "good" or "evil." Right away, we've got a table full of characters, and possibly a "hole" full of villains, that could fit into these shades of gray. Maybe we're actually talking about characters with ... gasp! ... depth!

We then get the obligatory montage of these guys (which happens in every ensemble movie trailer, superhero-themed or not). Yeah, nothing too special here - it goes on just long enough for us to go, "Hey, where's this Joker everyone's been talking about?" More on that later, though.

The music continues to grab me, and naturally, I did some research on it. Growing up in the 90's means I don't get every reference to every song made before the 80's. So, finding out that this song is a song by The Bee Gees surprised me. Yes, for those that aren't as meticulous in their research as myself, the song is titled "I Started a Joke," and the cover is significantly more haunting than the original. It's an incredibly sad song, though, and it really wasn't as much of a stretch to get it to resonate with the "villains" in this trailer as I thought it might be. As the trailer continues, the chords get stranger and stranger, slowly pumping up the twisted nature of this trailer and, naturally, pulling me in deeper and deeper.

As the music gets stranger, so do the visuals - we get several great shots of Harley Quinn as the music amps up a bit, the most notable featuring her licking what appears to be a bar from her jail cell at 2:16. Then Harley is tied up and gagged at 2:18, definitely the darkest image given so far. Then there's Harley in a car, biting the air, at 2:21 and then

HOLY CRAP IS THAT BATMAN?!?!?!?!

Sorry, sorry - my inner fanboy just came out. I don't actually think a Batman appearance would help this movie, given he's in the rather boring-looking Batman v. Superman (maybe I'll write more about that one later). We all have those random, instinctual outbursts, right? Those moments where you get surprised by something, even if, after giving it some more thought, you aren't quite as interested in that surprise as you initially thought? I don't think I'm alone there. This was one of those moments for me.

As I went back and watched this part of the trailer, though, I was stuck by how much more twisted and insane Harley got after her initial appearance in the trailer. And that's something that really amped up my interest in this movie - its ability to show a villain/hero/character with such range. She starts out simply hanging around (pun intended) in her jail cell, and then she's doing crazy things later, and we perhaps get a look at where the crazy was born. This trailer does what most trailers should - leave us asking questions about how things happen, or why things happen. I want to know more, man, because at this point in the trailer, the focal point of the trailer has become Harley Quinn and what appears to be a rather dark, twisted background.

And then, after the music gets a little less intense, we get what most people have been waiting to see. The appearance of The Joker was one of the most talked about pieces in any of the comments I read accompanying articles about this trailer. Does it look like a good take on The Joker? Is he copying Heath Ledger at all? Does he look like The Joker? Or does he look ridiculous? From my end, it looks like a different take on The Joker than we have seen from the movies thus far - I read someone point it out as a cross between Jack Nicholson's Joker and Heath Ledger's Joker. At first glance, I definitely get that comparison. But really, people, you won't know how Leto's Joker will be until you actually watch the entire movie. We just got a glimpse, a snippet, of what Leto's performance is all about, so we cannot possibly judge at this point. At least, I'm not going to judge.

(Quick aside - I've got a whole, whole lot to say on the subject of Jared Leto, but in order to do it justice, I am going to write another entry that features my opinions on him and a few other famous people that have garnered some rather notorious reputations.)

But judging The Joker aside ... what a trailer! It starts out chill and slightly eerie, then slowly gets more and more intense and creepy, and then calms down slightly, only to reveal what has been the most talked-about, most anticipated piece of the movie thus far. I mean, I have been pulled in, guys, and I know nothing about any of the other villains in this movie. Really - I do not know who these guys are. If I didn't name them, I've got nothing.

But here's the question - even though the trailer is constructed beautifully, do I want to go see this movie? Did the people in charge of putting this together do their job and rope in someone that isn't already familiar with the comic books on which this movie is based? Am I interested enough in what's going on here to actually shell out money and hire a babysitter and go see this with my wife? Will my wife want to go? It depends, really, on what comes next. There will be more trailers, especially since this movie is still over a year away (yes, you read that correctly - over a year away). I am definitely interested enough to keep an eye out for more trailers and see if those hold up. I'd like to see Will Smith deliver a line that isn't quite as "Will Smith-y" as the lines given here, and I'd love to get a better look at some of these other characters that I don't even know. Will the other trailers do that? I certainly hope so.

Until then, I'll be forced to watch and re-watch this one, and then maybe download the hauntingly beautifully song that accompanies it. Congratulations, movie-makers - you've caught the interest of many people out there. The ball is in your court - can you keep us interested, for a year?

We'll see.

Watching Cartoons As An Adult

Many of us know that a great defense of watching cartoons (children's cartoons, mind you) is simply saying, "My child is watching it, so I watch it with them." I imagine that, in any general social situation, I would use the same defense, not that I believe it is necessary, but because making a solid first impression is one of my core philosophies. Most people, after all, are generally suspect of adults that watch cartoons and then go around talking about them. I happen to find such an opinion silly - there are plenty of mature, responsible people that watch cartoons - but I still find myself only able to truly justify watching cartoons when I am watching them with my nine-year-old foster daughter.

Having said that, before the little lady joined our household, I had worked my way through several cartoons from the 90's and early 00's all on my own using the glorious resource known as Netflix, the place to go to seek out those nostalgic shows we watched back when Saturday morning cartoons still existed. Since I have graduated college, I worked through Spiderman (the 90's version off of which many a McDonald's toy were based) and Batman Beyond. Once I had someone with whom to watch, I started making suggestions, all of which the little lady has agreed to watch with much enthusiasm. We made it through all 3 seasons of Beast Wars: Transformers and have recently started watching Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes.

Several of these cartoons have a definite theme, if you have noticed. I do enjoy my superhero cartoons, probably because I lack the patience to work my way through the vast library of comic books and graphic novels from which these heroes gained their fame. As I believe I have mentioned in an earlier post, I am not completely enamored of reading comic books - that's my wife's territory. I have made several good-faith attempts to get into them - The Sandman was pretty amazing, and I have enjoyed the more recent Iron Man comics, since the first movie came out - but overall, it's not an artistic medium that resonates with me. The content, however, is something I have always found attractive. A hero fighting off scores of awesome villains, and sometimes teaming up with other awesome heroes? An entire universe full of these heroes and villains to explore? To me, the opportunities have always seemed limitless, causing me to craft my own world of heroes very early on in my life. Even now in adulthood, I have flirted with trying to bring some of these heroes into being through my writing, although my fiction writing leaves quite a bit to be desired.

As a result of this life-long interest in superheroes, I am still very interested in what cartoons are out there. One cannot simply get their superhero fix from the movies - TV shows, particularly cartoons, offer so many differing paths for these heroes to follow, often getting things right that I feel the movies have been unable to handle. Watching these cartoons has given me a great glimpse into just what is possible for these heroes, and how big the universe really is. The Spiderman cartoon, at that time in my life, was the only thing I had ever seen that brought so many different heroes and villains into the picture - I was obsessed with gathering toys of them all and playing with that world myself, expanding it as I saw fit and making it something entirely different.

Anyway, enough nostalgia - what about now? I still find myself appreciating how cartoons are presented, and how they tell their own stories. Due to their targeted audience, cartoons keep it simple, something many movies could benefit from doing (here's to you, Avengers: Age of Ultron). They often represent the mantra of "show, don't tell" incredibly well, again mostly due to their audience. Kids don't tune into shows to listen to people talk all of the time - they want to see things unfold, watch how things happen. Yes, there are clunkers out there, but if we look at the medium in general, it's incredibly easy to find a wide variety of cartoons out there that tell their stories incredibly well.

One of my favorite episodes of Batman Beyond is called "The Eggbaby," one of the goofier episodes that actually works. Terry (the boy who is Batman in this particular iteration of the hero) must care for what is essentially one of those fake, robotic babies anyone that's taken a Home Economics class knows about. Of course, he must also fight crime, as Batman is apt to do. What follows is a wonderfully hilarious sequence of events that culminates in Terry actually getting a good grade on the assignment because he succeeded in getting the egg baby the stimulation it needed. It's an example of a "serious" cartoon that does everything well, relying on the visuals to get us through and entertain us, with special emphasis on the egg baby's face and sounds. I actually made my wife watch this episode with me, even though she generally wants nothing to do with my "silly" cartoons, and even my "too mature for cartoons" wife was entertained.

Cartoons are already well-known for making people laugh, though - what about an instance in which it manages to do something else? I tear up every time I watch the Beast Wars: Transformers episode known as "Code of Hero," in which one of the Maximals (the good guys) known as Dino-Bot makes a last-stand effort to protect the future of humanity. It gets a bit over-the-top at times, with Dino-Bot delivering monologues plagued with clichés, but in the end, watching him sacrifice himself to protect the future is quite powerful, given his on-again, off-again relationship with the Maximals, having started out as a Predacon (the bad guys). Beast Wars is a deeply flawed show - it doesn't handle "goofy" quite as gracefully as Batman Beyond - but it does a great job of giving us very well developed characters and putting those characters in interesting situations.

There is, of course, a nostalgic piece to this. A lot of the cartoons I have named are ones I watched growing up. Avengers is the one exception here - that came out within the last five or six years. Even though I am no longer a child, the show still interests me. The little lady is on board with it too - she keeps asking to watch more and more. She's a future Netflix binge-watcher, she is, but she's a child - we expect her to find these things entertaining. I find the show has great comedic timing and gives the characters personalities that are completely independent of their movie counterparts. The cartoon takes the idea that we can craft original stories from already-existing characters and make it solid entertainment. It has its own agenda, its own ideas, and its own identity.

And maybe that's what makes cartoons so fun in general - it is a reliable place to find originality. Are there other sources of it? Of course, but when it comes to a reliable source of original ideas, cartoons are a great resource. This may be due to the nature of animation - if you can think it, you can make it. Other shows and movies are limited by budgets and materials, but animation? If you get the picture in your head, and you have the talent around you, it can appear on page (or, these days, on a computer screen). There are some wonderfully creative minds in the cartoon business, and with a medium that gives a significant amount of freedom in what it can present and how it can present it, why wouldn't there be a plethora of entertaining, original cartoons out there?

So, if imagination is the only limiting factor for a cartoon, then that might explain why they are so attractive. The superhero universe within Spiderman I obsessed over as a child could only be so expansive and varied because of the medium. Even goofy shows like Spongebob Squarepants and Animaniacs are set within a universe that feels huge, where there seem to be limitless possibilities. If someone has a funny idea, then it can be animated, and placed in the context of a universe that is arguably larger than most TV shows and movies can accommodate comfortably and effectively.

So, if you are one of those people that poo-poos the idea of cartoons, do some research and check some out. In order to be an adult and watch cartoons, you don't need to watch things like Family Guy (for the love of God, don't watch Family Guy - watch something that isn't created by a sexist piece of garbage like Seth MacFarlane, like Bob's Burgers or Futurama). Watch some cartoons with your kids and see if you can find something entertaining, or if you don't have kids, watch some with your friends' kids, or your nieces or nephews, or go volunteer somewhere with kids so you can watch cartoons with them. Odds are in your favor that you will find something you will like - it isn't all superheroes and fart jokes. There's a wealth of creativity in the world of cartoons, so even if you don't find any that you like, don't judge those that do watch them. We, like you, just want to be entertained.

Video Games as Architecture

When we talk about whether video games are art, we usually think of them as fundamentally narrative pieces, most comparable to movies, which also integrate storyline and character with visuals and sound. Part of the difficulty in arguing that video games are art lies in showing that video games can tell a tight story, that (in spite of players' ability to change the course or details of the story) game designers can craft a narrative that affects its players on a level deeper than mere amusement. Even if we can point to some examples of deep characterization and narrative in games, that also leaves out at lot of video games, and there may be games that we thought affected us aesthetically but which don't have great narrative strength. (Ocarina of Time is one game that I wouldn't describe as having particularly sophisticated character or narrative, but which I find profoundly beautiful). So what I want to argue is that the aesthetic effect of some games resembles architecture-as-art more than it resembles film. Let's get a few other points out of the way first, though.

One thing I want to make clear is that I'm not arguing that all video games are more like architecture than like film, nor that all video games are art. I think it's possible for movies, music, and food (among other media) to be art, but not all pieces within these categories are art either: I saw Jurrassic World for the fighting dinosaurs, I sometimes listen to Disturbed to amp myself up for Halo, and I like to eat a big bowl of calorie-rich rice and lentils before I jog. Analogously, I sometimes I play video games just to distract myself for a couple of hours or for the fun of competing. I've never felt aesthetically moved by the Halo series (except perhaps by Reach), but playing it gives me kind of a rush.

Since I already feel heat on the back of my neck from all the Halo players who hate Reach, I want to make a related point. I think that what aesthetically moves us varies from person to person, and, for that matter, from situation to situation. Sometimes I play Kerbal Space Program just for the fun of problem-solving. Others times I find myself feeling genuinely moved toward the aesthetic sublime. Once it caught me by surprise; as my rescue pod took off from the Mun, ferrying a stranded kerbonaut to safety, my heart went pitter-patter, and I suddenly felt very small. So I'm not trying to tell anyone which games they should or shouldn't be aesthetically touched by. I am trying to describe one manner in which games can aesthetically affect us.

I'm also not sure that the other motivations for playing games--for a rush, for problem-solving, for the challenge, etc.-- are necessarily at odds with aesthetic experience. When I rescued my stranded Kerbal from his camp straddling the Munar sunset, I had already put my free time (as well as in game resources) into training that character, as well as into designing the rescue-craft and getting it to the Mun. I suspect that my previous commitment of "resources" to that mission and my desire to succeed were partly responsible for my unexpected empathy with the character I was rescuing. Similarly, when I first took my Skyrim character through the Barrow at Bleak Falls, I felt a real sense of dread, which I wouldn't characterize as a "fun" in any simple sense, but which I might characterize as aesthetically interesting. I think the dungeon inspired this feeling in part because I was actively trying not to be killed by hidden enemies. Though sometimes I really do play video games just for the fun of trying to win, I suspect that the trying-to-win aspect of games can actually contribute to their aesthetic impact.[1]

"But what about this architecture business?," you may ask as I meander through my thoughts. Well, I think that video games in some ways more closely resemble architecture than they do narrative artworks, and that some of the reasons people might use to disqualify video games from the artworld would also disqualify architecture.

Unlike films, games, to one extent or another, encourage players to explore the game on their own terms. This is taken to an extreme in open-world games like GTA and Skyrim, but also characterizes some level-based games like Dishonored and some slow-moving strategy games like the Civilization and Total War series.[2] Similarly, most architecture doesn't limit its viewer to a single perspective, nor does it require you to view it in rigid order of perspectives. Of course, there are some limits in both cases: It's pretty much inevitable that you see bottom floor of Sainte-Chapelle before you see the upper floor; you can't play the last level of Dishonored without playing through the previous levels. But you do have some control. If you want to, you can dwell on Sainte-Chapelle's more dimly lit lower floor for a long time before walking up into the light of the chapel's nave, which might heighten the intensity of the second experience. You can also choose whether to go out to the chapel's balcony or stay inside viewing the windows. In larger cathedrals, like Notre Dame, it's impossible to see everything at once, and you can choose your path through the structure as well as which elements of the cathedral you focus on. Likewise in games, you have some latitude to explore the game-world and its mechanics as suits your preferences; the aesthetic experience isn't engendered by a highly crafted and tight narrative, and we don't complain that cathedrals aren't art on this basis.

Architecture also shares with video games the integration of a variety of aesthetic forms and media. It's true that films contain music, background images, 3D spaces, etc., but in architecture, as with video games, the components need to be appreciable individually as well as within the context of the whole. Whereas in films, viewers are limited by the director's choice as to how closely they can observe the art forms that comprise and back the film, with architecture, the viewer can study each piece individually. A film may pass over a painting briefly, but (keeping with the cathedral examples)  viewers of the building's stained glass, frescoes, or sculptures can dwell on those aspects for as long as they choose. Video games share with architecture the need to form some kind of coherent whole while containing a number of separate works that are individually appreciable. If you look around a cathedral, you'll see one story told by the Stations of the Cross, stories of saints depicted in the windows, and maybe a story of judgment or creation laid out on a ceiling fresco. Each of these works can be in itself visually beautiful (or sublime), and it at least has to be complete enough to evoke something on its own. Whereas films are usually praised as art when they focus in on the psychology of a single character and tie that personality into a tailored story, it seems to me that architecture can work on us by winding together the themes of many artworks and smaller narratives into a great narrative or a great theme. As a lone artwork, a gargoyle, a window, or a fresco may not evoke religious awe, but when all of these smaller works are combined architecturally they can evoke something which none of them can on their own.

This willingness of architecture to play on "great themes" (grandeur, salvation, modernity) by assembling constituent works reminds me of the relation between a video game's whole and its parts. The quests of Ocarina of Time, which stand on their own as mini-narratives, can be fun, enchanting, pretty, and creepy in turn. Individually, most of them probably don't have the narrative weight to be art-fiction. What's of interest (to me) is the thematic interplay between the quests. The first half of the game, characterized by fairy-tale-esque quests, bright spaces, and friendly people, gives way to an incredibly dark second half: The people of Castle Town have been replaced by soul-sucking undead; the realm of the Zoras is frozen solid, and you can never fix it; almost every part of Link's childhood has been transformed into something threatening or macabre, and when you return temporarily to Link's childhood you descend beneath Kakariko Village to find that a darkness has been festering there all along. Even at the end of the game, when the realm of Hyrule springs anew, Link needs his childhood magically restored -- Along the way, he's lost something he otherwise can't get back. In many ways, the game that I remember most from my childhood is about Link's irreparably shattered innocence. It's very lovely and very sad. So without performing as art in the way we expect narrative fiction to, the game is able to generate a thematic interplay that many players, myself included, find quite moving.

I want to point out one more way in which video games and architecture resemble each other: they are both highly technical and industrial, and if we refuse to call video games art for this reason, we'd also need to deny architecture art-status on the same grounds. It's true that video games require highly technical skills, and well as the mobilization of large scale industry to create the computers and servers they are played on, the computers used by the developers, and the networks involved in their distribution. But architecture also is highly technical and requires a large number of skilled workers. For a building to stand, it must be built so that the forces of gravity are distributed properly into the ground; you need to know which materials are strong enough for the job; you need to take into account environmental dangers to the structure. All of this requires architects to make a number of technical decisions to realize their aesthetic vision, as well as to leave much of the execution up to skilled workers who may have minimal personal interest in the aesthetic vision. As with video games, architecture involves a lot of technical skill, and much of the skilled work isn't executed by the work's "auteur." So, I think if we disqualify video-games because of their technical and industrial aspects, we'd also have to disqualify architecture from being art, which seems an undesirable implication.[3]

So what's my point? It's not that all games are just like architecture. Rather, I'm trying to show that we shouldn't assume video games are like films or automatically judge them according to the same standards as films. Some video games are primarily narrative, but there are plenty of non-narrative artistic media, and video games come in many varieties. Perhaps we can expand our appreciation of video games as aesthetic objects if we expand the ways in which we understand them to function aesthetically.

---

[1] I think I may be remembering this argument from somewhere else, but I can't recall who should get credit. 

[2] I personally have a hard time getting anything aesthetic out of fast-paced strategy games like Starcraft II, but I'd be interested in whether others experience those games differently.

[3] Come to think of it, I think Roger Ebert made a passing remark similar to this in one of his writings on video games. 

Nitpicking: Lyanna Stark's Death and the Hypothetical Maester

And Now it Begins...

In discussions of the widely accepted fan-theory that Jon Snow is the son of Rheagar Targaryen and Lyanna Stark, I'm having trouble with a couple of small components. I'm not rejecting the general R+L=J theory. I think it's probably right, but I wonder if some of the details need adjusting. Truth be told, the simplest answer here is authorial oversight on a couple of fairly small details, and the sensible thing would be to leave it at that...But I'm a sick person, and no one can stop me!

One assumption I'd question (A) is that Lyanna died giving birth to Jon Snow, or immediately afterwards. The other (B) is that Howland Reed is the only remaining person who knows that Rheagar left an heir at the Tower of Joy. Let's take each in turn, trying to explain how the first ties into the second. Then (C) I'll mention a few alternative interpretations we might go with instead.

A. The Fever

Some of the imagery suggests that Lyanna died of injuries sustained during childbirth: She is described as being found in a "bed of blood," in a "room [that] smelled of blood and roses." However, one of the first passages about Lyanna also indicates that she died of a fever, rather than directly from childbirth: "The fever had taken her strength and her voice had been faint as a whisper, but when he gave her his word, the fear had gone out of his sister’s eyes." If Lyanna died of a fever as a result of birthing Jon, she can't have died immediately afterward. Any infection needs some time to gestate, and (if Wikipedia is to be believed), infections resulting from childbirth generally require between one and ten days before the onset of symptoms.

Ergo, at least one day has passed between Jon's birth and Lyanna's discovery by Eddard. If the fever is solely responsible for Lyanna's death, then presumably it has been more than one day, since it would have taken some time for the fever to develop to the point where it was fatal. Alternatively, if the fever were exacerbated by physical trauma from Jon's birth, Lyanna's illness might have become fatal more quickly -- but still not immediately.  

On the basis purely of common sense, it would also seem like quite a coincidence if Eddard just happened to show up at the very time Lyanna was finished giving birth. Of course, in works of fiction coincidences like this can happen, but Martin tends to strive for gritty realism.

We might wonder why, if time has elapsed since Lyanna gave birth to Jon, she was still lying in a "bed of blood." Surely she would have been moved or given fresh bedding in the intervening days or hours. The continued presence of blood in Lyanna's bed might be accounted for in a few ways: It could simply be that the physical trauma from birthing Jon hasn't healed and she continued to bleed. Perhaps she couldn't be moved from her bed afterwards because there was concern that the movement would worsen her physical trauma. Finally, it's possible that the infection itself caused abscesses which bled onto the sheets.

B. A Most Hypothetical Maester

Something else I've wondered about since the first time I read the books is why there is no mention of servants attending Lyanna during the Tower of Joy event. In particular, why is there no midwife or maester if Lyanna has just given birth? Since Rhaegar seems to have believed that his son would be the Prince that was Promised, ostensibly a messianic figure, it's a little odd to imagine him not leaving anyone behind to oversee the birth. Even if he's trying to act with some degree of secrecy, it would be strange if one of the most powerful (and beloved) individuals in Westeros couldn't find a single maester whom he could trust to deliver the child; even Eddard Stark, in all his honorable obliviousness, was able to keep some faithful retainers, like Jory, Rodrik, and Luwin. It's certainly possible that Lyanna gave birth with the help only of three Kingsguard, but it's pretty counter-intuitive that this would be allowed to happen. The fact that Maester Luwin has delivered all of Catelyn's children suggests that it's standard for the highborn to be assisted by a maester during births.

So how does this fit with my hypothesis that some time elapsed between Jon's birth and Lyanna's death? Well, the elapsed time allows us to explain why we don't see any servants in the Tower of Joy when Eddard gets there, without forcing us to the odd conclusion that Lyanna delivered the baby on her own (or only with the help of Dayne, Whent, and Hightower). I suggest the following sequence of events:

1. Lyanna gives birth to Jon

2. Jon is fine, but Lyanna's condition deteriorates.

3. It becomes clear that the maester need not stay for Jon's sake and can do nothing more for Lyanna.

4. Lyanna sends the maester away, since there is nothing more he can do, and there is no reason to put him in harm's way. (With Rhaegar dead, Lyanna presumably has the authority to order their servants away, even if they originally served Rhaegar.) 

Why does this matter to the ASoIaF universe? Because it means that there could be a maester out there who knows that Lyanna and Rhaegar produced a child. Maybe nobody told him that this child would be the Prince that was Promised, or filled him in on all the details, but a maester could presumably put two and two together, at least enough to realize whose child he was helping to birth. Even if Rhaegar didn't recruit him directly, he could deduce a lot from the fact that he was at Rhaegar's tower, where Lyanna Stark was giving birth while being watched over by the finest of the Kingsguard.

This hypothetical maester wouldn't be able support Jon's legitimacy all on his own, but he could contribute significantly. Howland Reed probably knows Jon's parentage, but Reed's claims would need a lot of corroboration, since he's an ally of House Stark and would be seen as having an interest in trying to put a Stark on the iron throne. If (as other commentators have suggested) Rhaegar and Lyanna were married on the Isles of Faces, then the priests there could testify that any child produced by the couple would be legitimate. Add to this the testimony of a maester on hand with Lyanna Stark, and you start of have some good corroboration for Jon's claim to the throne. It wouldn't be perfect, but it's already harder evidence than that offered by Ned and Stannis to support Stannis' claim to the throne.

I mentioned earlier that a midwife could have been present, but it seems to me like a maester's testimony would be especially influential. Maesters' words command respect comparable to that of the highborn, hence the presence of a maester on the high council. At the same time, maesters are sworn to the realm, rather than to a faction, so if a maester says that Lyanna and Rhaegar had a child, they are less likely than Howland Reed to be suspected of political machination. A midewife could offer testimony, but given Westeros' feudal politics (and feudal gender politics) it's likely that a maester's word would carry more weight.

So here's my case in a nutshell: If Lyanna died of an infection, rather than immediately after Jon's birth, this makes it pretty plausible that a maester was on hand for Jon's birth. If so, the maester's testimony could help corroborate Jon's claim to power.

C. Alternative Possibilities

1. Lyanna was already suffering from an infection before Jon's birth. The birth by itself didn't kill her, but between birth and illness, Lyanna dies nearly immediately of a fever in a bed of blood. Ned shows up and finds her that way. This is self-consistent, but it doesn't explain the remarkable coincidence of Ned's timing, nor does it explain why no maester or midwife was present. Also, an isolated royal tower should be one of the more sanitary places in Westeros, and someplace you're relatively unlikely to get a random illness.

2. Maybe there were servants present when Eddard arrived. I can think of no point in Ned's dreams or memories where he says explicitly "The Tower of Joy was empty besides Lyanna." He doesn't mention anyone else at the tower, but, to be fair, he was pretty focused on his dying sibling. Technically it's possible that one or more servants remained at the Tower of Joy when Eddward arrived. That leaves us with the question of what happened to them, though. It would be very un-Eddard-like to kill them, but it would also be risky to let them wonder off with a secret that could get Jon killed, threaten House Stark, and once again destabilize Westeros.

3. We could explain the absence of maester as an accident. Maybe Rhaegar or Lyanna had recruited a maester to arrive closer to Jon's birth, but the maester was unable to get to the Tower of Joy, either because of the chaos of civil war, or because of the collapse of House Targaryen. It would still strike me as unusual for Lyanna to be left with only the Kingsguard at the Tower. She's pregnant with messiah/potential heir to the throne, and it doesn't seem like the highborn of Westeros settle anywhere without a servant or two to scrub their backs. (Catelyn did go to King's Landing with just Rodrik, but (a) she was going for optimal secrecy, (b) Eddard already had a household established at King's Landing, and (c) Catelyn wasn't pregnant, and being pregnant is hard).

4. Here's the darkest alternative I can think of: Neither the birth, nor the fever killed Lyanna. She committed suicide when her bodyguards were overcome. Strictly speaking, Eddard never says that the fever killed her, or that the birth killed her. He just says that the bed was bloody and that she was weakened by fever. After Ned makes his promise, all we know is that, "He remembered nothing. They had found him still holding her body, silent with grief." Maybe she had a fever, from the birth or otherwise, and then killed herself, producing blood. Maybe she took a poison that caused bleeding and fever-like symptoms. That sounds fast-acting, but she could have also taken poison at the start of the fighting, or when she realized the Targaryens had lost the war. At any rate, we also know that ASoIaF poisons can work quickly, as with the Strangler poison on Cressen near the beginning of A Clash of Kings. This would help to explain Eddard's grief: By trying to "rescue" his sister, he had, in effect, killed her; that could also be part of how she pressured him into taking Jon. It makes some sense for Lyanna too. If "rescued," she would have had to go back to King Robert, who had personally killed her prince, and who would probably kill Jon if he got half a chance. She would then have to keep up the farce by claiming that Rhaegar abducted her, or face some serious punishment. Add to this that Lyanna doesn't seem as impressed with Robert as he is with her --the only thing we know she said about Robert is that she expected him to be unfaithful-- it's not absurd to think that she'd rather not leave the Tower of Joy.

5. As I said at the start, it's more than likely that GRRM just didn't think about the onset-time for fever, and didn't find it counter-intuitive for Lyanna to give birth alone. I have, nevertheless, valiantly pursued these details in the interest of retentive nitpicking. 

Now it ends...

The Sad State of the X-Men Cinematic Universe

The Marvel cinematic universe, at least in regards to the films that are actually put out my Marvel studios, is one of the rare instances when an entire universe has been almost flawlessly put together. The movies cross-reference each other accurately, gaps are often filled in (although there are still plenty of inconsistencies here and there - nobody's perfect), and it all feels connected without a feeling of forced connectivity. Some movies haven't been as good as others, true, but I don't think I've ever left a movie scratching my head and wondering what on Earth the film-makers were thinking, and how they were going to combine everything else from that universe with what was just done.

Have I ever left an X-Men movie scratching my head? Um, yes. Yes I have.

I just watched the leaked trailer for X-Men: Apocalypse, and unlike what appears to be a high percentage of the nerdy realm, I was rather unimpressed. I think it might have to do with the fact that the entire X-Men cinematic universe has been a complete mess, with no serious attempts made to put it all back together. True, the entire franchise has essentially been "rebooted," but Days of Future Past, in my opinion, didn't quite reboot the franchise the way I feel would have been most effective. At the end of the film (it's been quite a while, but just in case there are some hold-outs, spoilers ahead), it brought everything back to the present, essentially telling us that hey, things are going to end up going alright, no matter what dangers this new cast ends up facing. Xavier's school will be up and running, with few worries beyond that of the normal ones associated with mutant existence.

This highlights what my problems with prequels have always been - that they simply tell a story that stupidly explains why things ended up the way they did. We know how it ends, so where is the urgency? Where is the suspense? Our main characters aren't going to die - they show up in the future! I know that there are prequels here and there that still manage to inject some sort of excitement and suspense into them, but those are few and far between. And as far as I am concerned, the X-Men movies that focus on past events have been nothing short of disappointing in terms of what new things they bring to the table.

This "prequel disease," as I think I'd like to call it, is not the only problem plaguing this once-promising franchise. The whole thing has turned into a giant mess of new directions and inconsistencies, so I'd like to take a few moments and guide you through the journey this group of mutants has taken throughout the last decade and half.

X-Men

Ah, the beginning, when it all seemed new and exciting. The first movie in this franchise was far from perfect, the villains not nearly as interesting as they could be and the whole script feeling like the writers didn't really know how to handle what they had in front of them. Too many "superhero" movies throw tons of heroes and villains at you all at once, but this first movie felt like it could've handled maybe just one or two more mutants, to shake things up a bit more. Overall, it was too safe most of the time, but was good enough to get everyone excited about what this franchise could be.

High Points: Wolverine and his relationship with Rogue, the pitch-perfect casting decisions, the awareness of what could follow.

Low Points: Halle Berry's half-attempt at an accent, the formulaic plot, appearing to save some of the really cool mutants for later, one of the worst lines in movie history.

Overall Opinion: Thumbs Up

X2: X-Men United

I cannot think of many movies that have made me so excited that I watched the trailer over and over and over again. And when I got this movie on DVD, I watched the opening sequence in the White House over and over again. I could not get enough of this movie - it seemed to get the formula right, with its attention to mutant acceptance (or lack thereof) in society and its perfect mix of new and old mutants with fun powers and awesome action. More than any other movie in the franchise, it seemed to have a plan for what would follow and wanted nothing more than make the X-Men franchise a must-see for years to come.

High Points: The perfect plot, the social commentary, the attention to detail and its plan for the future.

Low Points: The final act was a bit drawn out, but that's being picky.

Overall Opinion: Thumbs Up

X-Men: The Last Stand

What I think of most concerning this installment is not the movie itself but the horrendous disappointment I felt when Bryan Singer dropped out to direct the snore-fest Superman Returns. I was sad, felt a little bit abandoned, and scoffed at the replacement (Brett Ratner? Really?). I still went to the movie, hoping for the best, but found that the mood had changed considerably, the writing was not as natural and clever, and the number of mutant powers present had grown into the unmanageable. On top of that, Professor X seemed annoyingly angry and the movie seemed to have no idea where it would end up, only that it would end up making a lot of money and changing the entire landscape of the franchise. The movie has its moments (Xavier's death, Magneto moving the Golden Gate Bridge, Rogue's struggle with to-cure-or-not-to-cure), but those moments couldn't make up for what was clearly a misguided approach to a franchise that deserved better.

High Points: Xavier's death, great action sequences, continued attention to social issues, "I'm the Juggernaut, bitch!"

Low Points: Pretty much everything else.

Overall Opinion: Thumbs Down

X-Men Origins: Wolverine

This installment probably doesn't deserve a paragraph. The opening credits were fun, watching Wolverine and Sabretooth fight a variety of wars, but after that, all substance and continuity with the rest of the franchise was lost. It was as if the movie makers thought, "Well, the last movie was crap, so let's try to give them something completely different that will erase their memories of what came before." Mission accomplished, but I wish it hadn't been quite so accomplished. Didn't Wolverine and Sabretooth beat the snot out of each other in the first X-Men movie? And they're related? Come on, writers.

High Points: The opening credits. That's it.

Low Points: Everything following the opening credits.

Overall Opinion: Thumbs Down

X-Men: First Class

So, skip a few years and the writers get a great idea: let's do another origin story, since the last one was so great. In other words, they seemed to think it would be fun telling us how everything happened because it's always so fascinating. Seriously, am I in the minority with these origin things? If I know how it all ends up, why the hell do I care how we got there? I can see how it might give us some new information, but really, if we know how it ends, why bother. This one seemed promising enough when the cast came out, and there were certainly parts of the movie I found entertaining (watching Charles and Erich recruiting mutants was a gas), but again, the ending was anticlimactic (Oh wow! THAT'S why he's in a wheelchair! That was so worth knowing!). Overall, a misguided attempt to get everyone excited again, as well as another excuse to create more inconsistencies.

High Points: The casting, the banter and relationships between characters, the casting.

Low Points: The "Oh, that's how that happened" factor, the predictable ending.

Overall Opinion: Thumbs Down

The Wolverine

I skipped this outing when it was in theaters. I felt that, since I had been disappointed three times in a row, why bother going and coming home complaining again? My wife was tired of hearing it, really, and I was tired of the X-Men movies not living up to my expectations. So, I only saw this movie when I knew another X-Men movie was coming out, keeping my expectations low and my excitement down. Of course, since I thought I wouldn't enjoy it, I naturally enjoyed it very much. Not since the first two movies has the story been so engaging and entertaining, the characters so fresh and fun. This movie was very suddenly interested in picking up where the franchise had left off and building off of it, ready to inject new life into what seemed to me like a dying narrative. I found this movie to be incredibly refreshing and got super excited when Wolverine and Yukio made it sound like they were going to hang out together for a while. Oh, and I found it super-cute when my wife constantly referred to the movie as "Wolverine Goes to Japan," making it sound like a children's book instead of a movie.

High Points: The characters, the refreshing change-of-pace, the advancement of characters and story, the potential for what could follow.

Low Points: The final act was dragged out a bit.
Overall Opinion: Thumbs Up

X-Men: Days of Future Past

Oh man, I was excited when the trailer came out. I saw it immediately for its potential to fix as many inconsistencies as possible and save a franchise that shouldn't have needed saving in the first place. Could it explain what happened with that mutant cure and explain why it didn't work? Will it show us how Xavier came back to life through that surrogate body at the end of the credits of The Last Stand? Maybe it could touch on the Wolverine/Sabretooth dynamic that was introduced previously? No, none of these things occurred. As a matter of fact, the movie caused more inconsistencies than it fixed, including Wolverine's metal claws in spite of him losing them at the end of The Wolverine and the sudden introduction of Sentinels that were somehow around in the 70's but haven't showed up in any of the other movies. The movie itself, if you ignore every other X-Men movie, is good, but when you make a franchise movie, you need to keep the source material and other films in mind, something the movie makers decided wasn't worth their while.

High Points: The cast, the story, the directing, the potential to bring back the original awesome cast (yeah, I know, not happening)

Low Points: Lost potential for the future, glaring inconsistencies, the loss of Wolverine's new storyline

Overall Opinion: Thumbs Down, even though I really wanted to love this movie

I am not naïve enough to think that anyone is going to make any attempt to fix things - the franchise is lost. What this franchise needs is a true reboot, one that just says, "Hey, let's fix the whole cast and make no reference to any other movie and not even try to build on what has already happened." I kind of wish the First Class movie had done that, but that's not how it was advertised. It was given the feel of a prequel instead of trying to take great characters and send them on an awesome journey. The X-Men need an awesome journey, one that isn't plagued by the inconsistencies of the previous installments.

In the end, I'll probably go see Apocalypse. Yeah, I'm that guy, the one who complains to the end and then gives the moviemakers my money anyway. But who knows - maybe Apocalypse will be the reboot the franchise needs, to a certain extent. Maybe it will remain true to the other prequel movies and still manage to do something surprising. I am doubtful, though, at least concerning my own personal feelings about the franchise, that it will do anything to erase my memories of what happened before. They've set a precedent in their attempts to string all of these movies together, a precedent that states that these all occur in the same universe and should have continuity. Being the giant nerd that I am, I doubt I'll be able to see past it and enjoy this franchise again.

But oh well - at least I've got The Avengers. And LEGO Marvel Superheroes. I think I'll manage.