Yeah I am done with GOT and all its spin offs. The two seasons of nothing happening in HoD ended any hopes have for GOT products.

I strongly disagree with this approach, and if you’ll bear with me I think you may see why.

There’s a reason that some stories seem “Good” and others seem “Bad” right now. Think about some major video games. Why are Mass Effect, Cyberpunk 2077, and the Witcher “good” stories? Is it their depth? That plays a part yes. What about the number of characters, species? Lore depth? Number of codex entries? All of that is fine, true, but what about other mediums, like movies? What about Lord of the Rings who had good lore but less of other items? Why is some fantasy/sci fi really good and others is just godawful?

Let’s take another series, one with a very recent addition: Dragon Age. Dragon Age 1, 2, and even Inquisition are great stories. They drop you in Thedas, with something called the Blight suddenly corrupting everything around. You’re put on a quest to stop the blight, and the only way to solve it is to navigate the political intrigue of Ferelden. The story and lore are very interesting and the world building is deep. Dragon Age 2 builds on that stress and expands the borders, and Inquisition has everything culminate in a twisted sense where even magic itself is becoming corrupted. What you find out alters the shape of the histories and religions of Thedas.

Released just last year though, Dragon Age 4 released to negative reviews. The story continues and finishes what was built, the lore is there, the story continues and ultimately finishes in a satisfying way, but the story feels cheap, and awkward. You’re in the same world, you’re doing relatively the same things, but you don’t feel invested in the story at all compared to the previous installments. Why is that? The characters are more flat, but even then the main story is still based in the original story that they created back for Dragon Age Origins. Why does it feel “bad”.

This is not uncommon. Mass Effect with Mass Effect Andromeda. Lord of the Rings to the Hobbit movies. Why are these later installments so much worse even though the worldbuilding has been done?

For me at least, and I think a good many people the reason why is one that isn’t noticed until it’s noticed - and that is called Bathos.

Bathos is “An abrupt, presumably unintended juxtaposition of the exalted and the commonplace, producing a ludicrous effect”. Essentially, it’s a cheap laugh at an otherwise serious moment.

Imagine that you’re watching Lord of the Rings, it’s the end of the Two Towers and Frodo says to Sam “What are we holding onto, Sam?” The music swells, you see the tears in Frodo’s eyes and even Gollum seems to be reaching out after centuries of being tortured by the Ring, and Sam says “Pff who even knows, I mean it’s a piece of jewelry right? And we have robed guys on flying lizards, how am I supposed to know”. That’s Bathos, and that is what has happened to our modern story telling.

There is one clear thing that has happened in most modern media I think people miss. It’s that modern media is afraid to be authentic to itself. What do I mean by this? Take all of that “Bad” recent content and what is one common theme with them: They cannot take themselves seriously. In that moment with Sam and Frodo it’s emotional, and it’s hard to watch, and as the audience you can feel the drama… and some people feel awkward because there is so much emotion in that scene. Hollywood and Studios have picked up on that, and instead of letting that emotion land with a line as powerful as “Because there is good in this world, and it’s worth fighting for” they have replaced it with humor, because to audiences it relieves that tension. Only at the expense of a very impactful scene.

Back to Dragon Age 4; It’s in a world of elves, spirits, The Fade, pure fantasy and magic. These concepts would be normal to any citizen of that world - yet the characters routinely make fun of them, are confused by the concepts. They make cheap jokes like “You mean you just ‘talk’ to spirits, seems like a very odd career”. That sort of joke is to lighten the mood, but the expense is that you are pulled out of the world, and makes the world feel disingenuous and thus hard to connect emotionally with.

The effect of this is that it cheapens the worlds they have so painstakenly built, and it makes us the audience afraid to emotionally connect with the world. Not literally, but if we go back to the scene with Frodo and Sam, if they built up that emotional moment and cut it with a joke, right when your eyes were getting a bit misty, then the next time they tried to be emotional your guards would be up. You’d be guessing if it’d be another joke, and it makes the next moment that much less impactful. One or two instances of bathos can be funny, but if you miss it, if you screw it up, it can make the entire story feel cheaper and your audience will disconnect.

So should media avoid comedy? Of course not, comedy can be a wonderful tool - if used well. Mass Effect, another Bioware Game, never once let you believe that the world they had wasn’t realistic. They never “broke the fourth wall” or pandered to the audience to have a cheap laugh at the expense of the worldbuilding. That being said, there are genuinely funny moments that get audible laughs out of the player, but those jokes are authentic to the world. A great example is when we see an alien Volus (a squat frumpy race who resemble walking inflated beach balls) who is clearly in an altered mental state walk in with biotic (telekentic) powers. He talks himself up at this state, and if the player chooses to encourages him (the renegade option I might add), he proudly marches in and threatens an extremely powerful Asari, masters of the biotics. After a confused look she flicks her wrist and sends him flying offscreen crashing around. The is a joke that is 100% inline with the world they built, and it’s funny. It doesn’t make fun of biotics as a thing, like “gee whiz isn’t it crazy we can just move things with our mind?!”. It’s funny because biotics are a real thing in the world they built.

So back to Game of Thrones. The series was good because it was authentic. It created rules that we understood and it followed them. It didn’t make fun of the rules it itself set, instead it allowed us to get absorbed by the world it created. When Oberyn Martell was brutally killed did they have a cheap joke about how the champion law was ridiculous to begin with and how suddenly everything is solved? Or did they leave the audience stunned, letting the moment sink in and us feel that resonate all the way through.

This new show I think will be more Bathos-style humor. Cheap laughs pointing at how weird it is they have dragons, and houses, and things that should be respected in a world like that, and I think it will feel less authentic. I think it will be impossible to connect with emotionally if they go the route so many other hollywood items are.

I got a good chunk of this from the Youtuber “The Closer Look” who focuses on writing and worldbuilding. I didn’t mention Star Wars at all, which is an absolute perfect example of this cheapening of an otherwise serious world because he does a better job. I fully invite anyone who feels like fantasy or sci fi has gotten “crappy” but doesn’t exactly know why to watch his video: The Last Jedi - How Comedy Can Kill a Movie. It was light a lightbulb going off for me.

Thanks for reading this far!

Um. Forget Season 2. Where is season 1?

I didn’t watch GoT because everyone was friendly to each other.