WEBVTT
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we should have, we should have, you know, 1012 minutes for questions.
Perfect.
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Okay.
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So do you want or you need to share some slides are you going to be
talking.
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No, no, very straightforward.
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Cool. I'm going to stop the recording and then started again really quick
just to make our accounting easier.
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Here we go.
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Okay. And I'm going to.
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I try not to rely too much on technology because of course the more tech
you have, the more can go wrong so salad.
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You were talking. Okay, I'm gonna be, I'm going to be hard on you a
little bit you're saying that science fiction is about the word world
might be and fantasies about the way it should be.
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But a little aphorism that I came up with when I was doing my thesis.
Yeah, it. I think it holds true, of course, particularly if you subscribe
to the Tolkien model that the purpose of fantasy is to create recovery
and constellation wonder about stuff
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like the long trip to the Small Angry Planet.
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That is definitely science fiction.
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And it is such a clear description of that, it feels like such a. If you
haven't read it, it is super glorious. I'm not, I'm not familiar with it.
Oh it is their alien species that are so alien that it just makes your
teeth tingle.
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It has complex societies, it has love and different kinds of shapes and
forms, it has androids it has fights. It has a small mining company has
big scary bugs, although the staples of science fiction, but like, Oh,
it's, it's beautiful.
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There's a reason that one, a ton of the spectacular words in that space.
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I might have to look it up but I have a reading list of so long at the
moment but it could be used until I get around to it.
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Guy knocked it out in about four hours, it's not a doesn't take that
long. Oh well that's good but I'm, I'm studying.
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Yeah, post enlightenment supernatural ism as much as anything else, which
means you do have to keep your finger on on certain pulses so at the
moment terms of elbow deep and Justin Conan's passage trilogy, which
isn't isn't, it's not great, but
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I don't mean to diminish it but it doesn't particularly grab me but
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i mean it's it's a contribution to, to, to, to American apocalyptic
fiction.
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So you know I I sort of have to read it. This is
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James Joyce.
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Critics have an easy because they can just read 1000 pages of Ulysses and
that's all the primary reading they really ever have to do, and that's a
little cruel, making people, whereas if you if you were if you're if
you're studying living tradition like
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fantasy you've got you there's always two or three things you should be
reading audio books into your, your practice.
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I haven't tried them yet, because
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I'm old fashioned enough not to.
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But it might be it might be an option, you know, to, to, to consider.
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It depends on the book, at least, yeah, there's I mean everybody likes to
process information differently. I love, I love listening to stories I
record a lot of stories from my friends and my friends record them for me
and so when you're on a long trip
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your friends reading your your stories.
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And when they go on long trips, you're reading your friends their
stories. And that's what we do with a lot of the science fiction we write
for each other as we record it, so we can enjoy it together in that way,
but, and you write differently obviously
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if you're writing for to be read aloud.
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Include a lot more singing.
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There's a lot more work, so it fits well with fantasy norms.
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Right, right. Um, and it is a have a journal who's who's also got me
reading Lovecraft country at the moment.
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I watched the free episode and then I decided I didn't want to pay more
for the TV show.
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It was really good I loved it I just I can't pay for more is too many.
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Huh.
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Yes, well, I'm rather wary of of accumulating acumen accumulating
overheads by myself but
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there's a journal that's doing a special issue on on Lovecraft related to
Lovecraft country so and I think they want me to review something for
them so before then.
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Nice. I have to get the book out.
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Enemy right, which is one of the many things I appreciate about him is he
is one of the people that makes it the easiest to correctly characterize
his racist views because anytime someone argues with him you ask them to
Google The name of this cat, and
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then you have to discuss it anymore.
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I really appreciate how easy it is with most authors, you have to go
around the bend back and forth all the time about it but now with
Lovecraft you're just like, could you just Google the name of his fat and
then you never have to speak of it again,
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it's great. Yeah, well I mean it's, it's, it's, it's an unfortunate name
I quite agree.
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Heck, a racist.
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Oh, heavens Yes, I will let you get started. I'm going to both mute
myself and then I'm going to make you the spotlight, and at the end when
there's questions you are welcome to call on people or you can ask for my
help if you'd like me to call it books
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for you.
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Okay.
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Okay.
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Well, I'm yes my, my name is Joe young Joseph Rex young and I'm here to
discuss sons of stock and the system of Gothic fantasy.
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Um, which is a presentations, been a long time coming. To be honest,
actually I actually started writing it in, in 2014 when I first first
finished reading.
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A Song of Ice and Fire as it currently stands.
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And this was the first thing I wanted to write about so I started writing
about it and then I realized I was actually dealing with a slightly
broader issue of how Martin handles his characters.
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So I still took a step back and wrote that article and, in the course of
doing that, I realized I was dealing with a broader issue with how Martin
handles the body in his stories, and I stepped back and so I wrote that
article submission date got it published
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it back in. So, looking at the character article submission backed up I
published in myth law.
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And, and then my, my proposal for a book on er Edison was was rejected as
a time when I was working a postdoc in Germany and had to had to be
researched productive.
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So I had to very quickly come up with another book project.
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And so I said well I've got the first two chapters of the book on martin
here so I submitted that I put together a proposal for that submitted
that that got accepted unexpectedly.
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And then I had to spend 18 months writing that book, and I said I'll deal
with this with this sounds or issue in the book which I ended up doing in
two sentences.
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In one chapter so I thought well I'll do it when I'm where I'll cover
this, this, this issue when I'm when I'm promoting the book, and I
submitted this presentation cometh law, 2020, a myth con 2020 sorry, and
background accepted and I was all geared
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up to do it I was writing it and then of course MIPCOM was cancelled last
year so here we are, seven years after I started writing. We can we can
actually do this, this presentation so let's get into it.
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I'm Tony of the hand in George RR Martin's A Game of Thrones, sons of
stock and her friend Jane pool watch the heroes of 100 songs right for
each more fabulous than the last.
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Raised in the austere kingdom of the North, sons of wallows excitedly in
the glamour of the mystique of the occasion.
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the adjusting went on all day and into the dusk, the hooves of the Great
Wall horses pounding down the list until the field was a rugged wasteland
of tall enough, a dozen times gene and sons are cried out in unison, as
the writers clash together Lance's
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exploding into splinters as the common screen for their favorites. Gene
Colan her eyes whenever a man fell like a frightened little girl, but
songs I was made of sterner stuff.
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A great lady knew how to behave a tournament.
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So sounds and knows how to comport yourself in a demanding situation.
Another quotation precisely describes this capacity inaction later in the
story.
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She saw herself in a castle inhabited by Vice and violence, seated beyond
the reach of of law or justice in the power of a man whose perseverance
was the equal to every occasion.
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and in whom passions, of which revenge was not the weakest entirely
supplied the place of principles. She was compelled therefore, to
acknowledge that it would be fully and not fortitude anymore to deny His
power.
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Now that particular quotation actually comes from an Radcliffe's the
mysteries of Adolfo, and it records the impressions of the heroine Emily.
I mentioned it here because every word of it is actually applicable to
sounds and during the latter stages of
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her of the movements of her story as it currently stands.
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Um.
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Sounds like Emily is a young, often, she has. She has been kept hostage
by the ministers who killed her parents.
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Sandra was rescued by that from that captivity by the courtier Peter
Bayless who ensures that that ensures the silence of his co-conspirator
in the rescue.
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By killing the man.
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Again, like Emily sounds a finds herself Spirited Away to an isolated
Castle by Bayless who she acquires as an uncle. When he marries her and
for her assets, this is exactly what happens two sons who acquires mon
Tony the villain of Rodolfo as as a, as
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an uncle when, when he marries her art.
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When the art causes trouble Baylor's murders her tosses Jethro from a
window and torches a confession out of a servant, because it sounds like
he will return her to her own family estates.
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But the plan will involve the disappearance of his of his six year old
stepson sounds his cousin Robert.
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In the meantime, Bayless builds a distinct sexual tension with sons
they're taking discreet but escalating liberties with a person, seeing
with his passions quite overrun his principles.
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sounds or understands nevertheless that she is wholly dependent upon him
for protection and commonly accepted his vice violence and
inscrutability.
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So the parallels between sons and Radcliffe's Emily, a weirdly precise.
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Now the purpose of this presentation is not to linger on these parallels.
But all these precise parallels but to examine sounds as power in the
context of a literary system, of which Radcliffe's novel is one of the
great exemplars sciences passivity as
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her situation Watson's makes her a lightning rod for hetero didactic
gripes about the about the about modern story.
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I convinced a colleague to read a game of thrones the first the first
volume and Martin story.
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And she came back and gave the book back to me and said that was great.
And I said, Would you like to read the sequels. And she said, Absolutely
not. And I said, Why is it the violence and she said oh no I can cook
with that.
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that redheaded go. The thing I really hate in this story is sums up.
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I'm Susan Johnston ruefully described sons as foolish genuinely say sites
critics, describing her as boring submissive vapid and weak.
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I would argue, however, that sounds is submissiveness impassivity is
crucial to her function in mountains narrative.
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According to William Patrick days system of Gothic fantasy Sansa serves
as a perfect Gothic heroine accepting her loss in an uncanny situation.
In order to avoid being destroyed by it.
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This is a faith that conspicuously befalls her brother Rob Rob's frantic
efforts to rectify the iniquities of mountains world, result in him
contributing to them, and eventually being destroyed justice de suggest
is typical of a gothic hero sounds as
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passivity preserves her from contributing to the iniquities she focused.
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And this allows her to retain her own identity.
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Moreover, sons that displays an ongoing mutation into a third Gothic
archetype that detective viewed through, through days system for emerging
combination of physical passivity and intellectual deduction.
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A give her an agency in the story that few other characters have and
bodes well for her eventual victim and victory sorry over muffins doc
millionaire.
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I'm like it like ridiculous Emily signs of follows days schema ization of
the Gothic heroin. She is well bred passive and respectable.
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She plans a career as a chivalric damsel and she is thrilled when she is
betrothed to the young King Joffrey.
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Sorry Prince Joffrey.
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She did not really know Joffrey yet she thinks, but she was already in
love with him.
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Now, she, she hasn't thought, I think swallowed the aristocratic company
line on virtuous female behavior, girls like Sansa day notes tend to be
thrust into the underworld through no fault of their own there
virtuousness makes them pray to villains.
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Their virtuousness makes them prey to villains. This is exactly what
happens to sounds it sounds his problems start when her father breaks the
engagement with Joffrey leading her to complain to Queen Searcy.
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This gives Queen Searcy warning that her father, God has uncovered her
crimes, crimes.
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And she takes it out into custody, a move that leads to his execution
sons is kept hostage by the pure I'll sadistic young King Joffrey.
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What makes her prey to villains. Precisely. According to a system. It's a
subscription to the truisms that young girls are taught by this
patriarchal regime, this is not sons his fault.
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Okay, it's not a it's not a problem that starts with her sounds are also
typifies days model of the Gothic heroine, who is incapable of effective
action because her conception of herself and have proper behavior, rent
up.
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Sorry, random passive in the face of Tara.
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she neurotically beautified herself for Joffrey and quietly observes
multiple beatings from his bodyguards confronted by a violent mom angry
at Jefferies Miss rule.
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She tries to politely reason with them and requires rescuing by sound
dog, again, grateful for the rescue. She is nevertheless shocked by the
violence by which it is affected.
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He cut off his arm. She solved, as she recalls Claire, Claire Danes
treatment of one of our customers.
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When the disgrace night so dawn toss hollered launches a plot to rescue
her. She plays along very happy, very old, you know, very sort of
slipping very easily into the, into the, into the role of a damsel in
distress, but she refuses to accept a step
00:16:10.000 --> 00:16:13.000
outside the boundaries of propriety herself.
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Indeed, she explores a plan B that involves marrying into the respectable
Terrelle family. When her captors forestall that solution by marrying her
to Tyrion Lannister.
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She is a polled, but her practical resistance. Last one sentence, she
tried to run, but he's handmade quarter before she'd gone a yard.
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Per soul subsequent gesture of defiance is notably, one of inactivity,
she refuses to kneel so that the door vegetarian can ceremonially drape a
Lannister cloak around her shoulders.
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Why should I say his feelings she thinks when no one cares about mine.
Okay.
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Sounds a scenes internally at her mistreatment, but her opposition is to
it is essentially Prasad.
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Now this is good character work by Martin. Having established her intense
faith in the Chevelle recorder, you can hardly have her rejected and
begin to work, begin working to better her loss in the way that her
sister Aria does the contrast between the
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two sisters Moreover, demonstrates days point that the passivity of the
Gothic heroine is paradoxically, her greatest strength thrust into
adversity. These girls assert their identity by suffering, pain.
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This is essentially a masochistic experience, but by refusing to mount
and any offensive against this assault on the respectability. They keep
that respectability intact, Mila contributing to the horrors of the
violent activist Gothic world around them.
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This is something that sounds his youngest sister Aria slips into very
quickly. Escaping from custody she tries to go home and in the course of
doing that.
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She.
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She becomes complicit in numerous acts of violence, many of them
explicitly premeditated, and some of them just nakedly spiteful.
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I'm the ghost in her in whole she gets to herself, after after arranging
a killing. She explicitly equates herself with a ghost, wanting a ruined
console she is becoming a part of the Gothic world in a way that sounds
it simply does not these leads abiding
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gone by that like 18 different pseudonyms now.
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Will they be anything left to this we have this week ago when she gets
back it's, it's an interesting question.
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Um.
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Sounds up by contrast has never knowingly hurt anybody. She would she
remains the virtuous young lady who left winter fell, it is entirely
possible that she could achieve the goal that day sites as the essential
motivation of the Gothic heroin to return
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to the conventional world and establish yourself as a wife and mother by
refusing to fight back against the barbarities of to which she is
subjected sounds a protector identity and safeguards the plausibility of
her career goals.
00:19:28.000 --> 00:19:34.000
Now, fighting back would not avail, her anyway.
00:19:34.000 --> 00:19:47.000
When sons and detained, Ron stock sons his brother, his son an air mounts
and military rescue mission, a, an enterprise that swiftly escalates into
a full scale independence movement.
00:19:47.000 --> 00:20:07.000
He speaks. He spends the entirety of a Clash of Kings restlessly marching
around central Western p forges alliances, a chance, audacious tactics
wins battle after battle and get this conspicuously fails to have any
strategic impact whatsoever on the war
00:20:07.000 --> 00:20:09.000
he is fighting.
00:20:09.000 --> 00:20:20.000
He notably fails to prevent Tyrion Lannister from writing to defend
King's Landing, from assault bystanders Bertha, who has promised to free
songs, when he took the city.
00:20:20.000 --> 00:20:29.000
As a result, Taiwan defeats status, the city remains under Lannister
control, and Sansa remains a captive.
00:20:29.000 --> 00:20:36.000
I've won every battle, Rob complains to his mother, but somehow I'm
losing the wall.
00:20:36.000 --> 00:20:54.000
As such, he typifies days formulation of the Gothic hero, where the
heroine retains her identity by a stoic inaction. The hero is
characterized by restless action as he attempts to impose himself on the
sinister regime around him, because the Gothic million
00:20:54.000 --> 00:21:06.000
was built from unkindness abuse and defense. However, all that will avail
against it is further uncanny Enos abuse, and if the end defense.
00:21:06.000 --> 00:21:17.000
As such the hero is drawn into the Gothic world he becomes a part of it
is self assertion gradually mutates into repetitions of the barbarities
he saw to end.
00:21:17.000 --> 00:21:33.000
Rob fall is precisely this course crowned King in the North by his
followers, he results to be a good fair, just Monique crimes among his
followers demand the death penalty, however, and he insists on doing the
honorable thing, and executing the criminal
00:21:33.000 --> 00:21:36.000
himself.
00:21:36.000 --> 00:21:49.000
The axe crash down, heavy and well honed it killed it a single blow, but
it took three to seven their head from its body, and by the time it was
done both the living and the dead, with drenched in blood.
00:21:49.000 --> 00:21:59.000
Rob flung the poleaxed down in disgust and turned wordless wordless
towards the heart tree. He started shaking with his hands half clenched,
and the rain running down his face.
00:21:59.000 --> 00:22:16.000
Notice that he manages the, the meat of the execution that the killing,
with a single blow, but he has to do the medievalist thing to separate
the head from its body, so he has to strike three times it's remarkable
that Rob inhabits a golf the size world
00:22:16.000 --> 00:22:28.000
of vengeance and violence, and his actions per day, inevitably bends
towards him becoming an agent of that world is moral authority is the
severely compromised.
00:22:28.000 --> 00:22:42.000
Finally he seeks to impose his will, on the custom of arranged marriage,
winning a wife of his choosing rather than one imposed upon him by his
allies in reprisal those allies kill him and his mother.
00:22:42.000 --> 00:23:10.000
These are the wages of action and a literary space, specifically designed
to frustrate and a famed and abuse action sons avoids the state by
keeping to a policy of inaction, their identity uncontaminated and her I
objectives plausible as day argues for
00:23:10.000 --> 00:23:12.000
Well, not quite.
00:23:12.000 --> 00:23:23.000
De observes that Gothic fantasy inevitably eventually sorry gave rise to
a new genre defines when you type of literary character. The detective.
00:23:23.000 --> 00:23:33.000
He sees the detective as an inherently androgynous literary organism,
combining elements of Gothic masculinity and femininity.
00:23:33.000 --> 00:23:51.000
from the hero says de the detective takes intellect and egotism from her
from the heroine, he takes the ability to restrain himself to be reactive
de argues that the detective can live in the Gothic world, but also find
his way out of it.
00:23:51.000 --> 00:24:03.000
He finds his way home, in a sense, by understanding, Vince and tolerance
point that it's a detective story is an authorial arrangement of two
separate stories into a plot.
00:24:03.000 --> 00:24:21.000
One story Chronicles and action, the crime that story has taken place,
and cannot be changed the detective does not try to bring the murder
victim back to life, he engages in state in the other story, and
effective, but essentially reactive effort not
00:24:21.000 --> 00:24:26.000
to respond to that action in kind bus to understand it.
00:24:26.000 --> 00:24:43.000
To do so, detectives immerse themselves in the uncanny wild offensive
danger of the Gothic world. They appreciate the purpose of that world is
to upset them however, and they do, they resist the urge to reform it
instead assembling a narrative record,
00:24:43.000 --> 00:24:54.000
explaining why this world is offensive and who is to blame the reader
that's receives a reason indictment of a crime, rather than just a report
of it.
00:24:54.000 --> 00:25:12.000
Sounds of fits this model very well. And as such, she mounts a
particularly effective indictment of Western Ross's moral malaise Martin
uses what Farah Mendelssohn calls immersive exposition, explaining his
secondary world by having characters familiar
00:25:12.000 --> 00:25:23.000
with it, reflect upon what they already know readers construct the world
in their own heads in light of the assumptions evident in this
vocalization.
00:25:23.000 --> 00:25:38.000
This is a direct contrast to a text such as the Lord of the Rings, when
the reader receives the world via explanations from characters such as
Gandalf or Aragon Mendelssohn observes that this particular method of
exposition immersive exposition tends
00:25:38.000 --> 00:25:59.000
to produce thinned etiolated washed out world's arguing away from
received truth, because the reader both observes and participates in any
a rational critical exercise, arguing away from received truths, you
can't take anything on faith sciences focuses
00:25:59.000 --> 00:26:16.000
vocalization particularly effective at this because her reflections take
place in the context of a front all frustrated chivalric idealism their
excitement at the Tony and the hand stems from this idealism her love of
songs and chivalric romance her desire
00:26:16.000 --> 00:26:21.000
for everything to be pretty everything is pretty just for that one day.
00:26:21.000 --> 00:26:36.000
Um, as an immersive vocalize uh however sounds as essential role in the
story is to work things out and her critiques are all the more biting,
because they depart from her initial sense that things should be better.
00:26:36.000 --> 00:26:46.000
This is a parent, for example, when Joffrey sends the brutish, sir Marian
Trent to fetch her for further humiliation, after her father's execution.
00:26:46.000 --> 00:26:57.000
Trent is already struck sons at once, and she is reluctant to follow Him,
are you refusing to come, my lady. The look he gave her was without
expression.
00:26:57.000 --> 00:27:01.000
Don't, not so much as glance at the Bruce he had left her.
00:27:01.000 --> 00:27:06.000
He did not hate her sons I realized, nor that he loved her.
00:27:06.000 --> 00:27:08.000
He felt nothing at all.
00:27:08.000 --> 00:27:20.000
She was only a thing to him. She wanted to rage to hurt him if he had
heard her to warn him, that when she was queens you would have been
exiled if he ever did strike her again.
00:27:20.000 --> 00:27:36.000
But he wrote she remembered what the hound had told her, and so all she
said was, I shall do whatever his grace commands, as I do. He replied,
Yes, she replied, but you will know true night so married.
00:27:36.000 --> 00:27:51.000
12 year old girl speaking to a to an armed man who's already belted a
once it's remarkable sound again would have laughed at that sounds when
you other main might have cost her want her to keep silent, or even beg
for forgiveness.
00:27:51.000 --> 00:28:01.000
So Marion Trent did none of these things, sir Marion trend, simply did
not care.
00:28:01.000 --> 00:28:15.000
Now sounds as pain and offense are real she wants to strike back as the
Hound Dog again has warned her however resistance will be futile Joffrey
holds all the power, and can have her brutalized act as well.
00:28:15.000 --> 00:28:33.000
She therefore limits her resistance to a verbal observation that Marin is
not behaving as true Knights should frame of reference, capacity as a
young girl with a profound emotional faith in chivalry focuses her
reported events on a key point chivalry
00:28:33.000 --> 00:28:52.000
is intended successfully or otherwise historically accurately or
otherwise is intended to prompt moral engagement to get those possessed
of coercive power to think about how to use it responsibly sons is
emphatic reproduction of Sir Marin trends, Ill
00:28:52.000 --> 00:28:58.000
deserved chivalric title drives home her point that this is not
happening.
00:28:58.000 --> 00:29:14.000
This patent is repeated later, she has rescued by so don't toss, whose
gallantry is revealed to be financially motivated. He was strapped for
cash, and he was being paid by Peter Bayless to rescue her infuriated.
00:29:14.000 --> 00:29:21.000
She, she asks, Is it all lives forever and ever, everyone and everything.
00:29:21.000 --> 00:29:38.000
Having just killed don't off to ensure his silence is amused. But the
message hits home with the reader. The moral at elation of restaurants,
its brutality and lack of institutional bigger is so vivid, because so
much of it is showing through the eyes
00:29:38.000 --> 00:29:50.000
of a character of bitingly concerned with the gap between what should be
and what is sounds in short possesses all the attributes of a skilled
Gothic detective.
00:29:50.000 --> 00:29:58.000
She is physically passive understanding with an effort to change the
regime and mistreating her would be few tile.
00:29:58.000 --> 00:30:15.000
This safeguards for moral authority as she engages in a sustained but
devastating loss This is sustained and devastating critique of why she is
being mistreated predisposed to pick up on suspicious details, she starts
critiquing Peter Bayless at first
00:30:15.000 --> 00:30:29.000
glance, long before she is taken into custody at the at the tournament of
the hand wherever everything is still wonderful, she observes. He was
short, with a pointed beard and a Silver Streak in his head, almost as
old as her father.
00:30:29.000 --> 00:30:40.000
You must be one of her daughters, he said to her, he had great green
eyes, but did not smile when his mouth Did you have the telly Look, he
continued.
00:30:40.000 --> 00:30:56.000
Now, in stock sons his father instinctively dislikes Bayless based on an
assumption Bailey shows his power to monetary skill rather than military
skill, and as such possesses no traditionally defined honor.
00:30:56.000 --> 00:31:00.000
Sounds more critically nuts.
00:31:00.000 --> 00:31:18.000
Emotions appear faked his eyes did not smile in his mouth did this
capacity for nosing oddities and blacks embellish continues, when they
are ensconced in the area which is the the isolated castle that he locks
are away in
00:31:18.000 --> 00:31:35.000
the nearby Lords are suspicious of this newcomer. So, Bayless invites
them to Apollo.
00:31:35.000 --> 00:31:41.000
gives Bayless, the moral authority to dismiss the other loads, without
addressing their concerns.
00:31:41.000 --> 00:31:49.000
This it's oddly with somebody who looks at tosses and turns in her bed,
worrying at the matter like a dog with a bone.
00:31:49.000 --> 00:32:05.000
Eventually she she confronts Bailiff and accuses him of pain cooperate to
cause the rockets and less road his colleagues have been moral
initiative, Bayless confesses, the candlelight dancing in his eyes now
his eyes I twinkling.
00:32:05.000 --> 00:32:19.000
in his own cleverness outsmarting these people. Sounds like he has once
again established the nature of a problem. She is resisting the Gothic
world via the methodology of the Gothic detective.
00:32:19.000 --> 00:32:29.000
She is not does not try to solve the problem the motor has been committed
the body is already dead. You can't change that she does not try to solve
the problem, but to understand it.
00:32:29.000 --> 00:32:37.000
And by doing she's doing so, she structures, a narrative indictment of
the problem.
00:32:37.000 --> 00:32:49.000
In which case, it is worth noting it is Sandra who actually blows this
case wide open. It was sent self it out her father was sent south to find
out who killed john Aaron.
00:32:49.000 --> 00:32:55.000
He actually only succeeds in discovering something new.
00:32:55.000 --> 00:33:07.000
The actual assessments are identified by thumbs up. When she witnesses an
argument between Peter Bayless and just newly acquired wife errands widow
and sons as aren't lights up.
00:33:07.000 --> 00:33:12.000
There's no cause for all these tears, Peter tells license.
00:33:12.000 --> 00:33:23.000
Tears tears tears she stopped hysterically, no need for tears but that's
not what you said in King's Landing. You told me to put the tears in
John's wine and I did for Robert, and for us.
00:33:23.000 --> 00:33:37.000
And I wrote to Catlin and told her the Lannister had killed my husband,
just as you said that was so clever you are always so clever I told
father. Peters, very clever he'll rise high he will.
00:33:37.000 --> 00:33:45.000
So, Aaron's death was only tangentially related to the conspiracy, it was
discovered.
00:33:45.000 --> 00:33:54.000
Peter used license adolescent affection for him. This is going to get a
bit complicated for those of you who haven't read Martin story but bear
with me.
00:33:54.000 --> 00:34:11.000
Leslie uses sorry Peter uses license affection for him to convince her to
poison Aaron, in order to bring it to the capital to investigate that he
would discover Aaron secret become a threat to the queen and be killed,
rendering rendering Catlin sounds
00:34:11.000 --> 00:34:13.000
as mother, single again.
00:34:13.000 --> 00:34:27.000
Peter, who loved Catlin as a boy, I could then presumably slipping and
Mary Catlin moments after license confession he widows himself by tossing
the unreliable on from a window.
00:34:27.000 --> 00:34:43.000
Pizza therefore is ultimately to blame for a series of events, which has
caused sons or her parents and plunged west or us into bloody anarchy
sons is only on hand to overhear license confession, because she rolled
with the punches of that panicky passively
00:34:43.000 --> 00:35:00.000
passively cooperated with don't tosses escape plan and kept her hair on
when Peter revealed himself to be behind the plot kills don't toss and
sequestered sons in an isolated castle with her biddable disposable
readers learn the motivation for the entire
00:35:00.000 --> 00:35:10.000
plot of A Song of Ice and Fire, thanks to sounds as combination of a
detective critical intellect and passive practical passivity.
00:35:10.000 --> 00:35:20.000
Thanks, that is, to her capacities as a perfect Gothic detective areas
schema ties by William, Patrick day.
00:35:20.000 --> 00:35:21.000
Know.
00:35:21.000 --> 00:35:30.000
Day presents Bram Stoker's Mina haka as a similar manifestation of the
qualities of a detective in a female character.
00:35:30.000 --> 00:35:48.000
Mina facilitates victory over Dracula by submitting to his mistreatment
and less magically entering his confidence, he she does supplies
information to male characters who are very industrious, but are
incapable of achieving victory over him without that
00:35:48.000 --> 00:36:03.000
intelligence. It seems likely that whatever Peter Bayless has coming to
him in Martin's forthcoming volumes will similarly arrive to two sons as
combination of stereotypically feminine and masculine traits.
00:36:03.000 --> 00:36:20.000
Even if we avoid making predictions. This combination of attributes has
made her a crucial conductive to crucial conductor sorry of the narrative
effects, Martin is pursuing her passive sensibilities draw her into the
Gothic storm.
00:36:20.000 --> 00:36:31.000
Her enduring inquisitive idealism provides an ideal frame of reference
for Martin's evocation of institutional at elation and moral slop.
00:36:31.000 --> 00:36:49.000
But passivity should not be confused with despair. Furthermore, the
Gothic heroine, submit yourself to the depredations of the Gothic
underworld, they observed in the expectation of eventually being released
from them to pursue her own identity own her
00:36:49.000 --> 00:36:50.000
own agenda, sorry.
00:36:50.000 --> 00:36:55.000
This is a masochistic act, but it essentially optimistic one.
00:36:55.000 --> 00:37:08.000
She bends down the hatches in confidence that the storm will pass, and
when it does her identity will abide in doing so she let herself in for
fear of pain misery and indignation.
00:37:08.000 --> 00:37:13.000
But she also demonstrates a faith in her eventual deliverance.
00:37:13.000 --> 00:37:27.000
As such, the Gothic heroine embodies genres implied reassurance This is
the essential conservatism of the Gothic tradition that well the past May
surface to travel the prisons.
00:37:27.000 --> 00:37:48.000
Contemporary rationality will prevail over atavistic barbarity by
enduring the horrors of her author creatives darkly medievalist world,
sons of stock is acting on a belief that she and by extension the reader
is indeed, made of sterner stuff.
00:37:48.000 --> 00:37:53.000
Thank you.
00:37:53.000 --> 00:38:11.000
Thank you very much for the presentation I'm going to remove your
spotlight. And then if folks have questions, feel free to ask them by
raising your hand in the chat
00:38:11.000 --> 00:38:24.000
also fairly small group so if you just wanted to unmute and ask that's
probably fine too.
00:38:24.000 --> 00:38:29.000
Nobody.
00:38:29.000 --> 00:38:31.000
I'm not that good. Come on.
00:38:31.000 --> 00:38:37.000
Looks like Sarah may have one.
00:38:37.000 --> 00:38:43.000
Now, you're just you're making it an interested face and I thought you
might have something to say, No,
00:38:43.000 --> 00:38:52.000
I haven't read novels yet so I kind of Woodward whatever I question I
asked would be a silly one.
00:38:52.000 --> 00:39:01.000
I'm actually in the same boat I haven't read them either but I'm more
curious to now after hearing your talk because you're seeing the TV
series Yeah.
00:39:01.000 --> 00:39:03.000
Interesting.
00:39:03.000 --> 00:39:06.000
It looks like Leslie's hand is up.
00:39:06.000 --> 00:39:10.000
Yes, I have read the novels.
00:39:10.000 --> 00:39:12.000
I'm.
00:39:12.000 --> 00:39:29.000
And I've been following Martin on his web page and a couple of interviews
and I be called it he has said that the ending of the series will be
essentially the same as the ending in the last season that the series,
which makes me go back to your what is
00:39:29.000 --> 00:39:33.000
going to be like in the end will there be anything left her.
00:39:33.000 --> 00:39:52.000
And I'm wondering how how you feel about that now that the series is
finished and Martin is given his some clues as to how it's going to end.
And also, senses final scenes are very interesting given her entire story
arc also wanted to say somebody mentioned
00:39:52.000 --> 00:40:02.000
Also, and to say somebody mentioned sexy lamps. And I'm thinking, sounds
like 12. I'm not sure that applies.
00:40:02.000 --> 00:40:18.000
Well those are a lot in the series but she was just a little girl in the,
in the book, this is what this is. One of the things I find remarkable
again with that scene with Marin trends that I quoted you know this is a
12 year old girl already nursing
00:40:18.000 --> 00:40:21.000
a thick year.
00:40:21.000 --> 00:40:36.000
And, and, and she's, she's talking back to this guy, you know that's
that's actually a an act of remarkable bravery, I think, um, I mean, the
last two or three different questions that.
00:40:36.000 --> 00:40:45.000
With regard to with regard to Aria, um, I find it difficult to imagine
that area will will die.
00:40:45.000 --> 00:40:52.000
She. She is just I think, I think Martian enjoys her too much to kill
her.
00:40:52.000 --> 00:40:56.000
But they
00:40:56.000 --> 00:41:04.000
didn't promise his significant other, any promise is significant other,
that he would not kill Aria.
00:41:04.000 --> 00:41:06.000
I haven't heard that.
00:41:06.000 --> 00:41:21.000
But again, the big question is, you know, will there be anything left of
ARIA William in the, in the books she does, she does talk about her
vocalization doesn't include questions when she asked herself.
00:41:21.000 --> 00:41:29.000
Was that meal was that somebody else, you know, who was in winter fell,
you know with with brothers and so forth.
00:41:29.000 --> 00:41:44.000
So exactly the big the big question is will it be Aria who eventually
gets back to winter fall or will it be one of her like 18 or 20
pseudonyms now, who of course I've done terrible terrible things, some of
them.
00:41:44.000 --> 00:41:56.000
Um, and I think your your your points with regard to with regard to
sounds as age makes sense yes the TV series did age everybody up about
five years.
00:41:56.000 --> 00:42:06.000
It was interesting to look at it on stock but who's supposed to be like
35, in the novels, being played by someone who was in his late 50s.
00:42:06.000 --> 00:42:11.000
Um, in terms of the whole 60 lat question.
00:42:11.000 --> 00:42:24.000
I mean, under this is this is the the idea you know that as a woman
empowered, if you can, if you can replace her with a lamp in the story
and she would be exactly this should, you know, have exactly the same
power.
00:42:24.000 --> 00:42:43.000
Let's can't talk lamps. Can't folk allies, the problems that they face
sounds a does that and she does it consistently, and she is consistently
working things out, and she is consistently thinning the world down from
what should be to what is actually
00:42:43.000 --> 00:43:04.000
there. And by doing so, she is focusing focusing our attention on exactly
how bad the situation is and why it's bad, and and that's that that's the
secret of our power I think it's not in resisting the the problems, as,
as Aria does.
00:43:04.000 --> 00:43:22.000
But in presenting a reasoned rational critique of the problems,
explaining why this world is as bad as it is. And, you know, offending us
in that sense, giving us something to be shocked and terrified by, and
that day says is the secret power of the Gothic
00:43:22.000 --> 00:43:24.000
of the Gothic heroin.
00:43:24.000 --> 00:43:44.000
It's not a feminist power. He doesn't suggest that these that these.
These girls are empowered in quite that sense, but their power is to put
their offense on record to make us understand what the problem is, that's
that's where they got that Carolyn
00:43:44.000 --> 00:43:50.000
has power and that's the power I think songs I had.
00:43:50.000 --> 00:43:57.000
Does that answer your question.
00:43:57.000 --> 00:44:00.000
My next.
00:44:00.000 --> 00:44:06.000
I think so. Okay great grandparents up next Leslie if you need to put
your hand down let me know.
00:44:06.000 --> 00:44:08.000
Otherwise we'll go back into the queue.
00:44:08.000 --> 00:44:22.000
Right, thank you. So, um, yes. So, yeah, from what I understand, of this
character from your talk just now and and rumors of the, of the novel and
TV series neither of which I've seen but now it seems to me her.
00:44:22.000 --> 00:44:35.000
Her it's kind of a superpower of hers. She isn't dead yet, you know,
because that's kind of happens to a lot of people for a lot of important
people that were apparently important people who just die so I mean
that's that's important.
00:44:35.000 --> 00:44:50.000
First off, and. And secondly, yeah, it's it's a terrible world that that
Martin has put together, based on based on historical periods that the
world actually nations have actually been through and gotten out of.
00:44:50.000 --> 00:45:09.000
But I think it is very important that we have somebody there who comments
on the world, and is not able to necessarily change things a lot but
resist it by, you know, again, denying it questioning it and so on that's
how it could because for the reader
00:45:09.000 --> 00:45:24.000
or a watcher for everybody to accept that, that of evil world is evil
would really diminish the interest I think that anybody would have in
reading about it or seeing about it, or watching it.
00:45:24.000 --> 00:45:35.000
So, yeah, that's I think I think you're right i mean it's been said that
one of the difficulties that people have been getting into er Edison's
the woman Roberts is that there are no no people.
00:45:35.000 --> 00:45:47.000
That's a weird book yes there, that there are no there's no normal people
in relation to whom we can judge any of these superhuman warriors is
superhuman
00:45:47.000 --> 00:45:49.000
and sympathy.
00:45:49.000 --> 00:45:55.000
Sorry. Hard to create sympathy with the right.
00:45:55.000 --> 00:46:09.000
And what what Sandra is as I say, she's, she's a person who goes south
goes to the capital of kings will be glamorous chivalric capital of
King's Landing, and she seems the overnights and all the all the
wonderful.
00:46:09.000 --> 00:46:27.000
You know pageantry of of chivalry and she's entirely taken in by it loves
it has a profound emotional faith in it, and increasingly finds that
faith frustrated and that point of departure, is what makes her
criticisms of what happens to her in the, in
00:46:27.000 --> 00:46:30.000
the latter parts of the story.
00:46:30.000 --> 00:46:39.000
All the more biting you know it's a brilliant frame of reference, in
which to mount an indictment of a problem which is what Martin is doing.
00:46:39.000 --> 00:46:45.000
I'm working with regard to having having to be unfamiliar with the story.
00:46:45.000 --> 00:46:50.000
First of all you clearly are because you, you understand the gist of it.
00:46:50.000 --> 00:46:57.000
I mean, in the sense that you understand the gist of it, but you haven't
read the read the books or or seeing the TV show.
00:46:57.000 --> 00:47:03.000
Now, talking about him, you know, in saying that everybody dies.
00:47:03.000 --> 00:47:17.000
Well, my, my, my, my key takeaway from from five years or five or six or
seven years of reading writing publishing teaching and speaking on
Martin, is that absolutely nobody anywhere in the world has ever read any
of his stories or watched a single episode
00:47:17.000 --> 00:47:30.000
of the TV show. I've encountered almost nobody who is familiar with this
story, which is remarkable I don't I, I must be listening or reading
books, talking to the wrong people.
00:47:30.000 --> 00:47:42.000
Song for live read a lot of this earlier science fiction stories and
stuff I know he's a great author and I'm looking forward to reading the
books from cover to cover from the first of the last one, the last one
has been written.
00:47:42.000 --> 00:47:53.000
Well I would say I would I would warn you against against waiting for
that not because I don't expect it to happen I'm sure I retain great
confidence that Martin will finish the story.
00:47:53.000 --> 00:48:01.000
I'm simply because it's a really as I, as I pointed out in, in my book on
the subject.
00:48:01.000 --> 00:48:14.000
What Martin's done is he's produced a very genre literate harnessing of
the capabilities of the fantasy genre, to present a social critique, and
a critique of how we look at the past.
00:48:14.000 --> 00:48:18.000
And indeed, how we look at the present.
00:48:18.000 --> 00:48:33.000
And that's exactly what what fantasy is supposed to do. I mean my first
publication on Martin was titled The American Pratchett, because I think
the, I think the British author that Martin most closely resembles is
actually not token it's Terry Pratchett
00:48:33.000 --> 00:48:42.000
because he uses fantasy very very explicitly to to reflect on on reality.
00:48:42.000 --> 00:48:45.000
Sorry, subverts it, you know.
00:48:45.000 --> 00:48:51.000
I don't think he does some work fantasy I think he's a virtual reality I
think he supports our understanding of reality.
00:48:51.000 --> 00:49:15.000
And I think, and I think I don't think he's been given the his view as as
as someone who does that he's, he's an extraordinarily Clemmer writer.
These are very good, very good books.
00:49:15.000 --> 00:49:30.000
Um, I would encourage anyone who hasn't looked at these stories who's
interested in fantasy who's interested in something like the Lord of the
Rings, or the Discworld to have a look at these books because they're not
funny, but they are really really
00:49:30.000 --> 00:49:42.000
cleverly written, and they take really, really good advantage of the of
the capabilities of the genre, and they really need to be to be viewed as
that.
00:49:42.000 --> 00:49:46.000
I'm going to find you guys right there because we're up at a time.
00:49:46.000 --> 00:49:52.000
And you can continue the discussion on the Discovery Channel. Sorry sir I
saw your hand was up.
00:49:52.000 --> 00:50:09.000
But I'm sorry it took so long, you're fine. So, if you have any very
final words Joseph you're welcome to share them otherwise. This room is
going to be needed we're going to be having the, the group members
meeting, but also, I got my wrist slapped for
00:50:09.000 --> 00:50:21.000
letting people go on past the time yesterday so I'm not doing it again
today so just if you have any final words. I'll be jumping straight on to
the discussion if anyone would like to would like to talk to me then I'll
be I'll be available.
00:50:21.000 --> 00:50:26.000
Okay, good. Thanks so much everybody.
00:50:26.000 --> 00:50:27.000
Right.
00:50:27.000 --> 00:50:57.000
Right.
00:50:59.000 --> 00:51:05.000
Graham Victoria, and Annalise you guys are welcome to hang out in here
with me for a little bit.
00:51:05.000 --> 00:51:09.000
The members meeting is in a bit but I.
00:51:09.000 --> 00:51:16.000
The other mods felt it wasn't fair for let people go past their time so I
was trying to be good about helping everybody keep to time this time.
00:51:16.000 --> 00:51:42.000
I think I'm supposed to attend the members meeting should log out and
come back. Sure. You don't have to but there's probably just going to be
you and me and us chickens in this room for a little bit.