Spoilers ahead (though at this point I don’t know how you’ve avoided them).

So, lots of discussion about the (latest!) rape scene in Game of Thrones, which has led to a whole lot of folks defending it. Some of this defense is even-minded and fair, whether or not I agree with it. I certainly don’t think any topic should be off the table when it comes to fiction, and if you feel that this scene in some way is important to the story or important to the characters or culturally vital in some way I’m missing, hey: you do you.

I think it was crappy and I wish the writers would’ve done better — largely because they’re so good at telling this story in so many other ways. It’s often so good and so well-thought-out that to me, stuff like this really stands out. Like a cancer shadow on an X-Ray.

Regardless of what they did or planned as writers and showrunners, what I’m finding super gross is some of the response to the criticism. Particularly the, erm, impassioned defenses for the inclusion of rape as a story element in this particular scene and episode.

I’d like to tell you why it’s super-gross.

Let’s go on a journey together! A journey through grave grotesquerie huzzah!

Well, Sansa Knew What She Was Getting Into —

Ah, the most disgusting of defenses.

Sounds a lot like what real-world victims hear:

“She deserved it.”

“She knew what she was doing.”

“She said yes before she said no.”

And so on, and so forth.

It’s victim-blaming. And though she’s not a real character, realize that actual victims are hearing you say these things. They are internalizing them. Trickle-down economics doesn’t work for shit, but culture and a lot of its worst ideas sure can trickle down. It’s poison to all who drink it.

Storytellers may not have an actual responsibility to anyone or anything.

But shitty is shitty, so don’t be shitty. Be awesome, instead! See? Easy.

Yeah, But Sansa Is A Weak Character, So —

More victim-blaming. Also gross. Stop being gross. Why are you being gross?

She’s weak so she deserves to be raped? What heinous fuckery is that?

“Puppies are small and helpless, and so they deserve to be crushed.”

“Children are tiny. Kick them!”

“Grandma moves slow these days. Kill her while she watches Dancing With The Stars.”

What’s wrong with you? No. Nooooo. No, no, no.

*smacks you*

Do We Even Know That It Was Really Rape, I Mean —

Stop. Stop. Ew, stop.

*dumps a bucket of fire ants on your head*

Maybe This Really Proves How Strong Sansa Is —

*dumps toxic diarrhea on your head*

But It Explains What Theon Is Going To Do Next —

I don’t know what comes next from Theon, but unless it’s literally him donating his family fortune to RAINN and training to become a rape counselor in Westeros, I don’t see how this was appropriate or necessary. If he’s supposed to get some kind of revenge on Ramsay Bolton, well, garsh, I’d say he has enough reason to do that already, don’t you think? Do we forget the part where the young Bolton bastard hacked off Theon’s wangle-rod? Humiliated him and tormented him? Turned him from a human being into a beast named Reek? (Which I always imagine is just “Rick” said with a funny accent! As if Peter Lorre is saying it in Casablanca!)

And oh hey by the way pop culture is full of fridging women — meaning, when women characters are subject to violence only to activate MANPAIN and motivate MANACTION.

It’s not just about this one time.

It’s about the pattern across this show, across all shows, books, movies, comics.

Wait, But It Demonstrates What A Monstrous Sadist Ramsay Bolton Is —

Whew, thank god, because before now, we thought he was a real gentleman!

Oh, wait, except none of us were confused about Ramsay Bolton being terrible.

He’s actually so evil it’s ludicrous. He has no sympathetic side. He’s Joffrey 2.0 (and Sansa being wrapped up with him is deja vu, and not in a good way). He doesn’t just pluck the wings off of butterflies, this guy. Ramsay would set butterflies on fire and then shove them in the mouth of your beloved geriatric uncle while stealing the last of your beloved geriatric uncle’s food money from his wallet just before taking a shit inside the wallet and then shoving the previously mentioned shit-filled wallet into the town well that we all drink from so we’re all drinking it up.

Slurp.

He’s a kitten-kicker. A wang-slicer. A monster so inhuman I think he’s actually just a case of syphilis that took over a human body. You know how they interview the neighbors of serial killers and they’re like, “Wow, we had no idea?”

Yeah, with Ramsay, we have plenty of idea.

Here’s the thing: storytelling is about breaking the status quo. About juking left when we expect you to go right. We expect him to be a terrible person. So what happens if he isn’t? What if he seems to be actually romancing Sansa instead? What if Sansa hurts him? Or acquiesces and turns him from a predator into a Reek-beast? What if she spies in him something monstrous about herself? Where’s the twist? The hook? The artistry? This isn’t artistry. It’s just the authorial equivalent of Orson Lannister crushing bugs.

Him not assaulting her has actual narrative value here. First, it would function as a nice surprise. But more logically: the Boltons need this alliance. They require the Stark name. Ramsay has things to lose. His new name. His power. What if we pretended for once he was an actual character instead of a giant mustache-twirling embodiment of eeeeeevil? Mightn’t his struggle with trying not to reveal his horrible side be interesting to watch? More interesting, than say, another rape of another POV female character (particularly one who is victimized every 21 seconds in the show)?

Hold On, The Scene Tells Us Something New —

It doesn’t.

Ramsay is a monster? Knew it.

Sansa is a victim? Sadly we’re reminded near-constantly.

Theon is a simpering husk? Knew that one, too.

Even if you believe that “rape in fiction is okay as long as it moves the plot forward!” (as if it’s just a mechanism for melodrama), this doesn’t even pass that barest-of-bones smell test.

Oh Sure But You’re Not Getting Mad At All The Other Violence —

Well, who says? I’ve commented before on how nasty this show is. Sometimes this show demonstrates the sadism found in many of its worst characters. Now, to a point, I like sadism in my storytellers — I certainly don’t want everything to be MY FACE WARMED BY SUNSHINE BEAMING FROM A PONY’S BEDAZZLED ASS. So, fine. But here’s the other thing:

IfI were to sit in a room full of 100 people, how many of them do you think have been beheaded, cock-chopped, throat-slit, war-murdered, skull-asploded, and so on, and so forth?

Probably none.

Except Gary. Poor Gary.

But how many do you think might’ve undergone sexual assault or rape?

That’s a higher number, innit?

No, that’s not a reason to never write about the subject. But it is a reason not to rely on it as a creepy, shitty, trite trope. It’s important to realize that this thing is used again and again in fiction. Particularly in the SFF genre. It’s not treated as serious. It’s treated as a “plot device.” There’s no gravity to it. It’s like horrible wallpaper.

You expect it and see it so often you become inured to its presence.

But In Medieval History —

First of all, stop there, because not so much.

Second, I didn’t realize Game of Thrones was a historical television show.

I look forward to the Reddit discussion where you all debate the accuracy of the dragons based on the dragon skeletons found just outside of Plymouth just last year, or how accurately the show portrays the science behind revivified corpses and —

OH WAIT IT’S ALL FANTASY

Hey, what the fuck?

Truth in fiction is about authenticity.

Stop using “history and “fact” (which you’re probably getting wrong anyway) to explain why women are powerless or there aren’t any non-white people or whatever other lazy inclusion you cling to. Read some actual history instead of just more epic fantasy.

But Rape Happens All The Time —

Yes, it does.

And there’s the problem.

Rape culture is about the normalization of the act.

And if we keep excusing lazy inclusions of rape in our pop culture as there because it’s there, you’re just kicking that can further down the road instead of picking up and asking why are you kicking this can and why is the can full of rape and oh shit maybe it’s worth actually thinking about what we’re writing and reading about rather than what we take on as assumed and obvious. It’s not that you can’t talk about these sorts of things, but writing about them without any sort of examination, without any respect at all — that’s some twisted shit.

We can do better.

We can ask for better, too.

* * *

Added reading:

My post from the other day: “We Are Not Things” (Mad Max vs. Game of Thrones).

Robert Jackson Bennett on: “Why Are You Writing A Rape Scene?”

Emmie Mears :”Why I Share: Living On The Fury Road”

And finally, the “rape tropes” page at TV Tropes.

Once again: comments off.

First up —

Hey, Zeroes got a nice review from Publisher’s Weekly:

(link for subscribers only)

“Wendig (Blackbirds) piles on the thrills and chills in this fast-paced near-future novel about human frailty and inhuman ambition. … Wendig wields the tools of suspense and tension with skill. His large cast of characters is entertaining, the moments of horror are sharp and chilling, and the story races to a breathless conclusion.”

Plus, a hella great quote by Christopher Golden:

“Chuck Wendig is one of the most talented genre-fiction magicians we have and ZEROES reveals him at the height of his powers. Razor sharp characters highlight a paranoid, relentless thriller about outcast hackers and the malleable line between renegade and hero.” — Christopher Golden, New York Times bestselling author of TIN MEN

And one by Richard Kadrey:

“Zer0es is a taut, complex techno-thriller with something much darker and deeper at its core.” — Richard Kadrey, author of the SANDMAN SLIM series

I’ll be doing a small tour in support. Check my Appearances page! More dates coming.

Phoenix ComicCon

Hey! I’ll be at Phoenix ComicCon at the end of this month.

My schedule?

On the Outside Looking In : Thursday 3:00pm – 4:00pm

Author Signing C.j. Hill, Cherie Priest, Myke Cole, Greg van Eekhout, Chuck Wendig : Thursday 4:30pm – 5:30pm

More Than a Haunted House : Friday 1:30pm – 2:30pm

More Than a Haunted House Signing:Alex Gordon,Chuck Wendig,Greg van Eekhout,Andrea Philllips : Friday 3:00pm – 4:00pm

Here on Earth : Friday 4:30pm – 5:30pm

Beth Cato,Joseph Nassise,Alex Gordon,Mel Odom,Richard Kadrey,Viola Carr,Chuck Wendig Signing : Saturday 12:00pm – 1:00pm

Chuck Wendig Spotlight : Saturday 1:30pm – 2:30pm

Author Signing: Jamie Wyman,Suzanne Young,Chuck Wendig,Naomi Novik,Stephen Blackmoore,C.J Hill : Saturday 4:30pm – 5:30pm

Writing Reluctant Heroes : Sunday 10:30am – 11:30am

Signing:Saundra Mitchell,Amy K. Nichols,Brian Staveley,Chuck Wendig,Jonathan Maberry,Greg van E : Sunday 12:00pm – 1:00pm

Stepping up to Social Media : Sunday 1:30pm – 2:30pm

From Page to Screen : Sunday 3:00pm – 4:00pm

Also, don’t forget about the Poisoned Pen SUPER MEGA SCI-FI AUTHOR extravaganza — “Elevengeddon” — which is May 27th at 7:00pm. Features an unholy host of awesome authors: Kevin Hearne, Richard Kadrey, Naomi Novik, Delilah S. Dawson, Stephen Blackmoore, Sam Sykes, Myke Cole, Brian McClellan, Cherie Priest, Beth Cato, Andrea Phillips — basically, they keep adding authors to this thing. Come, hang out, get books signed, chat it up.

And I’ll be doing a STAR WARS: AFTERMATH poster signing. Saturday 10AM – 11AM.

The Harvest Launch: Let’s Play Books

I celebrate the launch of THE HARVEST (the final book of The Heartland series) at Let’s Play Books! Facebook event page here. Tuesday, July 14th, 6:00PM, Emmaus, PA. It’s a great bookstore for children and young adults (with a spare adult books section). B-Dub loves it.

The Harvest comes out that same day.

You can buy signed copies right from the store.

Or you can pre-order the e-book here.

In fact, I’ll tell you what —

If you buy a signed, printed copy from Let’s Play Books, I’ll give you a Kindle version of The Harvest. Because getting e-books with physical books is awesome, that’s why.

Storybundle

The WRITE STUFF Storybundle is still going strong.

Twelve books. Name your own price. Determine how much of your money goes to the bundler, the author, and charity. Includes my own 30 Days in the Word Mines.

(art above by Kate Leth, who is awesome)

(and below, you will find some spoilers, so you are very much warned)

Over here, you have Max Max: Fury Road, a film that may not have won the box office this weekend, but did a pretty Herculean effort ($45 million) for an R-rated film based on a very fringe franchise with aesthetics that go well against what anybody would think would sell actual tickets.

In the other corner, one of the most popular television shows on at present: Game of Thrones. Pseudo-medieval epic fantasy serialized for pay cable, also very R-rated (well, TV-MA, I guess), and perhaps also a surprise that it connects so well with the popular consciousness.

Both are, in their own way, very similar worlds.

One is post-apocalypse. (Though exactly how or why, we do not know.)

One is pre-apocalypse. (“Winter is Coming,” remember.)

Both are brutal, backward worlds. All too often harsh and unforgiving. The GoT world is probably more advanced than the Mad Max one, in a lot of ways — at least socially. In GoT you’ve got pretty gardens and big cities and varied climates. Mad Max eschews all of that. It’s basically a dust-fucked hell-hole. Occasionally damp, mostly dry and abrasive. Society has dissolved. People are not so much people as they are animals and zealots only. It’s all just sand in your chastity belt.

Both are, you could argue, male-driven worlds. Grotesque, feudal places lorded over by grotesque, wretched men. You’ve got Immortan Joe and the Bullet Farmer. You’ve got Joffrey and Bolton and a gaggle of other spectacular assholes. Both in fact feature comically evil men. Like, so evil it’s just fucking ridiculous. In Mad Max, you might argue it’s less evil and more straight-up lunacy, but you don’t get the feeling these are bad dudes with good sides. They’re just monsters. And guys like Joffrey and Ramsay Bolton are so eeeeevil that the show affords us every chance to watch them plucking wings off of butterflies (metaphorically). Which, admittedly, maybe gets a little old, but what the hell do I know? It certainly works to make you hate them.

If both are male-driven worlds, you can then take a pretty good guess how women are viewed in these worlds? Spoiler warning: it ain’t good. Women ostensibly have a higher position inside Game of Thrones, where they are at least viewed as more than just “things.” In Mad Max, women are objects. They are sources of production, more or less — animals for breeding, for milk, and for all that we can guess, meat. They are post-apoc livestock.

Some folks will say — okay, there are topics and subjects you can’t write about. Which is nonsense, obviously. Everything is the domain of fiction. Nothing is forbidden, everything is permitted. It must be, for fiction to maintain its teeth. Fiction only has meaning when everything is permissable. Rape and sexual assault is one such topic — some will say it’s off the table. Which again: it can’t be off the table. That’s a very good way to ensure silence around the subject, isn’t it? Saying you can’t speak about it in fiction is adjacent to saying you can’t speak about it for real, which is already a problem that doesn’t need worsening by made-up rules of fiction.

So, take that subject, and filter it through the lens of Game of Thrones and then Mad Max.

Both use sexual assault in the storyworlds.

In Mad Max, you can’t accept women as “things” or livestock without then making the leap to say, mmmyeah, it’s probably not by choice. Okay? They didn’t sign up for it. That’s frankly the whole point of the movie, isn’t it? (Again, see the art above quoting the movie: WE ARE NOT THINGS.) If you leave Fury Road and look back upon the series, you see a few powerful women here and there (Aunty Entity, and, erm, that one lady with the crossbow?), and you also would get to see an on-screen rape scene in The Road Warrior — one viewed through spyglass at a distance, but it’s very clear what’s going on. The confirmation of women as object is shown when one of the women in Fury Road is cut open so that the child inside her can be seen, even though it may not be alive.

In GoT, rape is part of the fabric of life. It’s woven right in there. It’s almost background noise — I’m pretty sure if you turn on the show and zoom in, it’s like Where’s Waldo or trying to find Carmen Sandiego. There’s maybe always a rape happening on-screen somewhere, at some point? “Did you find the rape happening in every episode?” (It’d be like a really super-gross party game.) Characters talk about rape. They do it and exposit scenes while they do it. They accept it and expect it. Folks will say this is based on medieval history, though really, it’s based more on medieval myth, and of course, once you throw dragons and active godly magic into the mix you pretty much signal that you don’t have to base your fantasy (key word: fantasy) story on anything, really. (But “it’s based on history!” is always a good crutch for lazy storytelling, so whenever an editor or critic challenges you, don’t forget to say loud and say it proud.)

So, two very popular storyworlds.

Two portrayals of a world where women hold dubious power and are seen as “things.”

One of these is roundly criticized for it.

One of them is roundly celebrated for it.

Game of Thrones catches hell for its portrayal of women and this subject.

Mad Max is wreathed in a garland of bike chains and hubcabs for it.

What, then, is the difference?

Let’s try to suss it out.

In Game of Thrones:

– rapes often happen on-screen-ish

– they happen semi-often

– they happen to POV characters (Dany, Cersei, and now, Sansa Stark — given that there are six total assumed major female POV characters in the series, that means 50% of them have undergone active sexual assault on-screen)

– twice the rapist is a character we like (Drogo, Jamie)

– often used to motivate characters or sub in as character development

– seemingly meant to shock, often male-gazey

– history of it in the show

In Mad Max: Fury Road:

– the assault is implicit, not explicit, happens way off-screen

– not a focal point, per se, of character development

– though does provide seeds in the bed for character development — meaning, the event is hidden so that we don’t see it, but what grows up out of the dirt still suggests that it happened

– not much history of it — but again, Road Warrior has an explicit instance?

– we are never on the side of the rapist

– not male gazey because not on-screen and because of female POV (Furiosa)

I don’t know that this tells us enough yet, so let’s unpack it some more.

Frequency is an issue, for one: in GoT, we see rape and sexual assault again and again. In four seasons, we have three (ugh this sounds horrible to even put it this way) “major” rape events used as plot devices and character motivational tools (and that sounds even more horrible and icky). In Mad Max, we never actually see it at all. In Got, it happens often enough that you begin to wonder if there is a well-worn, oft-punctured notecard for the GoT storyboard that has written upon it: I DUNNO, PROBABLY RAPE?

Which also suggests that another issue is point-of-view. Where do you put the camera? Where do you place the narrative? Fury Road begins well after any actual assaults have occurred (with the exception of the “cutting out a baby” thing, which is more a byproduct of sexual assault rather than an explicit sexual assault). And none of it is on-screen. The story happens after. In Game of Thrones, the rapes are — man, this will never not sound gross — “ongoing.” It’s an ever-unfolding rape carnival, a parade of sexual assaults. (Here, by the way, someone will surely say something about why are we so concerned about the rape but, say, not concerned about murder or Greyjoy’s “dick removal scenario.” To which I would respond, frequency again becomes an issue: if every season contained one major dick removal scenario, you’d probably start to say, “Hey, Game of Thrones writers, maybe cool it on the cock-chopping. It’s feeling like you have a thing against dicks. Do you hate dicks? Why do you hate dicks so bad?” And here we could ask the same about women. Do you hate women? Why do you hate women so bad? Do you have a thing against them?

Of course, they don’t hate women. That’s absurd and we can’t really assume to be true — both Mad Max and GoT posit a world that hates women, though, so again, what’s the difference? GoT gives us the pain and suffering of women as part of a larger pattern meant to motivate characters. In some cases, male characters — in the assault on Sansa Stark, I have been repeatedly told that it “explains” what Theon Greyjoy does. I have no idea what that is, but I can guess that it’s something against Ramsay Bolton, and there I’d like to suggest that Theon (the subject of the earlier “dick removal scenario”) probably needs no more motivation to do ill against the Boltons given the aforementioned fact of his man-wang being turned into dick salad. Nor does Sansa require “motivation” to hate the family who literally murdered members of her family. We don’t actually need more, there. We do not require further “character motivation,” and if rape is the only way you can motivate your characters, you may want to go back to Writer’s School because I think you skipped a few crucial 101 classes.

What it then comes down to is a question of agency. (Here: a post on agency and women characters and how “strong female characters” are really nothing without agency and the ability to push on the plot more than it pushes on them.) Where you place the narrative camera and how you choose to affect the characters leads to the question of — what does assault do for the character’s power and choice in the story? Placing the events off-screen and before the film begins, Fury Road buries it well enough to explain why the characters are doing what they’re doing. The arc of those characters — the women — in Mad Max is one of going from zero to one. From a loss of power to a gain of power. The story is about the reclamation of agency — it’s them saying with great and violent effort: we are not things.

But in Game of Thrones, the opposite occurs. We witness powerful women undercut by assault. It removes their agency. (That is, quite explicitly, what sexual assault does.) They are robbed of power to motivate them, to make men feel bad, to make the audience feel sympathetic. But they go from one to zero. They go from something to nothing — from agent and actor upon the plot to victim of the plot. You might say that Dany is motivated to become the queen by the act, but first, that’s gross, and second, it’s also not true. She’s motivated only to become a wife and a lover at that point. Cersei is changed by the act — it would seem to begin her descent. And Sansa is just at a moment when we start to believe she has agency and power. She’s tougher. Harder. She’s taking on a whiff of Littlefinger’s machinations. The show wisely made it seem like reclaiming Winterfell was at least in part her choice. Her hair is dyed black. She appears a grim, death-like specter of vengeance. And she even says the right things: she indicates her lack of fear, she impresses her power on others. It’s a turning point for a character who for so long has basically been a whipping girl. She’s been a can kicked brutally down the road. And finally, finally you think — ahh. Here it is. Here she is claiming her power. Finding her agency. Here she will at last become, like Arya, a mighty force for change and no woman and no man will ever again dominate her and —

Oh. Oh.

She gets the black dye removed from her hair and it’s like Samson with his locks cut. Because along comes Ramsay Bolton — who is so eeeeevil I’m surprised he doesn’t have a sinister mustache to twist and a puppy to eat — to take that all that away as he gleefully assaults her. All as we focus on the poor weepy face of dickless Theon Greyjoy, who by the way is a child-murderer so wait why do we care about Theon Greyjoy again?

It’s not that GoT is poorly-written. That’s actually the shame — it’s often so well done. The show is really one of the best television shows around right now. It’s part of the Renaissance of hella good storytelling going on the tube at present. If it was a garbage-fire of a show, we wouldn’t even care. We wouldn’t expect better. But me? I’d like to expect better. Because its creepy fascination with hurting and marginalizing its women characters is increasingly gross and lazy.

Listen —

This isn’t about being shocked.

This isn’t about being offended.

It’s about something larger and lazier and altogether nastier.

It’s really about rape culture. About how this seeps in like a septic infection. About how it’s illustrated and handled with little aplomb, how it’s a default, how it forms an overall pattern.

Rape and sexual assault are fraught topics. To say you can never use them in fiction is, as noted, a terrible thing. We must be allowed to talk about bad things. We must be allowed to explore them from nose to tail to see what it means. Fiction is best when it doesn’t turn away from pain and suffering. It must embrace trauma. But that also means treating it and the characters who suffer it with respect. Make it an organic part of the story, not a “plot device.” A plot device is crass, cheap, lazy. Sexual assault is not a lever you pull to make people feel bad. It’s a trope because it keeps showing up — that’s not a good thing. Women are constantly fridged in these stories to make male characters feel something — to make the audience feel something. The problem isn’t in individual instances, you see? It’s in the pattern. It’s in how this keeps showing up again and again, a lazy crutch, a manipulative button the writers mash with greasy mitts, a cheap trick to rob agency and push plot. Meanwhile, you have actual rape victims in the audience who are like, “Hey, thanks for turning my trauma into cheap-ass plot fodder.”

In fact, let’s dissect that a little bit — RAINN suggests that 1 in 6 women have been the subject of some kind of sexual assault. A TIME study noted that, on campus, that number is 1 in 5 women. These are consequential numbers. Huge, scary, terrible. Now, realize that Game of Thrones gets some of the highest ratings on cable television — roughly seven million people watching. And in 2013 it was roughly 42% women who made up that audience. If you go low enough to accept the 1 in 5 number, you accept that roughly 588,000 sexual assault victims are watching the show. Even if you think that number is inflated — even if you assume it’s not 20% of all women but only 5% — that number still becomes 147,000. It’s a not insignificant number. It’s a marrow-curdling number. And it’s a number where each person affected has others who have been affected in turn — family, friends, other loved ones. Trauma is not a stone thrown against hard ground. It’s a stone thrown into water. It has ripples.

Ask yourself again: Game of Thrones versus Mad Max.

Would you rather see a world where the women declare in a barbaric yawp: WE ARE NOT THINGS?

Or do you want to be subjected to one where again and again it’s proven: WE ARE ONLY THINGS…?

Do we really not see the difference?

Do you not see why one would be celebrated while the other is excoriated?

Now, please go and read:

Sansa, Ros and Trying to Keep Faith — by Leigh Bardugo.

Then — Matt Wallace writes Try Harder, Do Better.

Comments closed.

Another finale, come and gone.

This one left us with great expectation, but did it fulfill us? Did it complete its journey around the narrative sun? Did it conclude the tale of its troubled protagonist? Did it draw the character’s interior life out and connect it to the exterior? Did it show the fall from grace we were expecting?

That’s right. I’m talking about Small Wonder.

Where V.I.C.I. was forced to endure a reckoning as her evil android twin appears and sets the stage for an epic robo-showdown that results in the eventual spin-off series —

*receives note*

Oh. Ohhhh.

We’re supposed to be talking about the Mad Men finale, aren’t we?

Ah. Yeah. Oops! Ha ha ha boy are my cheeks red.

Lotsa folks saw the Mad Men finale and felt like it was the perfect end.

Lotsa folks saw it and seemed bewildered or bored by what they saw.

(Count me as somewhere in the middle — but more on that in a second.)

First, I want you to understand how hard it is to write an ending.

An ending should:

1) tie most things up but

2) not tie everything up and be too tidy

3) fit the rest of what came before but

4) still be its own thing

5) feel like the natural and only possible conclusion but

6) not feel too obvious because we still like surprises

7) fulfill the promises made early on but

8) also fulfill promises we didn’t realize it had made

9) confirm the theme of the piece but

10) but not make that theme so obvious it’s like a brick to the jaw

11) carry the same mood and emotional heft as the rest but

12) still be somewhat separate from the piece, too

13) answer questions but

14) ask a few new ones, too

That’s hard enough when it comes to a short story or a book.

Now, think about an entire book series. Or an entire television show.

You get more characters. More questions. More arcs to finish, more threads to see to their fraying or knotted ends. And then you have the factor of time. Five books. Seven seasons. A hundred chapters, or comic book issues, or television episodes. People investing years toward the tale — years where the pressure mounts for you to really stick that fucking landing. TV makes this even fuckier because you’ve got a week between episodes, you’ve got months (or even a year) between seasons, you’ve got the pressures of a network, the pressures of advertisers, countless writers, the loss of actors, and very likely a show who had to stretch out its journey (I’m looking at you, Lost, and also you, HIMYM), because you weren’t allowed to end when the story really should’ve ended. Oh, and not to mention the millions of people who are each waiting for their own personal vision for how the story’s gotta kick the can to the end of the road.

It’s actually amazing that any TV finales are any good at all.

So. The Mad Men finale. How’d it do?

(Note, from here on out, THERE BE MILD SPOILERS.)

For me, it was kind of… hit or miss. With a lot of the characters, it did good work — it resolved their arcs and put them the places we both expected and didn’t expect. (Again, that mysterious trick of making the ending feel organic and inevitable while still surprising us with an outcome we didn’t realize was so inevitable.) A lot of the women get fitting ends and don’t get the short shrift — Peggy and Joan in particular. (Betty, well, the show and the audience have always hated her, and so her ending seems somehow extra-malicious — if somewhat still inevitable. And I worry about Sally getting caught up in the wake of that.)

The problem for me comes in with the titular character, “MAD MAN” MCSTEVENS, the hard-charging, cigar-chomping advertising executive who punches his way to the top of Madison Avenue and with his revolutionary new ad campaign for Depends adult diapers —

*receives a note*

Okay, apparently Mad Man McStevens is not a character on that show.

Hold on, hold on.

*shuffles papers*

Ah! Dick “Don Draper” Whitman.

Who I will now call “Dickie-Don.”

Right.

I feel like the finale wasted ol’ Dickie-Don.

Like, here’s the thing, right? The show’s been promising us from the very beginning that this will be Dickie-Don’s fall from grace. His climb to the top and his subsequent tumble — it’s telegraphed even in the credits sequence at the fore of every episode. It is, in a way, a promise.

But that’s not what really happens. He hits emotional bottom, maybe — though it’s not something we haven’t seen before. He’s left his life in wreckage but we never get to see him have to deal with that wreckage. Not his kids, not Betty, not the war, not him stealing someone else’s name, not Peggy, not anything. He is consequence-free.

And the emotional breakthroughs he experiences in the episode aren’t even his. Dickie-Don goes to a retreat and experiences the turmoil and fallout of other characters — characters who are in part or are entirely strangers to us. Characters who often have conversations with Dickie-Don or who offer up confessions that are so on-the-nose regarding his “journey” it made me feel like I was reading someone aping bad literary fiction. People talked the way people don’t talk to deliver thematic emphasis and emotional beats just so we understood what was happening inside Dickie-Don’s pretty little LEGO man hair-helmet head.

Now, that’s not altogether bad — it’s certainly giving us some aspect of what the show has always given us. Dickie-Don hits bottom and then we find out the bottom is really just a new way for him to climb higher and so he does. That happens here, too, with Dickie-Don creating one of the world’s most consequential advertisements moments after reaching some kind of wibbly Nirvana during the first thirty seconds of meditation.

But we never get the fall.

We never get consequence.

We never get comeuppance.

That’s certainly a message in and of itself. Intentional, I’m guessing.

Cynical, and purposefully so.

So, in that sense? It works.

But where I fall apart is, it took seven seasons to get here. It took seven seasons to stand still. It’s easy to say, well, it’s all about the journey, but this wasn’t really much of a journey. It isn’t THERE AND BACK AGAIN: A DICKIE-DON’S TALE, but rather, YOU THINK DICKIE-DON LEFT AND WENT ON A TRIP BUT REALLY HE JUST HID IN THE CLOSET AND AVOIDED ALL CONSEQUENCE. We went along on the ride for, what, almost 100 episodes over eight years to go essentially nowhere. (In this, it’s very Sopranos-esque.)

TV is often criticized as having characters who don’t change and being “all middle,” but the current Renaissance of television is changing that — or so I thought. Shows are now allowed to move, allowed to end, and not merely tread narrative water.

The problem with Don Draper is that we’ve seen him before. Too many times. Ego-fed white guy Narcissist who sleeps around and drinks and has family troubles and is highly competent at his job and blah blah blah. Don Draper, Tony Soprano, Frank Underwood, Walter White — difficult, borderline-abusive, middle-age white motherfuckers who are secretly little damaged flowers inside. Villains cast as heroes. Weaponized unlikeability.

I don’t hate that particular character, but I am getting tired of him.

And if you’re going to give us one, you need to conclude it. Or do something new.

(Walter White, to my mind, gets his conclusion. Tony and Don, not so much. Can’t speak for Frank, but I’m hopeful that the show will take us where it needs to take us.)

If Mad Men just spent seven seasons to tell us that Don Draper will continue to grin that shit-eating grin and create advertising and carry on with his paradoxically-ascendant swirl-down-the-toilet, fine. That’s certainly a mission statement and not out-of-character with the show.

But it feels a bit like a waste of our time.

For me — not necessarily for you! — I want more out of my ending.

It was close. And it’s given me a lot to chew on — which is a good thing.

But it still missed the mark for me.

Now, I ask:

What did you think?

Better yet, what were some of the best finales — and worst finales — across television?

It is the time of car chases.

Today, Mad Max.

A few weeks ago: the recent installment of the Fast & Furious series.

Car chases are awesome.

So, when I got an email from reader Scott Lyerly who said, “Hey, you should do a whole flash fiction challenge based around car chases,” well, dang, I thought he had the right idea.

That, then, is your mission.

You have 2000 words to write a piece of fiction that comprises a car chase. Doesn’t matter the genre or how you frame it — but it must feature and in fact showcase a car chase.

Post that fiction to your blog or other online space. Drop a link here so we can see it.

Your story? Due by next Friday, the 22nd of May, noon EST.

Start your engines.

Ready?

Set?

GO.

In a near-future Tokyo, every action—from blinking to sexual intercourse—is intellectual property owned by corporations, who take it upon themselves to charge licensing fees for your existence.

Amon Kenzaki is a Liquidator for the Global Action Transaction Authority. If you go bankrupt and can no longer pay to live, Amon is sent to hunt you down and rip the BodyBank from your flesh. So what if you’re sent to the BankDeath Camps after, forever isolated from a life of information and transaction? Amon is just happy to do his job as long as he’s climbing the corporate ladder.

But the higher you climb, the farther you fall. Amon is tasked with a simple mission, one he’s done hundreds of times. Except he awakes the next morning having no memory of the assignment, and finds his bank account nearly depleted, having been accused of an action known as “jubilee.”

To restore balance to his account, Amon must work to unravel the meaning behind jubilee. But as he digs himself deeper toward bankruptcy, Amon begins to ask questions of the ironclad system he’s served his whole life and finds it may cost him more than his job to get to the truth of things.

* * *

Your writing is for other people, not just for you

I’m willing to accept that some people write certain things just for themselves and that’s awesome.

But if you have the faintest hope (or fear?) that someone else might read what you’ve written, (and 99.999% of the time you do), then you are not writing it just for yourself. Already you have an audience in mind. Once you recognize that, you can start forming a clear picture of who they are. Academics? Fantasy addicts? Inhabitants of a village in the Gobi Desert? Kurt Vonnegut claimed he wrote for his dead sister. It could be anyone!

Once you decide who you’re writing for, the number of forms your story can take is easier to choose. There’s nothing that lends itself to indecision, (or bad decisions), like too many options and no way to decide between them. But the audience in your head is like a narrative litmus test: when in doubt about your story, all you have to ask is “will my audience appreciate this?” If the answer is no, then you probably need to trash it, or rework it.

When I first came up with the idea for Cash Crash Jubilee about a decade ago, I had just graduated from high school and had these pretentious ideas about what it is to be a writer. I tried to turn my idea of a world where actions are intellectual properties into a novel, telling myself that my writing, my art, was for me and to hell with anyone that didn’t like it. I was an artiste, not some sell-out, dang it. But if I had been honest with myself, I would’ve sensed my deep need to share my creations and to know that others approved of them.

In part because of this attitude, my efforts to write the novel back then were a dismal failure. I floundered on the first few chapters. But about seven years later, I started to think more pragmatically about turning the idea into something that could be published and this forced me to consider who might read it, y’know, my audience; agents and editors of course, but, if I was lucky, many other readers as well. Once I had a clear goal and audience in mind, the unfolding of the idea into a story became an unstoppable process.

Listen Carefully To The Advice of Others

No two people see the world in the same way. There are things you can see that others can’t and things that others can see that you can’t. But since we’re unaware of what we can’t see, we often need someone else to point out our blind spots.

This applies to writing. Without the comments of friends, family, colleagues and others, you will often be unable to detect critical flaws or areas that need to be revised in your manuscript. Take Kazuo Ishiguro for example. In a recent interview, he said that his first reader is always his wife and that he radically revised his now critically acclaimed The Buried Giant based on her comments. So what I’m saying is, listening carefully to other people can save you from pumping out a clumsy story.

But taking criticism is painful. It hurts to be reminded that you’re not perfect. This is especially true when it comes to writing because of how much of yourself you pour into your story. In some ways your writing is more you than you are. It’s so full of concentrated doses of your identity that a mere suggestion can come across like an insult; well-intentioned remarks amplify into attacks in the echo chamber of pride. It’s also difficult to accept that you’ve made a mistake, because fixing it might require a lot of work. It could mean rewriting a whole paragraph or the whole damn book! But sending out an inadequate manuscript is only going to hurt more in the long run, so it’s best to listen up, accept the problem, and fix it early on.

Judge For Yourself Which Advice To Heed

If shutting your ears to criticism is writing’s Scylla, then accepting all of it is its Charybdis.

Here is a trap that some writers can fall into:

You write a draft and maybe you think it’s pretty solid or maybe you’re not sure what to make of it, but in any case you want some feedback, so you send it out to ten friends. One likes the break up scene. Another hates it. One thinks the ending is brilliant. Another thinks it runs astray after the middle. You want to make sure that all of their voices are heard, but everyone has a different opinion, so you start rewriting and rewriting. But no matter what form your story takes, someone’s comment is not being accounted for, and now your manuscript is in constant flux. It never gets done, and you realize that instead of pandering your creative talents to the taste of others, you might as well let them write the story for you or just have it crowdsourced.

If you want to write the best story you can, you need to learn how to listen carefully to others, But if you want to finish a story, you need to learn how not to listen to them.

Keep Going Until Everything Feels Right

If you write something and some part of it feels off, you probably need to rewrite it. In some cases, you may sense that a particular scene doesn’t sit right. This intuitive feeling of discomfort can be subtle and easy to miss in the rush of writing. The temptation here, if you even notice the feeling, is to ignore it, but from my experience this is always to your and your story’s detriment. This is the voice of your subconscious or daemon or god or whatever you want to call it warning you that you are in denial, that some section of your manuscript needs to be fixed. Fail to heed it, and you are likely to find yourself regretting it later.

This doesn’t mean you need to write a perfect story. It’s okay if it has flaws. In fact, writers like Haruki Murakami say that stories are better with a few rough patches. But if you discover a flaw, it needs to feel right. Then you will know that its being there is justified by how the whole fits together. Whether a detail is solid or faulty, if your gut tells you its wrong, you need to reflect on it carefully. It often takes a while to realize what you’re reacting to and how to resolve the issue, so give yourself time. Focus on other things, but keep it there in the back of your mind as a job still in progress. Eventually, given enough patience and unfocused attention, the problem will become clear and you will know what to do.

Writers Are Completely Alone: Only You Can Decide When The Manuscript is Ready

As Paul Valery writes, “A poem is never finished, only abandoned.” This of course applies to other kinds of writing (and arts). If you’re a perfectionist, you may want to keep on polishing your work forever. If you’re impatient, you may just break down at some point and begin submitting. But if you keep polishing the manuscript endlessly, you’ll never get it out there, and if you submit prematurely your work may never be taken seriously. You must learn when the right time is to abandon your story, whether that means stopping before it is too late (as with the perfectionist) or continuing on until the time is right (as with the impatient person).

In drafting your manuscript, advice from readers can be helpful, but you have to be able to distinguish what to accept and what to discard, charting a course between closing your ears to criticism and taking everything to heart. This is no easy task because it requires that you believe in yourself. This includes belief in your ability to write. You don’t need to think you’re the next Tolkien or Orwell or Dickens, but you need to at least believe that you’re good enough that your writing is worth all the sacrifices it requires. You also need to believe in your ability to make aesthetic judgments about writing in general, and more specifically about your own writing. There is no rule or formula that you can follow in evaluating what you have produced. Of course imagining your audience helps, but you’re still left with a wide range of possible versions that your audience might like. To decide amongst these, you need to know what you kind of story you’re going for and consider each bit of advice your readers give you and pay careful attention to their reactions (because people don’t always tell you exactly what they think) and decide what fits. All this requires a certain degree of self-confidence and instinct.

You can get help from readers in the form of feedback. You can read lots of books in your genre and advice from writers you respect. And all off this will help you. But at the end of the day, the final decision for everything lies with you. Only you can decide what works and what doesn’t. Only you can decide when the manuscript is ready.

In the final analysis, writing can be lonely, and if one is to survive it, they must believe in themselves.

* * *

Eli K. P. William, a native of Toronto, currently works in Toyko as a Japanese-English translator. Commissioned by one of Japan’s largest publishers (Shueisha). William is currently translating a bestselling novel by Naoki Prize–winning author Ryo Asai. Cash Crash Jubilee is his first novel.

Eli K.P. William: Twitter

Cash Crash Jubilee: Amazon | B&N | Indiebound