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orangenfrottee · 3 years

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Hey ho there, feel free to ignore this and I hope I'm not bugging you as I awkwardly slide in here, but I must ask: if you had full creative control of the show, how would you run season 5? You can pick and choose whatever leaks you want to include.

Ah!!! Thank you for your ask <3 I might have spent a couple nights typing out my answer, but in short: I'd cherry pick old story arcs, bring back everyone I like and who doesn't run when they hear Riverdale's calling.

I'd definitely get some decent writers (I'm partial to Jane Espenson, but no idea if she'd be a good fit) and definitely some diversity. I might accidentally fire all men and then play up all their shitty recurring themes for fun as a weird inside joke between me and the show.

I think if they ever gave me creative control of the show it would swerf hard to the crazy and not leave that lane because honestly, i think that's what Riverdale does best.

So, where would I start...

Instead of giving season four a decent ending, I would start with an extra long pilot with the title 'previously on' where the best and most important bits of the teens' school lives is shown with a heavy focus on Jason and the Farm. Parallely, we get to see the lovestory of Chic and Charles. The episode ends with a few very short scenes of the prom where everyone's happy and pretty.

Then we'd start on the real season five. It's been seven years and our characters are older and more grown up.

The show would at first only present the present lifesbof our characters and the barest bones structure to keep as much a little mysterious as possible (but here I tell you what happened during timeskip, too).

Archie is often considered the main character, so let's start with him:

Archie went to the Army after school (though he didn't actually pass his exams and thus didn't graduate, Mr Honey was quite amused). On his most recent tour he met someone special: Eric, his new friend.

Archie was wounded in battle with a... giant mutated elephant with sharp teeth and hallucinogenic venom. Or something. He isn't really sure what happened, but he's got a huge new scar all over his torso. The abs stayed in tact, but oh his pride. During recovery he met new wheelchair user (and on occasion crutches) Eric who has trouble walking since his legs are misshapen/he only has one. Archie thinks Eric got maimed by the same elephant he was, but thinks it rude to ask.

For Eric I'm picturing Sabrina's Ambrose.

With his hurt pride, Archie can't stay with the military and decides to go back to Riverdale.

Eric doesn't have a place to go, so Archie invites him along.

They need a job and since Eric has a calendar full of sexy half naked firefighters AND since they both have abs, Archie decides that type of uniform is the perfect fit for them and trades his newly renovated and well running boxing gym against the old fire station Penelope Blossom owns. (Literally, they even meet at Pop's to exchange keys and sign papers Penelope brought that Archie doesn't even skim.)

The fire station is quite out of everything, but it has a huge pool Eric likes to swim in and a fire truck. To make ends meet Archie sells his sperm to the Greendale sperm bank.

Archie is of course in love with Eric but unfamiliar with the concept of bisexuality and struggles to identify his attraction for what it is. Eric is a foreigner to Riverdale (or is he?) and unfamiliar with the town's culture and quirks. Still, something going on in Sweetwater River seems to be related to him.

Archie and Eric share the Andrews' House - and in the house next door... live Gladys Jones and Polly Cooper!

After Jughead and Betty left for College Alice' horrid mom impulses settled on Jellybean who didn't stand back, grind her teeth and took it but instead broke Alice' teeth. Her and FP were not amused (though FP was also angry at Alice for being too strict). Alice moves out but stays as a journalist in town.

FP gets in trouble for being a brutal gang leader without a gang beating up criminals behind the boxing gym on tape. Not wanting to go to an illegal fighting club prison, he hides with Canadian Serpents behind the border. (Joaquin's identical twin brother and Ricky live there, too. They're happy there.)

Maybe he'd call once or twice with misleading wrong snake facts that have nothing to do with the current mystery of the episode but fit into perfectly by chance.

Jellybean was invited along, but she chose to stay because she thinks Riverdale is rad and the old Cooper House is luxurious as hell. Also, her mom came back to become the new Sheriff!

Nearly seven years in, Gladys still holds the position because no one legally qualified wants it and she manages to keep gang violence at an all time low for Riverdale. Plus, she and Mary Andrews are not exactly friends but able to work well together. When there's another serial killer running wild in town she has no problem with having another girlfriend of Mary who happens to be a skilled professional in the most relevant field take over for a bit. If needed, the Riverdale gangs are usually willing to add muscle to good causes, too.

Jellybean has left Riverdale for university and will only be present for holidays and breaks. She'd still be played by Trinity because I love her and honestly, real nineteen year olds look like fourteen year olds everywhere in the world. Also this gives the viewers 'Archie vision': he will always see his best friend's toddling baby sister in the young woman which makes her the only undatable (legal) female on this planet for him.

While attending Riverdale High she lead the Andrews Boxing Gym and made it the most successful gym in the area. It won't be a plot point in the show (apart from her being angry at Archie for just trading it against trash) but there will be framed newspaper articlesband the like in Gladys' house.

Around the time everyone graduated, Polly was released from Shady Grooves and is back to her old smart self - and really missing her babies! As Choni leave for whatever private college Blossom women have always gone to, Polly takes them and goes home - just to learn on the porch that not only did her mother sell her childhood home more than a year ago without anyone ever telling her, the college fund she never had gotten legal access to and planned to use for the twins is gone too and her sister left town without saying goodbye.

Gladys has always taken care of all the stray kids she found no matter how tight the budget was and now there's this young desolate mother with twin toddlers in front of her posh murder house she'd gotten for cheap and she has this new gig as sheriff. Of course, she takes them in.

They stay in Betty's old room at first, but they soon get to remodel the attic to give Polly her own room. At present, Dagwood has Polly/Chic/JB's old room and Juniper the one facing Archie's. (When Archie sees her in the room, he actually has a flashback once to when he and Betty used to be so young, but then Juniper turns her gead, stares at him really creepily and smiles weirdly. Archie will be somewhat scared from then onwards and be reminded of when everyone thought Polly might gave killed Jason. Juniper would murder.)

At first, Polly's a full time, stay at home mom, but once the kids are older, she starts working part-time: for Gladys.

It turns out they work amazing together. Gladys tends to jump to convenient conclusions and threatens violence way to freely. Also, she is intimidating as fuck.

Polly is everything she isn't: level headed (to a point, in comparison at least), brilliant at combining clues and steering people (remember how she infiltrated Thornhill and made Cheryl unknowingly assist in her snooping plans?). On top of that, she has these stepford smiles and all the ways to appear unthreatening drillend into her head. Honestly, she and Betty are quite alike. While Betty has the lockpicking skills and knows her way around cars, Polly used to be really into fashion (or something) and, with all her experiences at the Sisters, the Farm and Shady Groves, Polly knows psychology.

She started solving some of Gladys' cases at the breakfast table, but now she's officially a deputy or an advisor or something. They're essentially like FP and Jughead, just that Polly is an adult (and that she wouldn't be in a gang beating suspects up regularly).

(These characters would all be mostly in the background though.)

Veronica finally gained perspective on her relationship to her father and grew up. Hiram's cut out of her life for good. They won't ever interact. (In fact, Hiram either moved to New York or he had a minor traffic accident where he lost all of his memory for good and now lives as Ram Rod and works as a trainer at Penelope's newly acquired boxing gym. Everyone is confused about it but doesn't care to ask.)

Veronica is successful at whatever she's doing and doesn't plan on ever moving back to Riverdale, but maybe something is up at Pop's that requires her checking up on in person and she just happens to cross paths with Betty who is also just there for the weekend. And they haven't had quality time together for years, because it's so hard to stay in contact sometimes even with people you love so much you'd die to keep them safe.

If I could come up with something meaningful for them to catch up on emotionally, I'd have them sitting together in a booth at Pop's for a whole episode just talking (but I'm not that deep).

Veronica might be engaged, but we see it fall through without really getting to meet the guy. She mostly just talks to Betty about him on occasion but in a somewhat messed up way. Ultimately, she realises how she treats him in some regards like Hiram treated her and her mother. She wants to grow up further and not be like her father anymore. Since the fiance was only a trophy pawn, she breaks it off and concentrates on introspection/ maybe therapy for a bit.

Later that season her sister comes back and surprise: Hermosa embraced becoming Daddy.

(These would have to be restricted to two half episodes only, she definitely deserves story arcs that aren't about her dad.)

Careerwise: she has a couple businesses, maybe a restaurant chain or a franchise and she seems to collect startups. She reinvests a lot and has to travel quite a bit but can work remotely too.

Everyone seems to want FBI agent Betty and if I'd go that route I'd have her demask Charles as the fraude fake FBI who hires guns for hire and fake emergency teams while making up fantasy horror stories about serial killer genes to scare his biological family into killing each other that I wholeheartedly believe he is. But I also like Betty's interest in mechanics and would love for her to have a career in mechanical engineering. Maybe she switched majors at uni and now works for a company developing prosthetics. Maybe she tries to get Eric into joining a study. (I mean, prosthetic legs would help his work as a fire fighter...).

She's in town to visit Polly and the twins but after talking to Veronica she spontaneously stays in town. She can do her work remotely, really. The two of them move into a two bedroom 'shared bnb' (or whatever it was called in season two) and we finally get to see their friendship on screen.

Betty isn't in a relationship at the moment abd she's so into her work, she isn't looking for one either.

Jughead had broken up with Betty seven years ago and never really had a well working relationship after. He's grown obsessed with finding a way to recreate what he had with Betty.

Not in a totally creepy psycho way, he's simply not understanding that he might be sex positive and he had been in love with Betty, but he is ace and quite aro, too. It doesn't help, that he finds people sexually attractive on their online profiles just to be repulsed by the tought of even kissing them goodbye in person.

(I don't think tv is generally a fitting medium for this, but I guess he can narrate for himself and make it work.)

I guess he has to be an author. Obsessed as he is about finding love again (he wouldn't call it like that) he figures it had either been the location or the constant fear for his life. He chooses to return to Riverdale. He probably instantly moves with everything he owns to Riverdale (not that it's much beside a modern laptop, the typewriter and his camera).

Archie gives the great advice how Jughead is obviously still innlove with Betty, duh.

He of course runs into Betty some day, they end up investigating some random murder together and find themselves in familiar positions and kiss - but it just isn't there anymore. Jughead feels nothing and Betty isn't really into it either.

Veronica later points him in the direction of maybe not being allo (because she used to question herself as aro).

Funfact: Jughead would have failed graduation with Archie if Mr Honey didn't forge some records that weren't actually submitted from Stonewall (they claim all records were deleted during a power outage). Jughead knows and is deeply shamed.

Thornhill has been renovated! Toni is pregnant! Choni will be raising their kids (surprise, it's going to be twins!) in Cheryl's ancestral home. Choni are married and happy.

Toni has reopened the White Worm with Fangs somewhere at the Southside and yes, let's make her the official Serpent Queen. Let her work lots of social causes (remember toys for tots?), grey area rule bending for good and of course she works well with Gladys. I've seen talk about her being a social worker floating around and honestly, I think that works amazing. She's working the local cases (and a few unofficial ones) and I think she and Cheryl are registered foster parents. On occasion (like once) they'd be shown taking care of a random kid.

Cheryl used her College time to study two things: business and Riverdale town history. Remember how in season two she took so much pride in her ancestors because she believed them to be good people? She might be disillusioned but she is the Blossom heiress and her and Toni's as well as Jason's kids will one day inherit a better family legacy. She'll invest in Southside rebuilding projects, advocate for new town memorials, maybe rebrand some of the Blossom product lines. Something like that

She won't run for mayor yet, but she's definitely invested in (local) politics.

Of course the pregnancy was with artificial insemination, the donor was either an unsuspecting red head from the Greendale Sperm Bank or they use some of Jason's that has surly been saved to guarantee the Blossom line when everywhere was scary talk about sperm counts going down due to mobile phones.

In addition: the maple factories need worker bees! Cheryl has a few programs with Toni to get Serpents/random Riverdalians newly released from prison or just with bad luck into a steady job and a cushy appartement overlooking the ex prison on the Southside. Pop's is also participating. Ethel works as a landlady for said appartement complex.

Also, why not add a second Blossom-Topaz lovestory to underline this incest-adjacent show and bring back Toni's grandpa and set him up with Nana Blossom. XD

Then during this season's arc, the Blossom uncle's corpse will be found in the river and the mistery is whether the FBI will figure out who the corpse us and what happened or not.

I love Reggie. Since Varchie is unlikely thanks to Eric, him and Veronica rekindling their relationship would definitely be a possibility I'm into, but he also seems to have an interesting connection with Kevin and Fangs that could be built on.

He would definitely have a car he'd love very much and I think it would still be Bella.

I'm not sure about his career, but it wouldn't include his father's car dealership. Maybe he'd be a successful movie star just in town between movie shootings.

Kevin was doing something with musicals on Katy Keene, I think? Writing or directing? He was trying to nake it big, but some plans fell through. Now he's back in Riverdale. Luckily, they are just about to open Riverdale's first theater in the relatively newly built but forever closed prison. Next to the Southside Theater the complex holds a mall and the White Worm.

Fangs works full time as the manager of the WW that he co-owns with Toni. He meets Kevin again once he's back in town.

Sweet-Pea somehow ended up as a junior doctor at the Riverdale hospital. He spends all of his scarce free time at the WW.

Some of the background Pretty Poisons officially work for the police now. Different than Gladys, they are actually ccccc for the positions they hold.

Peaches works as a manager for one of Cheryl's companies. She's happily married and has a kid (or something).

How long in prison do you get in the US for standing in as the head figure of a crazy pen and paper cult that has literal murders committed in his name? As a blond white dude probably just parole? So honestly, once they actually bring his case to court (and they have nothing against him because anyone could have been under the mask at any one time and people know of different gargoyle kings) he's released of all charges. No one in Riverdale actually knows though since his case took forever, Bughead had already left Riverdale and Alice didn't step up to follow the case. No one wrote about it, so no one knows. They just assume that of course the guy will be locked away forever, he's guilty.

In reality, he and Charles have bought a house somewhere in a different street of Riverdale where they aren't quite known and have adopted a couple kids.

Charles meets Alice regularly for lunch and she thinks he's this workaholic FBI agent only living for solving crime. They play a long con game I don't know the goal of.

(They have been behind the tapes even if that storyline gets totally ignored. They pretend FP being in exile is their doing, but the tape responsible was just a random security camera in the area.)

Josie's plans in New York sadly fell through (I haven't seen any Katy Keene but I want her back)

Lot's of bonding scenes with her brother Kevin who's also back in town. The two share a flat and on occasion burst into song together. Since I've already invented the Southside Theater, maybe she'd find a job there, too.

Val and Melody stayed in Riverdale aftee highschool and made careers in town for themselves. Maybe Melody at city hall and Val as a marketing specialist at the farm, Riverdale's most outstanding new grocery mart. Half of all Riverdalians don't get the controversy of the name, the others either think it's brilliant or tasteless. (Kevin for example has repressed the nemories so gard, he doesn't get it. Josie is very protective and angry at Val for working there.) The store belongs to the eccentric redhaired Eva Everafter or whatever pseudonym Evelyn can come up with to thinly hide her identity behind.

Somewhere in it I'd throw in a few lines vaguely referencing older happenings like "I still can't drink tap water" and the very first time Veronica sees Archie again after seven years she identifies him through his ab muscles.

So in short: Archie would be very dumb, everyone else is just there.

Also: Pop's would serve 50% vegan burgers and milkshakes so I could dig in with gusto.

#riverdale speculation #riverdale fanfiction #riverdale #asks #arsenicpanda #fun #my writing #i guess

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introvertguide · 4 years

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North by Northwest (1959); AFI #55

The next film for review was the Hitchcock classic North by Northwest (1959). This movie has possibly the most well known surprise attack scene in American cinema involving a crop duster. I know, it sounds great. The film was moderately successful at the box office and marked the one and only time that Alfred Hitchcock worked with MGM. It was also only one of two VistaVision films made at the studio. Hitchcock was not a man to let studios mess with his work, so he famously refused to cut 15 minutes out of the movie for time and instead cut a total of 5 seconds worth of material. Before I go into any more detail, I feel like this is bordering quickly on spoilers so let me get the warning and the synopsis out of the way:

SPOILER ALERT!!!! THIS IS A GREAT MOVIE THAT I KNOW VERY WELL AND FEEL LIKE IT SHOULD BE SEEN BEFORE IT IS DISCUSSED!!! I AM GOING TO GO OVER THE FILM IN GREAT DETAIL SO CHECK IT OUT BEFORE READING ANY FURTHER!!!

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The whole story begins with a case of mistaken identity. Roger Thornhill (Cary Grant) is an advertising executive who is going to lunch to have a business meeting. He sits down and then remembers he needs to phone his mother so he summons the waiter to ask about a phone. Apparently the waiter had just received a call for a spy named George Kaplan and some thugs are waiting for a signal that will identify the man. Thornhill’s signal is mistaken for the spy’s and the thugs move in and take away the ad exec at gunpoint. They go to the home of U.N. Diplomat Lester Townsend and Thornhill is interrogated by a spy named Philip Vandamm (James Mason) and his right hand man Leonard (Martin Landau). Thornhill tries to say he is innocent, but Vandamm and the thugs do not believe him and stage his death by drunken car accident. Thornhill survives and escapes by car, but he is still drunk and is subsequently stopped and arrested by the Glen Cove police for drunk driving.

Thornhill sleeps off his intoxication at the station and calls his mother to get in contact with their lawyer. The next day, Thornhill tells the local court everything that he remembers happening, but nobody believes him. He even takes them back to the house and a woman claiming to be Townsend’s wife acts like Thornhill was there for a party and left drunk. Thornhill has to pay the fine (a whole $2), but he is still curious.

Thornhill and his mother go back to the restaurant where he was kidnapped and finagle their way up into the attached hotel to find the real spy, George Kaplan. It turns out that nobody has ever seen this man in person so everybody just assumes that Thornhill is Kaplan since he showed up at the room. The thugs have returned and try to recapture Thornhill still thinking he is Kaplan, but Thornhill is able to escape. He goes and visits the UN to talk to Townsend in an effort to shine a light on the situation, but Townsend is confused and says that his wife died many years ago. Suddenly, a knife is thrown into the back of Townsend and all the witnesses around think that Thornhill did it as there is nobody else to blame. Thornhill again escapes and is now running away and trying to find Kaplan in hopes of clearing his name.

I very quick scene of an American intelligence agency meeting reveals that Kaplan never existed and that this was a made up spy to keep Vandamm occupied while they figure out his plans. It is unfortunate for Thornhill, but all agree that he will have to become Kaplan and more than likely die by the hands of Vandamm and his men. Thornhill is unaware of this meeting and continues to run around looking for this non-existent spy.

Thornhill is able to sneak on a train to go to Chicago since he believes that Kaplan is at a hotel there. He runs into a lovely blonde named Eve Kendall (Eva Marie Saint) who seems aggressively interested in him and wants to help him hide out. She knows that he is the man who is being blamed for the murder of the UN diplomat and she seems to want to sleep with him (like a groupie)? She is very straight forward and it turns out that this is because she is working for Vandamm, who is also on the train.

In the morning, Eve helps Thornhill arrange a meeting with the non-existent Kaplan at an isolated rural bus stop outside of the Chicago. Thornhill gets there and finds...nothing? A guy shows up but he is just waiting for the next bus. The only thing around is a biplane crop duster that seems to be dusting empty fields. It dramatically turns and swoops down at Thornhill firing a backloaded machine gun. Thornhill is able to hide in the fields and then manages to get under a passing oil truck, which the biplane smashes into and eventually explodes.

Thornhill steals a truck and reaches Kaplan's hotel in Chicago to discover that Kaplan had already checked out and left before the time when Eve claimed she talked to him on the phone. Thornhill goes to her room and confronts her and she plays naïve. She tries to run away while he is changing clothes, but he quickly follows her down to an auction where he finds her with Vandamm. He insults her coldly and then makes his escape from Vandamm by turning himself in, but the police strangely won’t take him to the station and instead leave him in the care of a man simply called The Professor (Lee Carroll).

The professor finally reveals to Thornhill that Kaplan doesn’t exist and that Eve is actually a government agent working for the U.S. It is also explained that Vandamm has some sort of evidence/information that he is trying to take out of the country and will be leaving by plane from his South Dakota home that is in the woods right next to Mount Rushmore. The Professor leaves Thornhill to play the role of Kaplan and negotiates for Eve at the Mount Rushmore visitor center and she seemingly shoots him to look good in front of Vandamm. Luckily the gun is loaded with blanks (remember this gun, it will come back).

Afterwards, the Professor arranges for Thornhill and Eve to meet and Thornhill learns that she must depart with Vandamm and Leonard on a plane. When Thornhill tries to dissuade her from going, he is knocked unconscious by another one of The Professor’s men and locked in a hospital room. Thornhill is able to escape (he gets out of everything) custody and goes to Vandamm's house to rescue Eve from leaving.

At the house, Thornhill sneaks around and overhears that the sculpture that Vandamm bought at the auction holds some kind of microfilm. Leonard also reveals to Vandamm that the gun was a blank and it is decided that Eve will be killed on the plane. Thornhill must keep Eve from getting on the plane so he gives her a note revealing the plot. She is being lead out to the plane and she makes a break for it, meets Thornhill, and they climb out on to Mount Rushmore to escape. The Professor rushes in with his men and arrests Vandamm while also shooting Leonard.

Unfortunately, Eve has slipped climbing around on the president faces and Thornhill is attempting to pull her back to safety when...he is now suddenly pulling her onto a foldout train bed and he is calling her Mrs. Thornhill. The train enters a tunnel and the movie ends.

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This was the fourth and lowest rated Hitchcock film on the AFI top 100, but I opine that it is the most fun. The constant escapes and the almost relatable situation of a businessman getting wrapped up in something of which he wanted no part of makes this a very easy watch. There really are no slow points in this film and the action is punctuated by good comedy. Drunken Thornhill trying to explain what happened and then desperately bidding at an auction to bide time for an escape his hilarious. My favorite line in the film is when Thornhill and The Professor are waiting at the Mount Rushmore visitor center and Thornhill looks through a viewing scope and says “I don’t like the way that Teddy Roosevelt is looking at me.” That is awesome.

As much as Alfred Hitchcock was the Master of Suspense and the King of Dramatic Climax...his endings aren’t generally very good. He did a terrific job wrapping up Rear Window (1954), making sure all storylines were finished, but he really didn’t end North by Northwest (1959), Vertigo (1958), or The Birds (1963). The movie Psycho (1960) did have an ending, but it was an exposition dump that really was the low part of the film. I love all of these films and the suspenseful build-ups to the dramatic climaxes are extraordinary and put them in a class of their own, but I would not call Hitchcock one to demand a satisfying resolution.

I know that I have done it for every one of the Hitchcock movies on the AFI list, but I again want to give a shout to Saul Bass for the opening credits and Bernard Hermann for the score. The intro to a Hitchcock film puts you in the mood for a good story and the score keeps you interested all the way to the end.

There were some questions from my parents as well as from a couple of viewers about the biplane scene. How was it that the plane passed by and then machine gun fire followed? Well, the plane was a N3N Canary, also known as the “Yellow Peril,” and was a tandem seat training biplane that had an open cockpit. This means that there had to be a a guy in the back with a gun shooting backwards. These were generally converted for agricultural use at the end of WW2. The plane that blew up was a different plane (a Stearman Boeing Model 75 trainer) that was also used as an agricultural duster. Empire magazine rated this scene as the greatest movie moment of all time.

Now that the group has been watching so many movies from Old Hollywood, it became apparent to me how extraordinarily dirty the language was on the train between Roger and Eve. I remember reviewing this film in a college film course and the professor commenting over the scene. She mentioned that this was the only scene of the film that had any cuts and they were made by Hitchcock himself. I also remember Eva Marie Saint saying she was 26 and the professor said, “Ha! Plus 10!” This was a mid 20s female character (played by an actress in her 30s) trying to actively bed a character in his mid 40s (played by an actor in his 50s) who she has just met and spent a total of 5 minutes with. It was all sorts of awkward, and it was great.

So. Should this move be on the AFI top 100? Yes. Probably higher in rank. I was just thinking of another Cary Grant film that is higher on the list, The Philadelphia Story (1940), and how this film is so much more fun. I think that there are other Hitchcock films like Rebecca (1940) and The Birds (1963) that could be on this list, but I guess 4 films from a director that isn’t American is a good representation. North by Northwest is definitely a deserving example. Would I recommend it? Yes. Heck, you can borrow my copy as long as you bring it back. I have seen the film probably two dozen times in the last 20 years and I would be happy to see it again if it means somebody can experience it for the first time. I highly recommend checking it out for yourself.

#alfred hitchcock #cary grant #eva marie saint #james mason #north by northwest #afi top 100 movies #movie review #film critique #synopsys #best movie scenes #introvert #introverts #film stills #spoilers

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iamliberalartsgt · 5 years

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Ivan Allen College Professors Discuss 'Game of Thrones'

Twenty years ago, Janet Murray, Ivan Allen College Dean's Professor in the School of Literature, Media, and Communications, predicted many of the narrative shifts depicting in sprawling stories like Game of Thrones. (Photo Credit: Rob Felt/Georgia Tech Institute Communcations)

The Game of Thrones may be nearing an end for viewers of the hit HBO series, but it is sure to live on in the classrooms of Janet Murray and Richard Utz, Ivan Allen College of Liberal Arts professors who find the show an ideal platform to help students learn to untangle a complicated world.

Murray, Ivan Allen College Dean’s Professor and director of the Prototyping eNarrative Lab, sees evidence in the series' sprawling plots of the very changes in narrative structure she predicted more than 20 years ago in her seminal book, Hamlet on the Holodeck.

“The confusion we feel in viewing programs like Game of Thrones, and the immersion that draws us to them, are signals to me that these stories are outgrowing the classic television format,” Murray said.

Utz, professor and chair in the School of Literature, Media, and Communications, sees in the show "rich opportunities to examine our current interplay of cultures, politics, and social mores," and plans to use it as part of an upcoming class in the new Global Media and Cultures program.

Read more about what these professors have to say about Game of Thrones below, then visit the Georgia Tech feature A Science of Ice and Fire to see a video featuring Mariel Borowtiz, a Sam Nunn School of International Affairs associate professor, and two Georgia Institute of Technology graduate students and their simulation of what might have happened had the legendary Carthaginian general Hannibal had a dragon like Daenerys Targaryen's.

Merging Media: Breaker of (Narrative) Chains

More than 20 years ago, in her seminal book Hamlet on the Holodeck, Janet Murray, the Ivan Allen College Dean’s Professor, predicted the rise of a new genre of deeply complex narrative driven by the marriage of television and computer.

It would be what she called the “hyperserial.” Plot, backstory, and detail too fine to showcase in an hour-long drama would pass back and forth between television screen and computer screen, high-speed digital transmission of content would enable new ways of accessing stories, and narrative would, as a consequence, grow richer and more complex.

Nowhere has the promise of complex narrative storytelling been so fully realized as HBO’s adaptation of George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire novels. So it is no surprise that Murray and her students in the college’s Digital Media program have used those stories to test her hypothesis.

In recent years, Murray’s students in the Prototyping eNarrative Lab (PeN Lab) have prototyped a companion app meant to help fans keep track of the dozens of characters, backstories, alliances, and antipathies that make up the dizzyingly complex world of Westeros. Working with Murray, they also have built an application to help viewers track the many plots of Game of Thrones, and the fates of its characters.

The companion tablet app provides a moment-by-moment window into a Game of Thrones episode, automatically serving information about onscreen characters and their relationships without user intervention.

The Digital Story Structure Project graphed the fall and rise of characters, showing, for instance, the opposite fates of Daenerys Targaryen and Jon Snow early in the series, followed by the merger of their fates in season 7.

“I am interested in prototyping the future of narrative,” Murray said. “Computers give us a new vocabulary of representation, and I believe this will lead to ever more complex storytelling. We need more complex storytelling to understand the world and share our understanding of complex systems and multiple chains of causation, multiple points of view, and multiple possible outcomes.”

Maester of Humanities

Richard Utz, professor and chair in the School of Literature, Media, and Communications sees in Game of Thrones "rich opportunities to examine our current interplay of cultures, politics, and social mores.” (Photo credit: Rob Felt/Georgia Tech Insitute Communications; Game of Thrones image courtesy HBO)

To a medievalist like Richard Utz, professor and chair in the School of Literature, Media, and Communication, Game of Thrones is engrossing, if unsettling, fantasy, one of the most complex narrative structures ever attempted, and a “highly valuable admission ticket to the study of contemporary media.”

One thing it is not, he said, is “medieval.”

“None of the reasons for Game of Thrones’ popularity — attractive world building, thriller-fiction pacing, complex characters, sexposition, bait-and-switch plot, escapist fantasy, intricate power play, clever play with archetypes, diverse female characters, guilt-free barbarism and violence, Sopranos-like family drams — is intrinsically ‘medieval,’” Utz said.

While the global fascination with Game of Thrones is sometimes seen as a recruitment opportunity by scholars of the Middle Ages, focusing on the books and HBO show from a traditional medievalist’s perspective is too limiting and self-serving.

“It is a global phenomenon. It is the most widely watched television show in the world ever,” he said. “While it is set in a fictional past, it raises a host of issues about our past, present, and future, and provides rich opportunities to examine our current interplay of cultures, politics, and social mores.”

Utz has written about his aversion to the use of novelist Martin’s world as way to lure students into studying the Middle Ages.

“Classes on the Middle Ages rarely need advertising because of the general cultural love affair students have with medievalist topics,” he said. “Game of Thrones needs to be studied as a contemporary media phenomenon that uses a vague ‘medieval feel’ as one of its attractions.”

In fact, he finds it notable that one of the main characters, Sansa Stark, began the series seeking the trappings of the romantic ideal of the Middle Ages — princesses, knights, and all — only to see that fairy tale viciously taken from her at every turn.

“Watch out for Sansa Stark in season 8,” he predicted. “She will play a major role in how the story unfolds, as will some of the other women whose paths have been transformed throughout the series. Like in classical drama, it’s the survivors who, having learned many difficult lessons, are the real heroines of this story.”

But he does see Martin’s stories and especially the HBO adaptation as an excellent place to meet students where they already are — invested in stories that are indelibly shaped by our current experiences, while retaining the enduring fascination with all things premodern.

“The premodern is an eternal mirror. On the one hand, we like to shudder at the otherness of it to reassure ourselves that we have long overcome its negative features,” he said. “On the other hand, we get to go back, fictionally, to a life that seems so much easier and unburdened by the complicated rules of contemporary civilization. Both responses are illusions, but that doesn’t mean we won’t entertain them.”

Utz plans to use the series as a case study in an upcoming class in comparative media cultures, as part of the new Master of Science in Global Media and Cultures program in LMC and the School of Modern Languages. The program is designed to prepare students to pursue professional careers that require advanced training in communication, media, language, and intercultural competency.

Utz believes that the narrative complexity of Game of Thrones is exactly the right realm within which to model the kinds of practices his students need to succeed and find fulfillment in their future jobs.

“The global city of Atlanta is in dire need of a workforce educated to be skilled communicators across cultural and linguistic divides,” he said. “I am planning on an approach that will confront my students with a wickedly complex scenario that allows for a deep understanding of multiple governmental structures, leadership styles, gender and race relations, linguistic and cultural traditions, and human behavior, a scenario just as complex as the ones increasingly common in future work environments.”

Dancing with Dragons

It isn’t a particularly bold supposition that dragons are a formidable weapon. Still, we wondered: exactly how much of an impact would a dragon have on a battlefield? Chandler Thornhill, a graduate student in economics, and Matthew Redington, a graduate student in computer science, offered to devise a few simulations.

Both are currently enrolled in the course Modeling, Simulation, and Military Gaming, an interdisciplinary, project-based class requiring collaboration across a range of backgrounds and skills. Groups of students spend a semester researching and dissecting historical battles, using this deep understanding to adjust variables and outcomes through computational modeling.

Introducing fantastical elements may seem an inconsequential exercise, but to one of its instructors, School of International Affairs Assistant Professor Mariel Borowtiz, introducing pop culture elements allows students to connect with modeling simulations in a different way.

“One of the things I like about bringing dragons into a simulation is that you really have to go through the same research process,” she said. “You have to be rigorous in how you find data and how you make assumptions. Obviously, there’s not a lot of data available on a dragon’s efficiency but you can look at the information sources available as a basis to formulate and justify assumptions. It shows the process can be applied in all sorts of areas.”

So how much of a difference did the dragon have? By their calculations, roughly 70 percent of opposing forces were turned to ash.

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