---
title: 'Game of Clones'
source: 'https://youtube.com/watch?v=ei1QhjvNnVM'
video_id: 'ei1QhjvNnVM'
date: 2026-06-30
duration_sec: 2569
---

# Game of Clones

> Source: [Game of Clones](https://youtube.com/watch?v=ei1QhjvNnVM)

## Summary

Five years after Game of Thrones ended, streaming services have flooded the market with fantasy shows trying to replicate its success. This video essay uses Harold Bloom's theory of influence to analyze why most of these 'Thrones clones' fail creatively, while a few succeed by adapting elements rather than copying them wholesale.

### Key Points

- **The post-Game of Thrones media landscape** [00:00] — Streaming services and TV channels have been desperately trying to create the 'next Game of Thrones' by adapting fantasy properties with similar aesthetics, political intrigue, and grimdark tone.
- **Harold Bloom's anxiety of influence** [01:38] — Bloom argues that all poetry (and art) is a reaction to earlier work. Artists must 'misread' their predecessors to create something original, otherwise they produce derivative work.
- **Examples of failed clones** [05:10] — Shows like Wheel of Time, Rings of Power, Witcher, and Avatar: The Last Airbender copy Game of Thrones' structure, political intrigue, and grim tone without understanding why they worked, losing their unique identity.
- **Successful adaptations: Succession and Shogun** [31:30] — Shows that succeeded asked 'what if Game of Thrones but...' and adapted the core formula into a unique setting, maintaining their own thematic identity.
- **Critique of Bloom's theory** [36:00] — Bloom's framework is useful for analyzing capitalist homogenization in media, but his conservative canon and dismissal of other critical approaches limit its applicability.

### Conclusion

The struggle against creative influence is real, but Bloom's six categories offer pathways to originality. The most successful works use influence as a springboard, not a blueprint.

## Transcript

five years ago Game of Thrones ended
Game of Thrones ended 5 years ago that
all of that was half a decade ago we as
a society have not recovered and I don't
just mean that we haven't recovered from
the ending being bad although I
personally will never recover what I
mean is that we are still culturally in
the shadow of the show or at least
that's what every major streaming
service and TV channel has been betting
on as the show approached its conclusion
a bevy of Articles materialized asking
what will the next Game of Thrones be
well shows that are trying to be the
next Game of Thrones the next Game of
Thrones a post ComiCon appraisal of
potential heirs to the throne what's the
next Game of Thrones all the contenders
for Fantasy TV's Crown these 16 shows
desperately want to be the next Game of
Thrones everyone wants to be the next
Game of Thrones what exactly it means to
be the next Game of Thrones was a bit of
a fill-in-the blank did it mean to be
the next show that got a big audience or
one that fans obsessed over and analyzed
or did it just mean a successful fantasy
series or a show about political intrig
for the executives at media companies it
seems to have meant adapt any fantasy or
sci-fi property we have the rights to as
quickly as possible but make it as much
like Game of Thrones as we can get away
with HBO made Game of Thrones in a cave
and we are going to replicate it if it
bankrupts us now 5 years later our media
landscape is absolutely drowning in
Thrones clones
[Applause]
hey
fire I wanted to talk about um how
desperately we all of us need to keep
reading um you can't think at all
clearly or well without memory and it
matters a great deal what you remember
when thinking about artistic influence
it is impossible not to be influenced by
literary critic and legendary Krogan
Harold Bloom who wrote the anxiety of
influence the book is focused singularly
on poetry but I'm going to use it to
talk about art more broadly in the book
Bloom proposes that there is really no
such thing as an original poem and that
all poetry is in one way or another a
reaction to other poems artists
experience this as anxiety as they're in
a paradoxical situation you can't
improve as a poet without reading the
Poetry of those who came before you but
the moment you allow the voices of the
Masters into your mind they can warp
what is essential about you and you find
yourself filtering your thoughts through
the imagined thoughts of these other
poets how do you write a play that
doesn't sound like Shakespeare in the
17th century or how do you write a video
essay that doesn't sound like every
frame of painting in 2015 really how how
do you tell me how for Bloom the answer
is that it is ultimately impossible but
the struggle to overcome this anxiety
can be fruitful and is the primary way
that strong poets Define themselves as
strong while weaker poets languish in
creating art that is merely derivative
the strong poet can synthesize what came
before and transcend it Bloom describes
the relationship between the modern
artist the influenced and his precursor
the
influencer in both biblical and Freudian
terms in his biblical metaphor when
reading the work of the precursor an
artist glimpses heaven so to speak and
is also at that moment cast out from it
like Satan and thrown into hell but it
is there that Satan now independent of
God can at least attempt to make a
heaven Out of Hell make art that has the
spark of the Divine but really he's much
more obsessed with the Freudian stuff so
we're going to focus on that a little
more in Freudian terms the precursor
artist is the father with which the
modern artist has an edible relationship
with owing his existence to the father
and yet being jealous of the father's
position of authority and power so in
art one must kill one's
father Bloom's answer for how a writer
achieves this is by being a bad reader
I'm being a little phous but the idea is
that the artist must somehow
misinterpret the work of the predecessor
because if it was possible to perfectly
understand the predecessor's work then
you would get trapped in the swamp of
merely reproducing that work but in
misunderstanding misreading or in
Bloom's jargon Mis prison can kind of
think of it as mislabeling you arrive at
something that is an original
perspective on the precursor the artist
can then use that misunderstanding as
the Genesis for the their own work and I
think that this is an important thing to
talk about because I think there's a lot
of people out there and multinational
corporations that want to make something
new but they don't know how to look
beyond their influences and they're
struggling with that and that's
something that I feel as well so I think
that you know we're talking about
Thrones clones in this episode but we're
you know also trying to work through
this let's let's work through it
together Bloom proposes that there are
at least six ways that artists can do
this or have done this that can lead to
great art so yeah if Harold bloom had
been writing during the BuzzFeed era the
book would have been called six reasons
you're a
hack you can feel the Game of Thrones
influence in some of these shows before
they even begin it's right here in the
opening themes Wheel of Time the rings
of power foundation and even Shogun All
Copy the basic idea of Game of Thrones
intro with close-ups on CGI images that
are some kind of toy or piece of art
that is slowly building itself
throughout the course of the intro only
to pull back at the end to reveal the
full image but while these shows ape the
Aesthetics of Thrones they don't copy
its utility an underrated aspect for why
Game of Thrones achieved widespread
success despite being an extremely
complicated story is because of this
opening which oriented viewers in a
world and gave them a sense of where
everything was in relation to one
another many of these fantasy
adaptations are in desperate need of
some way to show a freaking map to the
viewer rather than making me Google it
in season 2 of The Wheel of Time parin
travels across a desert with three women
who are from a desert but not this
desert they're from this desert a piece
of World building the show does not want
to draw attention to in which casual
viewers will never Gro you know unless
they click on the explore tab in the
browser and go through the reams of Wiki
articles Amazon is so eager to show you
that the website defaults to this tab
rather than taking you directly to the
episodes like every other streaming
service how dare you Bezos just show me
the episodes and put a map in the show
it's okay HBO does not own the concept
of maps if you're going to copy
everything else just show me where the
AIL waste is nobody knows where anything
is the first type of misreading is what
Harold Bloom
calls look I'm going to try and avoid
Bloom's fancy Latin names for all this
stuff let's just call it the swerve to
Swerve is to accept the greatness of a
precursor poet only up to a point to
recreate or recapture some sence of what
exists in a great work of art but to
then suggest that it goes wrong
somewhere and to remedy this fault with
your own work this is is like a central
idea for him like all of the six
readings kind of involve this one any
reading of any text is a swerve of some
kind it is baked into the process of
interpretation extrapolating on that
misreading is to Swerve into some new
Direction you read X poem it gives you y
idea so you write Zed poem and if you
carry the one and multiply by pi you
won't be a disappointment to your family
Bloom tracks these kinds of revisions
through the history of romantic poetry
but given this episode is on fantasy
epics an example jumps to mind The Wheel
of Time often accused of replicating The
Lord of the Rings but anyone familiar
with the work will know that this is
only true up until a point that Robert
Jordan deliberately evoked the early
parts of the Fellowship of the Ring
before sending his Heroes on a very
different Adventure the two rivers is
like the shy a pastoral Paradise
isolated from the concerns of Kingdoms
and cities a dark lord has forces called
trxs a combination of two regular foes
in Middle Earth trolls and Orcs And A
number of beings called Fades which
resemble the nasgul the heroes receed
with the help of a wise magic user and
each escaped many dangers including a
daring River Crossing humans aligned
with the dark lord in a gritty town and
a battle with dark Forces in the ruins
of a Fallen Kingdom these early
references to tolken helped many readers
get on board with Jordan's story but
Jordan then swerves away from that
outline into a story with very different
contradictory
themes when your king receives those
plans he will redirect his forces to
your borders
and rally the support of the other
nations the water tribes and the air
Nomads and the entire world will turn
their attention to the Earth Benders so
for us it was about striking that right
balance of making sure you were true to
the DNA of the original but at the same
time we had to make it a serialized
Netflix drama which meant it couldn't
just be for kids it had to also appeal
to the people who were big fans of Game
of Thrones and so it had to feel
grounded and mature and adult in that
way too that's a quote from Albert Kim
the show showrunner of the new Netflix
adaptation of avatar The Last Airbender
and what struck me immediately about it
was how imperative it sounded it had to
appeal not we tried to appeal or we
wanted to appeal but had like this was
an algorithmic dictat make this show
like Game of Thrones or it doesn't get
made whether or not that was the case
behind the scenes I have no idea but the
influence is clear on the screen right
from the beginning of the show which
starts not with an introduction to our
main characters like the original
Nickelodeon cartoon did but with an
introduction to the politics of the
story we learn that the fire nation's
attack on the Aromas was actually
achieved by cleverly tricking the world
into thinking they were going to attack
the Earth Nation instead how little
finger of You by the time the two lead
characters qara and Ang are actually
able to talk to one another we've had 25
minutes of Throne Room scenes small
Council scenes and a public assembly
political Intrigue was pushed to the
Forefront of the story before any other
element this comes at the expense of the
more childlike humor and Whimsy of the
original show the running time for the
season is about as long as the season
which it is adapting but there are
dozens of plot lines which it does not
adapt but rather than simply eliminate
what it considers tonally unnecessary
for the new vision of the show it adds a
whole bunch of political Intrigue plot
lines there's a whole subplot in the
Fire Nation involving the fire lord and
aula and reveal in the final episode
that season bad guy Xiao has secretly
been working directly for aula to thwart
Zuko on top of that there's also a
tendency in the plotting to have the
kids seek the adults for help which
which is something children's literature
is well advised to avoid like when they
first find Ang they go to their Grandma
for help and when they arrive on Kyoshi
Island they go to the leader of the
village for help typically the child
protagonists of an adventure story
including the ones in the original show
are trying to get out from under the
control of corrupt or incompetent adult
characters that they get to exercise
their own agency is the whole purpose of
the adventure in those stories there is
a substantive difference between being a
kid and being an adult there is not in
the 24 show and could be 10 or 20 or 50
doesn't really matter he's made to act
as just another part of the political
landscape of this world rather than a
disruptive Force that's going its own
way Amazon's billion- dooll tax write
off the rings of power is similarly
crude in its attempt to inject the
spirit of George RR Martin into the
corpse of JRR tolken they have a bit
more leeway to do whatever they want
than some of these other shows as unlike
them the rings of power was not directly
adapting a story that was fully fleshed
out in another medium but is instead
stringing together and padding out
anciliary material that they had the
rights to kind of while edging right up
to the line of the stuff that they
didn't have the rights to It's
Complicated political Intrigue is
something that while present in The Lord
of the Rings wasn't exactly at the
Forefront yes the characters visit the
kings and queens of various Realms but
the axis of the conflict is much simpler
than in Game of Thrones there is good
and evil as real tangible forces in that
world and so when you visit a kingdom
that is in danger it's in danger because
the king is being corrupted by some evil
magic and not because of a
three-dimensional chess game between his
advisers so while it isn't completely
alien to have a political Intrigue
plotline in a Middle Earth Story the
kind of intrigue was very specific and
not particularly compatible with the
sensibilities of Game of Thrones yet
over the course of the Show's first
season there are an overabundance of
scenes of The Elven King scheming to
have gadriel sent away to valanor
because her endless search for Sauron
has fallen out of favor with the court
or the jocking for power of those in the
court of numor or the fatherson
relationship in the royal family of the
dwarves over how their people should
treat the elves and on and on and on and
what is deemphasized is often just as
revealing as what is emphasized despite
the rings of power being in the title of
the show their creation is entirely
secondary to the origin story of a
volcano erupting and yet that story
where Sauron infiltrates The Elves and
slowly corrupts them and forges the ring
takes up a mere 20 minutes in the final
episode but it's the exact kind of Tolen
in political intrigue that is completely
natural in this universe plot lines
focused on political Intrigue are a
little more at home in a series like
Robert Jordan's The Wheel of Time which
is also being adapted by Amazon but
coming out in the shadow of Game of
Thrones has influenced just how much
attention that part of the story has
received the wheel of time if you don't
know is the story of three peasant boys
who are whisked away from their simple
rural town and into a grand Continental
Adventure that forces them to become
Heroes of Destiny fighting against an
all powerful Dark Lord that description
might give you the the impression that
this is a pretty generic fantasy series
and you would be right The Wheel of Time
embodies all of the classic tropes of
the genre it defines them what that
basic premise might also inform you of
is that there is a limit to how
interesting or complicated the political
Intrigue can get in a story like this
The Wheel of Time is a story where the
opposite team are the dark friends who
support the dark lord it's binary the
real conflict lays in figuring out who
is secretly supporting the dark lord one
of the primary locations for The Wheel
of Time is is the White Tower where all
of these sorceresses live and constantly
Feud and bicker with one another and
it's a place that the show treats as if
it is their King's Landing this is where
the political jockeying happens where
many characters are investigating a
number of different Mysteries and where
you might walk in on someone having a
threesome what you don't get that much
of though is people learning how to do
magic You know despite the fact that
this is also you know a magic school
pretend that the show came out in 2011
and it would have treated this location
as if it was their Hogwarts shown us as
many fun classes of magic as as possible
focused on the students bonding with one
another and it would have done
everything in its power to deemphasize
the politics a while back I released a
big long video about the first season of
foundation Apple's attempt that of
Thrones clone the show adapts Isaac
azoff's science fiction novels and one
of the reasons this video exist is that
I wanted to make another video on the
second season which I found to be an
overall Improvement on the first but I
found myself Limited in just talking
about it in isolation it didn't fall out
of a coconut tree I have however shared
my full thoughts on that over on my
patreon so if you want to support the
show and get some extra content you can
go to patreon.com justr Just Sayan the
foundation novel series is myopically
focused on the political relationship
between the fledgling Foundation at the
edge of the Galaxy and the crumbling but
still powerful Galactic Empire so scenes
like game of thrones-esque intrigue are
built into the premise and not out of
the ordinary here what is uncanny though
is how precisely the feel of Game of
Thrones is recreated here I am Ru en
Joiner to the queen allow me to present
the doen of the trade leagues Prime
witness of the CLA Cathedral and most
excellent Queen sarth I first sole
descendant of dominion the problem that
show faces to a degree is that it is
virtually impossible for a television
show to replicate the scale of the World
building that Game of Thrones had which
benefited from 20 years of George R
Martin flushing out every nook and
cranny of Westeros with literally
hundreds of Royal houses and characters
Foundation had relatively light World
building setting up planets and peoples
for the purposes of one story and then
we never really hear about them again
the TV series does an admiral job of
creating new factions within the empire
for the Emperors to bounce off of but
all of this serves to create the
atmosphere of a Game of Thrones without
the depth of that
conflict Bloom's second form of revision
is a kind of denial the modern poet
denies the quality of the precursor poem
suggesting that there is some great flaw
buried within the work and that it is
misfired in some way let me correct your
aim the new poet says this Bloom calls
completion and antithesis a poet
antithetically completes his precursor
by So reading the parent poem as to
retain its terms but to mean them in
another sense as though the precursor
had failed to go far enough in his
pursuit of understanding the logic of
Dreams Sigman Frey proposed a theory
about language drawing on the study of
Egyptian by philologist Carl Abel who
wrote that in the Egyptian language
there are a fair number of words with
two meanings one of which is the exact
opposite of the other Freud seized on
this idea to develop the concept that
perhaps there were Primal words words
containing opposing meanings in other
languages and that these older words are
the more correct way to interpret dreams
was Freud right about the existence of
these Primal words no probably not but
as is so often the case with him he's
wrong in an interesting way and then
literary critics take his ideas and make
them part of their thinking so then you
have to go through the whole thing again
Bloom found worth in the concept by
saying a poet could metaphorically seek
out the Primal word at the root of the
precursor poem because then you could
discover its antithesis and produce the
negative form of that poem SL Primal
word that way you can make something
just as great even if it's saying the
opposite thing this often means
exploring what is taboo I think Tess
antithesis is a way to understand the
emergence and appeal of grim Dark
Fantasy Grim dark is a subgenre of
fantasy in works like Game of Thrones
which Adam Roberts called an anti-
tolken genre in contrast to the more
ideal real istic and romanticized
worldview of The Lord of the Rings Grim
Dark Fantasy is more cynical and
nihilistic it is also much much more
violent and the violence has a
transgressive element to it taking
something the audience recognizes and
injecting it with some
more perhaps the area where the
influence of Game of Thrones has
affected the rest of these fantasy
habitations the most and often to their
detriment is in their tone their
adoption of the Grim dark worldview
though author Robert Jordan did
originally consider writing The Wheel of
Time as a more brutal and violent Story
the direction he ultimately took his
book series was in a decidedly more PG13
way there is violence in his stories but
it is often delivered in a more poetic
or ambiguous way rather than focusing on
the blood and gore of it all Rand the
protagonist learns different fighting
Maneuvers and he will often just list
them during a fight scene and it's up to
the reader to interpret how they want
the cat on hot sand or the king fisher
takes a silver back to look the TV show
on the other hand
[Applause]
our brutal bloody fights in the show all
captured in gruesome detail right from
the pilot episode comic relief character
Tom Marilyn who is supposed to be a
jolly Bard is omitted from the early
episodes of the show which makes all of
the events of the first few episodes
that much darker and when the characters
do sing a song to one another it is
Solemn and sad rather than an island of
joy and hope that Tom usually brought to
the story The Character does appear
later in the story in a a truncated way
but even still is made darker and edgier
and more aggressive than his book
counterpart his boots have Spurs he's a
cool Clint Eastwood cowboy guy Tom's
absence might not have been so keenly
felt to the show not also felt the need
to give parents character an even darker
Edge as he is suffering under a cloud of
guilt for the entirety of the first
season because he accidentally killed
his wife in the first battle an event
that is an invention of the show
everyone is mopy but parin is extra mopy
this is an adult show it's not for kids
it's [ __ ] adult the show adapts the
plotline of a Gwen being captured by the
Shan Chan in the second season where
she's forced to wear a magic collar that
essentially turns her into a
mind-controlled slave you can bet that
the Amazon show would turn this
relatively small subplot into a
multi-episode torture porn set piece
that evokes Theon being tortured by
Ramsay but whereas theon's torture
completely defined that character for
the rest of Game of Thrones in The Wheel
of Time Books awen and the other female
characters subjected to the magic collar
are right back to adventuring which is
an element of the story that I think is
open for some criticism and some
Revision in an adaptation I'm not
critiquing the fact that they did this
but more just highlighting that it was
done I don't know how Amazon will
characterize awen in future Seasons but
it will certainly be harder for them to
make this plot line have as much
consequence as the Ramsey plot line did
on Theon because that isn't what's in
the source material which means they'll
have to do a lot more work to make it
fit with the rest of the plot lines so
with Bloom's first two strategies the
poet is seeking to Grapple with the
precursor but is still adopting their
forms in Bloom's third type of influence
the poet attempts to break away from
that which came before Bloom argues that
in their struggles to overcome their
precursors poets feel something akin to
Freud's conception of The Uncanny
something repressed which recurs for the
poet the fear of repetition of merely
copying what has come before can be
uncanny and Inspire them to end this
compulsion like suppressing a nervous
tick which cannot fully be erased the
important words there were recurs rep
ition compulsion in storytelling those
are tropes and it's those tropes that
the newcoming poet wants to break for an
example of this when describing the
ideas behind his work George R Martin
said the war that tolken wrote was a war
for the fate of civilization and the
future of humanity and that's become the
template I'm not sure that it's a good
template though the tolken model LED
generations of fantasy writers to
produce these endless series of dark
Lords and their evil minions were all
very ugly and wore black clothes but the
vast majority of Wars throughout history
are not like that Martin recognized a
Trope in the genre and found a way to
break that compulsive repetition
creating something new in the process a
key part of why the battle for power
Works in a song in ice and fire is
because of its structure with each
chapter focusing on a different
character and with characters on every
side of a conflict while the Starks are
the characters you generally root for
they aren't the only characters that
have the audience's sympathies even and
especially when the characters aren't
virtuous we understand them and want to
see them survive our conflicting
loyalties make makes the wars compelling
as we don't know who is going to make it
out of each of the conflicts this
structure is almost perfectly designed
for Television TV shows Thrive by having
a plots and B plots and CDE plots each
playing in Tandem and cross cutting
between them keeping the audience
engaged in at least one of the stories
increasing the chances that they'll keep
watching Game of Thrones did not need
much structural adjustment to fit in the
mold of an HBO drama Thrones clones on
the other hand have attempted to inject
the structure into stories that weren't
built for them or in ways that don't
understand why this worked for Game of
Thrones in the first place for instance
the first season of the most expensive
show ever made follows four concurrent
plot lines galadriel's initial mission
to find the dark lord Sauron gets
diverted to numor elron goes on a
diplomatic mission to the Dwarven
kingdoms the people of the Southlands
struggle to Stave off an orc Invasion a
stateless wizard is discovered by a
group of halflings and discovers that he
is good I'm
good the structure is strange for a
story so Keen to remind its viewers that
it is a prequel to The Other Middle
Earth stories like while the Lord of the
Rings did eventually have a story that
branched off into several other plot
lines it began solely with The Hobbit
characters and got the audience to see
the big magical world through their tiny
innocent eyes A Game of Thrones also did
this setting most of its first 10
chapters in Winterfell but as is the
case with these shows replicating the
scale of late stage Thrones they also
copy the structure of a late Stage
episode without the structural
Foundation that got us there other than
the flimsy connection of the characters
all seeing the same meteorite the viewer
has little reason to understand why the
Southland story is important to what
Elon is up to or how the halflings
marching through a forest connects to
gadriel at Sea they simply cut to a
different story and expect the audience
to trust that it'll all connect and this
whole big weird structure doesn't reap
the benefits that Thrones did by having
the audience question their own rooting
interests a major reason for George R
Martin to tell his story the way that he
did was to break the simple good versus
evil binary that exists in a lot of f
stories and to have us empathize with
characters on every side of a conflict
rings of power has four stories about
four generically heroic characters who
are never in any real conflict with one
another The Witcher is an adaptation of
the fantasy series The Witcher by polish
writer Andre sekowski and while it
definitely already shares a lot of the
same DNA as Game of Thrones as they're
both Grim darks and have plenty of
political scheming The Witcher show
leans into those similarities rather
than highlighting what is different
about them for instance The Witcher is
essentially a hard Boral detective story
plopped into a fantasy setting in each
short story geralt is confronted with
some sort of mystery involving some kind
of magic or Monster spends the story
investigating the clues interviewing
suspects and eventually unmasking or
fighting whatever evil force exists in
the story from that description you
might conclude that The Witcher series
ought to be a police procedural you know
a 22 episode season with sand alone
stories where the main focus is on
solving a mystery we're in the wrong era
for that though instead the first season
of The Witcher is Eight Episodes long
each 1 hour and cuts between three
different stories the main gimmick of
the first season is that the three
stories following geralt Siri and
yennefer respectively are all happening
at different times and it isn't until
the final episode that they're all
brought into the same moment this
creates a weird tonal pacing issue where
the geralt plot line is adapting those
police procedural esque Standalone
stories from the first pair of books
while the Siri and yennefer story lines
are serialized Prestige TV type plot
lines to the show's credit sometimes
these stories are the ially linked like
this episode which crosscuts between
geralt battling arriga which is actually
a girl that has been transformed into an
evil creature and yennefer who was
undergoing her own transformation or
this episode where both plot lines are
dealing with some sort of secret Shape
Shifter other times though the various
stories hinder one another the pilot
episode adapts the short story the
Lesser evil which sees geralt weighing
the value of two lives against one
another two people who are each asking
him to kill the other and it's up to him
to see through each of their lies and
figure out what the Lesser evil is this
climax is with geralt getting into a
brawl in the middle of town that turns
into a massacre for which he will
forever be known as The Butcher of
blavin but interrupting that plotline is
the Battle of cintra where we watch a
gruesome Battlefield Clash the
destruction of an entire castle and the
mass suicide of the whole ruling class
of the country by the time you get to
geralt murdering 12 people in a
courtyard it feels quaint geralt's big
dilemma is made small by the scale of
what's happening between the cuts hey
there's a pun now I do understand the
logic behind structuring the season this
way from a capitalist perspective The
Witcher is a popular book series but it
is a mega popular game series and in the
games yennifer and Siri are just as
popular as geralt himself and I can
imagine the frustration a lot of people
would have had if they turned on The
Witcher show and it didn't have Siri in
it for like two seasons so that's an
influence on these decisions that has
nothing to do with Game of Thrones at
the same time the sense I get from the
show is this desire to speed through the
short stories as quickly as possible so
that they can get to the big important
stuff you know of Siri being the chosen
one etc etc and in the process the show
loses a lot of the color and humor that
these stories possessed in favor of a
more consistently depressing Grim dark
tone for instance one of my favorite
stories in the collection is the eternal
flame in that story geralt and dandelion
are helping a halfling merchant who was
assaulted on the road by a Doppler a
shape shifter who stole his identity and
his horses which he then sold the
Doppler then uses that money to buy a
bunch of seemingly worthless products s
and the merchant thinks that his
business and reputation have been ruined
but then they slowly realize that
everything the Doppler bought was soon
to Skyrocket in value because of some
geopolitical shift that nobody else knew
about you know there was a coup over
here and it caused the price of so and
so to jump but now rather than being
broke he's Rich it's probably the
funniest of The Witcher stories and it's
pretty low stakes fun it's also one of
the only short stories that wasn't
adapted at all in the Netflix series
they did however include the Doppler
character himself but rather than being
a mischievous little Scamp he's a
bloodthirsty sociopath and he's a plot
device in a you guessed it political
Intrigue
plotline try as he might the latecomer
poet cannot fully exercise himself of
the precursor's influence and even
forgetting is anything but a liberating
process Bloom argues that even if you
try to forget the influencer that
they're you know they're still hanging
around there in your mind somewhere
every forgotten precursor becomes a
giant of the imagination total
repression would be healthy but only a
God is capable of it so if a poet cannot
become a God then he can diminish the
godhood of another and that is Bloom's
fourth revisionary ratio demonization
the word is taken from the Greek yeah
we're doing this Dion and it is distinct
from the Christian demon you are
probably thinking about Greek Dions were
lesser deities and guiding Spirits in
one of Bloom's later works the diamond
knows he often uses the phrase uh
demonic Muse and Muse might be an easier
word to Grapple with here it's closer to
what he's really talking about so Muse
the precursor poet becomes a Divine Muse
in the mind of the new poet and unable
to rid themselves of their Eternal
presence strong poets attempt to
diminish the impact of those who came
before with a precursor created
something Sublime a new poet will create
a counter Sublime something that
suggests the precursor was weaker than
previously thought in essence this will
make the son the latecomer poet more of
a diamon and the precursor more of a man
so you're kind of trying to become your
own muse while also suggesting that hey
that other guy he's barely even ause
anyway forget that other forget that
other guy in the dark Knight The Joker
Is both inspired by and hateful of the
Batman and seeks not to kill him but to
bring him down in the minds of the
people of Gotham that is the tense
relationship between precursor and
latecomer poet in Bloom's conception of
things for an example of this we can
look no further than George R Martin
again and his relationship to his great
Muse and the Muse of all fantasy
literature Jr tolken ruling is hard this
was maybe my answer to Tolen whom as
much as I admire him I do quibble with
the Lord of the Rings had a very
medieval philosophy that if the King was
a good man the land would Prosper we
look at real history and it's not that
simple Tolen can say that Aragon became
king and reigned for a 100 years and he
was wise and good but tolken doesn't ask
the question what was Aragon's tax
policy did he maintain a standing army
what did he do in times of flood and
famine and what about all these Orcs by
the end of the war Sauron is gone but
all of the Orcs aren't gone they're in
the mountains did Aragorn pursue a
policy of systemic genocide and kill
them even the little Orcs in their
little orc crads here we can see Martin
lay out a Mis prison of tolken like it
is a misreading of tolken to start
asking all of these questions but they
are fruitful misreadings because they
lead Martin into the blind spot in
tolken work the result is that Game of
Thrones does take the Lord of the Rings
off the pedestal a little bit no longer
makes it the unquestioned idol of the
genre that is dioniz it's Martin's Grim
dark counter Sublime to tolken romantic
Sublime in doing this Game of Thrones
influenced the way that tolken can be
read and emulated there is a naivity to
tolken that can no longer be enjoyed in
in the same way that it used to be
looking over the TV landscape at the
shows that have attempted to tap into
the Game of Thrones audience the ones
that have been the most successful in
every sense of the word are the ones
that have asked what if Game of Thrones
but what if Game of Thrones but it takes
place in modern day and instead of a
medieval Kingdom they're fighting over a
media Empire and instead of it being a
drama it's got three dick jokes a minute
Shogun was written long before Game of
Thrones was a thing but the impetus to
remake it is at least partially a
byproduct of the success of Game of
Thrones and instead of trying to be the
next Game of Thrones the show has its
own thematic and visual identity it is
as if they said what if Game of Thrones
but it's historical fiction and the
scale of the conflict is much less
politically complicated and we focus way
more on the relationship between a
limited number of characters and the
lighting is really good the first four
categories that Harold Bloom lays out
are all basically different ways to have
a take on your influencer's work rather
than merely trying to replicate what
came before you can use a familiar setup
to then chart A New Path or try to tell
a similar story but with the opposite
tone or question the tropes of a
particular kind of art and then break
them or question the underlying
assumptions in a work and then critique
them no matter which category you put
Shogun and succession into and there's
arguments to put them in several
different ones because boom's categories
are pretty loose and overlapping the
shows are hits because they have unique
identities merely using the familiar
mold of rulers competing for power as a
building block Game of Thrones inspired
many shows during its run but the arms
race really started after the show ended
except the show never really ended the
vacuum that a lot of these shows thought
they were going to fill didn't really
exist because HBO filled that void
itself with House of the dragon and with
even more spin-offs on the way you know
the king is dead but long live the king
you can't clone Thrones better than
Thrones bones but okay wise guy what if
everything goes right and you actually
get over your ex-girlfriend I mean you
actually get over your influences isn't
that possible please tell me it's
possible well then you've stepped into
Bloom's fifth category self-
purgation where other forms of
struggling with the precursor have
avoided the issue the contest between
the two poets you know have allowed the
lomer poet to get away with just
commenting on the precursor or trying to
repress the precursor this step in the
process is what Bloom calls the contest
proper the match to the death with the
dead you know if nothing else Bloom is
fun to read empowered by their victory
over the precursor the poet will seek to
purge all outside influence from their
work to be the dominant will and voice
of their art Bloom Compares this to
religious aestheticism practices of
severe self-discipline the strong poet
in his dionic elevation is empowered to
turn his energy upon himself and
achieves at terrible cost his clearest
victory in wrestling with the mighty
dead in doing so however the poet
becomes not just Prometheus but
narcissus solop cystic in their
inspiration having become Godlike in
step four the poet now worships herself
only the truly strong poet can go on
being both making his culture and partly
contemplating his own central place in
it but for this contemplation he must
make a sacrifice and the sacrifice is
narrowing the creative circumference of
severing oneself from the lot of history
you've closed yourself off from the
force okay this basically means not
letting yourself be influenced by
anybody else you're only influenced by
yourself for a Time the poet can go on
creating works of greatness while living
on this island of creative inspiration
this Purgatory but writing poems is a
purgation that drains more than it
replenishes if the poet does not
eventually go back to to The Well of
inspiration they will die of thirst the
example that jumps to mind immediately
for me is Star Wars Star Wars you know
Star Wars Star Wars started as a
creative fusing of Pulp Cals space
Fantasy World War II action Samurai
movies Arthur and Legend and more then
it became one of the most successful
media franchises in the world and for a
while there only knew how to reference
itself and in this writer's humble
opinion only became interesting again
when it takes in new
influences okay so we talked a lot about
Herold bloom and his theories about
influence but was he you know right is
the anxiety of influence really the
primary way we should analyze the
relationships between different pieces
of art I've certainly had my fun
indulging all of Herold Bloom's
classical metaphors of Epic biblical
struggle but is it all just a bunch of
pseudo psychoanalytical hogwash is
Harold bloom a Visionary of his time or
what Legions of critics have called him
a pretentious windbag no other
well-known literary critic elicits the
kind of Praise or vitriol and not in
equal measure as does Herold Bloom the
attacks against Bloom and his theories
come on multiple fronts first is that
bloom is a conservative defender of the
western Cannon a cannon that is
dominated by white men in a strict
lineage from John Milton to Wallace
Stevens with little eye for anything
else that exists outside of that like of
course Bloom would tend to think that
it's important that poems are in
conversation with one another when he
only elevates the poems that were in
conversation with one another Bloom's
folus is not ideologically neutral
regardless of what he'd like us to think
in his preface to the second edition of
the anxiety of influence Bloom rails
against other forms of literary
criticism calling them the schools of
resentment basically poetry was really
freaking awesome before all of these
damn feminists and woke social justice
Warriors came along and ruined it with
their postmodern neo-marxist Hokum when
Bloom tells us that after 40 Years of
teaching in the academy he now finds
himself surrounded by professors of
hipop by clone of galic Germanic Theory
by ideologues of gender and the various
sexual Persuasions by multiculturalists
unlimited and that none of these Renters
of the aesthetic value of literature are
going to go away it is easy to forget
that he is talking about literature and
not the Ebola virus [ __ ] got him
though Bloom branded his opponents with
the word resentment there is a great
deal of projection going on because
nobody resented quite like Bloom he
resented the way that all of these other
forms of criticism didn't Focus on the
text itself in his mind but that they
tried to put the text into historical or
social or political contexts the anxiety
of influence is stop putting politics in
Star Wars the book Bloom's writing is an
attempt to turn back the clock on all of
these other schools of criticism
scaffolding that other critics could use
to focus solely on aesthetic
appreciation of poetry the connections
between poets Bloom took the need to
create his own system to a comical
degree in his disagreements with poet
John Ashbury John Ashbury was a
contemporary of Bloom's and Bloom helped
raise ashbury's profile but Bloom and
Ashbury disagreed immensely over
ashbury's own place in literary
tradition Bloom said that Ashbury who is
not likely to be pleased with this
observation is at his best when he dares
to write most directly in the idiom of
Stevens whereas Ashbury argued broadly
against big theories that explain the
universe as a way to understand poetry
and that the very existence of those
kinds of Frameworks can be limiting
forcing poets to write in ways they
think will get critical attention in
response Bloom echoed something like the
death of the author arguing that poets
don't really know themselves and that it
takes a Critic to clarify things and
while that may have an element of Truth
it doesn't mean Bloom specifically is
right about Ashbury all of that is to
say not everyone agrees with this strict
list of poets passing the torch of
influence including poets that are on
the list there are plenty of criticisms
to be had of both Bloom and his system
so perhaps the question to ask isn't is
this right but where is it useful I have
two in aners Bloom developed this system
to analyze what he saw as some of the
most Sublime works of art ever created
so I think it would upset him immensely
to apply it to capitalist hogwash but
unfortunately that's where I think it's
best applied capitalist incentives
demand that things be produced and
reproduced and reproduced and repackaged
and remade and resold and rehashed
Thrones clones are just one small part
of the wider Trend pushing creatives
towards a homogenized media landscape
that is only set to become even more
homogenized with the rise of AI leave it
to the machines and the spreadsheets and
they have no qualms about cloning the
last big thing to make the next big
thing it's by feeling the anxiety of
influence that artists can push back
against those demands and maybe Bloom's
six categories can be Pathways to
originality for someone out there maybe
they can be that for me I've got to be
careful I think of accusing other
projects of unoriginality while making a
video essay here on youtube.com I didn't
invent this form and while I'm immensely
proud of my videos I don't think they've
broken the mold either so I'm taking
this subject as a moment for reflection
on my own creative shortcomings because
I think I've still got a lot to say here
but I want to start doing it in a way
that pushes the boundaries what exactly
that means I don't know yet but I hope
you'll stick around with me and find out
I've forgotten something though we've
only gone over five of Bloom six
categories we've still got to talk
about this one one's the most
interesting of Bloom's types of
revisions and also the most plainly
absurd this is where the poet truly
overcomes the anxiety of influence no
longer will they struggle with the
precursor try to subvert them disparage
them in this final step the poet invites
comparisons once more between their work
and the work that influenced them and is
finally judged the greater then a weird
thing happens we begin to interpret the
influence non- chronologically we read
the precursor as if they were influenced
by their own successors we read tolken
as if he was inspired by Martin should
that be your goal as a creative I don't
know it feels too Petty too down in the
weeds why are you grappling with ghosts
truly escaping the anxiety of influence
would mean releasing the need for this
kind of validation from critics an
audience or history accepting the
inevitability of influence without
transforming it into a death match make
art for its own sake and the anxiety
will pass
so that's enough about the anxiety of
influence it's time to talk about the
anxiety of
influencers aka me videos like this take
an enormous amount of time and effort
and while I love making these videos it
just is the reality they take so much
time and work uh so if you've enjoyed
what you've seen if you got some use out
of it then I hope you'll consider
supporting this channel on patreon every
pledge goes a long way to helping me
make these videos not only faster but I
think more interesting and weirder and
about you know maybe more obscure topics
could really use your help there and not
only will you be helping me by
supporting the channel but there's also
a bunch of patreon exclusive stuff over
there so while I've been posting to
YouTube less and less I've been posting
to patreon more and more I feel that
it's just a better place for me to post
just some quick thoughts on things so I
have a bunch of movie review type videos
over there I've got a whole video on the
second season of foundation which is a
bit of a sequel to a video I made a
couple years ago we got reviews of Dune
in Civil War and Deadpool and Wolverine
it's been fun go check it out uh other
than that uh hope you're having a nice
day and keep writing everyone