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GRRM not knowing anything about Mongols is forgivable, after all that's not really the point of his book, and the notion that he means Dothraki to be like Mongols in the first place is based on a throwaway comment in some interview 10 years ago. GRRM trying to write a serious fantasy book about the consequences of warfare, and then understanding nothing at all about medieval warfare or medieval politics, is more of a problem worth discussing. But maybe Preston Jacobs is right, and all the weird stuff in the books is secretly hinting that it all takes place in a post-nuclear hellscape with cloning technology and aliens.
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Jul 18, 2021 08:13
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Is that dude still making videos? I haven't had one pop up on YouTubes recommend thing in over a year.
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Jul 18, 2021 10:05
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banned from Starbucks posted:Is that dude still making videos? I haven't had one pop up on YouTubes recommend thing in over a year. He comments on quite some TV series, like Loki now, for example.
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Jul 18, 2021 10:23
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pidan posted:GRRM not knowing anything about Mongols is forgivable, after all that's not really the point of his book, and the notion that he means Dothraki to be like Mongols in the first place is based on a throwaway comment in some interview 10 years ago. Spreading racist stereotypes being less problematic than being wrong about medieval politics  is a spicy take, I'll give you that.
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Jul 18, 2021 11:36
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 Out on the town having the time of my life with hundreds of written pages. They're all just out of frame, laughing too.
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Jul 18, 2021 13:00
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MalarkeyToboggan posted:I'm surprised he hasn't written Are you though? 
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Jul 18, 2021 17:39
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I love all the defensive posturing GRRM has done over the last 20 years-- making late night sketches, getting other authors to go to bat for him-- while everyone here in the Bad Thread and savvy fans everywhere knew that he was never going to write poo poo. And he could have prevented it if all the poo poo-talk really mattered to him, he really could have. The easiest way to shut up the critics is to empirically contradict them... and he couldn't even be bothered to do that. We are vindicated on a mound of ashes and hollow promises. A fat man licks his lips and counts stacks, and we hold triumph.
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Jul 18, 2021 21:42
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pidan posted:GRRM not knowing anything about Mongols is forgivable, after all that's not really the point of his book, and the notion that he means Dothraki to be like Mongols in the first place is based on a throwaway comment in some interview 10 years ago. He often cites the "when you have to choose between history and legend, print the legend" quote and admits that he did things like base The Red Wedding off of the more fantastical versions of The Black Dinner, so I just generally treat the books as fantasy based off of legends based off of what records we have available to us. mind the walrus posted:I love all the defensive posturing GRRM has done over the last 20 years-- making late night sketches, getting other authors to go to bat for him-- while everyone here in the Bad Thread and savvy fans everywhere knew that he was never going to write poo poo. And he could have prevented it if all the poo poo-talk really mattered to him, he really could have. The easiest way to shut up the critics is to empirically contradict them... and he couldn't even be bothered to do that. We are vindicated on a mound of ashes and hollow promises. A fat man licks his lips and counts stacks, and we hold triumph. I'll still put money down that he probably has at least like 500 pages of the last two books written, but they're in kind of a disjointed mess and that even if he were to finish WoW this year, it would take at least another year of editing if not more time for re-writes. I base this off of a combination of his claims to be a "gardener" and that he's already posted chapter excerpts. Usually when those two things combine, it results in the Hundreds of Pages of Nothing that I've had to proofread for prospective fantasy authors on several occasions. Coquito Ergo Sum fucked around with this message at 01:08 on Jul 19, 2021 |
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Jul 19, 2021 01:06
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Maybe, though if the released chapters are any indication, the 500 pages he has much include some 300 pages of hot garbage. I was maybe at my most GRRM-friendly when he released the Arya chapter, and even then it was so, so bad that gave me pause. Really stuff you'd expect to find being written by a teenage fan who only watched the TV show and wanted -more- of the bad things. "Well, it's going to open up with people talking about a dwarf's huge dick, because EDGY. And she will be doing a play about events lived by her family and other POV characters, because see, it's all CONNECTED. It rhymes! But then she gets another shot at bloody revenge! Because she's a dark avenger now and her targets somehow always bump into her even halfway across the world! And the last thing he hears is her saying the one-liner he said to her waaay back!"
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Jul 19, 2021 02:03
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Mercy is what convinced me that he’s a pedo.
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Jul 19, 2021 02:09
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It's gotta be tough to get back into the same writing groove after that long of a hiatus right? It makes sense to me that it'd read like fanfic.
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Jul 19, 2021 02:36
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It's also definitely true that he does not know wtf to do with the story. The timeskip he originally wanted is basically a cop to the fact that he didn't have anything plotted after ASOS and basically wanted to start telling an entirely new story. For all his reputation he really is just a TV writer at heart, complete with hack payoffs that he's now chickenshit to embrace because he knows it'll tarnish his legacy as The American Tolkien (god bless the idiot who coined that term). If anything punting the ball is the best way to keep people jerking him off until his unceremonious death.
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Jul 19, 2021 02:40
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I feel like in some weird way, authors working on multi-part epics who spend too much time on the internet often end up being too self-conscious about how fans are perceiving their work, and it can lead to that particular quality - that is, work suddenly seeming like fanfic, or oddly disingenuous when compared to earlier entries in a series. I feel like JK Rowling and the Harry Potter series actually was a victim of something similar, though she handled it somewhat better. Even so, there was a really clear demarcation point between books 4 and 5, which also coincided with a fairly lengthy hiatus during which time Rowling became acquainted with the internet communities and huge fandom that had sprung up around her work. Books 5-7 just felt... different, somehow less genuine and pure, and more like she was consciously trying to emulate herself. Stephen King also had a similar issue with books 5-7 of The Dark Tower, I'd argue - that one also fell apart somewhat - though unlike GRRM, he seemed to become preoccupied with rushing to a conclusion and finishing the series for better or worse expeditiously. In all three cases (GRRM, Rowling, King) I'd argue that a big part of the problem was the sheer length of time that it takes to write epic fantasy - its very difficult, as a writer, to maintain a consistent tone and tell a great story over such a tremendously long span of years and pages. It's a very difficult task to pull off, and I feel like they all tried to force the process, in a way, and failed in various ways because they refused to accept such changes organically. My example for the one epic fantasy series written over the long-term that an author allowed to happen organically, and thus succeeded by any measure? I'd say Ursula K. Le Guin's Earthsea series fits - she wrote the first book in the '60s and the last book in the 2000s, and nothing about any of those books felt forced. That series felt like I was on a true and genuine journey of discovery along with the author the whole way. I thought the last book (The Other Wind) especially was remarkable, because it was so deeply unlike most "last books" in an epic fantasy series. There were absolutely no expectations going into, no badly dangling plot threads, no sense of expectation or requirement regarding any of the characters or what they might do. kaworu fucked around with this message at 03:02 on Jul 19, 2021 |
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Jul 19, 2021 02:59
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GRRM has already straight up said he’s going to do tons of side projects after he’s done with TWOW so the deluded fans still holding onto hope that he’ll find some magic groove in his writing and work straight through to finish another book are gonna just be heartbroken again.
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Jul 19, 2021 03:30
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kaworu posted:My example for the one epic fantasy series written over the long-term that an author allowed to happen organically, and thus succeeded by any measure? I'd say Ursula K. Le Guin's Earthsea series fits - she wrote the first book in the '60s and the last book in the 2010's, and nothing about any of those books felt forced. That series felt like I was on a true and genuine journey of discovery along with the author the whole way. I thought the last book (The Other Wind) especially was remarkable, because it was so deeply unlike most "last books" in an epic fantasy series. There were absolutely no expectations going into, no badly dangling plot threads, no sense of expectation or requirement regarding any of the characters or what they might do. Thanks for reminding me I need to revisit Earthsea! I've been wanting to find a book to read and I've only read the original trilogy. Plus I'm wondering if I might get more out of the third book now that I'm older (it didn't really connect with me the same way the other two did when I was younger).
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Jul 19, 2021 03:31
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kaworu posted:I feel like in some weird way, authors working on multi-part epics who spend too much time on the internet often end up being too self-conscious about how fans are perceiving their work, and it can lead to that particular quality - that is, work suddenly seeming like fanfic, or oddly disingenuous when compared to earlier entries in a series. And then there are the scripts she wrote for the play and the Fantastic Beasts movies. The theory tracks.
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Jul 19, 2021 03:44
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Shimrra Jamaane posted:This is probably more of a reflection on me but I semi regularly go on the ASoIAF Reddit to gauge the temperature of some of the discussion and I find a lot gems that make it worth it. I think this reddit guy is more normal than freaks who hang out on a forum for literally over ten years crying about a book series they hate whilst also possibly having contributed to a pedophile incest "parody" fanfiction of said book series, but that's just me. Cheers 
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Jul 19, 2021 04:10
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Coquito Ergo Sum posted:I'll still put money down that he probably has at least like 500 pages of the last two books written, but they're in kind of a disjointed mess and that even if he were to finish WoW this year, it would take at least another year of editing if not more time for re-writes. I base this off of a combination of his claims to be a "gardener" and that he's already posted chapter excerpts. Usually when those two things combine, it results in the Hundreds of Pages of Nothing that I've had to proofread for prospective fantasy authors on several occasions. Every excerpt he's posted has been something he had written by the time ADWD released.
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Jul 19, 2021 14:34
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Writing in the style of ASOIF is probably pretty taxing to him. He's a writer who was used to switching it up all the time with short fiction, science fiction, vampires, etc,. Not only does the subject matter change, the style changes too. But something like ASOIF has to be stylistically, structurally, and totally consistent all the way through. He can't just bust loose a first person present tense chapter, but probably more annoying is that he can't reduce the level of detail he's established, which remains consistent no matter who's PoV is on screen and what they're doing. Tyrion eating weird myreneese delicacies is described with the same detail as Jorah's sword fights. It's got to be exhausting mentally. He could break the structure and speed the story up, but that's kind of what happened to the show.
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Jul 19, 2021 14:41
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I might be grossly misunderstanding the writing process here, but couldn't someone like GRRM skip over some of that absurd detail and then back-fill with the assistance of an editor? The books we've read are, functionally, a collaboration between GRRM and his editor. I don't know whether the publisher still employs the same person but there's enough GRRM-words out there for a good editor to be able to absorb and approximate his style. So what's to stop GRRM writing something like, in the case of Jorah's fight, "they fight but the Dothraki's hooked blade catches in Jorah's armour. Jorah disarm and kills him" and then working with his editor to expand it into something closer to his usual style? Even, if he's feeling super lazy, have the editor write it and send it back for GRRM approval? Is the idea that the gardening style means that he might organically happen upon a turn of phrase when describing the fight that somehow informs some element of Jorah's character that he will then build upon later?
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Jul 19, 2021 15:50
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Just give us the last 2 books but in Wild Cards format. I really don’t care about a lack of food porn.
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Jul 19, 2021 17:08
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Evil Fluffy posted:Every excerpt he's posted has been something he had written by the time ADWD released. I thought the general consensus was that the textual and circumstantial evidence is overwhelmingly in favor of the theory that every single 'preview chapter' for 'WoW' was in fact part of ADWD as Martin originally imagined it, and that his publishers/editors more or less strongarmed him into calling ADWD done - even though it wasn't. Hence why he had so many 'preview chapters' ready to go quite quickly, but nothing since, and why ADWD ends as it does. Martin has, in fact, written at least half a book less than he supposedly has because ADWD was released unfinished.
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Jul 19, 2021 17:16
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RoboChrist 9000 posted:I thought the general consensus was that the textual and circumstantial evidence is overwhelmingly in favor of the theory that every single 'preview chapter' for 'WoW' was in fact part of ADWD as Martin originally imagined it, and that his publishers/editors more or less strongarmed him into calling ADWD done - even though it wasn't. Hence why he had so many 'preview chapters' ready to go quite quickly, but nothing since, and why ADWD ends as it does. Martin has, in fact, written at least half a book less than he supposedly has because ADWD was released unfinished. Even funnier, some of those chapters were cut from AFFC during editing. They’re at least 16 years old.
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Jul 19, 2021 17:24
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Chomposaur posted:Thanks for reminding me I need to revisit Earthsea! I've been wanting to find a book to read and I've only read the original trilogy. Plus I'm wondering if I might get more out of the third book now that I'm older (it didn't really connect with me the same way the other two did when I was younger). Oh wow, yeah - it's very much worth revisiting, and Le Guin's writing style is marvelously lyrical and efficient. She really doesn't write quite like anyone else, and refreshingly the last book is probably the most well-written of the entire series, technically speaking. I generally think of Earthsea in terms of two separate trilogies, consisting of the first three books and the last three books. The third book (the last one of the first trilogy) The Farthest Shore deals a lot with mortality and the nature of death, and it's definitely the sort of book one might get more out of when older. It's also especially pertinent to that last book of the series I mentioned (The Other Wind) which is more like a sequel to The Farthest Shore than anything else, as it continues Arren's story more or less where it left off at the end of the first trilogy. Tehanu, the fourth book, is more like a sequel to Tombs of Atuan in that it continues the story of Tenar. It also ontinues Ged's story to some extent, too. Then, Tales From Earthsea which I appreciate more and more every time I read it, stands alone for the most part as a collection of stories; though the final story is more of a novella, and serves as a bit of a prologue to The Other Wind. I've come to like and appreciate the 4th book, Tehanu quite a bit more than I used. I first read it when I was like 12, hoping and expecting for something in the vein of the first 3 books - so I was of course DEEPLY disappointed, and didn't comprehend or appreciate what she was trying to do at all - of course, I had no idea what an awesomely self-contradictory genre-buster of a book Tehanu really was, and I've only come to appreciate what Le Guin was trying to do more as I've gotten older and read more fantasy, and realized just what an exceptionally bizarre fantasy story that really is. It's more like "anti-fantasy", especially devoted to tearing down the white misogynistic patriarchal aspects of the genre, setting them aflame, and then pissing on the ashes. kaworu fucked around with this message at 19:52 on Jul 19, 2021 |
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Jul 19, 2021 19:45
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Shimrra Jamaane posted:Even funnier, some of those chapters were cut from AFFC during editing. They’re at least 16 years old. So that’s why he lost interest
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Jul 19, 2021 20:58
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I took a literature class in college, and the professor talked about how cliched and formulaic fantasy fiction is (she had never read any), she then mentioned how of course Game of Thrones was different since it went against genre conventions. I had just finished reading the first book in the Earthsea series and I was screaming on the inside.
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Jul 20, 2021 00:18
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All this stuff about YiTi gives off big starcitizen.dreams.txt vibes
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Jul 20, 2021 00:25
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Whizzing Wizard posted:I took a literature class in college, and the professor talked about how cliched and formulaic fantasy fiction is (she had never read any), she then mentioned how of course Game of Thrones was different since it went against genre conventions. There's a special circle in hell that's nothing but literature/creative writing professors/students and you just take course after course after course. Barreft posted:All this stuff about YiTi gives off big starcitizen.dreams.txt vibes
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Jul 20, 2021 00:41
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Whizzing Wizard posted:I took a literature class in college, and the professor talked about how cliched and formulaic fantasy fiction is (she had never read any), she then mentioned how of course Game of Thrones was different since it went against genre conventions. She probably thought Twilight and Harry Potter were deep and amazing works too.
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Jul 20, 2021 01:10
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To be fair, I feel like Harry Potter is deep and amazing, just, like, by accident. It really is one of the most incredible and insightful depictions of late 90s End of History nonsense and of the Liberal Centrist mindset. Like if we didn't have tweets upon tweets of Rowling being a myopic bigot and lots of interviews of her being dumb, I sincerely and honestly believe future generations - if we manage to last that long as a species which lol at this point - would probably think Harry Potter was a brilliant and scathing satire on the level of A Modest Proposal. EDIT: And Twilight is just a terrible and heterosexual version of Carmilla where the author is too stupid to realize that eating people is only part of what makes Carmilla a monster and that her relationship with Laura is manipulative, predatory (and, again, in ways that go beyond eating people), and just generally deeply toxic.
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Jul 20, 2021 01:20
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RoboChrist 9000 posted:To be fair, I feel like Harry Potter is deep and amazing, just, like, by accident. It really is one of the most incredible and insightful depictions of late 90s End of History nonsense and of the Liberal Centrist mindset. Like if we didn't have tweets upon tweets of Rowling being a myopic bigot and lots of interviews of her being dumb, I sincerely and honestly believe future generations - if we manage to last that long as a species which lol at this point - would probably think Harry Potter was a brilliant and scathing satire on the level of A Modest Proposal. quote:EDIT: And Twilight is just a terrible and heterosexual version of Carmilla where the author is too stupid to realize that eating people is only part of what makes Carmilla a monster and that her relationship with Laura is manipulative, predatory (and, again, in ways that go beyond eating people), and just generally deeply toxic.
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Jul 20, 2021 01:46
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every flavour jelly beans is like, the peak of completely useless stupid products of late capitalism. like an internet of things washing machine except you eat it
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Jul 20, 2021 01:56
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mind the walrus posted:Even as a kid I remember something feeling "off" about the hype, subsiding under my juvenile appreciation of Every-Flavor Jellybeans and dormitories with changing staircases. The older I get the more and more I loathe Harry Potter and anyone who still holds to it as something meaningful or worthwhile. I remember seeing the first HP with a friend and as soon as the hook-nosed goblin bankers showed up I think my brain just gave up and shut down for a few hours. Rowling revealing herself to be a FYGM arch-TERF and adamantly defending it just kinda confirmed that yes, she really is a trash human. Evil Fluffy fucked around with this message at 02:02 on Jul 20, 2021 |
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Jul 20, 2021 01:59
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Yeah I glossed over the goblins because I remember thinking "wait so he's rich and not just the special... that's... well I admit I've never actually seen them commit to that one before; usually when someone's the special they just get taken care of. Huh." Then the movies came out and I was like "Even I know that's some anti-Semitic poo poo right there. No one else is commenting? We're just supposed to roll with it? We're not calling that out? Ok I'm just gonna roll with it."
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Jul 20, 2021 02:13
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Harry Potter is a story about the evils of racism wherein the racists are shown to be completely correct in their basic premises and the core thesis and central appeal of the entire franchise is how cool and awesome it is to be part of the master race. Also despite being about racism, there is not a single minority character of note, either an IRL racial minority or even a really notable Muggle (although I suppose, to their credit, the otherwise hilariously insane and bad Fantastic Beasts movies address the latter issue) further emphasizing that the racists are actually correct. But seriously. The second book has the reveal that the magical world of Hogwarts is *literally* built upon a foundation of murderous racism. The next book reveals that slavery is what enables the Wizarding World to function, and Hermione is seen as obnoxious and annoying for daring to speak out against slavery because it would inconvenience other privileged people. It's difficult to come up with a better parody of modern late stage capitalism.
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Jul 20, 2021 02:30
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I have a funny history with the Harry Potter books. I resisted reading them out of pure "bleh, not gonna feed the hype" snobbery. Then I got really sick during a trip and my girlfriend, who loved them, bought the first three to read with me since we couldn't do anything else, just stay in the hotel room while I recovered. That made them a bit special, though even then I noted (and joked) that it sure went a long way into making the horrible, soul0killing british boarding school system whimsical and fun. And that the 'fix' for nearly all of issues it presents is "how about YOU get rich and popular?" Also kinda hosed up that the Wizarding version of the post-WW2 period was basically "Welp, Magic Hitler is gone, let's just pardon all these nazi bigshots and return them to positions of power in our society, except for the ones obviously foaming at the mouth." Which, make no mistake, -was- a bit of a thing. 30% of the west german judges post WW2 were former member sof the nazi party, and a lot of other figures got a pass. But I don't think that was the point she was going for. Hell, even after their Magic World War THREE she lets the nazi family just walk into the sunset, because hey, their kids are gonna study with my kids in the future! Time is an endless repetition! But mostly, JK's shifting the books into "haha, funny magic shenanigans for kids!" into "Dark meaningful young adult story" was alwaus going to be really hard to pull off, and she still botched it in almost every way imaginable.
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Jul 20, 2021 03:09
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Barreft posted:All this stuff about YiTi gives off big starcitizen.dreams.txt vibes Oh you have no idea. https://www.reddit.com/r/asoiaf/comments/omteri/spoilers_extended_chapter_5_the_great_empire_of/
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Jul 20, 2021 03:18
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Shimrra Jamaane posted:Oh you have no idea.  I wish I cared half as much as anything about this dude cares about compiling stone makeup.
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Jul 20, 2021 04:28
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At least some GRRM mega fans are positing that he’s basically stealthily written his own Silmarillion into the main text of the series and have begun looking through it like the Bible Code.
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Jul 20, 2021 04:30
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"I've written maybe five words of High Valyrian..."
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Jul 20, 2021 04:31
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