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pidan posted:I think he legit wants to finish ASoIaF but either he's being too perfectionist about it or he just can't bring himself to write at all. If he just didn't care, he's had a decade to get it ghostwritten and cash out like he did with the worldbuilding books. Sit down and get it done. It's possible. Other writers do it.
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May 30, 2023 12:13
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Yeah but he's Old, he's under zero financial pressure to finish it, and he can do whatever he wants rather than try and tackle his now Don't understimate the old part as well. The track record of Authors, especially SiFi/Fantasy writers past 70, is notoriously bad. That's when the real end-of-career, 'WTF were they thinking?', clunkers come out. We might actually be dodging a bullet at this point.
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May 30, 2023 12:35
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Good point. He might get brain worms like Eric Clapton and numerous other olds and just go “it’s was all about battling wokeism”.
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May 30, 2023 12:46
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I mean if we're talking about the old guard of SF writers, let's not forget that both Asimov and Herbert two of the big three, died with their life's works incomplete. We never got that final Dune or Foundation book. And then Brian Herbert happened.
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May 30, 2023 13:07
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Mokotow posted:Good point. He might get brain worms like Eric Clapton and numerous other olds and just go “it’s was all about battling wokeism”.
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May 30, 2023 18:02
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When Arthur Clarke was 80 he put out a sequel to 2001 that had the astronaut that was jettisoned by HAL in the original get revived by an advanced civilization in the year 3001. Said civilizations has cloned dinosaurs as pets and all the ladies wants to sleep with the man from the year 2001 because he is circumcised. I'm bringing it up because that's the kind of garbage I'm expecting from the Fucker at this point.
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May 30, 2023 18:04
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bone emulator posted:I'm bringing it up because that's the kind of garbage I'm expecting from the Fucker at this point.
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May 30, 2023 18:04
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Anybody know if either RR Martin kid is good at writing
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May 30, 2023 19:03
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I mean being unable to write didn't stop Brian Herbert.
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May 30, 2023 19:16
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RoboChrist 9000 posted:I mean if we're talking about the old guard of SF writers, let's not forget that both Asimov and Herbert two of the big three, died with their life's works incomplete. We never got that final Dune or Foundation book. Herbert's a bad example. We got God Emperor, and then he kept writing because he had bills to pay.
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May 30, 2023 21:03
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I love God Emperor and always did think it was the perfect capstone and culmination of all the themes and ideas Herbert had been playing with in the series. Is that actually like a well documented thing that he intended to end it there? Or is that just an assumption based on the quality - or lack thereof - of the latter two books and the aforementioned fact that it was the logical stopping point?
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May 30, 2023 21:30
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bone emulator posted:When Arthur Clarke was 80 he put out a sequel to 2001 that had the astronaut that was jettisoned by HAL in the original get revived by an advanced civilization in the year 3001. Said civilizations has cloned dinosaurs as pets and all the ladies wants to sleep with the man from the year 2001 because he is circumcised. Yes but IIRC Arthur C Clarke is a child molestor and while the Bloated One is super creepy I don't think he's done that.
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May 30, 2023 21:47
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drat. They couldn't find a better picture of Frank Herbert for his Wikipedia entry? He looks rough.
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May 30, 2023 23:17
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RoboChrist 9000 posted:I love God Emperor and always did think it was the perfect capstone and culmination of all the themes and ideas Herbert had been playing with in the series. is that the one with the ridiculous-looking human worm on the cover
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May 31, 2023 04:24
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Friendly reminder that GRRM thought he was 4 months away from finishing the book in August of 2015:GRRM posted:Early August saw me back east for my nephew's wedding and an appearance with the Staten Island Direwolves. I took advantage of the visit to have another sit down with my editors and publishers and told them that I didn't think I could deliver by Halloween. I thought they'd be sick about it... but I have to say, my editors and publishers are great, and they took it with surprising equanimity. (Maybe they knew it before I did). They already had contigencies in place. They had made plans to speed up production. If I could deliver WINDS OF WINTER by the end of the year, they told me, they could still get it our before the end of March. It's been 94 months since this point. There is missing deadlines and then there's whatever this is.
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May 31, 2023 13:30
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Presumably not giving a gently caress.
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May 31, 2023 14:33
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bone emulator posted:When Arthur Clarke was 80 he put out a sequel to 2001 that had the astronaut that was jettisoned by HAL in the original get revived by an advanced civilization in the year 3001. Said civilizations has cloned dinosaurs as pets and all the ladies wants to sleep with the man from the year 2001 because he is circumcised. Deptfordx posted:drat. They couldn't find a better picture of Frank Herbert for his Wikipedia entry? He looks rough. Mad Hamish posted:Yes but IIRC Arthur C Clarke is a child molestor and while the Bloated One is super creepy I don't think he's done that.
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May 31, 2023 15:41
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For now, I wouldn’t give him the benefit of the doubt. He writes like a creepy gently caress and has done creepy gently caress poo poo. Most likely he’s a creepy gently caress and should be shamed for it.
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May 31, 2023 16:43
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Was Tolkien at least somewhat not horrible 
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May 31, 2023 16:58
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Mad Hamish posted:IIRC Arthur C Clarke is a child molestor he might have been smeared because he was gay, or he might have been found innocent because he was rich, but anyways he was cleared and the tabloid had to apologize
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May 31, 2023 17:56
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If it ever turns out Iain M. Banks did something monstrous - besides having the temerity to die too young - I'll be heartbroken.
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May 31, 2023 18:09
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RoboChrist 9000 posted:If it ever turns out Iain M. Banks did something monstrous - besides having the temerity to die too young - I'll be heartbroken. what's the deal with so many fantasy and scifi authors being rapists, pedos or nazis?
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May 31, 2023 18:41
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I mean, realtalk? A lot of them are nerdy weirdos who didn't have good social skills or awareness to begin with, and also grew up in a time when general ideas about consent were even worse than they are today, and then decided to abuse the power their fame and fortunes afforded them. Their environments and circumstances explain, but absolutely do not excuse, a lot of their behavior.
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May 31, 2023 18:56
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Kylaer posted:Was Tolkien at least somewhat not horrible Tolkien was about as good as you expect from a 1890s british guy. Some bad things by modern standards but nothing like the dudes being discussed, and some good stuff like cancelling the german Hobbit publication bc they wouldn’t use his jewish publisher, he was very anti-war even before WW1 service, Obvs he was a huge environmentalist Edgar Allen Ho fucked around with this message at 19:17 on May 31, 2023 |
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May 31, 2023 19:15
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RoboChrist 9000 posted:If it ever turns out Iain M. Banks did something monstrous - besides having the temerity to die too young - I'll be heartbroken. Banks is rare in that most of his work his protagonists aren't having "will I get laid?" anxiety. Which I hope is a healthy reflection of the author.
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May 31, 2023 22:51
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Invalid Validation posted:He probably saw how much everyone hated the last season of the show and went full blown writers block cause that’s generally what he had planned and can’t find a way to write out of it. How difficult must it be to not write something that sucked as bad as the show? RoboChrist 9000 posted:I mean if we're talking about the old guard of SF writers, let's not forget that both Asimov and Herbert two of the big three, died with their life's works incomplete. We never got that final Dune or Foundation book. Pratchett kept on writing even AFTER he died. Does GURM have a Christopher Tolkien of his own that would be able to pick up all of the stuff and make a somewhat sensible couple of final books of it? Hasselblad fucked around with this message at 23:20 on May 31, 2023 |
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May 31, 2023 23:15
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Hasselblad posted:How difficult must it be to not write something that sucked as bad as the show? The swedish nazis Well define sensible
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Jun 1, 2023 14:40
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Hasselblad posted:How difficult must it be to not write something that sucked as bad as the show? Considering the show is based on what GRRM planned to be the ending, and would require him to rewrite at least a few things, which means he has to write? I'd say it's near impossible for him. Like, if "Jon kills Dany, Bran sits the Iron Throne, Sansa becomes queen of the north" and so on are things he's planned from the outset there's a lot he'd have to do to rewrite those or at least make them not come across as stupid as hell.
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Jun 1, 2023 16:24
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There's definitely a way to make the broad outlines of the ending of GoT good, but it requires a lot more effort than than what the two showrunners wanted to put into it. I don't think GRRM is anywhere beyond that very very thin outline on whats going to happen
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Jun 1, 2023 22:14
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The show made the Game of Thrones, not the Song of Ice and Fire, the main plot. Cersei, not the Night King or whatever, was the final boss. This is completely at odds with the story Martin was telling and why he titled it as he did. Like the entire point is that petty politics do not matter in the face of an existential threat. The answer of 'who will sit the Iron Throne?' is ultimately 'I neither know nor care right now because the real issue is the goddamn undead apocalypse.' Like it's the ironic tragicomedy of Littlefinger, even. He's the greatest Crusader Kings player in the world, but no one has bothered to tell him they're actually playing Warcraft 3. But like I cannot believe that Martin would place emphasis as the show did, nor do I believe that Arya is Azhor Azhai or that Jaime decided to undo all his character development because he 'hates the smallfolk' as evidenced by when he allowed the Mad King to torch King's Landing. EDIT: Like if you cremate a corpse, it's fair to say that basically every single element of the human being is present in the pile of ash. Yet we still recognize there is a massive and meaningful distinction between a human and a pile of human ashes. RoboChrist 9000 fucked around with this message at 22:25 on Jun 1, 2023 |
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Jun 1, 2023 22:22
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Mike N Eich posted:There's definitely a way to make the broad outlines of the ending of GoT good, but it requires a lot more effort than than what the two showrunners wanted to put into it. Yeah, that's what I think as well, if the story was actually fleshed out and the bizarre beats from the show actually had context supported by the writing, it could be fine. GRRM will die before writing it.
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Jun 1, 2023 22:27
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The fucker will live to 200 years old and bury us all But he will never write those books
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Jun 1, 2023 22:34
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I think the controversial show beats are what GRRM had planned for the books as well, and I'm sure it made more sense in his head than it ended up making in the show. But I'm also pretty sure he had no actual coherent plan to make all those points work together. And in a hypothetical world where there was no show and he continues writing the books, he may well have thrown out a bunch of them. Or maybe Preston Jacob's theory that a time travelling Bran orchestrated all events by whispering in character's ears is in fact what GRRM had planned and he's just too lazy to actually write it all out.
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Jun 1, 2023 23:55
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pidan posted:I think the controversial show beats are what GRRM had planned for the books as well, and I'm sure it made more sense in his head than it ended up making in the show. But I'm also pretty sure he had no actual coherent plan to make all those points work together. And in a hypothetical world where there was no show and he continues writing the books, he may well have thrown out a bunch of them. Bran's line of "Why do think I came all this way  " from the finale w/r/t being chosen as the new king of Westeros definitely smack of "he orchestrated the whole thing", so I get where Preston is coming from. It's just that David and Dan read "Bran was behind it all" on GRRM's napkin note scribbles to them and they couldn't figure out how to actually show it, so they just put that beat there in at the end anyway and high fived and pretended they nailed it.
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Jun 2, 2023 00:36
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RoboChrist 9000 posted:The show made the Game of Thrones, not the Song of Ice and Fire, the main plot. Cersei, not the Night King or whatever, was the final boss. Well said. With regards to the show, the decision to focus on politics would make sense if it were more of a budget series, as placing the emphasis on humans playing dress up is far cheaper than getting monster costumes or CGI. But that clearly was not the case here, and if anything HBO should have been *the* network to give us a big budget bait-and-switch fantasy apocalypse story. It's a very frustrating misstep by the showrunners I think the most generous read on what's going on with GRRM is that the show came at the absolute worst time for his creative process. He had spent years crafting a genuinely very well plotted subversive fantasy story, and he had finally crossed the "hump" of that arc where he could start reaping the benefits of the many seeds he had planted... yet he hadn't *quite* committed to anything yet. Then the show comes out and focuses on different things, characters are written differently, and it goes onto become this cultural phenomena. That had to have influenced him in some way, even before the show starting outpacing the books. And it had to have been even more confusing and complicated when people's opinion on the show started souring hard.
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Jun 2, 2023 03:15
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The fantasy elements were always in the background and I always kinda figured once he started focusing on it it wouldn’t be nearly as interesting. I think he probably knows that.
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Jun 2, 2023 03:50
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Invalid Validation posted:The fantasy elements were always in the background and I always kinda figured once he started focusing on it it wouldn’t be nearly as interesting. I think he probably knows that. Which is sad because I thought the creeping unknowable horror of magic returning to the world and everyone being terrified of it because no one knows how to control, contain, or counter it was one of the better parts of the series. The idea that magic had the power to be the great upender of power structures of the world, to be able to throw down the oppressors and elevate the oppressed while also having the potential to backfire on its users spectacularly was fascinating to me. Also I really wanted to see GRRM's version of the Long Night. It would have sucked because GRRM sucks at writing battles, but it also would have just been so cool to finally see the promised throwdown between Jon and Dany and the Others. Alas
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Jun 2, 2023 05:48
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wish his publisher would just grow a pair get their advance back and drop his rear end. what a joke they are
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Jun 2, 2023 07:05
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nine-gear crow posted:Also I really wanted to see GRRM's version of the Long Night. It would have sucked because GRRM sucks at writing battles, but it also would have just been so cool to finally see the promised throwdown between Jon and Dany and the Others. Alas Jon is going to flex his hand a LOT. Because he burned it, and it gets stiff, you see. This will lead to the defeat of the Others. More seriously, I don't think there's any way the elements that Dany dies, Bran becomes king, and Sansa becomes queen of an independent North, can happen together. The LEAST stupid way that can happen is "we won the war against the Others so now we get along and we're willing to ignore the rules we spend 5,000 pages contesting"...and that's still pretty stupid, it would make the series feel like a waste of the reader's time (even more than it is already HRRRR) If Bran is king, why does the North break off? Unless there's some awful rupture between Bran and Sansa. And even then, Rickon and Jon come before Sansa, there has NEVER been a female ruler of Winterfell in like 5,000 years. Why would that change now? The drat novels are ALL ABOUT how individuals can try really hard to be better than their situation makes them, but the underlying social structures don't change and push you in the direction of being terrible. This isn't a Last Jedi situation where you have to kill the past and we all advance together into the new age of enlightenment and synthesis. And why would the North want to leave? If there's still people left alive in the North, it'll be because people from all seven kingdoms came together to fight the ice spiders. And if the North is gone, and Jon is exiled to be a one-man Night's Watch, who exactly is supporting Bran? I guess theoretically he has Edmure and SweetRobyn on his side, if Littlefinger is dead, but to everyone else he's some weird magic wheelchair kid. Again, the "thank you for saving us, now you can be King for some reason" ending is going to be awful. I'm open to being wrong here, there are parts of Martin's work that I've been critical before and after reading some analysis, I see that they're actually good. (Most of Sansa and Catelyn's storylines, for example.)...anyone have a reasonable idea how this plays out and is good?
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Jun 2, 2023 08:03
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von Metternich posted:Jon is going to flex his hand a LOT. Because he burned it, and it gets stiff, you see. This will lead to the defeat of the Others. Assuming Bran becomes king, the fact that he's a time traveling, all-seeing telepathic tree wizard has to play an important role somehow. So people supporting him doesn't necessarily have to make political sense, he has various options to manipulate or force them. And while that doesn't really match the setup of the overall story, people being manipulated by telepaths is a pretty common theme in GRRM's sci fi stories so it's not unprecedented. As for the North becoming independent, I figure the Long Night / battle with the Others will play out very differently in the books. Maybe Sansa marries an ice elf as the culmination of her marrying or getting abducted by various monsters. Maybe the Others or the Wildlings get the North, iirc it's basically depopulated at this point anyway.
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Jun 2, 2023 09:19
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