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[A Song of Ice and Fire, Books and Books+Show] Touch this thread and all shall be spoilt

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  • SpawnbrokerSpawnbroker Registered User regular
    Domhnall wrote: »
    Theon's story arc is amongst the very best in the entire series.....Don't change it at all.

    I found the Theon stuff in book 5, pretty much every chapter with Victarion, and even the Quentin Martell stuff very compelling. I know people like to complain a lot about Quentin on here, but I really liked his story. It also gives the Martells a very good reason to be angry at Daenerys.

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  • DomhnallDomhnall Minty D. Vision! ScotlandRegistered User regular
    edited May 2012
    He's also annoyed that medieval nobles are acting like medieval nobles so maybe the series isn't for him. It doesn't mean that GRRM sold out and the story was never meant to be what it currently is.

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  • shrykeshryke Member of the Beast Registered User regular
    edited May 2012
    Yar wrote: »
    I never said main character. In fact, Robb's lack of PoV is why I knew very early on that he would die. But I'd like to have some sense of there being a primary conflict. Stark vs. Lannister? Please, I knew that was only one of many possibilities, and not even the most interesting. I was more excited about Targaryen vs. whateverthehell got in the way. I guess what I found most likely was that Arya is going to become a straight-up evil menace, and that Tyrion, Brandon, Jon, and Dany would all first find themselves at odds but eventually team up (or Dany would defeat some of them) to then deal with whatever, Lannisters or Littlefinger or some other bad guys. Or I don't care, it could be none of those things. But it should be something.

    Um, The Others?

    If you want a main plot to the whole thing, that's it. Also, who will rule Westeros come the end of the battle with The Others could be thrown in there.

    Again, you just seem annoyed it wasn't the conflict you expected which, given that the very first thing in the series (the book 1 prologue) sets up a conflict with The Others, it makes no sense that you wouldn't be expecting that to be the main one.
    Deciding in Book 4 to leave off any primary conflicts and start backfilling and side-storying just seems out of place. We've known since Book 1 that Arya's wolf was following her and building a wolf-army, while Arya was training to be a super-ninja. That Brandon was a special kind of warg. That Jon would probably be the Lord Commander and Sansa probably the Queen. That Dany would have dragons and Dothraki and godknowswhatelse behind her. Since Book 1 it's been foreshadowed and telegraphed that they each have the potential for some seriously awesome power and influence and all have damn good reason to want to use it. We've got more setup and story potential than we could hope for by the end of Book 3. But now book 5's done, and none of those charcaters have doen anything yet. Dany took some cities in the East we don't care about and then gave up and married some asshole we all knew was a villain. Jon did do somehat interesting work at the Wall, killing wights/whitewalkers and bringing the wildlings into the fold. Otherwise no one's done shit. The same things I was expecting to happen in Book 2 and 3 and 4 are what I'm still expecting now to happen in Book 6, except for all that time spent on Greyjoys I also now expect that Victarian will have some role in it all too, I guess. Don't know why it couldn't have just been Theon and saved us all the trouble.

    Book 4 didn't leave off primary conflicts, it sets up new ones and follows the fallout of the old. Again, the fact that you call if "backfill" and "side-stories" just indicate you are deliberately not getting it. These things ARE the main plot, no matter how much you keep insisting they aren't. The Ironborn, Dorne, etc. These things are the major players in the latter half of the series.

    shryke on
  • shrykeshryke Member of the Beast Registered User regular
    Yar wrote: »
    So I bit the bullet, kept up with the Joneses, and watched the entirety of Season One yesterday. I'm actually two episodes into Season Two.


    Overall, my initial misgivings about the show have not been completely assuaged. The show, in my view, definitely suffers from both having too many characters and too few engaging characters, as even after an entire season the only characters I really ever gave a shit about are still limited to just Jon Snow and Tyrion Lannister (and I'm losing patience with Jon). What's more, it isn't that the other characters aren't well-developed and I'm just failing to get on board with them, it's that I actively hate almost everyone else on the show. Never have I seen a program so filled to the gills with such horrible/petty/stupid characters.

    It's like watching a chess match in slow motion, but with a thousand pieces, and all the pieces are insufferable pieces of shit, and you don't even really care who wins. I haven't read the books, but at this point I'm kind of rooting for Daenarys' dragons to just grow huge and murder everyone, Dothraki, Starks, Baratheons, Lannisters, septs and all.


    Still, in the win column, the set design looks fantastic, and (almost) everyone is acting their balls off. I'll probably finish Season Two out, but I don't know that I'll follow into Season Three if the show remains as unfocused as it has to this point, without presenting a engaging protagonist with a sense of agency.

    From the TV thread... all I can say is that the above is very close to how I feel about the books. I'm not so negative or critical about it all, but otherwise about accurate. Jon and Tyrion are the ones I care about, and getting frustrated with the two of them, I really just want Dany to hurry up and burn down the planet. And if Ross doesn't see an engaging protagonist with a sense of urgency now, he sure as hell isn't going to see one any time in the forseeable future.

    You should read more. Atomic Ross's main issue is that he's annoyed about the motivations of medieval nobility. Of course he doesn't find any protagonist with motivation, he's refusing to accept the motivations he's given because he doesn't like the pre-modern motivations they express.

  • valiancevaliance Registered User regular
    edited May 2012
    shryke wrote: »
    valiance wrote: »
    You didn't wait 5 years for AFFC and another 5 years for ADWD. Of course you don't get it.

    Oh god, this argument. "WAHHHH, I had to wait!!!".

    How long you waited for a book has no effect on it's quality.

    I agree. I'd rather have GRRM take 20 years and pump out a perfect series than rush it and fuck it all up. I'd rather have waited for David Aja to illustrate all of The Immortal Iron Fist than to have rushed ahead with fill in artists because he was too slow. You have the completed work forever and I'd rather a high quality work than a rushed one with diminished artistic value.

    That said, how long you waited has a very real effect on your perception of how fast the story is moving and where it's going. Reading all 5 books at once over the course of 6 months is a vastly different experience than reading them as they come out--the pacing is completely different. If you can't see how someone waiting 5 years to see what happened to their favorite characters could be disappointed by AFFC and/or ADWD, I don't know what to tell you. GRRM himself acknowledged fan frustration on that front.

    There are legitimate criticisms to be made of the series that can't be invalidated even by GRRM himself. Sure he can say "that's not what I planned" or "that is what I planned" but other than that the work and pacing are ours to interpret and critique. Fuck authorial intent. You can't just wipe away criticism with claims of "entitlement" or "you don't actually like to read" or "waaah waah." That's bullshit.

    valiance on
  • saggiosaggio Registered User regular
    http://journal.neilgaiman.com/2009/05/entitlement-issues.html
    Hi Neil,

    I've recently subscribed to George RR Martin's blog (http://grrm.livejournal.com/) in the hopes of getting some inside information regarding when the next "Song of Ice and Fire" book is due to be released. I love the series but since subscribing to the blog I've become increasingly frustrated with Martin's lack of communication on the next novel's publication date. In fact, it's almost as though he is doing everything in his power to avoid working on his latest novel. Which poses a few questions:

    1. With blogs and twitter and other forms of social media do you think the audience has too much input when it comes to scrutinising the actions of an artist? If you had announced a new book two years ago and were yet to deliver do you think avoiding the topic on your blog would lead readers to believe you were being "slack"? By blogging about your work and life do you have more of a responsibility to deliver on your commitments?

    2. When writing a series of books, like Martin is with "A Song of Ice and Fire" what responsibility does he have to finish the story? Is it unrealistic to think that by not writing the next chapter Martin is letting me down, even though if and when the book gets written is completely up to him?

    Would be very interested in your insight.

    Cheers
    Gareth

    My opinion....

    1) No.

    2) Yes, it's unrealistic of you to think George is "letting you down".

    Look, this may not be palatable, Gareth, and I keep trying to come up with a better way to put it, but the simplicity of things, at least from my perspective is this:

    George R.R. Martin is not your bitch.

    This is a useful thing to know, perhaps a useful thing to point out when you find yourself thinking that possibly George is, indeed, your bitch, and should be out there typing what you want to read right now.

    People are not machines. Writers and artists aren't machines.

    You're complaining about George doing other things than writing the books you want to read as if your buying the first book in the series was a contract with him: that you would pay over your ten dollars, and George for his part would spend every waking hour until the series was done, writing the rest of the books for you.

    No such contract existed. You were paying your ten dollars for the book you were reading, and I assume that you enjoyed it because you want to know what happens next.

    It seems to me that the biggest problem with series books is that either readers complain that the books used to be good but that somewhere in the effort to get out a book every year the quality has fallen off, or they complain that the books, although maintaining quality, aren't coming out on time.

    Both of these things make me glad that I am not currently writing a series, and make me even gladder that the decade that I did write series things, in Sandman, I was young, driven, a borderline workaholic, and very fortunate. (and even then, towards the end, I was taking five weeks to write a monthly comic, with all the knock-on problems in deadlines that you would expect from that).

    For me, I would rather read a good book, from a contented author. I don't really care what it takes to produce that.

    Some writers need a while to charge their batteries, and then write their books very rapidly. Some writers write a page or so every day, rain or shine. Some writers run out of steam, and need to do whatever it is they happen to do until they're ready to write again. Sometimes writers haven't quite got the next book in a series ready in their heads, but they have something else all ready instead, so they write the thing that's ready to go, prompting cries of outrage from people who want to know why the author could possibly write Book X while the fans were waiting for Book Y.

    I remember hearing an upset comics editor telling a roomful of other editors about a comics artist who had taken a few weeks off to paint his house. The editor pointed out, repeatedly, that for the money the artist would have been paid for those weeks' work he could easily have afforded to hire someone to paint his house, and made money too. And I thought, but did not say, “But what if he wanted to paint his house?”

    I blew a deadline recently. Terminally blew it. First time in 25 years I've sighed and said, “I can't do this, and you won't get your story.” It was already late, I was under a bunch of deadline pressure, my father died, and suddenly the story, too, was dead on the page. I liked the voice it was in, but it wasn't working, and eventually, rather than drive the editors and publishers mad waiting for a story that wasn't going to come, I gave up on it and apologised, worried that I could no longer write fiction.

    I turned my attention to the next deadline waiting – a script. It flowed easily and delightfully, was the most fun I've had writing anything in ages, all the characters did exactly what I had hoped they would do, and the story was better than I had dared to hope.

    Sometimes it happens like that. You don't choose what will work. You simply do the best you can each time. And you try to do what you can to increase the likelihood that good art will be created.

    And sometimes, and it's as true of authors as it is of readers, you have a life. People in your world get sick or die. You fall in love, or out of love. You move house. Your aunt comes to stay. You agreed to give a talk half-way around the world five years ago, and suddenly you realise that that talk is due now. Your last book comes out and the critics vociferously hated it and now you simply don't feel like writing another. Your cat learns to levitate and the matter must be properly documented and investigated. There are deer in the apple orchard. A thunderstorm fries your hard disk and fries the backup drive as well...

    And life is a good thing for a writer. It's where we get our raw material, for a start. We quite like to stop and watch it.

    The economics of scale for a writer mean that very few of us can afford to write 5,000 page books and then break them up and publish them annually once they are done. So writers with huge stories, or ones that, as Sandman did, grow in the telling, are going to write them and have them published as they go along.

    And if you are waiting for a new book in a long ongoing series, whether from George or from Pat Rothfuss or from someone else...

    Wait. Read the original book again. Read something else. Get on with your life. Hope that the author is writing the book you want to read, and not dying, or something equally as dramatic. And if he paints the house, that's fine.

    And Gareth, in the future, when you see other people complaining that George R.R. Martin has been spotted doing something other than writing the book they are waiting for, explain to them, more politely than I did the first time, the simple and unanswerable truth: George R. R. Martin is not working for you.

    Hope that helps.

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  • DomhnallDomhnall Minty D. Vision! ScotlandRegistered User regular
    But not liking the fact that Feast took 5 years to come out and didn't follow Jon, Dany and Tyrion doesn't mean that it isn't part of the main plot.

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  • shrykeshryke Member of the Beast Registered User regular
    valiance wrote: »
    shryke wrote: »
    valiance wrote: »
    You didn't wait 5 years for AFFC and another 5 years for ADWD. Of course you don't get it.

    Oh god, this argument. "WAHHHH, I had to wait!!!".

    How long you waited for a book has no effect on it's quality.

    I agree. I'd rather have GRRM take 20 years and pump out a perfect series than rush it and fuck it all up. I'd rather have waited for David Aja to illustrate all of The Immortal Iron Fist than to have rushed ahead with fill in artists because he was too slow. You have the completed work forever and I'd rather a high quality work than a rushed one with diminished artistic value.

    That said, how long you waited has a very real effect on your perception of how fast the story is moving and where it's going. Reading all 5 books at once over the course of 6 months is a vastly different experience than reading them as they come out--the pacing is completely different. If you can't see how someone waiting 5 years to see what happened to their favorite characters could be disappointed by AFFC and/or ADWD, I don't know what to tell you. GRRM himself acknowledged fan frustration on that front.

    Right, but that's not a legitimate criticism of the work itself.

    There are legitimate criticisms to be made of the series that can't be invalidated even by GRRM himself. Sure he can say "that's not what I planned" or "that is what I planned" but other than that the work and pacing are ours to interpret and critique. Fuck authorial intent. You can't just wipe away criticism with claims of "entitlement" or "you don't actually like to read" or "waaah waah." That's bullshit.

    You can interpret and critique all you want, but "I wanted it to go this way and it didn't" is not a valid critique. Especially when the series very obviously sets up that it's not going the way you keep implying you thought it did.

  • Katsuhiro 1139Katsuhiro 1139 Dublin, IrelandRegistered User regular
    No character has stepped up to the plate of being a "main character"?

    Jon Snow, Tyrion Lannister and Danaerys Targaeryan would like a word.

  • reVersereVerse Attack and Dethrone God Registered User regular
    No character has stepped up to the plate of being a "main character"?

    Jon Snow, Tyrion Lannister and Danaerys Targaeryan would like a word.

    And, as previously mentioned, Jaime Lannister of all people.

  • Katsuhiro 1139Katsuhiro 1139 Dublin, IrelandRegistered User regular
    I do love how George R.R. Martin manages to make you like Jaime despite everything.

    I also like how in the show he's played by one of the Delta operators in Black Hawk Down.

  • valiancevaliance Registered User regular
    edited May 2012
    shryke wrote: »
    valiance wrote: »
    shryke wrote: »
    valiance wrote: »
    You didn't wait 5 years for AFFC and another 5 years for ADWD. Of course you don't get it.

    Oh god, this argument. "WAHHHH, I had to wait!!!".

    How long you waited for a book has no effect on it's quality.

    I agree. I'd rather have GRRM take 20 years and pump out a perfect series than rush it and fuck it all up. I'd rather have waited for David Aja to illustrate all of The Immortal Iron Fist than to have rushed ahead with fill in artists because he was too slow. You have the completed work forever and I'd rather a high quality work than a rushed one with diminished artistic value.

    That said, how long you waited has a very real effect on your perception of how fast the story is moving and where it's going. Reading all 5 books at once over the course of 6 months is a vastly different experience than reading them as they come out--the pacing is completely different. If you can't see how someone waiting 5 years to see what happened to their favorite characters could be disappointed by AFFC and/or ADWD, I don't know what to tell you. GRRM himself acknowledged fan frustration on that front.

    Right, but that's not a legitimate criticism of the work itself.

    But it is an legitimate alternate point of view, colored by the circumstances around the work. You can't say "I don't get why people were upset" and then act like bringing up that very reason isn't a fair point. Which is not to be taken as a defense for entitlement, its a defense of legitimate criticisms not being lumped in with entitlement.
    shryke wrote: »
    There are legitimate criticisms to be made of the series that can't be invalidated even by GRRM himself. Sure he can say "that's not what I planned" or "that is what I planned" but other than that the work and pacing are ours to interpret and critique. Fuck authorial intent. You can't just wipe away criticism with claims of "entitlement" or "you don't actually like to read" or "waaah waah." That's bullshit.

    You can interpret and critique all you want, but "I wanted it to go this way and it didn't" is not a valid critique. Especially when the series very obviously sets up that it's not going the way you keep implying you thought it did.

    I don't think it very obviously set up that Quentyn Martell, Jon Connington and Aegon were going to pop up. Or even the Greyjoys and Martells in AFFC. I was like "who are these people and why should I care?"

    I think the perceived dip in quality in books 4 and 5 is real and reflects Martin's difficulties reconciling the characters being too young, the Mereenese Knot, and the abandoned 5 year time gap. Stories change as they're written and I don't think the new characters and plotlines were incorporated organically into the stories from the previous books. It just feels like ass-pull bloat.

    That said, I think both AFFC and ADWD will improve with rereads. I think a lot of the plotlines I hated at first sort of have to be there. But its like drinking cough syrup--its good for you, but it doesn't taste good going down.

    **I also loved book 5 until I got to the end and realized nothing was resolved. If it had fulfilled the promise of its first half I think 5 could have been my favorite book.

    valiance on
  • GONG-00GONG-00 Registered User regular
    saggio wrote: »
    http://journal.neilgaiman.com/2009/05/entitlement-issues.html
    Hi Neil,

    I've recently subscribed to George RR Martin's blog (http://grrm.livejournal.com/) in the hopes of getting some inside information regarding when the next "Song of Ice and Fire" book is due to be released. I love the series but since subscribing to the blog I've become increasingly frustrated with Martin's lack of communication on the next novel's publication date. In fact, it's almost as though he is doing everything in his power to avoid working on his latest novel. Which poses a few questions:

    1. With blogs and twitter and other forms of social media do you think the audience has too much input when it comes to scrutinising the actions of an artist? If you had announced a new book two years ago and were yet to deliver do you think avoiding the topic on your blog would lead readers to believe you were being "slack"? By blogging about your work and life do you have more of a responsibility to deliver on your commitments?

    2. When writing a series of books, like Martin is with "A Song of Ice and Fire" what responsibility does he have to finish the story? Is it unrealistic to think that by not writing the next chapter Martin is letting me down, even though if and when the book gets written is completely up to him?

    Would be very interested in your insight.

    Cheers
    Gareth

    My opinion....

    1) No.

    2) Yes, it's unrealistic of you to think George is "letting you down".

    Look, this may not be palatable, Gareth, and I keep trying to come up with a better way to put it, but the simplicity of things, at least from my perspective is this:

    George R.R. Martin is not your bitch.

    This is a useful thing to know, perhaps a useful thing to point out when you find yourself thinking that possibly George is, indeed, your bitch, and should be out there typing what you want to read right now.

    People are not machines. Writers and artists aren't machines.

    You're complaining about George doing other things than writing the books you want to read as if your buying the first book in the series was a contract with him: that you would pay over your ten dollars, and George for his part would spend every waking hour until the series was done, writing the rest of the books for you.

    No such contract existed. You were paying your ten dollars for the book you were reading, and I assume that you enjoyed it because you want to know what happens next.

    It seems to me that the biggest problem with series books is that either readers complain that the books used to be good but that somewhere in the effort to get out a book every year the quality has fallen off, or they complain that the books, although maintaining quality, aren't coming out on time.

    Both of these things make me glad that I am not currently writing a series, and make me even gladder that the decade that I did write series things, in Sandman, I was young, driven, a borderline workaholic, and very fortunate. (and even then, towards the end, I was taking five weeks to write a monthly comic, with all the knock-on problems in deadlines that you would expect from that).

    For me, I would rather read a good book, from a contented author. I don't really care what it takes to produce that.

    Some writers need a while to charge their batteries, and then write their books very rapidly. Some writers write a page or so every day, rain or shine. Some writers run out of steam, and need to do whatever it is they happen to do until they're ready to write again. Sometimes writers haven't quite got the next book in a series ready in their heads, but they have something else all ready instead, so they write the thing that's ready to go, prompting cries of outrage from people who want to know why the author could possibly write Book X while the fans were waiting for Book Y.

    I remember hearing an upset comics editor telling a roomful of other editors about a comics artist who had taken a few weeks off to paint his house. The editor pointed out, repeatedly, that for the money the artist would have been paid for those weeks' work he could easily have afforded to hire someone to paint his house, and made money too. And I thought, but did not say, “But what if he wanted to paint his house?”

    I blew a deadline recently. Terminally blew it. First time in 25 years I've sighed and said, “I can't do this, and you won't get your story.” It was already late, I was under a bunch of deadline pressure, my father died, and suddenly the story, too, was dead on the page. I liked the voice it was in, but it wasn't working, and eventually, rather than drive the editors and publishers mad waiting for a story that wasn't going to come, I gave up on it and apologised, worried that I could no longer write fiction.

    I turned my attention to the next deadline waiting – a script. It flowed easily and delightfully, was the most fun I've had writing anything in ages, all the characters did exactly what I had hoped they would do, and the story was better than I had dared to hope.

    Sometimes it happens like that. You don't choose what will work. You simply do the best you can each time. And you try to do what you can to increase the likelihood that good art will be created.

    And sometimes, and it's as true of authors as it is of readers, you have a life. People in your world get sick or die. You fall in love, or out of love. You move house. Your aunt comes to stay. You agreed to give a talk half-way around the world five years ago, and suddenly you realise that that talk is due now. Your last book comes out and the critics vociferously hated it and now you simply don't feel like writing another. Your cat learns to levitate and the matter must be properly documented and investigated. There are deer in the apple orchard. A thunderstorm fries your hard disk and fries the backup drive as well...

    And life is a good thing for a writer. It's where we get our raw material, for a start. We quite like to stop and watch it.

    The economics of scale for a writer mean that very few of us can afford to write 5,000 page books and then break them up and publish them annually once they are done. So writers with huge stories, or ones that, as Sandman did, grow in the telling, are going to write them and have them published as they go along.

    And if you are waiting for a new book in a long ongoing series, whether from George or from Pat Rothfuss or from someone else...

    Wait. Read the original book again. Read something else. Get on with your life. Hope that the author is writing the book you want to read, and not dying, or something equally as dramatic. And if he paints the house, that's fine.

    And Gareth, in the future, when you see other people complaining that George R.R. Martin has been spotted doing something other than writing the book they are waiting for, explain to them, more politely than I did the first time, the simple and unanswerable truth: George R. R. Martin is not working for you.

    Hope that helps.

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  • shrykeshryke Member of the Beast Registered User regular
    edited May 2012
    valiance wrote: »
    shryke wrote: »
    valiance wrote: »
    shryke wrote: »
    valiance wrote: »
    You didn't wait 5 years for AFFC and another 5 years for ADWD. Of course you don't get it.

    Oh god, this argument. "WAHHHH, I had to wait!!!".

    How long you waited for a book has no effect on it's quality.

    I agree. I'd rather have GRRM take 20 years and pump out a perfect series than rush it and fuck it all up. I'd rather have waited for David Aja to illustrate all of The Immortal Iron Fist than to have rushed ahead with fill in artists because he was too slow. You have the completed work forever and I'd rather a high quality work than a rushed one with diminished artistic value.

    That said, how long you waited has a very real effect on your perception of how fast the story is moving and where it's going. Reading all 5 books at once over the course of 6 months is a vastly different experience than reading them as they come out--the pacing is completely different. If you can't see how someone waiting 5 years to see what happened to their favorite characters could be disappointed by AFFC and/or ADWD, I don't know what to tell you. GRRM himself acknowledged fan frustration on that front.

    Right, but that's not a legitimate criticism of the work itself.

    But it is an legitimate alternate point of view, colored by the circumstances around the work. You can't say "I don't get why people were upset" and then act like bringing up that very reason isn't a fair point. Which is not to be taken as a defense for entitlement, its a defense of legitimate criticisms not being lumped in with entitlement.

    I get why people might be upset. I don't get why you think that has anything to do with the quality of the book itself.

    Who cares if you had to wait 5 years.

    shryke wrote: »
    There are legitimate criticisms to be made of the series that can't be invalidated even by GRRM himself. Sure he can say "that's not what I planned" or "that is what I planned" but other than that the work and pacing are ours to interpret and critique. Fuck authorial intent. You can't just wipe away criticism with claims of "entitlement" or "you don't actually like to read" or "waaah waah." That's bullshit.

    You can interpret and critique all you want, but "I wanted it to go this way and it didn't" is not a valid critique. Especially when the series very obviously sets up that it's not going the way you keep implying you thought it did.

    I don't think it very obviously set up that Quentyn Martell, Jon Connington and Aegon were going to pop up. Or even the Greyjoys and Martells in AFFC. I was like "who are these people and why should I care?"

    I think the perceived dip in quality in books 4 and 5 is real and reflects Martin's difficulties reconciling the characters being too young, the Mereenese Knot, and the abandoned 5 year time gap. Stories change as they're written and I don't think the new characters and plotlines were incorporated organically into the stories from the previous books. It just feels like ass-pull bloat.

    That said, I think both AFFC and ADWD will improve with rereads. I think a lot of the plotlines I hated at first sort of have to be there. But its like drinking cough syrup--its good for you, but it doesn't taste good going down.

    **I also loved book 5 until I got to the end and realized nothing was resolved. If it had fulfilled the promise of its first half I think 5 could have been my favorite book.

    It's obvious, from the first page, that The Others are one of if not the main plot of the book. By the end of book 3, they've barely been touched except by Jon. There was always going to be more to come.

    Meanwhile, we've known the Ironborn have been flexing their might since the War of the Five Kings started, so them become major players after most everyone else is dead isn't surprising. Dorne, a major house, has been notably absent so them getting involved isn't suprising either. Jon Connington is supposed to be a surprise, in the same way Melissandre is in ACOK. As is Aegon. Although those are, again, connected to a character we already know who has an agenda (Varys).

    That you ask "who are these people and why should I care?" is just silly. New characters and factions popped into the series every book. Why should book 4 be any different?

    The obvious answer and the one most people give, even if only indirectly, is they mistook the climaxes of ASOS for the climaxes of the series as a whole and thought the whole thing was winding down and tightening up. Which is just silly in light of the end of ASOS (where many of the main characters are catapulted off in new directions and for new adventures) and the main plot, brought up right at the start of the series, still hasn't been touched on in a major way by anyone but Jon Snow.

    The end of ASOS is a hugely obvious setup for alot more story and alot more plots being introduced.

    shryke on
  • AlejandroDaJAlejandroDaJ Registered User regular
    Can someone please rectify for me the fact that Varys earnestly helps to assassinate Dany early on in the series, but is then retconned into earnestly trying to save Aegon Targaryan before the series actually kicks off?

  • DaedalusDaedalus Registered User regular
    I hope Jon stays dead.

    Let me back up. When the third book ended, and Robb and his rivals Joffrey and Tywin all died at more or less the same time, it closed out the big narrative arc that began when Ned went to King's Landing in the beginning. The fourth book slowed down the pace quite a bit as everyone left alive picked up the pieces of what just happened. It's not even really any slower than the first book, but it is quite a change from the third.

    After book 4, the fans got really impatient and basically invented the rest of the story as they wanted to see it. There was this big thing about how Jon Snow was Lyanna and Rhaegar's kid, and he and Dany would get together and fight back the zombies and rule the kingdom and everyone would live happily ever after.

    Thing is, it was overturning bullshit tropes like that that put ASOIAF on the map in the first place, rather than making it just another shitty generic fantasy series. You start the first book thinking Ned Stark is the big protagonist hero marching south to Set Things Right, and you have an idea of the story arc in your head until, nope, Ned just got killed. Then you do it again: "oh, I get it, it's like Dune, where the son has to learn to rule to avenge his father, and Robb Stark is Paul Atreides and Ned was Leto and there's the rich asshole antagonist Tywin Harkonnen or whatever and..." And then it doesn't happen that way either! Robb marries for love instead of for power, with a predictable result, Tywin pisses off his son one too many times, and the whole expected outcome gets turned on its head.

    And I don't know about you, but for me this is the whole reason why this series grabbed my attention and, e.g. Shannara really didn't.

    So complaining that the books aren't going the way you expected them to go is silly. It's like quitting reading the series at the Red Wedding. It's not supposed to go in the direction you expect. Dany spent too long screwing around in Meereen and Aegon and Connington got to Westeros first. Yes, it's not what you expected. Go with it. You already had the story you expected in your head before you started reading, so why bother to write that one?

  • GONG-00GONG-00 Registered User regular
    Can someone please rectify for me the fact that Varys earnestly helps to assassinate Dany early on in the series, but is then retconned into earnestly trying to save Aegon Targaryan before the series actually kicks off?
    It was a failed attempt that had the effect of motivating Drogo to get over his aversion of crossing the sea to attack those that wanted to murder his wife and unborn son. Given who he is, I think it could have been a calculated risk on Varys' part. Even if it did succeed, he still had Aegon stashed away.

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  • CowSharkCowShark Registered User regular
    I want to see Theon invalidate the Kingsmoot, get that Seastone chair, some wooden teeth, bolt a sword to his hand, and avenge himself against the Boltons.

  • DaedalusDaedalus Registered User regular
    edited May 2012
    GONG-00 wrote: »
    Can someone please rectify for me the fact that Varys earnestly helps to assassinate Dany early on in the series, but is then retconned into earnestly trying to save Aegon Targaryan before the series actually kicks off?
    It was a failed attempt that had the effect of motivating Drogo to get over his aversion of crossing the sea to attack those that wanted to murder his wife and unborn son. Given who he is, I think it could have been a calculated risk on Varys' part. Even if it did succeed, he still had Aegon stashed away.

    Yeah, I'm pretty sure that Varys deliberately botched the assassination, too. I mean, who would know? He's the only one on the council with any influence overseas. Also, he hired Jorah to go over there and be Dany's bodyguard, and wasn't he the one who suggested the assassination in the first place? I can see it all fitting into his big plan.

    Daedalus on
  • AlejandroDaJAlejandroDaJ Registered User regular
    Daedalus wrote: »
    GONG-00 wrote: »
    Can someone please rectify for me the fact that Varys earnestly helps to assassinate Dany early on in the series, but is then retconned into earnestly trying to save Aegon Targaryan before the series actually kicks off?
    It was a failed attempt that had the effect of motivating Drogo to get over his aversion of crossing the sea to attack those that wanted to murder his wife and unborn son. Given who he is, I think it could have been a calculated risk on Varys' part. Even if it did succeed, he still had Aegon stashed away.

    Yeah, I'm pretty sure that Varys deliberately botched the assassination, too. I mean, who would know? He's the only one on the council with any influence overseas.

    Er, Varys didn't botch the assassination. The wine seller was in place with poisoned wine and everything. Jorah purposefully screws the assassination up by stopping Dany, and only because he has become impressed with her/is falling for her. The show goes even further by showing one of Varys' spiders making contact with Jorah right before the assassination takes place, to give him a royal pardon (presumably as a reward for her impending death).

  • DemonStaceyDemonStacey TTODewback's Daughter In love with the TaySwayRegistered User regular
    edited May 2012
    Reading that tharr dragons book.... about halfway through. Dany is pissing me off.

    Stop listening to other peoples dumb ideas about your dragons! Don't keep them locked up! You already lost one dragon by listeneing to these people. How are you going to conquer the world if you don't spend time with your god damned dragons and raise them yourself?

    GRAAARRRRRGGGHHHH.

    Sorry, just had to vent. It's just frustrating.

    DemonStacey on
  • DaedalusDaedalus Registered User regular
    Daedalus wrote: »
    GONG-00 wrote: »
    Can someone please rectify for me the fact that Varys earnestly helps to assassinate Dany early on in the series, but is then retconned into earnestly trying to save Aegon Targaryan before the series actually kicks off?
    It was a failed attempt that had the effect of motivating Drogo to get over his aversion of crossing the sea to attack those that wanted to murder his wife and unborn son. Given who he is, I think it could have been a calculated risk on Varys' part. Even if it did succeed, he still had Aegon stashed away.

    Yeah, I'm pretty sure that Varys deliberately botched the assassination, too. I mean, who would know? He's the only one on the council with any influence overseas.

    Er, Varys didn't botch the assassination. The wine seller was in place with poisoned wine and everything. Jorah purposefully screws the assassination up by stopping Dany, and only because he has become impressed with her/is falling for her. The show goes even further by showing one of Varys' spiders making contact with Jorah right before the assassination takes place, to give him a royal pardon (presumably as a reward for her impending death).

    Yes, but Varys planned Jorah there in the first place. Jorah, who disgraced his family name in order to impress the woman he loved only to have that woman run off. He's a romantic, in other words, and Varys is having him stay by Dany at all times to "keep an eye on her". Therefore, Dany would impress Jorah by her kind personality and Jorah would naturally defend her (or Dany doesn't have the personality Varys is looking for in the next ruler and can be safely discarded in favor of Plan Aegon. Win/win). I don't think this is too much of a reach, even: I thought I remembered Varys on some monologue on how even though he's a eunuch he knows how men will end up acting around women, or something like that.

  • valiancevaliance Registered User regular
    Daedalus wrote: »
    I hope Jon stays dead.

    Let me back up. When the third book ended, and Robb and his rivals Joffrey and Tywin all died at more or less the same time, it closed out the big narrative arc that began when Ned went to King's Landing in the beginning. The fourth book slowed down the pace quite a bit as everyone left alive picked up the pieces of what just happened. It's not even really any slower than the first book, but it is quite a change from the third.

    After book 4, the fans got really impatient and basically invented the rest of the story as they wanted to see it. There was this big thing about how Jon Snow was Lyanna and Rhaegar's kid, and he and Dany would get together and fight back the zombies and rule the kingdom and everyone would live happily ever after.

    Thing is, it was overturning bullshit tropes like that that put ASOIAF on the map in the first place, rather than making it just another shitty generic fantasy series. You start the first book thinking Ned Stark is the big protagonist hero marching south to Set Things Right, and you have an idea of the story arc in your head until, nope, Ned just got killed. Then you do it again: "oh, I get it, it's like Dune, where the son has to learn to rule to avenge his father, and Robb Stark is Paul Atreides and Ned was Leto and there's the rich asshole antagonist Tywin Harkonnen or whatever and..." And then it doesn't happen that way either! Robb marries for love instead of for power, with a predictable result, Tywin pisses off his son one too many times, and the whole expected outcome gets turned on its head.

    And I don't know about you, but for me this is the whole reason why this series grabbed my attention and, e.g. Shannara really didn't.

    So complaining that the books aren't going the way you expected them to go is silly. It's like quitting reading the series at the Red Wedding. It's not supposed to go in the direction you expect. Dany spent too long screwing around in Meereen and Aegon and Connington got to Westeros first. Yes, it's not what you expected. Go with it. You already had the story you expected in your head before you started reading, so why bother to write that one?

    Interesting perspective, I like the idea of the whole work being deliberately counter to expected outcomes. More like watching history unfold than reading a story about a particular protagonist.

    I don't think Jon will stay dead though. I think there's too much invested in him narratively. Too much prophecy, too many hints at how his return could be achieved. It's less of a copout in this genre than in some, since we've seen that resurrection is very possible in this world under certain rare circumstances. I'm torn between whether I think Jon staying dead would be a betrayal of the buildup to his resurrection in pursuit of cheap thrills or a bold breaking of the mold in the tradition of Ned and Robb's deaths.

  • DomhnallDomhnall Minty D. Vision! ScotlandRegistered User regular
    Every odd numbered book a Stark dies. Watch yourself in ten years time, Rickon!

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  • AlejandroDaJAlejandroDaJ Registered User regular
    Daedalus wrote: »
    Daedalus wrote: »
    GONG-00 wrote: »
    Can someone please rectify for me the fact that Varys earnestly helps to assassinate Dany early on in the series, but is then retconned into earnestly trying to save Aegon Targaryan before the series actually kicks off?
    It was a failed attempt that had the effect of motivating Drogo to get over his aversion of crossing the sea to attack those that wanted to murder his wife and unborn son. Given who he is, I think it could have been a calculated risk on Varys' part. Even if it did succeed, he still had Aegon stashed away.

    Yeah, I'm pretty sure that Varys deliberately botched the assassination, too. I mean, who would know? He's the only one on the council with any influence overseas.

    Er, Varys didn't botch the assassination. The wine seller was in place with poisoned wine and everything. Jorah purposefully screws the assassination up by stopping Dany, and only because he has become impressed with her/is falling for her. The show goes even further by showing one of Varys' spiders making contact with Jorah right before the assassination takes place, to give him a royal pardon (presumably as a reward for her impending death).

    Yes, but Varys planned Jorah there in the first place. Jorah, who disgraced his family name in order to impress the woman he loved only to have that woman run off. He's a romantic, in other words, and Varys is having him stay by Dany at all times to "keep an eye on her". Therefore, Dany would impress Jorah by her kind personality and Jorah would naturally defend her (or Dany doesn't have the personality Varys is looking for in the next ruler and can be safely discarded in favor of Plan Aegon. Win/win). I don't think this is too much of a reach, even: I thought I remembered Varys on some monologue on how even though he's a eunuch he knows how men will end up acting around women, or something like that.

    "I'm listening to the King and totes sending out the order for this assassination, but I'm secretly hoping that my spy half a world away will be in the right place at the right time to reverse his orders and change his colors, because of love, maybe." That's not exactly a plan I would hang my hat on.

    Absent some concrete justification in the narrative, I'm just assuming at this point that it can be explained by Occam's Razor: GRRM wrote it before he had Varys' story arc nailed down, and it's only problematic because of the late-in-the-game Aegon reveal.

  • enlightenedbumenlightenedbum Registered User regular
    For a moment, let's assume the Varys had Aegon in his back pocket plot was always part of GRRM's plan.

    Let's also assume that Varys genuinely does want an end to the civil wars and bulllshit. He serves the realm, after all.

    Then killing Dany makes perfect sense. After Aegon's installed, she could always claim that he's a false Targaryen and she's the real heir as the trueborn daughter of the last Targaryen King. If she's dead, there are no other Targaryens to claim the throne once Aegon's there. Does fuck up the Targaryen marriage habits, but I'd bet Varys has concluded those are not for the best anyway, so whatever.

    Self-righteousness is incompatible with coalition building.
  • DaedalusDaedalus Registered User regular
    I just feel like Varys put everything in a position where his plan could work out either way, then rolled the dice.

  • TaminTamin Registered User regular
    edited May 2012
    My response to the Rhaegar + Lyanna thing is: it'd be cool, but so what? How does that change anything?

    Sure, it makes the story more tragic, and alters the tone a little ... but how is it useful?

    That said, it is interesting how, across Westeros, different people think Jon is Ned's son by a different woman.

    Catelyn hears that it was Ashara Dayne; Ned tells Robert it was Wylla; Arya talks to a kid who 'confirms' Ashara Dayne; Stannis says Jon's mother must have been a fish-wife; Wyman Manderly 'confirms' that Ned slept with a fish-wife who had a son named Jon Snow.

    I think there are other examples, but I can't be sure.

    Tamin on
  • enlightenedbumenlightenedbum Registered User regular
    Daedalus wrote: »
    I just feel like Varys put everything in a position where his plan could work out either way, then rolled the dice.

    This is my actual theory, as he does not seem like an all eggs in one basket kind of guy.

    Self-righteousness is incompatible with coalition building.
  • DaedalusDaedalus Registered User regular
    Also, doesn't Arya overhear Varys and Illyrio discussing invasion plans shortly after the assassination order gets sent out?

  • ArtereisArtereis Registered User regular
    I can't see Jon not being resurrected after all the prior instances of Thoros bringing back Dondarrion who brought back Cat. Mel was far too interested in Jon to just let him slip away.

  • TaminTamin Registered User regular
    edited May 2012
    Daedalus wrote: »
    Also, doesn't Arya overhear Varys and Illyrio discussing invasion plans shortly after the assassination order gets sent out?

    She hears them mentioning that the Starks and Lannisters are getting ready to go to war, and complaining they aren't ready. Specifically, because
    “Perhaps so,” the forked beard replied, pausing to catch his breath after the long climb. “Nonetheless, we must have time. The princess is with child. The khal will not bestir himself until his son is born. You know how they are, these savages.”

    All in context of delaying things until Khal Drogo is ready to invade, and they are ... at a rough guess, about 5 months from that point.

    No, it looks like the assassination order happens after that exchange, as Varys talking to Illyrio is how Robert finds out about Dany's child.

    (another) edit: Littlefinger seems quite certain that Varys will put out that anyone who kills Dany will be made a Lord; and supposes a sellsword will make a botch of it. Nothing is said of poisoned wine, nor about Jorah receiving a pardon; but we don't know what he learned from his "visit to the dock's", so it's hard to be sure.

    (further) edits: The weird thing here, is the show seems to make it clear that Jorah was turning his back on Varys' plots. But, in A Storm of Swords, he admits he made reports as recently as Qarth. And, during his confession, he says this:
    "I … I but suspected … the caravan brought a letter from Varys, he warned me there would be attempts. He wanted you watched, yes, but not harmed." He went to his knees. "If I had not told them someone else would have. You know that."

    Tamin on
  • KanaKana Registered User regular
    Varys mentions to Ned I believe that since he knew he couldn't talk Robert out of sending an assassin, he talked him down from sending a faceless man. Instead they just announced, "Yo we want someone to kill this girl!" which inevitably attracted just amateurs.

    But in general a lot more of Dany's storyline makes sense once Aegon shows up and we realize that Dany and Viserys were always plan B. Either in case Aegon didn't work out, or simply to send over to Westeros and cause shit before Aegon rescues everyone.

    A trap is for fish: when you've got the fish, you can forget the trap. A snare is for rabbits: when you've got the rabbit, you can forget the snare. Words are for meaning: when you've got the meaning, you can forget the words.
  • CanadianWolverineCanadianWolverine Registered User regular
    Daedalus wrote: »
    I just feel like Varys put everything in a position where his plan could work out either way, then rolled the dice.

    This is my actual theory, as he does not seem like an all eggs in one basket kind of guy.

    I am also of the impression Varys is the kind of guy to hedge his bets, to be in a position that no matter what, the house always wins.

    Not only that, the whole assassinate Dany thing was so poorly executed in a world where other assassination plots have used far more effective methods on more protected targets, especially with Faceless about, that I am pretty sure at least the first attempt was meant to be a patsy botch job. The other attempts on Dany though...

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  • shrykeshryke Member of the Beast Registered User regular
    The issue with all that is that Varys supports Aegon because he's been trained to think of the smallfolk, not just because he's a Targeryn.

    I'm not sure why he'd support Daenerys, except perhaps for the marriage potential.

  • Boring7Boring7 Registered User regular
    Domhnall wrote: »
    Every odd numbered book a Stark dies. Watch yourself in ten years time, Rickon!

    My money's on Rickon becoming a cannibal berserker.

    As for fan-theories and tropes and retcons...meh. Any writer planning a long haul throws a hundred bricks in the air for dogs to catch later. Some things come up, some don't, some change subtly while others stay right in line. Varys pulling Aegon out of his ass doesn't directly conflict with anything except what he told the king and since he's been established as a liar before, that's in line. It works especially for the Martinverse because it's a crapsack world, where people are constantly dying and turnover is so high that you are used to characters showing up out of nowhere to make up for the fact that he's just killed everyone you had already been introduced to. Thus whether he's always planned to bring a character in or just made him up a few moments ago, you are still primed to accept this new jerkoff being introduced, because your other options are a Hodor POV chapter, or spend a chapter from the POV of a slowly rotting corpse.

    Writing is like Xanatos speed-chess or running a campaign, you have to think on your feet, obfuscate everything, and fudge the rolls whenever they aren't looking.

    Chapter 12: Hodor

    Hodor hodor, hodor hodor hodor. Hodor hodor hodor, hodor hodor hodor hodor hodor.

    "Hodor," hodor. Hodor hodor hodor.

  • KanaKana Registered User regular
    shryke wrote: »
    The issue with all that is that Varys supports Aegon because he's been trained to think of the smallfolk, not just because he's a Targeryn.

    I'm not sure why he'd support Daenerys, except perhaps for the marriage potential.

    Yeah I mean at the time he wasn't even apparently thinking of Dany, except as a uterus in which to forge a useful alliance.

    But then why would two plotters as damn careful as Illyrio and Varys trust in Viserys to not screw things up? It was always a bit of a plot hole. Not a huge one or anything, but Aegon's appearance, which really should've felt like an asspull, just made a bit of their plots make more sense.

    A trap is for fish: when you've got the fish, you can forget the trap. A snare is for rabbits: when you've got the rabbit, you can forget the snare. Words are for meaning: when you've got the meaning, you can forget the words.
  • SpawnbrokerSpawnbroker Registered User regular
    Kana wrote: »
    shryke wrote: »
    The issue with all that is that Varys supports Aegon because he's been trained to think of the smallfolk, not just because he's a Targeryn.

    I'm not sure why he'd support Daenerys, except perhaps for the marriage potential.

    Yeah I mean at the time he wasn't even apparently thinking of Dany, except as a uterus in which to forge a useful alliance.

    But then why would two plotters as damn careful as Illyrio and Varys trust in Viserys to not screw things up? It was always a bit of a plot hole. Not a huge one or anything, but Aegon's appearance, which really should've felt like an asspull, just made a bit of their plots make more sense.

    They weren't trusting in Viserys at all. Remember how Illyrio tried to get Viserys to stay in Pentos with him? Viserys wouldn't have any of it, and since Illyrio is strictly an advisor and can't technically force Viserys to do anything, he had to let him go with the Khalasar.

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  • TaminTamin Registered User regular
    Well, I don't like Jaime because ... he tried to murder the same child twice.

    teehee

  • ArbitraryDescriptorArbitraryDescriptor changed Registered User regular
    Tamin wrote: »
    Well, I don't like Jaime because ... he tried to murder the same child twice.

    teehee
    I keep forgetting that this information doesn't come until much later. It's hard not correcting people in person because I seem to have convinced myself that it was already revealed in the show.

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