https://nitter.net/CultureCrave/status/1725843020866871790
Damn if only he had put an ounce of effort in giving a proper finish to the biggest show fucking ever maybe people would give a shit about it
Tbf, Martin didnt have anything to do with the ending of the show sucking.
Now, the fact that he's doing this instead of finishing the books, that sucks ass.
I know, my point still stands. had he given those dipshits at least a fucking sketch of how it should end, they wouldn't have killed what it looked to be a bigger cash cow than StarWars and HarryPotter together
According to interviews he did give them the broad strokes of how it should end, D+D are just so incompetent that he needed to give them a lot more for them to follow. Probably more than he's even conceptualized yet lol.
Its interesting though, the stuff in the early seasons that were completely new additions that werent in the source text were actually good. Literally my favorite scene (Robert and Cersei talking about their marriage) isnt in the books. As far as I know, that was a D+D invention. So its weird to me that the same guys who did that couldn't write without source material later on. Guess they can do detail work like that just fine but not broad arcs? idk.
According to interviews he did give them the broad strokes of how it should end, D+D are just so incompetent that he needed to give them a lot more for them to follow.
They also literally had a grudge against Emilia Clarke over her renegotiating her contract so she wouldn't have to do nude scenes anymore back in the second season, which is when they started writing the end of her character's story as a revenge fantasy against her personally. So it wasn't even just incompetent writing, but them actively deciding early on to write a weird, misogynistic ending out of spite for an actress not wanting to be naked around them on the set.
I think both HBO and G Martin proposed 10 seasons but D+D refused because they want to make disney films or something.
That being said, I don't really care about the books anymore. It has been too long anyway, and I'm not re-reading
there's a 2010 Chinese adaptation of three kingdoms link with english subs that's really good. The acting and intrigue is on par with early game of thrones but it's funded by a culture endowment so there's way less uncomfortable sex stuff and they don't phone in the end
The JJ Abrams gambit, refined: you don't have to provide disappointing endings to hype waves if you never write the ending
you don't have to provide disappointing endings to hype waves if you never write the ending
Half Life 3
Does anyone at this point think the ending will be significantly different from the show? Martin put pretty blatant nods to what the big reveals will be in the books, the foreshadowing points to Dani going full tyrant with her WMDragons. It's pretty clear the show runners either had an outline from George or just read the fucking books and correctly predicted what he was gonna do.
Yes the ending will be significantly different.
For one, Euron Greyjoy is the big bad and is foreshadowed to release some sort of eldritch dark god entity into the world while binding one of Dany’s dragons, or summoning another moon meteor that brings another long night. He is also the prophesied Azor Ahai and Azor Ahai is bad and created the long night and white walkers by invading/warging into the weirwood hivemind and displacing the tree spirits. This is all foreshadowed by the story of the Bloodstone Emperor.
Dany won’t go full WMDs, instead she will have to kill and overthrow fake Aegon (young griff) who will be beloved by the people for ousting the evil queen Cersei who destroyed the sept of Baelor. So Dany will be seen as a tyrant but she’s not going to just massacre people. Tyrion is the devil in her ear though and she’s possibly allying with Victorian Greyjoy so she might become evil by who she associates with. It was always shown her invasion of Westeros would be terrible and involve mass suffering, with the Dothraki and Dragons that was obvious. Whatever happens with Euron, Dany will be directly involved.
Bran is going to have to resolve the issue of the white walkers by putting them back into the weirwood trees and driving the 3 eye raven and all other humans out of the weirwood tree hivemind to make space and right the wrongs of Azor Ahai.
Jon may be resurrected a lot more wolf like, his personality merging with Ghost while he was dead. This was ignored in the show. Also, it’s foreshadowed Jon might be the night’s king that the others are searching for, and they will resurrect him (not Melisandre) as a sentient ice wight like coldhands to lead them back to their homeland. Jon might become the leader of the white walkers and lead them to exile/peace.
I can go on if you like, we haven’t even gotten into the deep ones / merlings and their impact on the plot. They will be involved with the Euron plotline most likely, they currently have Aeron Greyjoy (damp hair), Davos and Patchface under their influence (anyone who drowns and comes back significantly different). They are the architects of the oily black stone cities of asshai and moat Cailin. They farm humans and breed them livestock, as seen on the thousand isles and the iron isles.
I wouldn't be surprised if the author saw the negative reaction, realized he was going to do roughly the same thing, and decided to just get circling the runway and churning out endless edgy side projects instead of coming up with something else.
See my comment above, the ending of the books will be significantly different due to the cutting of Euron Greyjoy, Victorian Greyjoy, Young Griff and other pivotal characters that will affect the world in world historical ways. They completely removed the foreshadowed plot of Euron Greyjoy summoning a meteor into the earth and causing another long night, possibly becoming the vessel for an old god or demon of some kind. They also completely botched the white walker plotline explaining their creation and eventual destruction, which requires Brann to realize his ancestors were evil and right the wrongs of history by letting the white walkers back into their home in the weirwood trees and relinquishing human control of the weirwood hivemind network.
Azor Ahai / the prince that was promised is Euron Greyjoy who brought about the original long night and will be bringing the upcoming one as well. Azor Ahai is evil.
The Night’s King, who is a fabled evil king of legends, is Jon Snow. Jon will be resurrected as Night’s King and lead the White Walkers back into their homeland of the weirwood network (they are tree spirits driven out of the weirwoods and given physical form via blood sacrifice, mostly babies).
So the twist will be the prophecy is true but the opposite of how we have been interpreting it. Azor Ahai is actually the bad guy and Night’s King will end the long night and lead the others to peaceful justice and to return to their home)
Are there any books that are written by like... Teams of people?
Books are the only entertainment medium that is entirely dominated by individual authors and hasn't turned into something where whole teams of writers work on a project. I guess the editor usually has a bit of input but still.
It also seems considerably better off for it, as a medium.
The Expanse was written by a pair of authors under a single pen name
The Expanse is an interesting example because even knowing there were two authors while reading it I couldn't tell when it shifted from one author to the other. In fact, it had a remarkably consistent style throughout the series. I wonder if they've ever spoken about how they split the labor.
I'd heard they did alternating chapters, which if so is impressive as there is no change in feel from one to the next.
Are there any books that are written by like... Teams of people?
It's going to be a thing very soon that you essentially have teams of plot outliners, character developers, AI prompt engineers, and editors quickly drafting novels together. You're going to have the hypercapitalist speed-focused methods of software development (Agile, Scrum, etc.) leaking into creative fields in order to make them more profitable and have faster turnaround times.
That's not even step-away-from-the-lathe. Some dickheads are working on that right now.
It's a natural consequence of cinema, video games, etc. that they will require teams of people most of the time because of the sheer volume of disciplines involved. Books only require one most of the time, just like painting, sculpture, songwriting, etc.
Maybe videogames and cinema are also better off with one dedicated writer, and an editor. I know "too many cooks" is already a thing that has been popularised in the past but perhaps it needs to make a return.
Several projects would genuinely be better off if the internals of the companies had a "keep your hands off" attitude to the writing, and kept it in the hands of one talented person rather than a team of people all trying to stamp their soulless addition on it while pushing and pulling internally over control.
Every example of "design by committee" can be matched by an example of a legendary writer's room (eg: golden era Simpsons)
Every brilliant auteur can be matched with an example of an "idea's man" who had to be reigned in by a team or was really a team all along with one person taking credit (eg: George Lucas).
I think it's more likely there are no hard rules for projects being better off with dedicated writers or teams of writers.
It's like asking if it's better for music to be written by singer-songwriter or a band working collaboratively. Both methods can produce great art.
But much like it exceptionally difficult to impossible to predict or manufacture a hit, I think it's probably a generally hard problem to determine what should be written by a team or a solo writer until after the work is already done.
Even comic books are often made by two people before it gets to the editors. That said, I agree and I don't think anyone really likes design-by-committee other than the people making money off of it.
As a communist, my gut reaction is that this is an antisocial way of organizing things but that it should be totally possible to have people collaborate in a more constructive way. That probably requires actually understanding those systems though, and I do not.
In a no copyright environment you'd have everyone, literally everyone, writing folklore, ideas, stories, coming up with their own twists to the lore, their own takes. Historic mythology didn't develop from one writer it developed through people telling stories and adding bits or their own twists.
The good ones caught on and were adapted by others, the bad ones did not. The overall story and the "popular" mythology of the character/tale would form this way collectively. But it would still be a bunch of individual storytellers doing it.
The property model is what prevents this occurring collectively in a more natural human fashion.
I know that Wheel of Time was handed over by Robert Jordan to Brandon Sanderson, because he was dying. It can be very jarring to suddenly see a change in writing style.
Maybe that's how historians of literature feel when they detect forgeries or misattributions.
I think maybe it would make more sense to have authors write individual stories and contribute to a shared setting. Not like spin-offs and fandoms, but like open source contribution I guess.
I had this idea for one of my novels. It's this absolute playground of a setting where, in essence,
s have full reign over character customization in an MMO in the halted-dystopia future. I have the POV characters with entirely different plots so there's infinite stories you could tell. If grimbo the goblin gets a cult following, then another author could write about their goblin-y adventures and it could contribute to the same world.Yeah in a way I guess super hero comic shared universes are kind of already this.
I think maybe it would make more sense to have authors write individual stories and contribute to a shared setting. Not like spin-offs and fandoms, but like open source contribution I guess.
That's sort of how the Warhammer and Warhammer 40k novels worked. I think that's what they did with the Star Wars novels that are no longer canon. You end up with a couple good books and a lot of slop.
Are there any books that are written by like... Teams of people?
any 39 clues enjoyers in the chat
Brandon Sanderson does the primary writing work, but he does have a small team under him to develop it.
There really are very few examples of good "collaborative" books out there. And even in something like Good Omens, I found it pretty easy to tell which were the Terry Pratchett sections and which were the Neil Gaiman ones. I guess there is simply no substitution for one hyperfixated recluse fugueing paragraphs onto paper. (I hope there is no substituting it for my sake at least)
Stephen King is a lib and I don’t think he’s written anything particularly good in 30+ years, but the stuff he wrote when he was bonkers on drugs and booze… I think it’s actually veeery good.
being a lib is about control after all (credit to disco Elysium), so it would make sense for a mind that is out of control to be more distant from libitude
The Long Earth series is a wet fart though. Like damn, you'd think discovering the multiverse, finding out humans appeared once, ever, would be an interesting thing to explore. But no, it's 4 books of a guy being misanthropic all leading up to a total lack of climax.
Great world building exercise, awful book series.
Gotta be honest, only read the first one, liked it, but never read the rest
GRR Martin contributes to a collaborative series, Wildcards, and his heart seems to be in it more than the Game of Thrones series (asoiaf) which is probably the main reason asoiaf remains incomplete.
Yeah literature by comitte sounds like a terrible idea. Like sure single authors will stuff their books full of their weird eccentricities and sometimes that can lead to bad stuff, and it is definitely good that editors existed, but I agree that it makes for a better medium.
Why not? House of the Dragon shows that the problem was the GOT show runners specifically and not HBO or GRRM, since it rules and basically redeemed HBO here.
Just keep those hacks D and D 100 miles away from it
I'd like to ask Mr. Martin to stop ruining fantasy for people who actually like the genre (or at the very least add more meaningful fucking melanin already)
Ever since GoT was likened to "Fantasy for people who would rather be watching the Sopranos" I've never been able to unsee it
I guess that applies to the show, but honestly I strongly prefer the depth of character writing present in ASOIAF to any more classic fantasy stories that Ive engaged with. And I admit, the things i like about ASOIAF are not the fantasy elements. Its barely a fantasy story to me. Like yeah there's dragons and ice zombies but to me thats not the point its just set dressing.
Agreed about the melanin though. And I totally get how classic fantasy fans would be frustrated by the show at least.
My favorite thing about the books is how he reinvents fantasy tropes within a low-fantasy world.
It manages to make the fantastical feel truly fantastical in a way that no other book series I've read has.
I like that you can look at and character, or people, or faction in Game of Thrones and draw immediate parallels to real-world mythology and fantasy stories. It is comfy because, instead of trying to subvert or avoid tropes and archetypes, he appropriates them without hesitation.
That's spot on, especially after having read the first GoT book.
good news for people who like making genealogy charts for imaginary characters
had another beer and remembered this relevant bit of my life, when I was like 14 my cousin who was maybe 17 at the time and her mom recommended the wheel of time series to me, and their pitch included showing me their shared spreadsheet of characters and their genealogy
I was 14 so I read a few of the books before discovering that doing charts was not my idea of fun
I like GRRM but also find him extremely annoying and he is obviously problematic. I made it through the first 2.5 ASOIAF books before I couldn’t take it anymore. I’ll probably go back to them eventually. I also enjoyed both GoT and House of the Dragon. My only major problem with GoT is that Daenarys should have conquered Westeros and exterminated all of the feudal lords.
I also like his “pantsing” method of writing and think it works really well. The problem is that the guy is a fuckin’
The "pantsing" method worked great for the first few books, but not knowing how he was going to resolve things created some issues later on, and is probably a big part of why the series is permanently paused.
I remember in his blog before ADwD came out, he was very open about how not knowing how he would resolve the Meereenese plotline caused big delays, and it ended up being a pretty mediocre plotline in the end too.
My only major problem with GoT is that Daenarys should have conquered Westeros and exterminated all of the feudal lords.
That would involve society improving somewhat and that can't ever be shown to happen because
As someone who was reading the series a few years before the show was even announced, I kinda love this as the ultimate troll move. At the end of the day a writer has no real obligation to finish their work. I still believe we'll get Winds of Winter, but Song of Spring just ain't gonna happen.
GRRM specifically does have an obligation. Like the whole "Writers aren't your bitches. They don't owe you anything" defense was cooked up for him, and he's the case where it doesn't apply. Because he has been outright promising this, and he does it routinely, and he uses the idea of finishing his work as a way to garner interest in other projects.
Remember when Warren Beatty convinced Paramount to make a 3 hour long movie about American communists in Russia, and made the US government the villain, was sympathetic to the bolsheviks, and then had tankie vs anarchist argument segments where the movie kinda sorta sided with the tankies, and did this during the height of the Cold War, and then made Ronald Reagan watch it, and continued to make chuds mad for the next 42 years? That was some real studio entertainment
I keep meaning to watch that but I have a hard time finding a torrent for it
magnet:?xt=urn:btih:9c64f908f8ae41f4eada144c8c7fdd2d01e9203b&dn=Reds (1981) [1080p] [BluRay] [5.1] [YTS.MX]
I’m so glad I didn’t get into the ASoIAF books. I couldn’t imagine getting dabbed on by an author this hard.
I quit before Dance of Dragons came out and moved over to Kingkiller Chronicle
Now I'm a finished-series-or-better-yet-standalone-novels kind of guy.
Still won't finish Winds of Winter, apparently.
But as long as upcoming "prestige" slop has lots of
nothing fundamentally will change. 
Fuckin' love me some adventures of Ham and Cheese
Fuckin' love me some more indecipherable Funko Pops
Fuckin' love me some more grinding a franchise to the bone
I'm not suprised, I'm just horrified
Finish the damn books old man.
