George RR Martin, his fanboys, and former fanbase

[Open Window Maniac]

The biggest example of this is in the start of the fifth book when Dany gets a full on prophecy dropped on her, which includes her meeting multiple characters that are explicitly described. Since there is no reason to believe it will be false at least until the ending, what happens in practice is that Dany and everyone else mentioned has god tier armor until their meeting, which none of happen in the book.

So at the end of the book, when Dany is defecating to death in the middle of nowhere, having lost everything she has conquered, at her lowest point, I just don't care. Because I know she will survive, fuck someone to get her position back and SLAY QUEEN her way to westeros to meet the requisite cast.

Born to shit, forced to be in a contrived plot.

 

[AnyballLecter]

This is a good thread to debate this, seeing we are a mix of 1) show-haters and 2) people who get the unrealistic expectations for the show and the flaws of the books and 3) people who are both.

The Dragon Demands (whose fair and balanced comprehensive biography can be read in this thread) says that the media do not want to report on the new Game Of Thrones show, House of the Dragon, due to the ending of the main show. We have seen how this guy wants to turn everything into an indictment of the show runner, David Benioff. Therefore, I suspect he is covering his bases so that if the new show fails, he can blame the dude for a flop he had no involvement in. My opinion is all that is happening is there is only so much the TV sites want to cover - until the show gets an actual audience.

What do you think? How much coverage of this show have you seen compared with Lord of the Rings: Rings of Power or Sandman?​

https://asoiaf.westeros.org/index.p...gon-flood-gates-open/page/21/#comment-8827026
Copy & paste. Question:

I saw your post on YouTube where you said something about how you know some reporters who don’t want to cover the show. Why not?

Answer:

Oh I'll talk more about this later but it's not a spoiler or leak it's just...

I talked to one freelancer journalist I know (and then some others who said the same thing)....who said that they're having a REALLY hard time pitching articles to mainstream TV news sites about House of the Dragon. NOT even "comparisons with Game of Thrones" or "what went wrong with Game of Thrones" articles. I'm talking basic, "hey, can we do a character profile article on Rhaenyra and Alicent to introduce new viewers?"....they're getting shot down. News sites are doing the most simplistic, bare-bones reporting on "there's a show called House of the Dragon" and then copy-pasting the same description template, but - for the most part - putting no effort into it.

MOST of them expect House of the Dragon to fail, and have decided there's no interest in it....even though, objectively, there are analytics showing that say, IMDb's site traffic rankings officially listed it as the most anticipated new show of the year, OVER Lord of the Rings prequel, Sandman, or Star Wars/Marvel projects. Simply looking at GOOGLE TRENDS, a readily available tool, there are charts showing how much more it's being searched online than those other shows.

Nonetheless, MOST mainstream news sites are...still so bitter about Game of Thrones that they "rage-quit".

Which is annoying for us: They wouldn't report on how the show was going bad from Season 5 onwards, BRUSHED OFF our complaints about the Season 5 abandoning the books....then when Season 8 was rock bottom bad....they didn't turn around and go "let's analyze what went wrong". These aren't people who analyze things - if they did, they wouldn't have stayed hyped after Season 5 and ignored our warnings and complaints.

YES there are a few exceptions with news sites that have relationships with HBO like Entertainment Weekly or Hollywood Reporter but....most aren't promoting this at all.

It's an odd mirror of how no one wanted to report on Game of Thrones Season 1 in the leadup to it in 2011, because it's "just a silly fantasy show".

These conversations I had with reporters about the behind the scenes bias against House of the Dragon were....were sobering. Made me realize how much of an uphill battle this show has.

 

[Chuckwagon]

The impression I've gotten is that nobody cares about House of the Dragon due to the ending of the main show, not just the media or any other singular group. Most of my friends had at least some passing interest in GoT when it was at the height of its popularity last decade, but since the ending their interest in the IP has completely cratered. Doesn't matter if they were super invested or just casual watchers, the kind of people who theorized over minute details online or just tuned in for each episode once a week and then talked about it the day after, book-readers or show-only fans; none of them liked the ending and they pretty much all moved on to other things quite quickly. The ones I've brought HOTD up to didn't even know the show is about to start airing and expressed at best a lukewarm 'hmm OK, maybe I'll give it a watch if the reviews are good' sentiment, at worst they've told me that they've sworn GoT stuff off for good after S8.

I haven't seen much buzz about it online either. Outside of dedicated ASOIAF/GoT spaces, almost nobody talks about it even on gaming forums hosting Total War or CK2 ASOIAF mods as far as I can tell, unless it's to post the occasional meme about how much the ending blows or how LOTR is better. It really does feel like GoT's cultural influence died overnight after that disastrous last season.

Speaking of LOTR's superiority, I found a video with a take on why its popularity is longer-lasting than ASOIAF's which I haven't seen elsewhere. I didn't think about it this way before but this does make sense now that I am thinking about it - GoT's shock value really was both its biggest asset and its biggest weakness in the long run, and the shallowness of all its edge & lack of a universally popular message everyone can appreciate (not in a skin-deep token 'diversity & representation' way as HOTD's going for with its literally black Blacks but in the profound and truly universal way that Americans or Western Europeans, Chinese, Nigerians and Arabs can all comprehend the restoration of a rightful king or the revival of traditions and go 'yeah that's cool') have further contributed to its slippage into the dustbin of entertainment history. Said edginess and its conception as a sort of anti-Tolkien 'realistic deconstruction' does also really date it as a product of the late '80s/'90s to mid-2010s when dark grim/pseudo-gothic edgelord shit was taking off everywhere from comics to movies, as well. That people have been increasingly poking holes in its purported 'realism' since even before the show finished airing is just the icing on the crap cake.

 

[The Bovinian Derivative]

This is a good thread to debate this, seeing we are a mix of 1) show-haters and 2) people who get the unrealistic expectations for the show and the flaws of the books and 3) people who are both.

The Dragon Demands (whose fair and balanced comprehensive biography can be read in this thread) says that the media do not want to report on the new Game Of Thrones show, House of the Dragon, due to the ending of the main show. We have seen how this guy wants to turn everything into an indictment of the show runner, David Benioff. Therefore, I suspect he is covering his bases so that if the new show fails, he can blame the dude for a flop he had no involvement in. My opinion is all that is happening is there is only so much the TV sites want to cover - until the show gets an actual audience.

View attachment 3556331

What do you think? How much coverage of this show have you seen compared with Lord of the Rings: Rings of Power or Sandman?​

https://asoiaf.westeros.org/index.p...gon-flood-gates-open/page/21/#comment-8827026
Copy & paste. Question:


Answer:

Well he's not that wrong as far as search trends go. I Google Trends'd a few shows I could think of and House of the Dragon is up there, except Stranger Things, a show that has ended a month ago, still topped them.

Spoiler: Image of Trend results

I did a second search just as generic search terms, replacing House of the Dragon with Game of Thrones, and Rings of Power with Lord of the Rings and it's pretty similar, except Stranger Things is an order of magnitude above all of them.

Spoiler: Image of the trend for same shows just as generic search terms instead

I don't know what the takeaway is. General apathy for most things? Surely there's good TV out there.

 

[AnyballLecter]

Thrones / House of the Dragon are much higher than LotR on google trends all year.

Stranger Things was airing NEW EPS during those spikes.

My question was about media reporting and I think the coverage is about what you would expect. Another reason why some journos can't sell their article pitches is the the media are cutting costs because the world is ending etc.

 

[Oats12345]

That guy in the video makes a good point about how Tolkien actually face the true horrors of men by fighting in world War 1 compare to Martin who just sat on his fat ass his entire life judging other people's work.

Tell me which one do you think understands realism and the harsh life of reality from experience?

 

[Open Window Maniac]

This is a good thread to debate this, seeing we are a mix of 1) show-haters and 2) people who get the unrealistic expectations for the show and the flaws of the books and 3) people who are both.

I like to put myself in 4) People who really only became aware of the ASOIAF after the utter disaster that was the show's final season.
I enjoy a good dumpster fire, and a massive tv show flushing itself down the drain makes for a pretty cozy dumpster fire. Through watching various videos riffing on how bad the latter half of the show gets, and other videos dissecting the lore and some plot aspects, I learned through osmosis what the significance of the various locations, characters and great houses were. I have to say there is some pretty interesting back story to ASOIAF and some cool ideas in the plot. If it wasn't for the fact that it will never get a proper ending and that all the cool ideas are surround by multiple passages of GRRM's fetish material, I'd consider checking the books out.

 

[Tasty Tatty]

If this thing flops, it might be because people aren't really invested on these new characters. It could be appealing to the books fans because we know who Visenya Targaryen is, but not only casual normie watchers don't know and don't care, D&D, the motherfuckers, spend eight years insulting the book fans. Like, fuck you.

 

[AnyballLecter]

I like to put myself in 4) People who really only became aware of the ASOIAF after the utter disaster that was the show's final season.
I enjoy a good dumpster fire, and a massive tv show flushing itself down the drain makes for a pretty cozy dumpster fire. Through watching various videos riffing on how bad the latter half of the show gets, and other videos dissecting the lore and some plot aspects, I learned through osmosis what the significance of the various locations, characters and great houses were. I have to say there is some pretty interesting back story to ASOIAF and some cool ideas in the plot. If it wasn't for the fact that it will never get a proper ending and that all the cool ideas are surround by multiple passages of GRRM's fetish material, I'd consider checking the books out.

You should watch 'Game of Thrones.'

 

[Zbk3VmLfujjzjxBd43tL]

For me it's ridiculous to claim that the Others are main antagonists. They barely appeared in the books and we have 5 massive books already. And not only that, 95% of the story has nothing to do with them. Like the best and most popular aspects of the book are something completely different. So none of that actually matters? Real story is about Others???

So 95% of the story is just pointless filler?

Structure of ASOIAF is a mess.

I think one of the appeals of the story was "wow, these nobles fighting sure seems petty when the Others are coming soon enough to kill everyone" and how the Nights Watch is totally ignored and mistreated by basically everyone despite how the reader knows very important they are.

I like to put myself in 4) People who really only became aware of the ASOIAF after the utter disaster that was the show's final season.
I enjoy a good dumpster fire, and a massive tv show flushing itself down the drain makes for a pretty cozy dumpster fire. Through watching various videos riffing on how bad the latter half of the show gets, and other videos dissecting the lore and some plot aspects, I learned through osmosis what the significance of the various locations, characters and great houses were. I have to say there is some pretty interesting back story to ASOIAF and some cool ideas in the plot. If it wasn't for the fact that it will never get a proper ending and that all the cool ideas are surround by multiple passages of GRRM's fetish material, I'd consider checking the books out.

If you accept the ending is a downer for many reasons, Books 1-3 of ASOIAF are still a great read. Although I guess if you already know the spoilers and what happens next then it probably isn't as good, because yes, the shock value of sudden deaths and plot threads getting axed was always one of the appeals. But I say one of, because the worldbuilding is great and Gurm lays out a nice and gritty take on medieval Europe with some interesting magical elements here and there. There's a reason the books were one of the most acclaimed fantasy series in the 00s.

 

[Milwaukee Macho Man]

What do you think? How much coverage of this show have you seen compared with Lord of the Rings: Rings of Power or Sandman?

I've seen the same amount for LotR and HotD. I only started seeing shit about Sandman pop up a few days ago.

Note: I don't watch actual television and use adblock on my computer, so I really only see shit when I'm on my phone.

 

[AnyballLecter]

use adblock on my computer

Not talking about ads, was talking about reporting and online buzz.

 

[Milwaukee Macho Man]

Not talking about ads, was talking about reporting and online buzz.

That's generally how I come to see online reporting and buzz *shrugs*

 

[Sexual Chocolate]

I wonder how big or active the fanbase for his books is at the moment. Surely at this point it's a matter of it being a sunk cost and they've all invested too much time in waiting to turn back now.

Idk, he'd have to write something first.

He also helped create the Wild Cards anthology series, and contributed worldbuilding for the 2022 video game Elden Ring.

Something other than lazy fanfic tier "worldbuilding" wank.

Probably a lot fewer than would've bought anything he published circa 2014. He was approaching JK Rowling levels of sellability, but now I guess he's mid-tier, maybe a little better than that? Somewhere between Dean Koontz and new Dan Brown novels.

On the plus side, he's still a household name, the publishing and TV companies are desperate for any kind of content. If he ever needs money for pizza rolls and fancy tricked-out boomer scooters... slapping his name on some ghostwritten nerd shit would probably earn him millions of dollars.

 

[wtfNeedSignUp]

Elden Ring

I really want to see what was GRRM's original pitch in world building. My best guess is that he wrote the whole divine family shenanigans, while the more outside elements came from Miyazaki since a lot of it is similar to what we've seen in previous works (outer gods with Bloodborne great ones, madness fire with Dark Souls age of flames, etc.). And almost certainly a lot of the more questionable parts of it were cut off.
Considering it's the biggest lore element in the game, it feels to me like a loss since it overshadows personal stories with grand demigod tales which are basically Norse myths with the serial numbers filed off (and the usual creepy sibling/self fuckery he is known for, seriously GRRM to incest is like Vaush to horses) .
At least personally the lore in Elden Ring felt uninteresting. Dark Souls also had a decaying world but the story and characters was about the now, rather than how Gwyn accidentally fucked his trap son and then ate *continue for 10 paragraphs*.

 

[Kulee Baba]

The impression I've gotten is that nobody cares about House of the Dragon due to the ending of the main show, not just the media or any other singular group. Most of my friends had at least some passing interest in GoT when it was at the height of its popularity last decade, but since the ending their interest in the IP has completely cratered. Doesn't matter if they were super invested or just casual watchers, the kind of people who theorized over minute details online or just tuned in for each episode once a week and then talked about it the day after, book-readers or show-only fans; none of them liked the ending and they pretty much all moved on to other things quite quickly. The ones I've brought HOTD up to didn't even know the show is about to start airing and expressed at best a lukewarm 'hmm OK, maybe I'll give it a watch if the reviews are good' sentiment, at worst they've told me that they've sworn GoT stuff off for good after S8.

I haven't seen much buzz about it online either. Outside of dedicated ASOIAF/GoT spaces, almost nobody talks about it even on gaming forums hosting Total War or CK2 ASOIAF mods as far as I can tell, unless it's to post the occasional meme about how much the ending blows or how LOTR is better. It really does feel like GoT's cultural influence died overnight after that disastrous last season.

Speaking of LOTR's superiority, I found a video with a take on why its popularity is longer-lasting than ASOIAF's which I haven't seen elsewhere. I didn't think about it this way before but this does make sense now that I am thinking about it - GoT's shock value really was both its biggest asset and its biggest weakness in the long run, and the shallowness of all its edge & lack of a universally popular message everyone can appreciate (not in a skin-deep token 'diversity & representation' way as HOTD's going for with its literally black Blacks but in the profound and truly universal way that Americans or Western Europeans, Chinese, Nigerians and Arabs can all comprehend the restoration of a rightful king or the revival of traditions and go 'yeah that's cool') have further contributed to its slippage into the dustbin of entertainment history. Said edginess and its conception as a sort of anti-Tolkien 'realistic deconstruction' does also really date it as a product of the late '80s/'90s to mid-2010s when dark grim/pseudo-gothic edgelord shit was taking off everywhere from comics to movies, as well. That people have been increasingly poking holes in its purported 'realism' since even before the show finished airing is just the icing on the crap cake.

In High School English my textbook had a curated segment from Stephen King's nonfiction book "Danse Macabre", and despite not being a fan of Stephen King books besides obviously the many classic film adaptations I was very fascinated by this segment, so much so that I bothered to remember it gist of it today. In those brief few pages Stephen King writes about the horror monster, to paraphrase as best as I can King writes about the "Monster" of all horror movies. And that there's a problem all creators must face, if the monster is shown fully and the audience can see the seams of the monsters costume, suddenly the monster is no longer terrifying. All the fear, dread, and most importantly the mystery has left the room.

The creator(s) then have two options, they either can apply the KISS Principle and leave the story at that or they can write on and on and make a tome of lore. The former is done by most good horror movies, but it's not the option when writing an epic of a story or a long winded film franchise. The audience becomes massive fans and demands the answers to the burning questions. And when the writer or creative team makes this tome of lore generally they straight up FAIL. Endless examples to list, whether that's Stephen King's own coked up lore for Pennywise The Clown (he's an eldritch MONSTER who loves terrifying and eating children and HE HATES THIS GIANT TURTLE!). JK Rowling tried to pad out the Harry Potter lore with the Fantastic Beasts movies and that has ended up being such a wet fart that Warner Bros seemingly will just cancel the sequels despite Harry Potter still being one of their big cash cows.

One of the few authors who ultimately managed to produce the tome of lore and have it miraculously land is ultimately Tolkien with the aid of his son who will never receive enough credit for his work. The Lord of The Rings and the seemingly never ending posthumous works is just such a massive amount of work.

George got it into his head that he was the "American Tolkien" and it broke his mind. He had a fun fantasy soap opera story and now he doesn't know how to end it. He wants it to be as meaningful as LOTR but he's not that good of a writer. And there's no doubt in my mind that the final season of GOT surely did have some of what George has currently had planned in his head. I mean seriously you foreshadow for the longest time about the legend of Azor Ahai who decides to murder his wife to make the greatest sword, it's quite apparent that Jon was going to murder Dany. But now everyone's lambasted that ending so George has to completely rework the conclusion to a fantasy story that he's been working on for decades.

George will die with the novels unfinished. A hatchet man will be hired to go through his notes and write up an ending. Most will hate that finale and George's novels will be largely forgotten. Lord of the Rings will continue to be discussed long after we're all dead, it is the medieval fantasy world that all medieval fantasies are compared to.

 

[Radola Gajda]

JK Rowling tried to pad out the Harry Potter lore with the Fantastic Beasts movies and that has ended up being such a wet fart that Warner Bros seemingly will just cancel the sequels despite Harry Potter still being one of their big cash cows.

Personally I think first FB movie was fine (by Harry Potter standards) . It avoided many problems of prequels. (This guy will end up here in few years, this guy, because he is not in story this is prequel to is probably dead....). And it was okay selfcontained story. Sequel is shit.

But as I said my standard for "good" Harry Potter is pretty low, because target audience are kids and teens

 

[TVB]

But as I said my standard for "good" Harry Potter is pretty low, because target audience are kids and teens

Unless the only adults who still follow Harry Potter is an old cat lady.

 

[Feline Supremacist]

In High School English my textbook had a curated segment from Stephen King's nonfiction book "Danse Macabre", and despite not being a fan of Stephen King books besides obviously the many classic film adaptations I was very fascinated by this segment, so much so that I bothered to remember it gist of it today. In those brief few pages Stephen King writes about the horror monster, to paraphrase as best as I can King writes about the "Monster" of all horror movies. And that there's a problem all creators must face, if the monster is shown fully and the audience can see the seams of the monsters costume, suddenly the monster is no longer terrifying. All the fear, dread, and most importantly the mystery has left the room.

The creator(s) then have two options, they either can apply the KISS Principle and leave the story at that or they can write on and on and make a tome of lore. The former is done by most good horror movies, but it's not the option when writing an epic of a story or a long winded film franchise. The audience becomes massive fans and demands the answers to the burning questions. And when the writer or creative team makes this tome of lore generally they straight up FAIL. Endless examples to list, whether that's Stephen King's own coked up lore for Pennywise The Clown (he's an eldritch MONSTER who loves terrifying and eating children and HE HATES THIS GIANT TURTLE!). JK Rowling tried to pad out the Harry Potter lore with the Fantastic Beasts movies and that has ended up being such a wet fart that Warner Bros seemingly will just cancel the sequels despite Harry Potter still being one of their big cash cows.

One of the few authors who ultimately managed to produce the tome of lore and have it miraculously land is ultimately Tolkien with the aid of his son who will never receive enough credit for his work. The Lord of The Rings and the seemingly never ending posthumous works is just such a massive amount of work.

George got it into his head that he was the "American Tolkien" and it broke his mind. He had a fun fantasy soap opera story and now he doesn't know how to end it. He wants it to be as meaningful as LOTR but he's not that good of a writer. And there's no doubt in my mind that the final season of GOT surely did have some of what George has currently had planned in his head. I mean seriously you foreshadow for the longest time about the legend of Azor Ahai who decides to murder his wife to make the greatest sword, it's quite apparent that Jon was going to murder Dany. But now everyone's lambasted that ending so George has to completely the conclusion to a fantasy story that he's been working on for decades.

George will die with the novels unfinished. A hatchet man will be hired to go through his notes and write up an ending. Most will hate that finale and George's novels will be largely forgotten. Lord of the Rings will continue to be discussed long after we're all dead, it is the medieval fantasy world that all medieval fantasies are compared to.

When I was a little girl around five my aunt from Germany came to live with us for a short time (getting away from a failed relationship). She was a governess to a wealthy family, which isn't quite the same as a nanny since she's expected to teach children manners and educate them as well. She spent a lot of time with me, teaching me German and reciting stories at bedtime (something my mother never did), and was a fantastic storyteller; to this day I can picture her next to my bed by the nightlight. I looked forward to going to bed because of her.

What does this have to do with Martin? Well, my aunt, whether she knew it or not, taught me the basics of storytelling; a beginning, middle and end-a satisfactory end. The subverting expectation trope is pretty lame, and often done wrong, so the story being told suffers. Danerys is like Chekhov's gun; she's the catalyst for the entire story and thus she needs an ending that's satisfactory to the reader and the story. She could take over Westeros and either rule beneficently or destroy it, find it unappealing and fuck off back to Mereen or just decide to stay in Dragonstone and fuck around with her dragons somewhere else, but having her suddenly go mad only to be killed by her cousin/bf-the end, with the most retarded of characters as the victors, is just kind of lame.

It's my opinion that you have to be able to tell a fantasy story like ASOIAF to a child in increments at bedtime, and make them want more. I always saw it as the story of an exiled princess with three dragons who sets out on a journey to reclaim her kingdom, not the story of how a crippled fortuneteller, his emo brother, his Assassin's creed sibling and his PTSD sister came to rule a kingdom wrecked by strange critters, barbarians, degenerates and zombies (and a bad tax policy). LOTR is the story of how three ordinary folk set out to destroy the Ring of Power that could destroy their world, and incidentally Aragon reclaims his birthright as King along the way. You have to be able to describe the basic plot of your story in one sentence. I'm not sure how to describe ASOIAF, and that's the problem.

 

[Divine right to rule]

I stopped watching the show after the original characters of the retard showrunners became unbearable.
I was also really angry how they handled Stannis, who is probably my favorite book character, next to Jaime.
After a universally hated little OC twat stabbed Jon, and the Bastard of Bolton crushed Stannis with an army of horsemen he pulled out of his ass, I quit and never looked bad.

The show was already so bad at that point, I don't know how much worse it could have gotten.
What exactly did the moronic showrunners do to piss even those with the tolerance to watch until the end off?