George RR Martin, his fanboys, and former fanbase

[AnyballLecter]

 

[wtfNeedSignUp]

View attachment 3616190

There is more joy laughing at a fat, self-important, joyless fat old guy than reading his books.

 

[Ishtar]

Is there justification in story why people still live in Asshai and dont move somewhere less extreme?

You go to Asshai if you are or you want to study sorcery, practice foul arts, fornicate with demons, and engage in the most heinous forms of magic.

Asshai is a massive city, Old Town and King’s Landing and at least one other city could fit in side it’s walls-but only like one in every ten buildings is occupied. So the actual population of Asshai is presumably rather small. It’s sorcerers and warlocks and maegi. Not the sort of people welcome or indeed interested in going elsewhere.

Not to mention there are no children in Asshai and animals brought there on ships quickly sicken and die.

https://awoiaf.westeros.org/index.php/Asshai

What makes Asshai worth going to at all, is if you are a sorcerer there is nothing forbidden. You can do whatever you want, practice whatever fucked up sorcery or blood sacrifice magic you like.

 

[A Sentient Cloud]

You go to Asshai if you are or you want to study sorcery, practice foul arts, fornicate with demons, and engage in the most heinous forms of magic.

Asshai is a massive city, Old Town and King’s Landing and at least one other city could fit in side it’s walls-but only like one in every ten buildings is occupied. So the actual population of Asshai is presumably rather small. It’s sorcerers and warlocks and maegi. Not the sort of people welcome or indeed interested in going elsewhere.

Not to mention there are no children in Asshai and animals brought there on ships quickly sicken and die.

https://awoiaf.westeros.org/index.php/Asshai

What makes Asshai worth going to at all, is if you are a sorcerer there is nothing forbidden. You can do whatever you want, practice whatever fucked up sorcery or blood sacrifice magic you like.

Previous books had strongly implied Asshai was more or less a normal city, albeit one foreign and "scary" to 14 year old Daenerys. Silk and wine industries are mentioned, neither of which would be tenable in a dead biome. Dany's storyline strongly foreshadowed she'd be heading there to sort out her dragon issue per her conversations with Quaithe, but then GRRM got her stuck in the morass that was Slaver's Bay so Asshai got retconned to the Spookyville described in World of Ice and Fire.

Is this thread just going to be fact-checking fiction? So apparently Tolkien travelled to the real Middle Earth and documented it meticulously, while GRRM just made up a bunch of lies.

You're not wrong but sperging about GRRM's fractally shitty worldbuilding is a time honored tradition in the ASOIAF fandom since the show is long behind us and fatso isn't releasing any more books.

 

[IAmNotAlpharius]

Vox Day (of all people, maybe on a Rekieta stream?) speculated Gurm's sex scenes were so weird, distorted, and unappealing because Gurm is just writing what he knows. He might even have called him a deviant troll or dwarf. Kind of a pot/kettle black situation, but a reasonable answer.

Vox Day is a bigger cow although not literally. But yessir it is a pot kettle situation.

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Not a Blog Update
(Archive)

Let me be clear. I do not know Salman Rushdie. Oh, I know OF him, of course. He has been one of the world’s most celebrated authors for decades now. I have seen him on television, read about him in newspapers and magazines, listened to his interviews. We have some mutual friends and acquaintances, I believe, for the world of publishing is a small one, but we’ve never been in the same place at the same time that I recall. I doubt that he has ever read any of my work, and I am abashed to admit that I have never read any of his.
Not for any particular reason. There are hundreds of authors whose books I keep meaning to read, without ever quite getting to them. My unread shelves hold more books than I could possibly read if I lived to be a hundred and did nothing between now and then but read, all day, every day. There are classics of English literature that I know only from the CLASSICS ILLUSTRATED comic books I read in the 50s. There are major seminal works of science fiction and fantasy gathering dust on my shelves. One day, I tell myself, one day. There are books I have loved… yet other titles by the same writers remain “to be read.” So my neglect of Rushdie really had nothing at all to do with him, and everything to do with how many books there are in the world, and how few hours in the day.
Not (yet) having read Rushdie’s novels did not keep me from admiring the man… from afar, as it were. Along with the rest of the world, I read of the turmoil around THE SATANIC VERSES and the fatwa declared against him by the ayatollahs of Iran. For the “crime” of writing a book that some people did not like, he was forced to spend a decade in hiding, surrounded by guards, wearing disguises when he dared leave his house. Through it all, he displayed courage, compassion, and grace under fire, while holding firm to his principles and yielding not an inch to the haters. In more recent years, the danger finally seemed to have ebbed, and Rushdie was once again able to speak and travel and appear in public.
He emerged as one of the world’s leading defenders of free speech, which only deepened my admiration for him. Freedom of speech is a central pillar of our democracy, and every other democracy in the world. There is nothing, but nothing, that I believe in more strongly.
And these days freedom of speech needs defenders, for when I look around, I find it under attack everywhere. Blacklisting, cancel culture, libraries being closed or defunded, classic works of literature being banned or bowdlerized or removed from classrooms, an ever growing list of “toxic” words the mere utterance of which is now forbidden no matter the context or intent, the erosion of civility in discourse. Both the Rabid Right and the Woke Left seem more intent on silencing those whose views they disagree with, rather than besting them in debate. And the consequences for those who dare to say things deemed offensive have been growing ever more dire; jobs lost, careers ended, books cancelled, “deplatforming.”
And now, it seems, attempted murder.
I cannot begin to express how horrified I am by the attack on Salman Rushdie in New York as he was about to give a speech. He was stabbed multiple times by a masked man who leapt onto the stage and rushed at Rushdie before he could say a word. The latest report I’ve read says that Rushdie is off the ventilator and improving, but he will never entirely recover. He suffered damage to his liver, and to his arm. He may lose an eye. The attack took place in front of a large audience who had come to hear him speak… ironically, about America as a haven for dissidents.
The attacker was arrested, and is being held without bail. His name is known, but I will not use it here. He already has an attorney, and I read that he will plead “not guilty” to the various charges being brought against him. When you try to kill someone on a stage in plain view of hundreds… well, I have to wonder how his legal team will dispute his guilt. An insanity defense? The devil made him do it? He was just following orders, a soldier of god? Maybe he just did it for the money. There is a considerable bounty on Rushdie’s head, after all. (Would that those who offered that bounty could also be arrested and tried before the World Court). Perhaps the attacker was drunk, or on drugs. Maybe he’d eaten a Twinkie. No doubt we will learn his motive when the case comes to trial. (Will the trial be televised? Will the public follow it as avidly as they did the Johnny Depp/ Amber Heard case? Call me cynical, but somehow I doubt it).
I think we all know what motivated the attack, however. We know what Salman Rushdie did. We have known for many years.
He wrote a book.
A book that a lot of people did not like.

I don’t know Salman Rushdie, as I said. That cannot be helped. There’s not much I can do for him… except to hope that he makes a full recovery, or as much of a recovery as he can possibly make, given his injuries… or maybe I should call them wounds. For that is what they are, wounds received in battle in a war he has been fighting most of his life, a war for freedom of speech, for art, for compassion.
I don’t know Salman Rushdie’s work either, however… and THATis something I can do something about. I just placed an order for copies of THE SATANIC VERSES, MIDNIGHT’S CHILDREN, and several of his other books. And I have instructed the managers at Beastly Books, my little bookshop here in Santa Fe, to order every Rushdie title presently in print. Beastly is not an ordinary general interest bookshop (Santa Fe has several of those); almost of the books it stocks are autographed. They carry my own titles, of course, along with books by the authors who have appeared at Beastly Books and the Jean Cocteau Cinema over the years for signings, interviews, readings, and other events. Rushdie’s books would not previously have been on our shelves, no more than those of thousands of other writers who we have never hosted. But that’s changing, as of today. From here on, we will be stocking everything Rushdie wrote…
The man who rushed on stage in Chautauqua with knife in hand wanted to do more than murder Salman Rushdie. He wanted to silence him.
Well, fuck that. I say, let his voice be heard.
I hope that all of you reading this will join me.
If, like me, you have never read his books, if he’s only someone you saw on the news, go out and buy THE SATANIC VERSES. Or any of his books, actually… but SATANIC VERSES is the one that will make the point most clearly. If you already have a copy on your shelves, great… but he has lots of other books, buy some of them. Tell your local bookstore to put his novels on their shelves. Make sure your local library stocks them.
If enough of us out there truly believe in freedom of speech, we can send Salman Rushdie soaring up the bestseller lists again. Nothing would please me more than to see THE SATANIC VERSES rise to #1, decades after its original publication. Nothing would make the point more clearly. Current Mood:

angry

Based. For those who don’t know the author he’s talking about wrote an unflattering book on Islam.

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George R.R. Martin Is Sick of Telling You When He Might Finish His Books (archive)​

Recently speaking to Vanity Fair about his writing process during the pandemic—and his own recent diagnosis with covid-19 after attending San Diego Comic-Con—Martin, who has spent years telling fans when he thinks he’ll be done with the next book in the A Song of Ice and Fire saga only for those rough estimates to just fly on by with not a preview page in the world, finally said the obvious thing: he’s done doing that, because he’s tired of people yelling at him. “I’m making progress, but I’ve given up on any hope of predicting the end. Every time I do, I don’t make it and everybody gets mad at me, and there’s no sense. It’ll be done when it’s done.”
To be fair to Mr. Martin, he did it a lot, to the point that it became less of a genuine frustration and more of just a running joke. But it’s also understandable, in that the author expressed frustration that in part some of the speculation of A Song of Ice and Fire’s future conclusion, especially recently, has also come alongside morbid speculation about his health. “Hopefully, covid won’t kill me, so we won’t have that issue. I do find it a little grisly, people speculating online about what’s going to happen to the rest of the books when I die,” Martin added. “I don’t like to speculate about that. I don’t feel close to dying.”

The full interview this article is referring to is here.

The Exhaustive History of Every George R.R. Martin Winds of Winter Update (archive)​

• July 2011: It Should Take 3 Years

• January 2013: A Preview Chapter!

 

[AnyballLecter]

House of the Dragon is getting more good reviews than bad, but the Rotten Tomatoes and Metacritic scores are not as good as Game of Thrones.

Some fans are gnashing and wailing. This new show is exactly to GRRMs spec, so if it does badly, they will be confronted by the idea that maybe Game of Thrones made changes for the better. They will shriek and run away from that idea.

 

[IAmNotAlpharius]

House of the Dragon is getting more good reviews than bad, but the Rotten Tomatoes and Metacritic scores are not as good as Game of Thrones.

Some fans are gnashing and wailing. This new show is exactly to GRRMs spec, so if it does badly, they will be confronted by the idea that maybe Game of Thrones made changes for the better. They will shriek and run away from that idea.

I suspect it’s going to be better received than the Rings of Power.

 

[A Sentient Cloud]

I suspect it’s going to be better received than the Rings of Power.

Well certainly, but that bar is so low it's hitting fiber optic cable.

 

[Tasty Tatty]

House of the Dragon is getting more good reviews than bad, but the Rotten Tomatoes and Metacritic scores are not as good as Game of Thrones.

I don't trust reviews of people who have probably not read the source and think shit, swearing, vomit, and rape are good tv for the sake of it.

As I am getting constantly bombarded with ads of this show (both online and tv), I feel tempted to watch it, but I know I'm gonna end up trying to murder casual fans who i know will tell me "the show was so amazing!" and describe me something that didn't happen at all in books or, worse, did happen but show writers didn't understand.

 

[AnyballLecter]

I don't trust reviews of people who have probably not read the source and think shit, swearing, vomit, and rape are good tv for the sake of it.

As I am getting constantly bombarded with ads of this show (both online and tv), I feel tempted to watch it, but I know I'm gonna end up trying to murder casual fans who i know will tell me "the show was so amazing!" and describe me something that didn't happen at all in books or, worse, did happen but show writers didn't understand.

You are blowing up one criteria out of proportion - fidelity to the source material. It's not advanced literature. You are not defending the purity of anything really important.

They don't make historical TV shows or movies accurate, for fucks sake. Why flip your shit because the details of the tits and dragons on the books differ from the tits and the dragons on TV?

 

[Tasty Tatty]

They don't make historical TV shows or movies accurate, for fucks sake. Why flip your shit because the details of the tits and dragons on the books differ from the tits and the dragons on TV?

I am not retarded to think that a tv/movie adaptation is gonna be 100% accurate to the source. I'm ok with changes because it is an adaptation.

What you can't change is the context of a situation. If you have a character killing someone in a book because the character is a sociopath, and you adapt it by showing the character killing in self-defence, then we're talking about a completely different situation and it's not an adaptation, it's a really bad fanfic where the writers are trying to push their own views. Just like how Cersei is basically a criticism of modern feminism and feminist entitlement in the books while in the show, she's a feminist icon.

 

[Super Hans]

Vox Day (of all people, maybe on a Rekieta stream?) speculated Gurm's sex scenes were so weird, distorted, and unappealing because Gurm is just writing what he knows. He might even have called him a deviant troll or dwarf. Kind of a pot/kettle black situation, but a reasonable answer.

Vox Day was making the point, at least when I still watched his stuff, that Gurm was obviously such a dweeby, sexless lardass without seeing a picture of him by what he wrote. The food descriptions have the most passion and detail, the sex scenes are almost universally grotesque, and whoever tries to do something moral gets fucked over for it.

 

[TheHarbinger]

What you can't change is the context of a situation. If you have a character killing someone in a book because the character is a sociopath, and you adapt it by showing the character killing in self-defence, then we're talking about a completely different situation and it's not an adaptation, it's a really bad fanfic where the writers are trying to push their own views.

This is what George Lucas did with Han Solo in Star Wars. He was originally a drug smuggler. And shot Greedo first out of self preservation. Then comes the revisionism and simplification of his character across various stories where they whitewash him. Including the ridiculous and near endless changes to him shooting Greedo out of self defense. And then ending with him being a fuel smuggler with a heart of gold.

If gross oversimplification of characters and streamlining of entire stories aggravates you then Game of Thrones would be a disaster to watch. And House of the Dragon will be just the same. As they are not even bothering to make the characters physically resemble their actual canon counterparts from the original books with the various nigger Targaryens in their $10 blonde wigs. With the retcons to Targaryen lore and the Others and White Walkers being part of the show I expect heavy handed changes to the overall ASOIAF story that will again create two fan groups. Those that embrace the retoncs and just accept this drivel as sycophants. And those that are either disgusted or disinterested.

I just want to see how they write the Night's King and the Long Night into this show then I will stop watching. And try to explain away the horrendous ending of the White Walkers saga.

 

[Ishtar]

I seriously don’t understand the potential of a dance of the dragons series.

It is literally a 2 in universe year conflict, with two major protagonists. Beyond Rhaenyra girl boss crap, I can not see what exactly you can do with it. It’s basically “a dispute over succession leads to medieval civil war but with dragons”.

Like, what is the point?

 

[Zbk3VmLfujjzjxBd43tL]

I seriously don’t understand the potential of a dance of the dragons series.

It is literally a 2 in universe year conflict, with two major protagonists. Beyond Rhaenyra girl boss crap, I can not see what exactly you can do with it. It’s basically “a dispute over succession leads to medieval civil war but with dragons”.

Like, what is the point?

Because it's a medieval civil war but with dragons and niggers, sounds compelling enough.

 

[A Sentient Cloud]

I seriously don’t understand the potential of a dance of the dragons series.

It is literally a 2 in universe year conflict, with two major protagonists. Beyond Rhaenyra girl boss crap, I can not see what exactly you can do with it. It’s basically “a dispute over succession leads to medieval civil war but with dragons”.

Like, what is the point?

I don't even understand why we're focusing on the incest elves Targaryens at all. I mean, sure I *do*, HBO is hoping lightning strikes twice with another girlboss meme character like Daenerys, but goddamn the Targaryens are NOT INTERESTING. Their names all sound the same, they're all basically the same personality, and their physical appearance is goofy as fuck in a live-action production. Matt Smith looks like absolute shit in that discount anime get-up.

 

[TheHarbinger]

I don't even understand why we're focusing on the incest elves Targaryens at all. I mean, sure I *do*, HBO is hoping lightning strikes twice with another girlboss meme character like Daenerys, but goddamn the Targaryens are NOT INTERESTING. Their names all sound the same, they're all basically the same personality, and their physical appearance is goofy as fuck in a live-action production. Matt Smith looks like absolute shit in that discount anime get-up.

The Targs are by far the most standout House in the entire ASOIAF series. They are not natives to Westeros. Their ancestors somehow tamed dragons. The seem to be supernaturally linked to dragons. They openly practice incest. They merely pretend to adopt the Faith of the Seven to placate Westeros commoners but this is all political theater. They are prone to either brilliance or pure madness. Making them unpredictable. They have branch houses that are violent and power hungry. Their story is the most interest (on paper at least).

Out of all of the houses in ASOIAF to do a prequel on they are prime candidates. Starks? Lannisters? Anyone else? Would be infinitely boring. Targs and dragons are the backbone of the series. Jon and Dany are both Targs. Tyrion in the books is heavily implied to be from Mad Aerys and not from Tywin (dragon dreams, abortion attempt, white hair, Tywin denying their relation).

The physical appearances of the Targs in this show are ridiculous. I suspect that they made the White actors look cheap on purpose because they could not make the nigger Targs believable. So rather than have perfect costumes and hair for the British actors and actresses who were Targs like in Game of Thrones. They just said "if we can't get it right for the black Targs we will just make them all look like cosplayers".

And the "girl boss" meme really only works with absurd characters like Arya. With her magical flying dagger leap into the Night's King. Dany is a 'boss' character because she has giant dragons. Any man would piss himself in front of a dragon. Of course people are terrified of her power but really they are ghastly afraid of her dragons. Her girl boss attitude did nothing against Jon when he knifed her pregnant stomach point blank. And Drogo's Bloodriders were never in fear of her until she showed them her dragons and her immunity to fire. They were going to kill her before Jorah stepped in.

 

[Oats12345]

The Targs are by far the most standout House in the entire ASOIAF series. They are not natives to Westeros. Their ancestors somehow tamed dragons. The seem to be supernaturally linked to dragons. They openly practice incest. They merely pretend to adopt the Faith of the Seven to placate Westeros commoners but this is all political theater. They are prone to either brilliance or pure madness. Making them unpredictable. They have branch houses that are violent and power hungry. Their story is the most interest (on paper at least).

Out of all of the houses in ASOIAF to do a prequel on they are prime candidates. Starks? Lannisters? Anyone else? Would be infinitely boring. Targs and dragons are the backbone of the series. Jon and Dany are both Targs. Tyrion in the books is heavily implied to be from Mad Aerys and not from Tywin (dragon dreams, abortion attempt, white hair, Tywin denying their relation).

The physical appearances of the Targs in this show are ridiculous. I suspect that they made the White actors look cheap on purpose because they could not make the nigger Targs believable. So rather than have perfect costumes and hair for the British actors and actresses who were Targs like in Game of Thrones. They just said "if we can't get it right for the black Targs we will just make them all look like cosplayers".

And the "girl boss" meme really only works with absurd characters like Arya. With her magical flying dagger leap into the Night's King. Dany is a 'boss' character because she has giant dragons. Any man would piss himself in front of a dragon. Of course people are terrified of her power but really they are ghastly afraid of her dragons. Her girl boss attitude did nothing against Jon when he knifed her pregnant stomach point blank. And Drogo's Bloodriders were never in fear of her until she showed them her dragons and her immunity to fire. They were going to kill her before Jorah stepped in.

Also do people still refer to Dany as a girl boss after the finale I would have thought people would stop doing that

 

[I (Don't) Have A Gun]

Their ancestors somehow tamed dragons

Magic. Now the exactly nature and source of the magic is unknown, but likely it was something similar to the dragonbinder horn.

The Valyrians claim they discovered a bunch of dragon eggs in volcanic mountains and just kinda figured out the magic from there.

It is said however in Assai that a lost ancient people taught a bunch of shepherds how to use the dragon binding magic and they then became the Valyrians.
It's also said that the dragons originate in the Shadow Lands to the far east and were tamed there by an ancient long lost people. Unlikely that these people were the Valyrians since originally they were shepherds and nowhere near the Shadow Lands
Now as far as I know it's not confirmed if the people who originally tamed the dragons were the same people who taught the Valyrians the magics to tame dragons but it seems very likely that what happens is that the Valyrians were just outright given dragons and the means to control them by some ancient people from the east.
Now they could be the people who once lived in the city of Stygai within the Shadow Lands since it is said that dragons and demons live near the city, or it could be the people of Assai since Assai is is also known as Asshai-by-the-Shadow the shadow of course referring to the Shadow Lands, but it's implied that Asshai was built by... fish people.

Out of all of the houses in ASOIAF to do a prequel on they are prime candidates. Starks? Lannisters? Anyone else? Would be infinitely boring

Off the top of my head the Night's King could be interesting, basically a war between the Nights Watch and the Starks. You can even throw in a couple of White Walker and some zombies.

 

[Tasty Tatty]

I seriously don’t understand the potential of a dance of the dragons series.

It is literally a 2 in universe year conflict, with two major protagonists. Beyond Rhaenyra girl boss crap, I can not see what exactly you can do with it. It’s basically “a dispute over succession leads to medieval civil war but with dragons”.

Like, what is the point?

It has more cool characters involved besides Rhaenyra, like Daemon.

Thing is, I think this could have worked better like an anthology called HotD, starting with Aegon's Conquest, which definitely has much better characters: Aegon himself and his sisters. Like you said, this show is gonna serve to make it all about GIRL BOSS AND PATRIARCHY IS BAD!, which is not at all what the conflict was about.