A Song of Ice and Fire (Released Spoilers)

INTHEMIDSTOFLIONS said:

How did he give his own career off LOTR? Isn’t it vastly different than Tolkien’s? I’ve only read song of ice and fire. I haven’t seen the show beyond and episode or two.

Fantasy was already alive and well before Tolkein. That’d be owed more so to pulp fiction writers like Robert E Howard in the 1930s.

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It's high fantasy vs low fantasy.

High fantasy is mostly Tolkien based worlds that became popular through his stories and later morphed into dungeons and dragons, warhammer fantasy, computer games, etc.

Low fantasy is more reality based. Historical elements with alternative time lines and limited supernatural elements. Conan and Game of Thrones could be considered low fantasy with more mundane settings and more historical politics and intrigue.

I think this stuff was originally intended to be more high fantasy, then he got lost in the weeds with the political shit. Also, there's a lot more than just dragons for high fantasy elements.

Maybe he’s going to release the wholeshebang one day and give us the real biggest surprise ever (he’s actually been working). If not, then someone should pull a Misery and kidnap him with an AI chat bot present and just force it out.

OU Ariakas said:

When I was in my 20's, I thought the same thing. No one is a hero, everyone is capable of good and evil, killing main characters is edgy.

Now that I'm in my 40's and a dad of boys that want them to grow into good men? I want a bunch of stories where the male role model is truly good and the reward for being truly good is defeating evil and becoming worshipped and loved. In a world where everything is shades of grey and people's motives are varied and unclear; I want stories that are beacons of bright white light to stand as shining guideposts for my boys to latch onto and use as their guide to the hero's journey.

We need truly good heroes that fight evil and win. No ifs, ands, or buts.

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I think you misunderstood my point.

I was saying it would be more powerful, more of a sacrifice, if Gandalf stayed dead and wasn't resurrected. That his resurrection cheapens his sacrifice.

I wasn't making any commentary on the goodness of Gandalf.

OU Ariakas said:

No one is a hero, everyone is capable of good and evil

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I fundamentally disagree with this take, I know it isn't the point you were making, but I truly believe this is the wrong mindset to have as an author. We need men like Aragorn, Jack Ryan, Steve Rodgers, etc.

Dr.Retarded said:

My wife and I tried to watch Ozark, and maybe got a few episodes in, and just shut it off. I had heard it was a good show cuz a buddy of mine had worked on it, but I just couldn't get invested. Every character was just horrible or unlikable. Maybe I missed out but I didn't do a good job on selling me to give a damn about any of the characters.

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I've noticed this as a trend as well. I think maybe Breaking Bad started it. Or maybe even The Sopranos.

But I couldn't really get into Ozark either. Same thing for Black Rabbit. When your characters are just scummy pieces of shit without any redeeming qualities, I'm not sure why I'm watching.

reavor said:

Maybe, and maybe George completely ruined his books by not being able to reign in his POV characters, instead of just keeping on expanding them, breaking his original goal of like 3 books, in the end being unable to edit down the spiraling POV verse he has lost himself in.

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That he was still introducing new point of view characters and expanding the narrative in book 5 rather than condensing things down to wolf versus lion is a big part of why I've got no real expectation he'll ever finish things up before dying.

Dr.Retarded said:

Every character was just horrible or unlikable. Maybe I missed out but I didn't do a good job on selling me to give a damn about any of the characters.

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This is why I don't like reading/watching most books/movies made after 2015.

Arbitrary said:

That he was still introducing new point of view characters and expanding the narrative in book 5 rather than condensing things down to wolf versus lion is a big part of why I've got no real expectation he'll ever finish things up before dying.

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Tbh, this is why I lost interest in the Expanse books, too.

INTHEMIDSTOFLIONS said:

Tbh, this is why I lost interest in the Expanse books, too.

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I gave up partway through book seven. Doing a 28 year time skip for the concluding trilogy means you can kill anyone off while still leaving yourself a huge block of time to write more stories in later if you feel so inclined. I don't know what happened, I never looked at a synopsis but it completely trashed my enjoyment of a series that was good enough for me to keep going and not much more.

Arbitrary said:

I gave up partway through book seven. Doing a 28 year time skip for the concluding trilogy means you can kill anyone off while still leaving yourself a huge block of time to write more stories in later if you feel so inclined. I don't know what happened, I never looked at a synopsis but it completely trashed my enjoyment of a series that was good enough for me to keep going and not much more.

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That's literally where I stopped as well. Halfway through book 7.

No one wants to read about how Holden and Naomi have become geriatric and have incontinence issues.

INTHEMIDSTOFLIONS said:

That's literally where I stopped as well. Halfway through book 7.

No one wants to read about how Holden and Naomi have become geriatric and have incontinence issues.

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I never went and checked a synopsis so I don't know if my concerns ever manifested but I definitely ruined my own enjoyment just the same. I'm just going to assume that at least some main characters exploded.

Related to the time skip we get (it's been a while bear with me) Clarissa Mao joining the crew which looks to be all kinds of drama and character development waiting to unfold to then skip ahead 28 years where I guess it all worked out. I was interested in seeing where all that went and it went nowhere.

Arbitrary said:

I never went and checked a synopsis so I don't know if my concerns ever manifested but I definitely ruined my own enjoyment just the same. I'm just going to assume that at least some main characters exploded.

Related to the time skip we get (it's been a while bear with me) Clarissa Mao joining the crew which looks to be all kinds of drama and character development waiting to unfold to then skip ahead 28 years where I guess it all worked out. I was interested in seeing where all that went and it went nowhere.

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I think by book 5-6 it became full on soap opera. Those two books couldve been condensed down to 1x500 page book and it would've been fine.

What you described happens a LOT with tv shows. Lots of build up, cliff hanger at the end of the season, then next season everything built up from season 1 was resolved off-camera, lets move on to the new issue and build that up for a cliff hanger season finale, then resolve it off camera, then repeat with season 3, etc.

Heretics of Dune had something similar where the entire book was building up to two battles that each had maybe 1-sentence description. Herbert was like, "And then there was the awesome battle at the end you were waiting for. Just imagine it, I dont need to describe it. Okay, next." Imagine of the battle at the end of Return of the King just happened off screen in between two scenes. How upsetting that would be.

Reminds me of JJ Abrams. People like to say, "He's such a great writer but he can't finish a story." i hate to break it to you, but if you can't finish a story well, you're not a great writer. Writing is build up and pay off. If it's only build up, it's bad writing. Which is most content post 2015.