I'm not gonna lie, I don't see the attraction to Game of Thrones. I had to stop reading once I realized the story wasn't going anywhere and Martin basically admitted he just makes it up as he goes along. I don't know, it's alright, just not excellent.
The only thing I don't understand is why people celebrate him as gritty and realistic just because he kills off tons of people. Some of the things that happen feel random and decidedly unrealistic. Like when Dani sleeps with her hand maiden. Martin never suggested she was bisexual, it's almost never brought up again, and he doesn't use it to speculate on homosexuality in the middle ages, which actually would be interesting character development. It was just fanservice. Fanservice that involved a fourteen year old girl. I think my breaking point was following Brianne through two books on a wild goose chase, only to have her turn around and go back to the guy who sent her on her quest in the first place. He could cut out that entire section, and it wouldn't hurt the books at all.
._. so I see this joke come up a lot around the internet "I quit" after watching the season finale.
I don't get why everyone is joking about it.
The whole season they were ramping up excitement about attacking Casterly Rock to get at Tywin Lannister. I genuinely wanted to see that and was interested in what it would do for the plot for all the characters.
Then they did what they did, and basically just destroyed a perfect bell curve of excitement. I'm not quitting the show but I can completely understand why someone would. I am not going to care about anything that happens between those two families now :/ because to me, it won't be more interesting than seeing a strong villain role character get his home taken right from under his nose.
I felt that what happened actually was bad writing/story telling, because it easily stopped some of its audience from caring about a large portion of the story's plot.
Eh, I'm 4 books in and its not been too bad. The people who die are mostly people who are well established as important to the characters/political scene, but almost never characters with a lot of screen time,
I can only think of three that can be considered main characters, that one innkeeper from book 2 whose name escapes me, Raven, and Old Man Fish (who I'm stretching with).
It's actually pretty masterful at having a ton of death without alienating audiences.
Disclaimer: I have never read or watched any Game of Thrones material. My opinions are referenced to abstract concepts. I don't I will get ino GoT either, since people not shutting up about it have just made me distance myself out of spite. Just like that top-of-the-chart song that plays everywhere you go until it's carved ino your ears.
Anyway. I have never understand this argument that killing of characters is good writing by itself. Good writing doesn't actually have to have an deaths at all. If fact, if the deaths serve no allegorical or deep literary recourse the death is merely shock value, and it swings all the way opposite from good writing. Proper authors know that every single word, grammatical structure or event in the plot must carry weight, even if it's not apparent at first hand an only as a part of a unifying theme or purpose. For TV shows, Lost killed of a lot of main characters, but only the first few deaths had any meaning and greater relevance. All there rest seemed just for the LOLs and it's part of the ever diminishing quality that happened in that show.
I have never seen anyone kill off main characters with the casual indifference of George R. R. Martin. Although not my favorite author, I enjoy his visceral writing style. It's not surprising when one considers the fact that the Martin, a medieval historian, takes great inspiration from the English War of the Roses. Life was cheap in the middle ages--and still is--and lords and legends were killed off just as quickly as they emerged.
Also, having read 4 of his books, I didn't really think that he could "shock" me anymore, boy was I wrong--those who have read the book know what I am talking about.
Also, having read 4 of his books, I didn't really think that he could "shock" me anymore, boy was I wrong--those who have read the book know what I am talking about.
If there's one terrible habit Martin got into since... well, basically since the end of the first book, it's setting up scenarios where it appears certain that a character is dead, and then revealing they're still alive. In contrary to the suspense supposedly created by his willingness to kill off any of the characters, it actually appears more like he's just teasing people with the threat of death and gets on my nerves. Unless a character is killed off explicitly in full view "on screen", so to speak, I'm going to be sitting and waiting for Martin to try and do yet another of his umpteen "gotcha" revelations where he reveals, to absolutely no surprise anymore, that the character he implied was dead was not actually dead.
What I'm saying is that there is so much precedence of Martin doing exactly this kind of thing and the characters surviving that it seems highly unlikely that he'll have killed off Snow.
Those 'oops, not really dead' reveals never got me because they never set up well enough that those characters were in danger. The deaths at that time would also have been a pointless waist of characters and the end of the story line would have been just too abrupt. Snow is different. He's taken a serious wound, he's unlikely to get assistance in time, even if he does get assistance there's no healing magic, and there's no looming story line only he can continue. Bran, on the other hand, wont die until Martin finishes enough of the Weirwood plot line that his death won't feel like a dangling plot thread.
So far all of the main characters in GoT dying did so whenever their death was best placed to act as a catalyst for a whole new magnitude of clusterfuck.
Jon's death creates a character and power vacuum at the wall, just when he was pretty much the only one preventing an all-out clash between the wildlings, the watch, and Stannis' retinue - white walkers thrown in for additional southbound shit flavour.
Personally I wouldn't be surprised by a miraculous revive, but one thing is certain: a shitstorm is brewing up there, and it's gonna be big.
I thought that was going to be THE WHOLE POINT of the book series, but only now is anything happening there. It would be like if you follow Harry Potter to hogwarts, finding out he's a wizard, about the school, and about Voldemort then following Dudley, Serious, and Lucious around for the next three books, with only the occasional chapter for what Harry's up to. Martin's pacing is terrible. He keeps switching to characters I don't care about, doing things I don't care about.
I see I'm not the only one who saw the ANIME tag underneath to day's strip, and not a GAME OF THRONES tag. I was wondering what show they were talking about, and Attack on Titan is a likely choice. As for Game of Thrones, all the talk I've read about it (that aren't hiding in the increasingly funny spoiler warnings) points out how there's no point in liking a character who has any morality at all if you just know they're going to eat it soon. I know just the trope for this: http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/DarknessInducedAudienceApathy
I apologize in advance if I now ruined your productivity today.
I have never seen anyone kill off main characters with the casual indifference of George R. R. Martin. Although not my favorite author, I enjoy his visceral writing style. It's not surprising when one considers the fact that the Martin, a medieval historian, takes great inspiration from the English War of the Roses. Life was cheap in the middle ages--and still is--and lords and legends were killed off just as quickly as they emerged.
Also, having read 4 of his books, I didn't really think that he could "shock" me anymore, boy was I wrong--those who have read the book know what I am talking about.
Well, speaking of the FIFTH BOOK WHICH CONTAINS PLOT DETAILS PROBABLY ABOUT 3 SEASONS AHEAD OF WHERE THE SHOW IS.....
*ahem*
I don't think he did. Well, maybe he did, but he'll still be back. I don't have any real evidence other then the fact that no character has ever (permanently) died in their own chapter. Personally, I think he'll either live through it, or Mellisandre (Millisandre?) will bring him back...Thus leaving him free to ignore his vows. This would fit with Jon's story running in parallel with Dany's, seeing as they would both leave their respective "kingdoms" behind.
Also, you only mentioned 4 books in your post, even though the spoiler is from the fifth one. So people who have actually read only the first 4 will be kind of screwed over. Please edit your post.
Disclaimer: I have never read or watched any Game of Thrones material. My opinions are referenced to abstract concepts. I don't I will get ino GoT either, since people not shutting up about it have just made me distance myself out of spite. Just like that top-of-the-chart song that plays everywhere you go until it's carved ino your ears.
Anyway. I have never understand this argument that killing of characters is good writing by itself. Good writing doesn't actually have to have an deaths at all. If fact, if the deaths serve no allegorical or deep literary recourse the death is merely shock value, and it swings all the way opposite from good writing. Proper authors know that every single word, grammatical structure or event in the plot must carry weight, even if it's not apparent at first hand an only as a part of a unifying theme or purpose. For TV shows, Lost killed of a lot of main characters, but only the first few deaths had any meaning and greater relevance. All there rest seemed just for the LOLs and it's part of the ever diminishing quality that happened in that show.
So with you, nothing wrong with dying characters, and i do love a good tragedy, but the death needs to serve a purpose.
I have tried to read one of the books, did not get far because i just could not get interested with the characters (might try again sometime during winter if i got time), so i can't say how well GRRM does character deaths, but if he uses lots of "fake" deaths, i can't say i'm going to be very optimistic about them when i start trying to read the series again.
Plus i tend to hate the several plotlines going on at same time thing, it almost never really works because you are constantly thrown of one way or the other and never get to really into the characters, or are forced to read about people you could not care less about, just so you have a clue what is going on while reading about those you do care (are interested) about.
Death and killing off characters, especially main ones, in a story is one of those double edged swords. Used well it can make for gripping twists and shock the reader, but on the other hand its also killing off all that characters growth and potential for later. And when done en masse it's even more dangerous because unless the writer can give suitable replacements then readers are left with characters they have no investment in and may stop caring about the series entirely. If you want to see how to do it wrong just look at the comic book industry.
I just bothers me when an engaging character is killed before there's any meaningful conclusion to their arc. I get that it's "realistic" because real life doesn't wait for character arcs to finish either, but if I wanted real life I would go outside and/or talk to people, which frankly sounds like a nightmare.
Also, having read 4 of his books, I didn't really think that he could "shock" me anymore, boy was I wrong--those who have read the book know what I am talking about.
If there's one terrible habit Martin got into since... well, basically since the end of the first book, it's setting up scenarios where it appears certain that a character is dead, and then revealing they're still alive. In contrary to the suspense supposedly created by his willingness to kill off any of the characters, it actually appears more like he's just teasing people with the threat of death and gets on my nerves. Unless a character is killed off explicitly in full view "on screen", so to speak, I'm going to be sitting and waiting for Martin to try and do yet another of his umpteen "gotcha" revelations where he reveals, to absolutely no surprise anymore, that the character he implied was dead was not actually dead.
What I'm saying is that there is so much precedence of Martin doing exactly this kind of thing and the characters surviving that it seems highly unlikely that he'll have killed off Snow.
Those 'oops, not really dead' reveals never got me because they never set up well enough that those characters were in danger. The deaths at that time would also have been a pointless waist of characters and the end of the story line would have been just too abrupt. Snow is different. He's taken a serious wound, he's unlikely to get assistance in time, even if he does get assistance there's no healing magic, and there's no looming story line only he can continue. Bran, on the other hand, wont die until Martin finishes enough of the Weirwood plot line that his death won't feel like a dangling plot thread.
So far all of the main characters in GoT dying did so whenever their death was best placed to act as a catalyst for a whole new magnitude of clusterfuck.
Jon's death creates a character and power vacuum at the wall, just when he was pretty much the only one preventing an all-out clash between the wildlings, the watch, and Stannis' retinue - white walkers thrown in for additional southbound shit flavour.
Personally I wouldn't be surprised by a miraculous revive, but one thing is certain: a shitstorm is brewing up there, and it's gonna be big.
I thought that was going to be THE WHOLE POINT of the book series, but only now is anything happening there. It would be like if you follow Harry Potter to hogwarts, finding out he's a wizard, about the school, and about Voldemort then following Dudley, Serious, and Lucious around for the next three books, with only the occasional chapter for what Harry's up to. Martin's pacing is terrible. He keeps switching to characters I don't care about, doing things I don't care about.
You might want to adjust your preconception about the books slightly. The Harry Potter books tell a contained story, and finish when the story is done. Writing additional books after the seventh would diminish the story, as everything is neatly tied up.
A better comparison would be a few of the more detailed chronicles of the Middle Ages. It has their roots in older civilisations (the Roman empire vs. the Targaryen dynasty), constant strife and conflict, and inevitably will evolve beyond swords and spears as primary methods of conflict resolution, without there ever being a shortage of conflicts in need of resolution.
Harry Potter has a protagonist. The closest thing Game of Thrones has to a protagonist is the Land of Westeros.
Of course, it's entirely conceivable you just want an ending, or even an happy ending. Personally I just love the sense of reading history in motion, as it continually flows from one conflict to another.
Also, having read 4 of his books, I didn't really think that he could "shock" me anymore, boy was I wrong--those who have read the book know what I am talking about.
If there's one terrible habit Martin got into since... well, basically since the end of the first book, it's setting up scenarios where it appears certain that a character is dead, and then revealing they're still alive. In contrary to the suspense supposedly created by his willingness to kill off any of the characters, it actually appears more like he's just teasing people with the threat of death and gets on my nerves. Unless a character is killed off explicitly in full view "on screen", so to speak, I'm going to be sitting and waiting for Martin to try and do yet another of his umpteen "gotcha" revelations where he reveals, to absolutely no surprise anymore, that the character he implied was dead was not actually dead.
What I'm saying is that there is so much precedence of Martin doing exactly this kind of thing and the characters surviving that it seems highly unlikely that he'll have killed off Snow.
Those 'oops, not really dead' reveals never got me because they never set up well enough that those characters were in danger. The deaths at that time would also have been a pointless waist of characters and the end of the story line would have been just too abrupt. Snow is different. He's taken a serious wound, he's unlikely to get assistance in time, even if he does get assistance there's no healing magic, and there's no looming story line only he can continue. Bran, on the other hand, wont die until Martin finishes enough of the Weirwood plot line that his death won't feel like a dangling plot thread.
So far all of the main characters in GoT dying did so whenever their death was best placed to act as a catalyst for a whole new magnitude of clusterfuck.
Jon's death creates a character and power vacuum at the wall, just when he was pretty much the only one preventing an all-out clash between the wildlings, the watch, and Stannis' retinue - white walkers thrown in for additional southbound shit flavour.
Personally I wouldn't be surprised by a miraculous revive, but one thing is certain: a shitstorm is brewing up there, and it's gonna be big.
I thought that was going to be THE WHOLE POINT of the book series, but only now is anything happening there. It would be like if you follow Harry Potter to hogwarts, finding out he's a wizard, about the school, and about Voldemort then following Dudley, Serious, and Lucious around for the next three books, with only the occasional chapter for what Harry's up to. Martin's pacing is terrible. He keeps switching to characters I don't care about, doing things I don't care about.
You might want to adjust your preconception about the books slightly. The Harry Potter books tell a contained story, and finish when the story is done. Writing additional books after the seventh would diminish the story, as everything is neatly tied up.
A better comparison would be a few of the more detailed chronicles of the Middle Ages. It has their roots in older civilisations (the Roman empire vs. the Targaryen dynasty), constant strife and conflict, and inevitably will evolve beyond swords and spears as primary methods of conflict resolution, without there ever being a shortage of conflicts in need of resolution.
Harry Potter has a protagonist. The closest thing Game of Thrones has to a protagonist is the Land of Westeros.
Of course, it's entirely conceivable you just want an ending, or even an happy ending. Personally I just love the sense of reading history in motion, as it continually flows from one conflict to another.
Not at all. I had no problem following and waiting on the Wheel of Time books. What I want, is a little more focus and better pacing. (Insert Wheel of Time Pacing comment here e_e) 'A Feast for Crows' could have been cut way back and fitted into A Storm of Swords and A Dance with Dragons. I chose Harry Potter as an example because it's well known, perhaps 'The Blade It's Self' would have been a better example, or 'Gardens of the Moon'.
The problem with Westeros being the protagonist is I just don't care about the land. It does feel a little like history in that the real story seems to be happening some time in the future and what we're going through is the back story for that. I know lots of people like it, but I don't hold it in any where near as high regards. I've read a lot of books, and it just seem a middling 'eh'. I really don't get the appeal, I've just read several more entertaining books.
It's all about subverting expectations. Fantasy genre, good guys always win. With Martin, there aren't "good" guys. The better people usually lose or do something that cocks things up more than the "evil" option would have.
Falseprophet said:
Giest4life said:
I have never seen anyone kill off main characters with the casual indifference of George R. R. Martin.
I don't really consider the man who had to write the Red Wedding chapter last because he was too emotionally distraught, then cried over the characters he'd just killed, "casually indifferent".
It might be painful personally but it certainly doesn't show through his writing. Most of the deaths are horrible, but there's just a certain somewhat casual tone about how he announces their fates.
This site uses cookies to help personalise content, tailor your experience and to keep you logged in if you register.
By continuing to use this site, you are consenting to our use of cookies.
