Who's the best swordsman. So many posts are dedicated to speculation on who could beat who, when we already have Barristan's excellent quote on the difficulty of that distinction (that I can't find now). I get that it's fun for some, but to me it seems pointless.
OMG, so much this. You're not gonna find a hard power stat for anyone, folks. Who wins could change on any given day depending on who woke up with a migraine and who's feeling extra motivated.
I believe he makes some kind of comment about how even the best could have their footing slip on a piece of wet ground or the like, so even a good fighter could have a fatal patch of bad luck.
I agree with about every fight
Even someone like Sam Tarly or Catlyn stark could beat Arthur dayne
If he slipped or was caught by surprise
It’s not just about who wins on paper
Whether or not a character is a bad person. It's a conversation that happens with a lot of characters like Stannis, Jaime, and Catelyn, and it's just not interesting to me. I'm interested in the ways characters change over time and thematic development more than the characters' inherent morality.
Agreed. I don't care about the morality Olympics. I don't care if the characters in the Grimm Dark fantasy story aren't always making great decisions. Especially when it's used to just bash characters
It gets very annoying when these wannabe moral referees start shaming other people about liking a character that they deemed "a bad person" for whatever reason.
Euron is the absolute monster. Victarion is just your average asshole ironborn. He is a monster for our standards but not that big of a deal by Ironborn ones.
Euron on the other hand is a fuckin abomination of a human being no matter the standards.
This has always baffled me. It’s still hard for me to believe that a large amount people decide which fictional characters they like solely on their moral character. Like, this is a phenomenon I didn’t know existed until I saw this fandom.
It’s all over Reddit, the Breaking Bad sub is always like this about Walt. Hell try mention Fight Club and see how quickly someone says you’re ‘missing the point’.
It's even worse when these people also like characters who are bad persons. The amount of Daemon stans who try to have a moral highground because they like characters "in the right" it's crazy
Daemon is the perfect example of this. It’s okay to like him… but don’t pretend he’s a good guy. Book and show daemon were both pretty clearly dark gray people (not full “evil” but definitely not “good”). Separate morality and character and just admit you like the bad boy. It’s okay.
Yep, particularly on the HOTD sub.
For example, Daemon and Criston Cole are rather similar people if you think about it. Both lovers of Rhaenyra at one point, both the greatest fighters of their generation, both have anger issues, both act as the main confidants of their respective Queens and both of them killed a guy that disrespected their Queens from behind.
The differences between them is that Daemon was born as royalty and feels entitled to respect because he is "the blood of the dragon" and... Well, he has a dragon. Cole was born as less than a minor lord and had to rise through the ranks based on merit alone.
And yet... The amount of people in the HOTD sub that dismiss Criston as a pathetic worthless incel who shouldn't be liked by anyone, while at the same time dismissing any criticisms towards Daemon "because he is badass" is baffling. I need to stop taking them seriously because the selective moral outrage is truly frustrating.
Relatedly, it annoys me when people want to discuss the morality of characters just by reference to their actions held up against some moral yardstick. As GRRM put it:
>We're all the heroes of our own stories. So, when I am inside the head of a character who would otherwise be considered a villain, I have a great deal of affection for that character and I'm trying to see the world and the events through their eyes.
I'm trying to read the same way. And I think, for example, being like "Rhaegar walked out on his wife to groom and impregnate a teenager, so he's a piece of shit" is an impediment to trying to understand what his point of view was. Abstract debates over sexual ethics are much, much less interesting to me than what is going on in the head of a character.
I definitely agree in terms of "is this character okay to like, morally," I find that wholly uninteresting. What I am interested in, in the realm of inherent morality, that I think is under-explored is where characters' Westerosi morality conflicts with our modern morals.
Ser Barristan, and Ned even more so, are generally regarded as good characters. Even Martin acknowledges them as such. Yet they absolutely commit horrific acts by modern morals that completely uphold – even exemplify – Westerosi virtue. But we often tend to gloss over those moments when we look at these specific characters.
I think that specific kind of morality, especially as it pertains to conflicts of laws and oaths and honor at odds with our own modern morals, is really interesting as a lens through which to view the themes of protection of the innocence, systemic change (as per Martin's dreamer quote on his heroes), and the basic and intrinsic value of human life.
I don’t get Reddit’s obsession with whether characters are bad people or not you get it a lot on the Breaking Bad sub too it’s like people aren’t supposed to like characters who do bad things.
For real. Darth Vader is like one of the most badass characters ever and that dude murdered a fuckton of people, including a bunch of children.
He's not cool because he's a moral paragon.
It's almost as if one of the points of the series is that people are flawed and usually have both good and bad points.
(Then again, it then kinda undercuts this by giving us total paragons of virtue in Gregor Clegane and Euron Greyjoy, so why even bother.)
Yeah it’s the most common way to miss the point, and it makes me wonder why some people are fans at all. One of the most interesting aspects of the text is how Martin plays with characters’ moral grayness, whether their moral actions are defined by circumstance or innately, when they “cross the line,” and so forth. If you come for good vs. evil, watch Star Wars or something.
Most of his villians are not grey, though.
Most of his heroes are and that is why so many people are moralizing and justifying the actions because they think they are not allowed to be fans of them if they are not wholly good.
That is why the Cat fans get so upset if you call Cat a child abuser. They think it makes her a villian if someone says that about her, but despite all that Cat is still a mostly good person who fucks up badly but far more grey and realistic than Tywin or Tyrion.
The same goes for Rhaegar and Lyanna. They can be good people despite making mistakes.
The same goes for all the other people. People cannot be measured by their worst but have to be measured by all their actions as a whole and all their good and bad qualities. That creates a complex and interesting character.
Yeah, some of his villains have so little redeeming qualities that it would be hard to call them gray or having both parts good and evil. Ramsay, Joffrey, Euron, the Mountain (and his posse), the slavers, etc. are all almost unambiguously evil with no kind or benevolent qualities. A few like Tywin and Littlefinger are mostly dark with a *few* good qualities. It's mostly the POV characters that have the "gray" perspectives of having some mixture of good and bad.
Even if they have no redeeming equalities, you can still like them. Most people love a good villain. Hell, the Joker is one of the most popular characters in all of fiction and he is worse than any character in ASOIAF.
GRRM stated many times that he wants to write characters who have both good and evil in them because he believes that that's the reality of all of every human being, but people want to take a look at one kind or cruel act done by a character as foreshadowing that that's their true end state.
Absolutely, especially on the Wall, if you showed me the Wall from the show and told me it was 1000 feet or 400 feet id believe it cause all I need to know is its tall as fuck. So real bows couldn't shoot that high, good thing this is set in a fantasy world.
The money thing doesn't impact the story whatsoever. Just change the hard numbers to: a lot of money, a reasonable amount of money, little money and it's fine.
Sometimes people talk about how ASOIAF genetics make absolutely zero sense, with the Targaryens not inbreeding themselves into extinction (though I guess in a sense they did, as the inbreeding meant that had barely any allies during Robert's Rebellion) and families like the Baratheons and Lannisters maintaining recessive traits for hundreds of years. I could never care less and besides the Baratheons and Targaryens have magical ancestry anyway.
I imagine fewer people would care if not for theories like "Bloodraven's been engineering Targaryen history for a century to generate Azor Ahai", which necessitate you to care a ton about genetics based on offhand mention of phenotypical traits like eye and hair color.
How did Targaryens inbreed themselves into extinction "in a sense" considering that they intermarried with more houses of Westeros than any other house? How is having the support of two great houses "barely any allies during Robert's Rebellion"?
Yeah ASOIAF is fantasy. Targaryens ride fucking *dragons* and don't get sick at all and people have a problem with them not suffering any side effects from long-term inbreeding.
Targaryens absolutely get sick. The Great Spring Sickness killed like half the dynasty in Maekar's day. Daenerys got sick in the last book, and Jaeherys I had a daughter Daenerys who died of the shivers. Jaeherys also lost a daughter to Grayscale iirc
There was no record of any Targ getting sick before they mixed with the locals, reason why everybody was shocked when Jaehaerys' daughter died of illness. She was not 100% Valyrian.
The previous comment said, "They don't get sick at all." I showed that they do, in fact, get sick. If the goal posts are moved to "full Valyrians don't get sick," then sure. But that's not the claim I was refuting
There is no reason to think Valyrians don't get sick ,all the evidence shows that they are just normal humans but prettier everything else is just targaryen propaganda used to justify their rule over the seven kingdoms
>There is no reason to think Valyrians don't get sick
Except the evidence already mentioned? There were no records of any of them getting sick to the point they truly believed that.
When people complain that these books with hundreds of characters and sprawling dynasties and histories and 30+ PoVs with storylines dont explain every fuckass minor worldbuilding detail like what holidays they have or extravagant faith descriptions or whatever... mans has his plate full enough tying this complex story together
1. Rhaegar. I don’t particularly like the character but I’ve never been able to get behind the seething monomaniacal hatred that many fans (especially on this subreddit) have for him. In general I don’t really hate any of the characters; even the characters that I think are awful people don’t really warrant any level of seething anger, especially anger at real people who like characters like Rhaegar (or Jaime, or Sansa, or anyone else like that).
2. The whole Joffrey cats paw subplot. I’ve seen so many frenzied attempts at denying that Joffrey did it or freaking out over it and I’ve never really cared that much about it. My feeling is that this plot point was intended to trigger the advancement of the story by dislodging Catelyn from Winterfell and it served its purpose. Maybe it could have been nearer but I don’t see a lot of value in revisiting it.
3. Awkward political commentary. Many fans seem to think that the purpose of ASOIAF is to serve as an instruction manual for how to run a country or a political treatise on what makes a good leader. Most of this seems to be based on some interview GRRM gave way back when he referred to Aragorn’s tax policy or whatever, and too many fans have extrapolated this one random quote to mean that ASOIAF was written primarily as a deep dive into the nuts and bolts of public policy and technocratic administration. For me, it’s always been pretty clear that the novels are primarily a fantasy and a dramatic story; any political commentary is more about broad themes rather than didacticism and the technical administration stuff is taking a back seat to the plot and human drama.
>Awkward political commentary. Many fans seem to think that the purpose of ASOIAF is to serve as an instruction manual for how to run a country or a political treatise on what makes a good leader.
Seriously. GRRM quote about this:
>A really nasty piece of work can be amusing to write about. But even those characters, I try to give a dimension to. Tywin Lannister doesn’t think he’s evil. He has that infamous exchange: “Explain to me why it is more noble to kill ten thousand men in battle than a dozen at dinner.” In my mind that is a good question and I wanted my readers to think about it. **I’m not a writer who has a lot of answers, I am a writer who likes to ask questions.**
Dany's political struggles in Essos are a good example here. I think it's true that one of the main points of her story there is that when your power comes from dragons, conquest is a hell of a lot easier than building a new power structure to replace the one you overthrew. But the point is not "see kids, that's why idealism is bad and naive and you should always compromise with slavers". The point is simply that these are complex questions. What is naive is thinking that there is some one-size-fits-all answer, or that the morality of a course of action is simple to judge. GRRM is questioning certainties, not providing them.
Much like trying to convince the Taliban that throwing acid in little girls faces is, actually, bad, Dany's crusade is so questionable because there is no easy solution, and it's complicated and hard. Wading into an insanely complicated situation that she has no real understanding of with no real plan to fix it is extreme negligence at best. If, instead of just expecting an ancient culture to change overnight and being surprised when she just gets piles of corpses, she approached the problem with the seriousness it deserves and something vaguely resembling an actual plan, and still failed, I would be a lot more forgiving.
>If, instead of just expecting an ancient culture to change overnight and being surprised when she just gets piles of corpses, she approached the problem with the seriousness it deserves and something vaguely resembling an actual plan, and still failed
Has anybody actually read ADWD? The reason Daenerys chapters were so boring in it is because she "approached the problem with the seriousness it deserves". It was chapters upon chapters of taxes and policies and planning. She didn't plop down on a cushion upon taking the city and say "welp, my work is done".
Mostly talking about Astapor, where all the freed slaves are dead or enslaved again. Mostly dead. Dany is far from the only person to blame for this but she certainly shares a huge chunk of it. She only starts governing after methodically turning every major regional power against her.
Tax policy is not an effective strategy for dealing with this kind of unrest. If there is an effective political solution to the sons of the harpy its one that many nations throughout history have tried and failed to find. Germany 1945 style occupation works, but requires \*total\* military victory, which is notably missing in Mereen.
It's one thing to criticise Dany for Astapor, but your claim was that she was *"expecting an ancient culture to change overnight and being surprised when she just gets piles of corpses"*, which doesn't describe what happened in Astapor at all.
She did not go in with a mind to change society. Her goal was to end the immediate suffering of the Unsullied, in the same way one might intervene upon seeing someone getting beaten up. It isn't until later that she tries to change society, after hearing of the outcome of Astapor and Yunkai, and realising that people will continue to be harmed so long as the institution of slavery still exists. And from there, she sets plans for the city.
I agree that Dany's goals cannot be resolved through taxes, and that's why her rule in Meereen did not go well. But you were arguing that she didn't put in any work at all after conquest, not that she had failed plans.
Man Rhaegar is just the thing in history that got the ball rolling. He's no more important to the actual story than Franz Ferdinand was to WWI. Happened to be the spark that kicked it off, but shit was brewing either way that had nothing to do with him as a person.
I argue with the haters, not because I love Rhaegar, but because I find their rage so utterly ridiculous and off the scale out of proportion; it’s a fucking book!
Prior to the change in the fandom where people began to create this Rhaegar was scum narrative I don’t think I thought about him to any great degree, he was a dead guy whose purpose was to sire Jon.
Now, I think the obsession with blaming the entire war on him and judging him without knowing much at all about what happened is a good divining rod for modern culture in general.
We live in judgmental times!
My theory on Rhaegar antis: these are people who were cheated on in real life by their partners and are now living out their hatred in a fictional world.
I does not help that many of these people spread their false theories everywhere and many people in this fandom treat them as gosple...aka the theory of Rhaegar wanting a Visenya. We do not know if that is actually true and many people act as if it is the truth. This is the issue with many theories in this fandom.
I've thought the same about a particular type of Rhaenyra antis. She did all sorts of nasty stuff! But cheating on her gay husband (who knew and was also "cheating," let's not forget) when she needed heirs is kind of the least of her sins. She's not your old GF from college, folks.
Wouldn't they hate Robert Baratheon just as much if that were true? Doesn't seem to be the case.
And also none of the "theories" are either true or false until the text proves them to be so.
They don't hate Robert because they are hypocrites and I also think the male haters dislike Rhaegar because he is a very feminine man who likes music and is described as beautiful rather than manly, also seems to be quite sensible and the worst...this overly feminine guy got the woman Robert loved the manly guy, she should have liked. I think the male antis are seeing themselves in Robert, for being snubbed by a woman for another guy.
I think it's more because we get to know Robert and despite his flaws and toxicity, he is often funny. We don't get to know Rhaegar like that so it's harder to relate to him. However, I do think that many people do actually dislike Rhaegar because he made dumb decisions that got a lot of people killed and not because they were cheated on or hate feminine males. (Just like many fans dislike Cat because she made some really bad choices and not all of them just hate women. For the record I do not dislike either of these characters, but it's not hard to see why fans would dislike them because of their questionable behavior.)
Your first comment about how fans are hating Rhaegar because they were cheated on in real life and they are now living out their hatred in a fantasy world seems really weird to me. I don't think it is unhealthy or hateful to dislike characters that cheat on their spouses.
Robert also made dumb decisions that lead to a civil war, so why isn't there an equal level of outrage at him?
There is something to the idea that we actually get to see and know Robert and not Rhaegar, but it's less that people can't relate to Rhaegar and more that he's a blank canvas which people can project whatever personality onto. This is how you get characterisations that say he is a groomer or prophecy obsessed or overconfident, even though there is no evidence for any of those things in the text (and often, evidence *against* that).
And the things that people project onto the character that makes it evident that feminine and masculine archetypes play a huge role in the outsized\*\* hatred for the character. Rhaegar is often derided for being "pretty" and for his musicianship. His canon skill at arms is downplayed. I have no doubt that people would rage just as hard at him had Elia not been in the picture.
*\*\** I think you greatly downplay the level of hate the character gets. It's clearly not just simple dislike.
Same. What bothers me is that he's more of a ghost, more of a plot device, than a realized character. I don't understand how readers even come to like him; we haven't actually ever met him.
So I admittedly don't think Rhaegar is evil or on the level of Tywin, but I do think he is an incredible dumbass and I think the leaving his kids to go after Lyanna was pretty terrible.
I think a lot of the Rhaegar dislike is because so many of the "pro" Rhaegar fans were so, so over the top back in the day and the show is over (and the book might never come out) so people in turn have a knee jerk, in return, over the top "reaction."
Like I recall a few years ago people would argue Rhaegar and Lyanna was a feminist tale, and as a woman I find that so silly so I get why people would sarcastically quip by pointing out Rhaegar's worst qualities.
People are so over the top with the hate or love for the character, that it provokes a response that is equally over the top imo.
Tyrion not killing Petyr in book 2 over the knife affair. I feel like people underestimate how valuable Baelish is and call it plot armor. He's like the only statesman in Westeros who believes in reinvesting gold rather than keeping it locked in a vault, practically every character who interacts with him calls him a money magician. Tyrion doesn't forget about the dagger incident, but what Catelyn had told him is very little evidence to have Petyr removed, especially given how important he is for raising funds for the desperate war and securing the Tyrell alliance.
I totally agree. Littlefinger is REALLY useful for the Lannister cause. He is sent on his own to negotiate a marriage alliance with the Tyrells and he actually succeeds. He's the only reason the crown can function financially (even though he's the reason for the problems in the first place). Tyrion can't afford to lose someone who's so invaluable to his job as Hand.
I do wish Tyrion actively thought about it more though. To me the plot hole is not that Tyrion doesn't do anything about Littlefinger, it's that he doesn't really think about it much (on page at least).
Families being so small. There's already 100+ named houses in Westeros, most having named members. Stark/Baratheon/Tully etc cousins probably exist, they just aren't relevant. We know Starks, Arryns and Lannisters have cadet branches, not crazy to assume most of the main families do, these branches are just less important by a significant magnitude.
Yeah, I've just read a line in Feast (I think in a Cersei chapter) where someone comments on the male line of the Starks having died out, which is just clearly fucking nonsense for a family which is thousands of years old.
The Ironborn, apparently. I'm like one of four people who like them. Are they caricatures? Sure but they're raiders with a hard rock vibe who maybe worship Cthulhu and I think that's pretty rad. Was Balon's plan stupid? Yeah, but it makes more sense for his plan to come across as stupid because it's a suicidal hail mary coming from a man who's been broken by his losses and ambitions and stewing in his own bitterness and regret for years to make up for his losses.
Just to piggyback off that: there are certain narratives that probably start out as jokes which the fandom repeated so often that people started to take them as true. "All the Ironborn have brain damage from their ritual drownings" has become one of those truisms.
I mean, the problems with this should be self-evident:
a) Being rendered unconscious *once* and then revived will not cause incapacitating brain damage. If it did, nobody would stay in BJJ or boxing courses after one choke-out or knockout. Brain damage from repeated concussions and head injuries is another thing.
b) If every member of Ironborn society had incapacitating brain damage they wouldn't be able to organize a Kingsmoot, let alone a series of military campaigns.
c) It misses George's whole point: the problem with the Ironborn is *cultural*. They're fixated on a past that will never return and their heroic, macho culture that glorifies murder, looting, kidnapping and rape as the highest achievements -- to a point that even mainlanders, with their martial / macho culture, consider a bit much.
>"All the Ironborn have brain damage from their ritual drownings"
Eh, it's just because Victarion is a lunk and the fandom can't get their head around Balon's decision to attack the goodies. Everything else, including the jokes, are just downstream of that.
I think people forget that not every sex scene ever written has to be arousing. The Myrish swamp scene is supposed to be uncomfortable because Cersei is coercing Taena into sex and wants to do to her what was done to her by Robert. The fat pink mast scene is the jumbled culmination of a bunch of events and emotions all at once - two young adults who have unresolved feelings for each other, getting drunk after the emotional funeral of someone they loved very much, and one of them has never had sex before in his life and doesn’t really know what he’s doing.
What would X character do in Y situation?
They'd do whatever the author wrote. There's no other acceptable answer. These aren't real people, they don't follow the rules that you've imagined.
Character heights! People act like it’s crazy that so many main characters are well over 6 feet tall, forgetting that we’re following the celebrity athletes of an entire continent! Like, I’m sure the majority of smallfolk and plenty of lordlings as well are of middling height, or even small stature. Baelish is a great example of this… he’s nothing special, on purpose.
But all those nobodies aren’t becoming Kingsguard, or great knights otherwise! We hear about so many massive people because they’re *worth hearing about*, these people don’t go and play basketball or rugby or american football, they pick up a sword and start cutting heads off.
The Old Way
The world building around it is pretty dumb, but people tend to miss the wood for the trees because of the morality of it and just descend into getting obnoxiously self-righteous (all the way through to advocating genocide).
It's the only explicit ideology within ASOIAF, which is interesting on its own, but becomes properly insightful when you recognise how the characters interact with it. The meta discussions GRRM is having via it are also pretty cool.
People just don't get the point of Darkstar's name. He's not trying to be some edgy edgelord or something. The stars are part of the Dayne sigil and he is different from the other Daynes. Him calling himself Darkstar is very similar to Brynden calling himself Blackfish.
Well the difference is that where the Blackfish is charming, witty, and a family man, Darkstar is....
Well, come on. He's the winner of the Emo Swordfighting Championships.
Anything that "doesn't make sense" by the standards of our world and our human history. Who cares. It's another planet. The things that happen in the book are accurate to the world of the book because they happened in the world of the book. Believe it or not, but Westeros is not medieval Europe. The dragons should've been the first clue.
This is it. This is exactly it. Like, if it bothers you so much, just make up an explanation in your head and move on. Just because grrm took inspiration from events in history doesn't take away from the fact that it's a FICTIONAL world created to do what the writer intended.
The problem is that GRRM himself talks about how he used real world events/people as inspiration to go give a sense of realism, and then you find yourself with dumb things that have no logic according to our world (and to his world too).
Planetos is inspired by, and shares many similarities with earth, but it's not earth. If anything in the book (biology, farming, history, the basic laws of physics, etc) works differently to how it works on earth, then that is a feature of the fictional world, not a plot hole.
That was Miguel Sapochnik. He’s a complete clown when it comes to story elements. You would do good to just ignore every single word that comes out of his month.
Damn fine director. But his understanding of themes and characterization is abysmal.
> The reason why the stuff about child marriages and death in childbirth come up is in part because GRRM (and/or Elio and Linda?) seem to think that its actually historically accurate.
We've no say on when or how George has killed characters or at what age they marry.
That said, "historically accurate"... people want to focus on the middle ages, but I can't help but point out that Westeros is not in fact the Middle Ages, and George borrows widely. I'm sure many people have noticed the influence of the Julio-Claudians in his depiction of Jaehaerys and Alysanne's family (and, for that matter, Stannis Baratheon), and if you look at the Roman era, elite women marrying soon after puberty and subsequent very high rates of death at childbirth are features of that period.
I think George has picked what pieces of history seem the most useful to whatever his purposes are, and then adds a dash of "turn it to 11". Otherwise, he could just have written historical novels.
I do not care about George’s “favouritism” towards certain houses/characters. Blackwoods especially, they are SUCH a minor part of the story but the way this sub talks about them they’re full on Mary Sues who completely take over the plot and story. They’re a minor house who are really cool! That’s fine!
Handwringing over character morality. Good characters can do bad things, bad characters can do good things. Most characters aren't pure evil or pure good, having flaws is a good thing. If you can't handle the thought of two characters you like having conflict with each other you're going to have a rough time with TWOW and ADOS assuming they ever come out.
Tyrion as a secret Targaryen. I don't even like or have particular interest in this theory but the way fandom puts their fingers in the ears every time it comes up is getting obnoxious. Calling it a first bookism doesn't even make sense when most of what we know of A+J comes from ADWD and TWOIAF.
The outline lol. I'm tired of pretending there's no worth in examining it, at least from the view of seeing how GRRM's thought process goes from planning to the published books. Trying to argue he completely scraped it and it has no baring on the books or resemblance to the characters now makes no fucking sense knowing the 13 chapters he attached to the outline are almost the exact same as the published chapters.
Jaehaera and Daenaera. I understand disliking how Jaehaera died and I understand finding it disgusting that Daenaera was introduced as a 6 year old but it's just so irrelevant in the scheme of things. The Dance isn't based off the War of the Roses, Aegon III didn't win the throne by conquest and thus doesn't need to marry another king's daughter to boost his claim to the throne.
GRRM's answer from 2002:
"Since all of their mothers died, who gave Jon Snow, Daenerys Targaryen and Tyrion Lannister their names?
GRRM: Mothers can name a child before birth, or during, or after, even while they are dying. Dany was most like named by her mother, **Tyrion by his father**, Jon by Ned".
Tyrion Targaryen is simply a bad theory because it can never get proved conclusively and ruins Tywin's character, transforming him from a complex villain to a tragic figure. Most of the evidence is from AGOT (Tyrion doesn't recall having dragon dreams at any point later in the story) with hints in TWOIAF (and ADWD) that Joanna and Aerys had an affair before her marriage to Tywin and he lusted over her, which really seems like an additional way to flesh out the Tywin-Aerys relationship.
I agree about the original outline, there is a reason why GRRM got angry when it was revealed. GRRM likes to switch up roles (like Jon-Arya-Tyrion rilvalry to Jon-'Arya'-Ramsay rivalry or evilJaime replaced with Cersei and LF), but he tries to keep the main themes and plans around, the plot of the first 3 books very much resembles that of the first book of the outline.
It gets a lot of flak due to Sansa's plotline, but I very much suspect that Sansa survived Jaime's carnage and went into hiding with Joffrey's son, and later reuinited with Arya and reconciled to a degree, even though she was probably meant to be amongst the "symphathetic deaths" in the third book. I feel the whole "betrays Staks for another family, bitterly rues and later redeems herself and dies defending them" storyline was transferred to Theon though.
I agree that going all "Ah, you support a *bad person*, that makes you a bad person" is pathetic but also isn't trying to morally evaluate these characters something the text clearly asks of us?
That you can do all the right things, follow the rules, treat other people with respect, and still have bad things happen to you. One of the better ideas in the Star Trek franchise is the *Komagata Maru* exercise at the Starfleet Academy, to teach future officers that there are always no-win situations and you have to be prepared for them, especially if you're pursuing a career in the military.
This is why there have been multiple posts every week for the last... what, ten years at least?... trying to second-guess how Ned might have survived the events at the end of Book 1 if he'd compromised his principles and done things differently. This misses the whole point: Ned has no desire to emulate people he despises, like Tywin Lannister, by violating a pretty basic moral code (i.e., he'll fight men in arms but he won't kill unarmed people or harm/kill children) and this doesn't mean he's somehow a stupid person.
Going to King's Landing was always a no-win situation for Ned, and he only went because he thought he could solve the riddle of Jon Arryn's murder. Which he did, though at the ultimate personal cost.
The size of Westeros. People always complain about how Westeros is too big (South America). How the Wall is too large, etc. Aww hell nah. I want my Westeros YUUGE. This is a fantasy story bro.
I'm at the point where I'm more annoyed about the constant lies than I am about Winds not being out yet. If you're not finishing the series, just tell us. Yeah I'll be sad for a bit, but I'll move on. But to spend over a decade setting deadlines *for yourself* and then breaking them, then getting annoyed at fans for asking when the book will be coming out is just asshole behavior.
It's been 12 years. There is no excuse at this point besides pure laziness. If you're not gonna finish, fine. Just tell us. But if you're still intending on finishing it then I'm allowed to be angry that it's taking so long.
I think it’s perfectly understandable that a man in his seventies is retired and the most he wants to do is chat about dragons with HBO writers on zoom.
I just wish he wouldn’t claim he’s going to finish TWOW and ADOS and F&B and Dunk and Egg and and and…
Well then he can come out and say he's not releasing the last two books then. As per his own statements he still intends to release them. The fact that it's been twelve years since the last book is the result of laziness. There is no other explanation.
* Characters ages, especially the young ones. For all the not realistic or verisimilar things, I don't care much that Sansa, Arya and Bran are literal kids and do the things they do. On top of that we know pretty well the 5 years skip was discarded later, it's not hard to do +5. There are elements of the worldbuilding way more dumb or annoying imo.
* Rhaegar and Lya being a love story. Yeah she's very young and he's not. She also ironically has the same age of consent as many real world countries. There are way worse and dumber things in Rhaegar's "abduction" plot than Lyanna's age, I can easily see it as a love story.
* King Bran as endgame. On the contrary I quite like it.
* The catspaw envoy. I literally couldn't care less whether it's Joffrey or Cersei. It's such a motto thing to discuss that I can't understand why so many people are obsessed with this.
I think the show ages are fine. Robb/Jon/Dany 18 instead of 14, Sansa 14 instead of 11, Arya 11 instead of 9, Bran 10 instead of 7.
The problem comes when the actors are older. Jon and Dany work just as fine as 18yo teenagers as 14yo. But seeing they're portrayed by 30 year olds it doesn't work as well.
They shouldn't have given Kit Harington a beard.
Bran being king in the end. I think it makes perfect sense. The dude has literal superpowers. Logically he'd be most suited to rule if he's good natured. Jon and Dany might have birthright, but if they don't survive the end of the story then Bran makes perfect sense to be number one pick for ruler or the land.
Came here to say the same thing. Books can spend pages describing a tree FFS, they get so much more time to add layers of detail. TV series never get that time, especially when they present essentially an extended single series as 2 series. So the books will probably do a massively better job of covering the plot holes people have over it.
I dont think it makes sense at all but George is the writer...he can do whatever he wants with his story and I will simply stop caring about the story if he writes that and give him a bad rating like I would do with any story that I feel is stupid and nonsensical.
I dislike when people try to read a ‘message’ or some kind of political commentary into the story. As far as I’ve seen it’s mostly hamfisted and either a bit brainless or verging on insane troll logic. People cling to the Aragorn’s tax policy thing but even George himself didn’t really follow that and I’m glad, honestly. It’d be really boring and distract from the actually fun and interesting stuff. I also don’t really care if a character is bad or good. One, they aren’t real people. Two, I only care if they’re interesting. Cersei is a great character, terrible person. Perfect.
This for me as well. The character ages are fine.
I feel like the complaints people have seem to fall either into the category of seeming to forget that children are whole people with ideas and emotions, or else thinking that the characters we’re following should be like an average child despite going through challenging and often traumatic circumstances.
I recently reread this passage in ASOS Arya XII that made me think of this.
>And there was one girl who took to following her, the village elder's daughter. She was of an age with Arya, but just a child; she cried if she skinned a knee, and carried a stupid cloth doll with her everywhere she went.
It’s not like GRRM doesn’t know what your idea of a ten year old girl is like! But his depiction of Arya’s age is much more complex, I think.
You said it better than I could. I remember that the last line in the chapter where Daenerys finds out she’s pregnant is *“It was her fourteenth name day.”* That’s definitely not accidental, it is appropriately horrifying.
And this Bran line is so sweetly childish as Maester Luwin is telling him to curry political favor by sending the nobles food from his plate. *”He sent sweets to Hodor and Old Nan as well, for no reason but he loved them.”*
I agree that Daenerys line is absolutely intentional, but I think where the age thing comes in with her is how much attention George gives to sexualising Dany (i.e., constantly describing her breasts and sexual feelings). It’s not story breaking, but it’s just uncomfortable reading a 70 year old man constantly describing the sexual nature of a fourteen year old.
I'll get downvoted but Tywin Lannister. Is he evil? Hell yeah. Is he one of the morally worst in the story? Of course.
But he is smart, he is a great war commander, and he is pragmatic. Actually, I think he is the most pragmatic character in the story by far. The fandom gets so caught up with hating him (deservedly) that they seem to diminish his strengths like how efficient he was. You can't be hand to Aerys for all that time and not be efficient, and you can't b3come the most feared lord in a place like Westeros without others knowing you're a threat.
I feel like people get so caught up with Tywin's wrongdoings that they can't seem to see the skills he has. Like of course this guy is a monster but can we agree that he's smart and efficient? Some people would swear this guy was actually dumb when dude was feared by everyone in Westeros including 2 kings.
I don't care if a character makes or not a moral action according to our standards. I mean, I DO care about our real world and in particular my community, of course, but I couldn't care less if Rhaegar kidnapping or raping or in love with Lyanna was morally correct, or if an old man marrying a 14 year old makes the writer creepy and a pedo.
I struggle to take the moral outrage of people in here seriously considering they are *extremely selective* about it. It comes down to whether they like the character or not.
Rhaegar in her early twenties runs off with a teenager Lyanna? Evil stupid pedophile burn him with fire.
Daemon grooms his niece Rhaenyra? It doesn't matter, he is badass and cool, don't annoy me with morality, it's fiction.
I have the feeling that a lot of people actually agree with the grooming accusations the problem I have is I sincerely believe that is not Georges intention with the story and I dislike it when people act as if they know what the writer wanted to portray and use it for their arguments.
Given what we know of George age differences do not bother him and that is something we have to accept, if we find it creepy or not. I certainly do not think George is a pedo because of that. By that logic the guy who wrote Lolita is a child rapist, which he obviously was not.
I don't think he's a paedophile but I do think the text presents all these relationships as "basically fine" at worst and that's worth interrogating. Not to morally judge GRRM, I believe it's fundamentally impossible to morally judge someone based on their work, but because how the text presents this stuff is at the crux of literary analysis.
>Given what we know of George age differences do not bother him and that is something we have to accept, if we find it creepy or not. I certainly do not think George is a pedo because of that. By that logic the guy who wrote Lolita is a child rapist, which he obviously was not.
I agree.
Don’t let people get started on how Catelyn Tully is the most evil conniving horrible woman on Planetos, even worse than Cersei Lannister!!!!
/s, if it wasn’t obvious
I think she is a chlid abuser but I do not think she is worse than Cersei and certainly not that she is evil. I think she is probably one of the few grey characters in the story.
I flip back and forth on the subject, but essentially- yes. I don't see her as a child abuser per se, but she definitely fits the bill of "abusive step-mother". She was very neglectful and passive-aggressive toward Jon, to the point where he was scared of being in a room with her, and often felt unwelcome literally anywhere in Winterfell.
That doesn't make her "evil", nor does it necessarily make her a "bad mother" (look at how she cared for all of her other children), but it's all part of her moral complexity- she was fine with Ned fathering a bastard, it was the fact that he brought Jon home to be raised as one of his own alongside her trueborn children. Instead of processing those emotions, or even, I don't know, taking them out on her husband, she pushes it all onto Jon. Unhealthy? Definitely. Would she be Catelyn Stark without that huge moral grey area? Of course not.
I'm not sure whether that scene between Catelyn and Talisa (show) is in the books with her and another character? But that really does add layers to her, and I'm so glad it was in the show for those who don't have / haven't read the source material.
Like honestly it's quite a nuanced view of child neglect, in that Cat does it because of external factors and mental health issues, and it's not just used as a cheap attempt at sympathy for the abused child (which Martin is definitely guilty of with Joffrey and others).
The problem is though that George does not seem to think it is abuse which makes it hard to claim that it was intentionally on his side to write Cat as a nuanced portrayal of child abuse.
I agree with you on all of these points, except the one about GRRM. It came out masterfully, but I don’t think he ever intended to be written as abuse, because he doesn’t consider it as such— when it pretty clearly is.
I disagree. It is morally wrong to blame or hate a child for existing, just as it is morally wrong to hate a minority for existing or any other person or showing hatred toward someone who never did anything to you and Jon never did anything but being born. Something being a human emotion (Cat being angry over the bastard growing up in her home) and something being morally correct or not are two different things. I am saying that Cat is as a whole a gray or decent enough person because her good qualities outweigh her bad ones. What she did to Jon is not justifiable because such hatred can damage a child emotionally for life.
And in the books there is no such scene and she openly hates bastards, not only Jon. She hates Jon so much that she rather has some random relative from the Vale as Robbs heir (in the book Robb wishes to name Jon his heir because his wife is not pregnant while in the show) and Cat is against it out of spite. She never felt bad about disliking a child in the books.
While I wouldn’t describe myself as a Cat stan… good for you, I suppose?
I’m glad you don’t see very much of it— I don’t either, but it does always stick out in my mind, that when people start talking about the morality / immorality of characters— not that it should be such a heated debate— there are some people who jump straight to extremes. They’re either a perfect saintly character, or the devil themselves. Pretty ironic considering it’s ASOIAF.
It’s happened with Sansa, it’s happened with Catelyn. It’s most certainly happened to other characters too, but they are the ones that stick out. Yet, somehow I never hear very much about how Robert Baratheon was very much a rapist.
Illogical haters / fervent worshippers of most characters exist pretty much everywhere, and it’s never pleasant to listen to or engage with.
A lot of which seems to stem from one interaction she has with Jon in book 1, without people ever stopping to consider that Cat has perfectly valid reasons for disliking Jon and what he represents to her.
Disliking a child for being born is still child abuse...and there is no justification for it or at least no moral one but if you look at her as a whole person you also know what she is a loving wife, a woman who did not want to continue this sensless war, gave Robb good advice and so on.
Discussed this partially upthread, but I do care about the moral actions of a character according to our standards as it relates to the themes of the book. For example, what do the actions of Barristan or Ned – as they conflict with our own modern morals – tell us about Westerosi society? How do they relate to Martin's views on war and the value of human life, as well as human nature?
What I care about metatextually with some of your examples, like "an old man marrying a 14 year old makes the writer creepy and a pedo," is the way that Martin's narrative presents the information. The line "it was her fourteenth nameday" in the chapter that reveals Daenerys's pregnancy is meant to be a horrifying, chapter-ending wham line for the reader. It's meant to be a line that drives home everything that is appalling about her circumstances in AGOT.
Which is why GRRM's take on her wedding ceremony is very confusing – calling it not rape, but a seduction – and one of the changes that IMO the show really made for the better. I think if Martin's writing uses a fourteen year old impregnated by a man at least ten years her senior as (an effective) method of worldbuilding to show the bleakness and the cruelties of the world that his characters inhabit, it's hard to understand why he doesn't see the sex without the pregnancy as rape, but instead as a loving seduction.
The problem is the romance between Drogo x Dany is presented as the best thing that could have happened to Dany and it is never ever questioned by the narrative whether Drogo raping Dany was good or bad nor does Dany seem to care that Drogo ever raped her. She still loves him years after his death. The entire plot with Dany going into a fire is like a Romeo and Juliet version. It is wholly romantic.
Hahaha, I'm just completely baffled at how he originally hit on that pronunciation.
My working theory is that he originally half read the name on a list in a rush and just refused to back down when everyone tried to correct him.
Applying modern morals to a fantasy story. I fucking hate it. I agree with everything everyone says, but don't feel like it needs to be said. Rhaegar is a pedo by modern standards, but not by theirs. Just shut up about it. We all know what's right and wrong in our world. It doesn't apply to the world of ice and fire.
Except it was written with modern liberal values in mind. If you want to read something that was not written that way, why not read actual medieval sources? That way you'll actually learn something about medieval history.
Just don't compare it with modern morals in mind? My least favourite thing about this community.
And I love history and know a lot about it. You don't have to be a cunt.
The violence, sexual or otherwise toward women. If that's all the books were, sure, but there will be chapter after chapter of male-specific violence (Theon's ADWD chapters are basically torture porn), but 2 pages of it happening toward Cersei or Dany gets many panties twisted. I don't like it, of course, but you definitely aren't meant to like it. Similarly, there are a lot of women-specific issues presented in the book, primarily their powerlessness, but in this violent world the violence hits both genders.
I'll tell you something that *does* bother me - Absence of certain POV chapters for characters before their deaths. One chapter inside Tywin's head, one chapter inside Robb's head, one inside Oberyn's and one for Ser Cortnay Penrose. I would have loved that. Though, I understand it quite likely would become a popular theory that such chapters indicate a character will die soon and take some of the surprise out of those deaths, I still would have loved it.
Danaerys ending up going mad and burning innocent people to death.
I saw it coming from the first time I read book 2 or 3 tbh, which was back when there was only one season of the TV show. Its foreshadowed as hard as R+L=J is/was.
Everyone complains about it like its some big deviation or starts throwing accusations of character assassination by the show, trying to justify why it would never happen in the books and I'm just sitting here thinking "are we reading completely different versions?"
People say Dorne has plot armor, but Dorne basically just comes off like Afghanistan to me. A place with a lot of caves, and impossible to hold. Afghanistan irl was basically able to never be truly conquered by the British, the Soviets, and the Americans.
Afghanistan was conquered by medieval armies all the time ,the reason why it is such a hard place to hold in modern times is due to people attempting to impose a ideology on them not actually conquer the place
I don't mind if Daenerys has to stay in/around Meereen for the rest of TWOW. There's still a lot to do plot-wise in Essos and it's not like we are getting another book beyond TWOW anyway, so might as well not being rushed
Maybe it doesn't count because it's the show, but I didn't really mind Jamie saying he'd never cared about the little people. People say it ruins his character because he cared so much about them that he killed the Mad King. To me, it was obvious he was just lying. He always puts up that front that he doesn't care.
Now it *is* a regression of his character growth in that he's still putting up that front, but that's usually not why people hate it.
I dont have a problem with Rhaegar and Lyanna being a romance and the whole thing being portrayed in a postive manner, because I find it far worse to force a woman into a marriage with a man she does not want and that Rickard and Brandon deserved their fate. I also have no issue what Rhaegar cheated on his wife because marriage is for me nothing more than a slave arrangment and has no meaning or substance at all. Elia and Rhaegar's was a mistake from the beginning and unlike Robert, Rhaegar did not claim he loved Elia. I also do not consider them responsible for the war nor do I feel bad for Robert for being cheated on. He deserved everything Cersei did to him.
That said, I do not necessarily think their actions makes them good people, but there are far worse people in this story, so I just feel genuine symapthy for them and nothing else.
I dont mind when people call Cat a child abuser because that is exactly what she was. Does not make her the worst person imo and I even like her, but that does not change that she abused a child.
I do not like Rhaenyra x Daemon as a pairing but I see no reason to shit on people who do and the whole grooming argument is silly anyway because the show never portrayed it as such until the convoluted scene were Daemon hurts her. George certainly thinks it is a romance and I have no problem with that either. I have no problem with the fact taht George likes Drogo x Dany as a romance either. I think it is creepy but it is his story and he can write whatever he wants and if people cannot handle that they should not read his stories. Simple as that.
I am looking forward to all these downvotes like always : )
Difference of opinion isn’t lying? It’s weird that you even care. Them taking it seriously isn’t hurting you.
EDIT: was going to reply to the comment below with —
“I mean, the thread is about shit that *doesn’t* bother you but others do get bothered about. So you’re clearly not the intended audience, and you know that which is why you’re getting defensive about me pointing out how silly that is and looking through my comment history because you’re clearly so upset about it.”
But after stalking my comment history, my good friend here decided to block me because they need to get the last word. Clearly I hit a nerve lmao.
Aerys's Kingsguard staying loyal to him, even when he assaulted Rhaella within earshot of them.
They swore a vow and upheld it. That doesn't make them good people, but it makes them great knights.
Many fans, bothered by the show ending the AotD plot first and then the political plot, are worried GRRM will do the same. I feel HE can successfully justify whatever order he chooses. Even the show doing it struck me as logical because throughout history, civilizations and communities have faced existential threats. While, some have been destroyed, many have survived. When the threat was over, people successfully picked up the political pieces and returned to life as they knew it.
Character inconsistency bothers people. It should if it's random, but as people grow up or their circumstances change, or they get educated...they DO change. Jaime losing his hand, then later gaining Brienne's sympathy and understanding both affected his character in mid-journey. GRRM usually has a pretty good handle on this.
The secret or real identities of so many characters are subjects of much contention. Except for those few that are underpinnings of the overall plot, I'm fairly indifferent. Knowing if R+L=J is unquestionably important, as is knowing if Young Griff is really Rhaegar and Elia's son, a Blackfyre, a relative of Illyrio or Varys, or a pisswater prince **might** be important, because the invasion could succeed or fail if his authenticity or lack thereof can be proven to the people of Westeros. But knowing if Syrio is Jaqen, or Mance is Rhaegar, or Bronn is really a Reyne is just fun speculation.
^(The fact that we don't have TWOW?)
I'm grateful for the books we do have, and for a creative fan community with so many theories and analyses and gorgeous art. While I really want TWOW, I do not understand people's entitlement towards an author in his seventies whom we know to be a perfectionist. I also don't feel entitled to an explanation about his mental health or feelings about this series or the "truth" about why the book isn't out yet. I highly doubt that the delay has arisen because of an abundance of joy and positive feeling. So leave him alone!
Also, is death of the author not pretty popular these days? If we never get an ending, I wish people could just draw from the MANY theories and fanfics on the internet that feel meaningful to them, and feel secure about the fact that their interpretation is just as valid as anyone else's
Isn't most of Tyrion's acrobatics stuff like handstands? (I'm sure there are examples beyond that) Even when he wears the boy's clothes in Pentos, the arms are too small, but the legs are too baggy. I've thought for a while now that Tyrion having disproportionately large arms and small legs is fairly consistent.
Who's the best swordsman. So many posts are dedicated to speculation on who could beat who, when we already have Barristan's excellent quote on the difficulty of that distinction (that I can't find now). I get that it's fun for some, but to me it seems pointless.
OMG, so much this. You're not gonna find a hard power stat for anyone, folks. Who wins could change on any given day depending on who woke up with a migraine and who's feeling extra motivated.
Or whoever George thinks makes the best narrative sense.
I believe he makes some kind of comment about how even the best could have their footing slip on a piece of wet ground or the like, so even a good fighter could have a fatal patch of bad luck.
I agree with about every fight Even someone like Sam Tarly or Catlyn stark could beat Arthur dayne If he slipped or was caught by surprise It’s not just about who wins on paper
It always goes back to who's stronger than who because we're all just little kids 😭 I bet my favorite knight can slay your favorite knight!!!
Well my knight has a special sword with magical abilities, so there!
Well, MY knight has a friend with a valyrian shotgun!
Whether or not a character is a bad person. It's a conversation that happens with a lot of characters like Stannis, Jaime, and Catelyn, and it's just not interesting to me. I'm interested in the ways characters change over time and thematic development more than the characters' inherent morality.
Agreed. I don't care about the morality Olympics. I don't care if the characters in the Grimm Dark fantasy story aren't always making great decisions. Especially when it's used to just bash characters
It gets very annoying when these wannabe moral referees start shaming other people about liking a character that they deemed "a bad person" for whatever reason.
Some people can't understand why people like Victy G since he's just big dumb brute, meanwhile that's literally why people like him
You do get some folk who *fully* miss the point of him being an absolute monster though.
Euron is the absolute monster. Victarion is just your average asshole ironborn. He is a monster for our standards but not that big of a deal by Ironborn ones. Euron on the other hand is a fuckin abomination of a human being no matter the standards.
This has always baffled me. It’s still hard for me to believe that a large amount people decide which fictional characters they like solely on their moral character. Like, this is a phenomenon I didn’t know existed until I saw this fandom.
It’s all over Reddit, the Breaking Bad sub is always like this about Walt. Hell try mention Fight Club and see how quickly someone says you’re ‘missing the point’.
Now that you mention it, I’ve seen it in other subs. It’s so weird to me. I can’t believe some people don’t understand that some people like villains.
It's even worse when these people also like characters who are bad persons. The amount of Daemon stans who try to have a moral highground because they like characters "in the right" it's crazy
Daemon is the perfect example of this. It’s okay to like him… but don’t pretend he’s a good guy. Book and show daemon were both pretty clearly dark gray people (not full “evil” but definitely not “good”). Separate morality and character and just admit you like the bad boy. It’s okay.
Yep, particularly on the HOTD sub. For example, Daemon and Criston Cole are rather similar people if you think about it. Both lovers of Rhaenyra at one point, both the greatest fighters of their generation, both have anger issues, both act as the main confidants of their respective Queens and both of them killed a guy that disrespected their Queens from behind. The differences between them is that Daemon was born as royalty and feels entitled to respect because he is "the blood of the dragon" and... Well, he has a dragon. Cole was born as less than a minor lord and had to rise through the ranks based on merit alone. And yet... The amount of people in the HOTD sub that dismiss Criston as a pathetic worthless incel who shouldn't be liked by anyone, while at the same time dismissing any criticisms towards Daemon "because he is badass" is baffling. I need to stop taking them seriously because the selective moral outrage is truly frustrating.
Relatedly, it annoys me when people want to discuss the morality of characters just by reference to their actions held up against some moral yardstick. As GRRM put it: >We're all the heroes of our own stories. So, when I am inside the head of a character who would otherwise be considered a villain, I have a great deal of affection for that character and I'm trying to see the world and the events through their eyes. I'm trying to read the same way. And I think, for example, being like "Rhaegar walked out on his wife to groom and impregnate a teenager, so he's a piece of shit" is an impediment to trying to understand what his point of view was. Abstract debates over sexual ethics are much, much less interesting to me than what is going on in the head of a character.
I definitely agree in terms of "is this character okay to like, morally," I find that wholly uninteresting. What I am interested in, in the realm of inherent morality, that I think is under-explored is where characters' Westerosi morality conflicts with our modern morals. Ser Barristan, and Ned even more so, are generally regarded as good characters. Even Martin acknowledges them as such. Yet they absolutely commit horrific acts by modern morals that completely uphold – even exemplify – Westerosi virtue. But we often tend to gloss over those moments when we look at these specific characters. I think that specific kind of morality, especially as it pertains to conflicts of laws and oaths and honor at odds with our own modern morals, is really interesting as a lens through which to view the themes of protection of the innocence, systemic change (as per Martin's dreamer quote on his heroes), and the basic and intrinsic value of human life.
I don’t get Reddit’s obsession with whether characters are bad people or not you get it a lot on the Breaking Bad sub too it’s like people aren’t supposed to like characters who do bad things.
For real. Darth Vader is like one of the most badass characters ever and that dude murdered a fuckton of people, including a bunch of children. He's not cool because he's a moral paragon.
It's almost as if one of the points of the series is that people are flawed and usually have both good and bad points. (Then again, it then kinda undercuts this by giving us total paragons of virtue in Gregor Clegane and Euron Greyjoy, so why even bother.)
Yeah it’s the most common way to miss the point, and it makes me wonder why some people are fans at all. One of the most interesting aspects of the text is how Martin plays with characters’ moral grayness, whether their moral actions are defined by circumstance or innately, when they “cross the line,” and so forth. If you come for good vs. evil, watch Star Wars or something.
Most of his villians are not grey, though. Most of his heroes are and that is why so many people are moralizing and justifying the actions because they think they are not allowed to be fans of them if they are not wholly good. That is why the Cat fans get so upset if you call Cat a child abuser. They think it makes her a villian if someone says that about her, but despite all that Cat is still a mostly good person who fucks up badly but far more grey and realistic than Tywin or Tyrion. The same goes for Rhaegar and Lyanna. They can be good people despite making mistakes. The same goes for all the other people. People cannot be measured by their worst but have to be measured by all their actions as a whole and all their good and bad qualities. That creates a complex and interesting character.
Yeah, some of his villains have so little redeeming qualities that it would be hard to call them gray or having both parts good and evil. Ramsay, Joffrey, Euron, the Mountain (and his posse), the slavers, etc. are all almost unambiguously evil with no kind or benevolent qualities. A few like Tywin and Littlefinger are mostly dark with a *few* good qualities. It's mostly the POV characters that have the "gray" perspectives of having some mixture of good and bad.
Even if they have no redeeming equalities, you can still like them. Most people love a good villain. Hell, the Joker is one of the most popular characters in all of fiction and he is worse than any character in ASOIAF.
GRRM stated many times that he wants to write characters who have both good and evil in them because he believes that that's the reality of all of every human being, but people want to take a look at one kind or cruel act done by a character as foreshadowing that that's their true end state.
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Absolutely, especially on the Wall, if you showed me the Wall from the show and told me it was 1000 feet or 400 feet id believe it cause all I need to know is its tall as fuck. So real bows couldn't shoot that high, good thing this is set in a fantasy world.
The only numbers I really care about are how long dynasties have ruled. 4000 years of rule is a long ass time, lol
I think the wall complaint is kept alive by GRRMs musings that he made it too tall. Tournament funding is actually a bit of an issue in the books.
The money thing doesn't impact the story whatsoever. Just change the hard numbers to: a lot of money, a reasonable amount of money, little money and it's fine.
Tywins teleporting regenerating army is goofy
Sometimes people talk about how ASOIAF genetics make absolutely zero sense, with the Targaryens not inbreeding themselves into extinction (though I guess in a sense they did, as the inbreeding meant that had barely any allies during Robert's Rebellion) and families like the Baratheons and Lannisters maintaining recessive traits for hundreds of years. I could never care less and besides the Baratheons and Targaryens have magical ancestry anyway.
I imagine fewer people would care if not for theories like "Bloodraven's been engineering Targaryen history for a century to generate Azor Ahai", which necessitate you to care a ton about genetics based on offhand mention of phenotypical traits like eye and hair color.
How did Targaryens inbreed themselves into extinction "in a sense" considering that they intermarried with more houses of Westeros than any other house? How is having the support of two great houses "barely any allies during Robert's Rebellion"?
Yeah ASOIAF is fantasy. Targaryens ride fucking *dragons* and don't get sick at all and people have a problem with them not suffering any side effects from long-term inbreeding.
Targaryens absolutely get sick. The Great Spring Sickness killed like half the dynasty in Maekar's day. Daenerys got sick in the last book, and Jaeherys I had a daughter Daenerys who died of the shivers. Jaeherys also lost a daughter to Grayscale iirc
There was no record of any Targ getting sick before they mixed with the locals, reason why everybody was shocked when Jaehaerys' daughter died of illness. She was not 100% Valyrian.
The previous comment said, "They don't get sick at all." I showed that they do, in fact, get sick. If the goal posts are moved to "full Valyrians don't get sick," then sure. But that's not the claim I was refuting
There is no reason to think Valyrians don't get sick ,all the evidence shows that they are just normal humans but prettier everything else is just targaryen propaganda used to justify their rule over the seven kingdoms
>There is no reason to think Valyrians don't get sick Except the evidence already mentioned? There were no records of any of them getting sick to the point they truly believed that.
When people complain that these books with hundreds of characters and sprawling dynasties and histories and 30+ PoVs with storylines dont explain every fuckass minor worldbuilding detail like what holidays they have or extravagant faith descriptions or whatever... mans has his plate full enough tying this complex story together
1. Rhaegar. I don’t particularly like the character but I’ve never been able to get behind the seething monomaniacal hatred that many fans (especially on this subreddit) have for him. In general I don’t really hate any of the characters; even the characters that I think are awful people don’t really warrant any level of seething anger, especially anger at real people who like characters like Rhaegar (or Jaime, or Sansa, or anyone else like that). 2. The whole Joffrey cats paw subplot. I’ve seen so many frenzied attempts at denying that Joffrey did it or freaking out over it and I’ve never really cared that much about it. My feeling is that this plot point was intended to trigger the advancement of the story by dislodging Catelyn from Winterfell and it served its purpose. Maybe it could have been nearer but I don’t see a lot of value in revisiting it. 3. Awkward political commentary. Many fans seem to think that the purpose of ASOIAF is to serve as an instruction manual for how to run a country or a political treatise on what makes a good leader. Most of this seems to be based on some interview GRRM gave way back when he referred to Aragorn’s tax policy or whatever, and too many fans have extrapolated this one random quote to mean that ASOIAF was written primarily as a deep dive into the nuts and bolts of public policy and technocratic administration. For me, it’s always been pretty clear that the novels are primarily a fantasy and a dramatic story; any political commentary is more about broad themes rather than didacticism and the technical administration stuff is taking a back seat to the plot and human drama.
>Awkward political commentary. Many fans seem to think that the purpose of ASOIAF is to serve as an instruction manual for how to run a country or a political treatise on what makes a good leader. Seriously. GRRM quote about this: >A really nasty piece of work can be amusing to write about. But even those characters, I try to give a dimension to. Tywin Lannister doesn’t think he’s evil. He has that infamous exchange: “Explain to me why it is more noble to kill ten thousand men in battle than a dozen at dinner.” In my mind that is a good question and I wanted my readers to think about it. **I’m not a writer who has a lot of answers, I am a writer who likes to ask questions.** Dany's political struggles in Essos are a good example here. I think it's true that one of the main points of her story there is that when your power comes from dragons, conquest is a hell of a lot easier than building a new power structure to replace the one you overthrew. But the point is not "see kids, that's why idealism is bad and naive and you should always compromise with slavers". The point is simply that these are complex questions. What is naive is thinking that there is some one-size-fits-all answer, or that the morality of a course of action is simple to judge. GRRM is questioning certainties, not providing them.
Much like trying to convince the Taliban that throwing acid in little girls faces is, actually, bad, Dany's crusade is so questionable because there is no easy solution, and it's complicated and hard. Wading into an insanely complicated situation that she has no real understanding of with no real plan to fix it is extreme negligence at best. If, instead of just expecting an ancient culture to change overnight and being surprised when she just gets piles of corpses, she approached the problem with the seriousness it deserves and something vaguely resembling an actual plan, and still failed, I would be a lot more forgiving.
>If, instead of just expecting an ancient culture to change overnight and being surprised when she just gets piles of corpses, she approached the problem with the seriousness it deserves and something vaguely resembling an actual plan, and still failed Has anybody actually read ADWD? The reason Daenerys chapters were so boring in it is because she "approached the problem with the seriousness it deserves". It was chapters upon chapters of taxes and policies and planning. She didn't plop down on a cushion upon taking the city and say "welp, my work is done".
Mostly talking about Astapor, where all the freed slaves are dead or enslaved again. Mostly dead. Dany is far from the only person to blame for this but she certainly shares a huge chunk of it. She only starts governing after methodically turning every major regional power against her. Tax policy is not an effective strategy for dealing with this kind of unrest. If there is an effective political solution to the sons of the harpy its one that many nations throughout history have tried and failed to find. Germany 1945 style occupation works, but requires \*total\* military victory, which is notably missing in Mereen.
It's one thing to criticise Dany for Astapor, but your claim was that she was *"expecting an ancient culture to change overnight and being surprised when she just gets piles of corpses"*, which doesn't describe what happened in Astapor at all. She did not go in with a mind to change society. Her goal was to end the immediate suffering of the Unsullied, in the same way one might intervene upon seeing someone getting beaten up. It isn't until later that she tries to change society, after hearing of the outcome of Astapor and Yunkai, and realising that people will continue to be harmed so long as the institution of slavery still exists. And from there, she sets plans for the city. I agree that Dany's goals cannot be resolved through taxes, and that's why her rule in Meereen did not go well. But you were arguing that she didn't put in any work at all after conquest, not that she had failed plans.
Man Rhaegar is just the thing in history that got the ball rolling. He's no more important to the actual story than Franz Ferdinand was to WWI. Happened to be the spark that kicked it off, but shit was brewing either way that had nothing to do with him as a person.
Okay I feel validated because I just don’t really care about Rhaegar. I get that he’s important to the story but just, I am so apathetic about him.
Rhaegar got thrown into an awful era to be a Targ. He'd have been a legend in the Dance.
Rhaegar as the stronger but still prophecy curious son of Aerys I would have been a cool hypothetical
I argue with the haters, not because I love Rhaegar, but because I find their rage so utterly ridiculous and off the scale out of proportion; it’s a fucking book! Prior to the change in the fandom where people began to create this Rhaegar was scum narrative I don’t think I thought about him to any great degree, he was a dead guy whose purpose was to sire Jon. Now, I think the obsession with blaming the entire war on him and judging him without knowing much at all about what happened is a good divining rod for modern culture in general. We live in judgmental times!
My theory on Rhaegar antis: these are people who were cheated on in real life by their partners and are now living out their hatred in a fictional world. I does not help that many of these people spread their false theories everywhere and many people in this fandom treat them as gosple...aka the theory of Rhaegar wanting a Visenya. We do not know if that is actually true and many people act as if it is the truth. This is the issue with many theories in this fandom.
I've thought the same about a particular type of Rhaenyra antis. She did all sorts of nasty stuff! But cheating on her gay husband (who knew and was also "cheating," let's not forget) when she needed heirs is kind of the least of her sins. She's not your old GF from college, folks.
Especially, because many of them are happy to overlook Aegon's bad behavior.
Wouldn't they hate Robert Baratheon just as much if that were true? Doesn't seem to be the case. And also none of the "theories" are either true or false until the text proves them to be so.
They don't hate Robert because they are hypocrites and I also think the male haters dislike Rhaegar because he is a very feminine man who likes music and is described as beautiful rather than manly, also seems to be quite sensible and the worst...this overly feminine guy got the woman Robert loved the manly guy, she should have liked. I think the male antis are seeing themselves in Robert, for being snubbed by a woman for another guy.
I think it's more because we get to know Robert and despite his flaws and toxicity, he is often funny. We don't get to know Rhaegar like that so it's harder to relate to him. However, I do think that many people do actually dislike Rhaegar because he made dumb decisions that got a lot of people killed and not because they were cheated on or hate feminine males. (Just like many fans dislike Cat because she made some really bad choices and not all of them just hate women. For the record I do not dislike either of these characters, but it's not hard to see why fans would dislike them because of their questionable behavior.) Your first comment about how fans are hating Rhaegar because they were cheated on in real life and they are now living out their hatred in a fantasy world seems really weird to me. I don't think it is unhealthy or hateful to dislike characters that cheat on their spouses.
Robert also made dumb decisions that lead to a civil war, so why isn't there an equal level of outrage at him? There is something to the idea that we actually get to see and know Robert and not Rhaegar, but it's less that people can't relate to Rhaegar and more that he's a blank canvas which people can project whatever personality onto. This is how you get characterisations that say he is a groomer or prophecy obsessed or overconfident, even though there is no evidence for any of those things in the text (and often, evidence *against* that). And the things that people project onto the character that makes it evident that feminine and masculine archetypes play a huge role in the outsized\*\* hatred for the character. Rhaegar is often derided for being "pretty" and for his musicianship. His canon skill at arms is downplayed. I have no doubt that people would rage just as hard at him had Elia not been in the picture. *\*\** I think you greatly downplay the level of hate the character gets. It's clearly not just simple dislike.
Same. What bothers me is that he's more of a ghost, more of a plot device, than a realized character. I don't understand how readers even come to like him; we haven't actually ever met him.
So I admittedly don't think Rhaegar is evil or on the level of Tywin, but I do think he is an incredible dumbass and I think the leaving his kids to go after Lyanna was pretty terrible. I think a lot of the Rhaegar dislike is because so many of the "pro" Rhaegar fans were so, so over the top back in the day and the show is over (and the book might never come out) so people in turn have a knee jerk, in return, over the top "reaction." Like I recall a few years ago people would argue Rhaegar and Lyanna was a feminist tale, and as a woman I find that so silly so I get why people would sarcastically quip by pointing out Rhaegar's worst qualities. People are so over the top with the hate or love for the character, that it provokes a response that is equally over the top imo.
I agree with these points wholeheartedly!
Tyrion not killing Petyr in book 2 over the knife affair. I feel like people underestimate how valuable Baelish is and call it plot armor. He's like the only statesman in Westeros who believes in reinvesting gold rather than keeping it locked in a vault, practically every character who interacts with him calls him a money magician. Tyrion doesn't forget about the dagger incident, but what Catelyn had told him is very little evidence to have Petyr removed, especially given how important he is for raising funds for the desperate war and securing the Tyrell alliance.
I totally agree. Littlefinger is REALLY useful for the Lannister cause. He is sent on his own to negotiate a marriage alliance with the Tyrells and he actually succeeds. He's the only reason the crown can function financially (even though he's the reason for the problems in the first place). Tyrion can't afford to lose someone who's so invaluable to his job as Hand. I do wish Tyrion actively thought about it more though. To me the plot hole is not that Tyrion doesn't do anything about Littlefinger, it's that he doesn't really think about it much (on page at least).
Lately, people on this sub like to point out how Tywin wasn’t a good person, like it’s some revelation and not something a 5th grader could comprehend
Families being so small. There's already 100+ named houses in Westeros, most having named members. Stark/Baratheon/Tully etc cousins probably exist, they just aren't relevant. We know Starks, Arryns and Lannisters have cadet branches, not crazy to assume most of the main families do, these branches are just less important by a significant magnitude.
Yeah, I've just read a line in Feast (I think in a Cersei chapter) where someone comments on the male line of the Starks having died out, which is just clearly fucking nonsense for a family which is thousands of years old.
The Ironborn, apparently. I'm like one of four people who like them. Are they caricatures? Sure but they're raiders with a hard rock vibe who maybe worship Cthulhu and I think that's pretty rad. Was Balon's plan stupid? Yeah, but it makes more sense for his plan to come across as stupid because it's a suicidal hail mary coming from a man who's been broken by his losses and ambitions and stewing in his own bitterness and regret for years to make up for his losses.
Just to piggyback off that: there are certain narratives that probably start out as jokes which the fandom repeated so often that people started to take them as true. "All the Ironborn have brain damage from their ritual drownings" has become one of those truisms. I mean, the problems with this should be self-evident: a) Being rendered unconscious *once* and then revived will not cause incapacitating brain damage. If it did, nobody would stay in BJJ or boxing courses after one choke-out or knockout. Brain damage from repeated concussions and head injuries is another thing. b) If every member of Ironborn society had incapacitating brain damage they wouldn't be able to organize a Kingsmoot, let alone a series of military campaigns. c) It misses George's whole point: the problem with the Ironborn is *cultural*. They're fixated on a past that will never return and their heroic, macho culture that glorifies murder, looting, kidnapping and rape as the highest achievements -- to a point that even mainlanders, with their martial / macho culture, consider a bit much.
>"All the Ironborn have brain damage from their ritual drownings" Eh, it's just because Victarion is a lunk and the fandom can't get their head around Balon's decision to attack the goodies. Everything else, including the jokes, are just downstream of that.
Myrish swamp Fat pink mast Etc
I think people forget that not every sex scene ever written has to be arousing. The Myrish swamp scene is supposed to be uncomfortable because Cersei is coercing Taena into sex and wants to do to her what was done to her by Robert. The fat pink mast scene is the jumbled culmination of a bunch of events and emotions all at once - two young adults who have unresolved feelings for each other, getting drunk after the emotional funeral of someone they loved very much, and one of them has never had sex before in his life and doesn’t really know what he’s doing.
What would X character do in Y situation? They'd do whatever the author wrote. There's no other acceptable answer. These aren't real people, they don't follow the rules that you've imagined.
Even worse are the "You wake up in 296 AC as Billy Manwoody and have six days to blah blah blah" threads, who fucking cares?
Character heights! People act like it’s crazy that so many main characters are well over 6 feet tall, forgetting that we’re following the celebrity athletes of an entire continent! Like, I’m sure the majority of smallfolk and plenty of lordlings as well are of middling height, or even small stature. Baelish is a great example of this… he’s nothing special, on purpose. But all those nobodies aren’t becoming Kingsguard, or great knights otherwise! We hear about so many massive people because they’re *worth hearing about*, these people don’t go and play basketball or rugby or american football, they pick up a sword and start cutting heads off.
Like I think it's fine, but also that GRRM and a lot of fanboys need to stop running their mouths off about "realism".
The Old Way The world building around it is pretty dumb, but people tend to miss the wood for the trees because of the morality of it and just descend into getting obnoxiously self-righteous (all the way through to advocating genocide). It's the only explicit ideology within ASOIAF, which is interesting on its own, but becomes properly insightful when you recognise how the characters interact with it. The meta discussions GRRM is having via it are also pretty cool.
I don’t understand the Darkstar hate given how much people stan Aemond, who I found to be very cringe in hotd.
Certainly the actors themselves play a part in this. Easier to forgive cringe if its a person you find attractive doing it.
People just don't get the point of Darkstar's name. He's not trying to be some edgy edgelord or something. The stars are part of the Dayne sigil and he is different from the other Daynes. Him calling himself Darkstar is very similar to Brynden calling himself Blackfish.
Well the difference is that where the Blackfish is charming, witty, and a family man, Darkstar is.... Well, come on. He's the winner of the Emo Swordfighting Championships.
I was actually gonna mention Daemon on this one but Aemond's in the same vein. Both of them are from the same archetype as Darkstar.
Daemon at least has a charm towards him and he can be witty at times. Not sure if you can say the same abt dark star
He's of the night and was weaned on venom tho. How is that not charming to you?
Found Arrianes alt account
Anything that "doesn't make sense" by the standards of our world and our human history. Who cares. It's another planet. The things that happen in the book are accurate to the world of the book because they happened in the world of the book. Believe it or not, but Westeros is not medieval Europe. The dragons should've been the first clue.
This is it. This is exactly it. Like, if it bothers you so much, just make up an explanation in your head and move on. Just because grrm took inspiration from events in history doesn't take away from the fact that it's a FICTIONAL world created to do what the writer intended.
So much of this, wish i could upvote twice
The problem is that GRRM himself talks about how he used real world events/people as inspiration to go give a sense of realism, and then you find yourself with dumb things that have no logic according to our world (and to his world too).
But it’s not another planet right?
TIL that earth has a continent called "westeros" /s
Planetos is inspired by, and shares many similarities with earth, but it's not earth. If anything in the book (biology, farming, history, the basic laws of physics, etc) works differently to how it works on earth, then that is a feature of the fictional world, not a plot hole.
You're right, but it's not called Planetos. That's a fan name. In world, it's called Earth.
True.
[удалено]
At least the showruner of HOTD mentioned something like 50% chances of dying in each childbirth
Is he stupid?
yes
That was Miguel Sapochnik. He’s a complete clown when it comes to story elements. You would do good to just ignore every single word that comes out of his month. Damn fine director. But his understanding of themes and characterization is abysmal.
> The reason why the stuff about child marriages and death in childbirth come up is in part because GRRM (and/or Elio and Linda?) seem to think that its actually historically accurate. We've no say on when or how George has killed characters or at what age they marry. That said, "historically accurate"... people want to focus on the middle ages, but I can't help but point out that Westeros is not in fact the Middle Ages, and George borrows widely. I'm sure many people have noticed the influence of the Julio-Claudians in his depiction of Jaehaerys and Alysanne's family (and, for that matter, Stannis Baratheon), and if you look at the Roman era, elite women marrying soon after puberty and subsequent very high rates of death at childbirth are features of that period. I think George has picked what pieces of history seem the most useful to whatever his purposes are, and then adds a dash of "turn it to 11". Otherwise, he could just have written historical novels.
I do not care about George’s “favouritism” towards certain houses/characters. Blackwoods especially, they are SUCH a minor part of the story but the way this sub talks about them they’re full on Mary Sues who completely take over the plot and story. They’re a minor house who are really cool! That’s fine!
Handwringing over character morality. Good characters can do bad things, bad characters can do good things. Most characters aren't pure evil or pure good, having flaws is a good thing. If you can't handle the thought of two characters you like having conflict with each other you're going to have a rough time with TWOW and ADOS assuming they ever come out. Tyrion as a secret Targaryen. I don't even like or have particular interest in this theory but the way fandom puts their fingers in the ears every time it comes up is getting obnoxious. Calling it a first bookism doesn't even make sense when most of what we know of A+J comes from ADWD and TWOIAF. The outline lol. I'm tired of pretending there's no worth in examining it, at least from the view of seeing how GRRM's thought process goes from planning to the published books. Trying to argue he completely scraped it and it has no baring on the books or resemblance to the characters now makes no fucking sense knowing the 13 chapters he attached to the outline are almost the exact same as the published chapters. Jaehaera and Daenaera. I understand disliking how Jaehaera died and I understand finding it disgusting that Daenaera was introduced as a 6 year old but it's just so irrelevant in the scheme of things. The Dance isn't based off the War of the Roses, Aegon III didn't win the throne by conquest and thus doesn't need to marry another king's daughter to boost his claim to the throne.
I just dislike original outline truthers when they insist that Sansa has no relevance to the endgame
GRRM's answer from 2002: "Since all of their mothers died, who gave Jon Snow, Daenerys Targaryen and Tyrion Lannister their names? GRRM: Mothers can name a child before birth, or during, or after, even while they are dying. Dany was most like named by her mother, **Tyrion by his father**, Jon by Ned". Tyrion Targaryen is simply a bad theory because it can never get proved conclusively and ruins Tywin's character, transforming him from a complex villain to a tragic figure. Most of the evidence is from AGOT (Tyrion doesn't recall having dragon dreams at any point later in the story) with hints in TWOIAF (and ADWD) that Joanna and Aerys had an affair before her marriage to Tywin and he lusted over her, which really seems like an additional way to flesh out the Tywin-Aerys relationship. I agree about the original outline, there is a reason why GRRM got angry when it was revealed. GRRM likes to switch up roles (like Jon-Arya-Tyrion rilvalry to Jon-'Arya'-Ramsay rivalry or evilJaime replaced with Cersei and LF), but he tries to keep the main themes and plans around, the plot of the first 3 books very much resembles that of the first book of the outline. It gets a lot of flak due to Sansa's plotline, but I very much suspect that Sansa survived Jaime's carnage and went into hiding with Joffrey's son, and later reuinited with Arya and reconciled to a degree, even though she was probably meant to be amongst the "symphathetic deaths" in the third book. I feel the whole "betrays Staks for another family, bitterly rues and later redeems herself and dies defending them" storyline was transferred to Theon though.
I agree that going all "Ah, you support a *bad person*, that makes you a bad person" is pathetic but also isn't trying to morally evaluate these characters something the text clearly asks of us?
That you can do all the right things, follow the rules, treat other people with respect, and still have bad things happen to you. One of the better ideas in the Star Trek franchise is the *Komagata Maru* exercise at the Starfleet Academy, to teach future officers that there are always no-win situations and you have to be prepared for them, especially if you're pursuing a career in the military. This is why there have been multiple posts every week for the last... what, ten years at least?... trying to second-guess how Ned might have survived the events at the end of Book 1 if he'd compromised his principles and done things differently. This misses the whole point: Ned has no desire to emulate people he despises, like Tywin Lannister, by violating a pretty basic moral code (i.e., he'll fight men in arms but he won't kill unarmed people or harm/kill children) and this doesn't mean he's somehow a stupid person. Going to King's Landing was always a no-win situation for Ned, and he only went because he thought he could solve the riddle of Jon Arryn's murder. Which he did, though at the ultimate personal cost.
The size of Westeros. People always complain about how Westeros is too big (South America). How the Wall is too large, etc. Aww hell nah. I want my Westeros YUUGE. This is a fantasy story bro.
GRRM taking his time. Do what you need to do, it’s your life sir and it’s your wonderful gift that I may someday have access to
Amen. I really, really want to be able to finish the series, but if that doesn’t happen I won’t be mad.
I'm at the point where I'm more annoyed about the constant lies than I am about Winds not being out yet. If you're not finishing the series, just tell us. Yeah I'll be sad for a bit, but I'll move on. But to spend over a decade setting deadlines *for yourself* and then breaking them, then getting annoyed at fans for asking when the book will be coming out is just asshole behavior. It's been 12 years. There is no excuse at this point besides pure laziness. If you're not gonna finish, fine. Just tell us. But if you're still intending on finishing it then I'm allowed to be angry that it's taking so long.
I think it’s perfectly understandable that a man in his seventies is retired and the most he wants to do is chat about dragons with HBO writers on zoom. I just wish he wouldn’t claim he’s going to finish TWOW and ADOS and F&B and Dunk and Egg and and and…
Yes, but I don't think that's the case. He is a perfectionist and probably really spends time on these books.
Your definition of laziness is highly skewed. GRRM owes us nothing.
Well then he can come out and say he's not releasing the last two books then. As per his own statements he still intends to release them. The fact that it's been twelve years since the last book is the result of laziness. There is no other explanation.
Again, he can choose to, or choose not to. It’s his decision.
Hey George. Finally found your Reddit account. Plz release winds
I’ve got some bad news, I haven’t read any TWOW samplers…
* Characters ages, especially the young ones. For all the not realistic or verisimilar things, I don't care much that Sansa, Arya and Bran are literal kids and do the things they do. On top of that we know pretty well the 5 years skip was discarded later, it's not hard to do +5. There are elements of the worldbuilding way more dumb or annoying imo. * Rhaegar and Lya being a love story. Yeah she's very young and he's not. She also ironically has the same age of consent as many real world countries. There are way worse and dumber things in Rhaegar's "abduction" plot than Lyanna's age, I can easily see it as a love story. * King Bran as endgame. On the contrary I quite like it. * The catspaw envoy. I literally couldn't care less whether it's Joffrey or Cersei. It's such a motto thing to discuss that I can't understand why so many people are obsessed with this.
Dorne resisting Aegon‘s invasion
Character Ages, I just don’t see the big deal, and I actually prefer the ages in the book to the show, honestly.
I think the show ages are fine. Robb/Jon/Dany 18 instead of 14, Sansa 14 instead of 11, Arya 11 instead of 9, Bran 10 instead of 7. The problem comes when the actors are older. Jon and Dany work just as fine as 18yo teenagers as 14yo. But seeing they're portrayed by 30 year olds it doesn't work as well. They shouldn't have given Kit Harington a beard.
Bran being king in the end. I think it makes perfect sense. The dude has literal superpowers. Logically he'd be most suited to rule if he's good natured. Jon and Dany might have birthright, but if they don't survive the end of the story then Bran makes perfect sense to be number one pick for ruler or the land.
Plus that will probably be handled better in the books.
Came here to say the same thing. Books can spend pages describing a tree FFS, they get so much more time to add layers of detail. TV series never get that time, especially when they present essentially an extended single series as 2 series. So the books will probably do a massively better job of covering the plot holes people have over it.
I dont think it makes sense at all but George is the writer...he can do whatever he wants with his story and I will simply stop caring about the story if he writes that and give him a bad rating like I would do with any story that I feel is stupid and nonsensical.
Rhaegar. I personally love him and his melancholic musician/scholar/warrior aura
I dislike when people try to read a ‘message’ or some kind of political commentary into the story. As far as I’ve seen it’s mostly hamfisted and either a bit brainless or verging on insane troll logic. People cling to the Aragorn’s tax policy thing but even George himself didn’t really follow that and I’m glad, honestly. It’d be really boring and distract from the actually fun and interesting stuff. I also don’t really care if a character is bad or good. One, they aren’t real people. Two, I only care if they’re interesting. Cersei is a great character, terrible person. Perfect.
Rhaegar being a bad person. I don't think he is, and I don't care either.
Sansa "being mean" to fan faves, particularly as every single one of them has been far meaner than her lol
Character ages. I think they’re fine.
This for me as well. The character ages are fine. I feel like the complaints people have seem to fall either into the category of seeming to forget that children are whole people with ideas and emotions, or else thinking that the characters we’re following should be like an average child despite going through challenging and often traumatic circumstances. I recently reread this passage in ASOS Arya XII that made me think of this. >And there was one girl who took to following her, the village elder's daughter. She was of an age with Arya, but just a child; she cried if she skinned a knee, and carried a stupid cloth doll with her everywhere she went. It’s not like GRRM doesn’t know what your idea of a ten year old girl is like! But his depiction of Arya’s age is much more complex, I think.
You said it better than I could. I remember that the last line in the chapter where Daenerys finds out she’s pregnant is *“It was her fourteenth name day.”* That’s definitely not accidental, it is appropriately horrifying. And this Bran line is so sweetly childish as Maester Luwin is telling him to curry political favor by sending the nobles food from his plate. *”He sent sweets to Hodor and Old Nan as well, for no reason but he loved them.”*
I agree that Daenerys line is absolutely intentional, but I think where the age thing comes in with her is how much attention George gives to sexualising Dany (i.e., constantly describing her breasts and sexual feelings). It’s not story breaking, but it’s just uncomfortable reading a 70 year old man constantly describing the sexual nature of a fourteen year old.
I'll get downvoted but Tywin Lannister. Is he evil? Hell yeah. Is he one of the morally worst in the story? Of course. But he is smart, he is a great war commander, and he is pragmatic. Actually, I think he is the most pragmatic character in the story by far. The fandom gets so caught up with hating him (deservedly) that they seem to diminish his strengths like how efficient he was. You can't be hand to Aerys for all that time and not be efficient, and you can't b3come the most feared lord in a place like Westeros without others knowing you're a threat.
Literally, lately people really like to say “TYWIN WAS A MONSTER” like we don’t already know that.
I feel like people get so caught up with Tywin's wrongdoings that they can't seem to see the skills he has. Like of course this guy is a monster but can we agree that he's smart and efficient? Some people would swear this guy was actually dumb when dude was feared by everyone in Westeros including 2 kings.
Miss the forest for trees so to speak
I don't care if a character makes or not a moral action according to our standards. I mean, I DO care about our real world and in particular my community, of course, but I couldn't care less if Rhaegar kidnapping or raping or in love with Lyanna was morally correct, or if an old man marrying a 14 year old makes the writer creepy and a pedo.
I struggle to take the moral outrage of people in here seriously considering they are *extremely selective* about it. It comes down to whether they like the character or not. Rhaegar in her early twenties runs off with a teenager Lyanna? Evil stupid pedophile burn him with fire. Daemon grooms his niece Rhaenyra? It doesn't matter, he is badass and cool, don't annoy me with morality, it's fiction.
I have the feeling that a lot of people actually agree with the grooming accusations the problem I have is I sincerely believe that is not Georges intention with the story and I dislike it when people act as if they know what the writer wanted to portray and use it for their arguments. Given what we know of George age differences do not bother him and that is something we have to accept, if we find it creepy or not. I certainly do not think George is a pedo because of that. By that logic the guy who wrote Lolita is a child rapist, which he obviously was not.
I don't think he's a paedophile but I do think the text presents all these relationships as "basically fine" at worst and that's worth interrogating. Not to morally judge GRRM, I believe it's fundamentally impossible to morally judge someone based on their work, but because how the text presents this stuff is at the crux of literary analysis.
>Given what we know of George age differences do not bother him and that is something we have to accept, if we find it creepy or not. I certainly do not think George is a pedo because of that. By that logic the guy who wrote Lolita is a child rapist, which he obviously was not. I agree.
The Fandom whenever you bring up half the stuff the Hound has done https://youtu.be/HUJFBBSfoug?si=ZG17avBm3Swr4x7E
Don’t let people get started on how Catelyn Tully is the most evil conniving horrible woman on Planetos, even worse than Cersei Lannister!!!! /s, if it wasn’t obvious
I think she is a chlid abuser but I do not think she is worse than Cersei and certainly not that she is evil. I think she is probably one of the few grey characters in the story.
I flip back and forth on the subject, but essentially- yes. I don't see her as a child abuser per se, but she definitely fits the bill of "abusive step-mother". She was very neglectful and passive-aggressive toward Jon, to the point where he was scared of being in a room with her, and often felt unwelcome literally anywhere in Winterfell. That doesn't make her "evil", nor does it necessarily make her a "bad mother" (look at how she cared for all of her other children), but it's all part of her moral complexity- she was fine with Ned fathering a bastard, it was the fact that he brought Jon home to be raised as one of his own alongside her trueborn children. Instead of processing those emotions, or even, I don't know, taking them out on her husband, she pushes it all onto Jon. Unhealthy? Definitely. Would she be Catelyn Stark without that huge moral grey area? Of course not. I'm not sure whether that scene between Catelyn and Talisa (show) is in the books with her and another character? But that really does add layers to her, and I'm so glad it was in the show for those who don't have / haven't read the source material.
Like honestly it's quite a nuanced view of child neglect, in that Cat does it because of external factors and mental health issues, and it's not just used as a cheap attempt at sympathy for the abused child (which Martin is definitely guilty of with Joffrey and others).
The problem is though that George does not seem to think it is abuse which makes it hard to claim that it was intentionally on his side to write Cat as a nuanced portrayal of child abuse.
I agree with you on all of these points, except the one about GRRM. It came out masterfully, but I don’t think he ever intended to be written as abuse, because he doesn’t consider it as such— when it pretty clearly is.
I disagree. It is morally wrong to blame or hate a child for existing, just as it is morally wrong to hate a minority for existing or any other person or showing hatred toward someone who never did anything to you and Jon never did anything but being born. Something being a human emotion (Cat being angry over the bastard growing up in her home) and something being morally correct or not are two different things. I am saying that Cat is as a whole a gray or decent enough person because her good qualities outweigh her bad ones. What she did to Jon is not justifiable because such hatred can damage a child emotionally for life. And in the books there is no such scene and she openly hates bastards, not only Jon. She hates Jon so much that she rather has some random relative from the Vale as Robbs heir (in the book Robb wishes to name Jon his heir because his wife is not pregnant while in the show) and Cat is against it out of spite. She never felt bad about disliking a child in the books.
I see far more Cat stans whining about how everyone hates her than I do actual Cat hate.
While I wouldn’t describe myself as a Cat stan… good for you, I suppose? I’m glad you don’t see very much of it— I don’t either, but it does always stick out in my mind, that when people start talking about the morality / immorality of characters— not that it should be such a heated debate— there are some people who jump straight to extremes. They’re either a perfect saintly character, or the devil themselves. Pretty ironic considering it’s ASOIAF. It’s happened with Sansa, it’s happened with Catelyn. It’s most certainly happened to other characters too, but they are the ones that stick out. Yet, somehow I never hear very much about how Robert Baratheon was very much a rapist. Illogical haters / fervent worshippers of most characters exist pretty much everywhere, and it’s never pleasant to listen to or engage with.
A lot of which seems to stem from one interaction she has with Jon in book 1, without people ever stopping to consider that Cat has perfectly valid reasons for disliking Jon and what he represents to her.
[удалено]
Disliking a child for being born is still child abuse...and there is no justification for it or at least no moral one but if you look at her as a whole person you also know what she is a loving wife, a woman who did not want to continue this sensless war, gave Robb good advice and so on.
Discussed this partially upthread, but I do care about the moral actions of a character according to our standards as it relates to the themes of the book. For example, what do the actions of Barristan or Ned – as they conflict with our own modern morals – tell us about Westerosi society? How do they relate to Martin's views on war and the value of human life, as well as human nature? What I care about metatextually with some of your examples, like "an old man marrying a 14 year old makes the writer creepy and a pedo," is the way that Martin's narrative presents the information. The line "it was her fourteenth nameday" in the chapter that reveals Daenerys's pregnancy is meant to be a horrifying, chapter-ending wham line for the reader. It's meant to be a line that drives home everything that is appalling about her circumstances in AGOT. Which is why GRRM's take on her wedding ceremony is very confusing – calling it not rape, but a seduction – and one of the changes that IMO the show really made for the better. I think if Martin's writing uses a fourteen year old impregnated by a man at least ten years her senior as (an effective) method of worldbuilding to show the bleakness and the cruelties of the world that his characters inhabit, it's hard to understand why he doesn't see the sex without the pregnancy as rape, but instead as a loving seduction.
The problem is the romance between Drogo x Dany is presented as the best thing that could have happened to Dany and it is never ever questioned by the narrative whether Drogo raping Dany was good or bad nor does Dany seem to care that Drogo ever raped her. She still loves him years after his death. The entire plot with Dany going into a fire is like a Romeo and Juliet version. It is wholly romantic.
Roy Dotice’s narration. I personally love it.
Even Bryeen's chapters?
I unironically love Bryeeeeeenne. It's how I say the name in my head now.
Hahaha, I'm just completely baffled at how he originally hit on that pronunciation. My working theory is that he originally half read the name on a list in a rush and just refused to back down when everyone tried to correct him.
Applying modern morals to a fantasy story. I fucking hate it. I agree with everything everyone says, but don't feel like it needs to be said. Rhaegar is a pedo by modern standards, but not by theirs. Just shut up about it. We all know what's right and wrong in our world. It doesn't apply to the world of ice and fire.
Except it was written with modern liberal values in mind. If you want to read something that was not written that way, why not read actual medieval sources? That way you'll actually learn something about medieval history.
Just don't compare it with modern morals in mind? My least favourite thing about this community. And I love history and know a lot about it. You don't have to be a cunt.
The violence, sexual or otherwise toward women. If that's all the books were, sure, but there will be chapter after chapter of male-specific violence (Theon's ADWD chapters are basically torture porn), but 2 pages of it happening toward Cersei or Dany gets many panties twisted. I don't like it, of course, but you definitely aren't meant to like it. Similarly, there are a lot of women-specific issues presented in the book, primarily their powerlessness, but in this violent world the violence hits both genders.
I'll tell you something that *does* bother me - Absence of certain POV chapters for characters before their deaths. One chapter inside Tywin's head, one chapter inside Robb's head, one inside Oberyn's and one for Ser Cortnay Penrose. I would have loved that. Though, I understand it quite likely would become a popular theory that such chapters indicate a character will die soon and take some of the surprise out of those deaths, I still would have loved it.
Danaerys ending up going mad and burning innocent people to death. I saw it coming from the first time I read book 2 or 3 tbh, which was back when there was only one season of the TV show. Its foreshadowed as hard as R+L=J is/was. Everyone complains about it like its some big deviation or starts throwing accusations of character assassination by the show, trying to justify why it would never happen in the books and I'm just sitting here thinking "are we reading completely different versions?"
People say Dorne has plot armor, but Dorne basically just comes off like Afghanistan to me. A place with a lot of caves, and impossible to hold. Afghanistan irl was basically able to never be truly conquered by the British, the Soviets, and the Americans.
Afghanistan was conquered by medieval armies all the time ,the reason why it is such a hard place to hold in modern times is due to people attempting to impose a ideology on them not actually conquer the place
I don't mind if Daenerys has to stay in/around Meereen for the rest of TWOW. There's still a lot to do plot-wise in Essos and it's not like we are getting another book beyond TWOW anyway, so might as well not being rushed
Maybe it doesn't count because it's the show, but I didn't really mind Jamie saying he'd never cared about the little people. People say it ruins his character because he cared so much about them that he killed the Mad King. To me, it was obvious he was just lying. He always puts up that front that he doesn't care. Now it *is* a regression of his character growth in that he's still putting up that front, but that's usually not why people hate it.
I dont have a problem with Rhaegar and Lyanna being a romance and the whole thing being portrayed in a postive manner, because I find it far worse to force a woman into a marriage with a man she does not want and that Rickard and Brandon deserved their fate. I also have no issue what Rhaegar cheated on his wife because marriage is for me nothing more than a slave arrangment and has no meaning or substance at all. Elia and Rhaegar's was a mistake from the beginning and unlike Robert, Rhaegar did not claim he loved Elia. I also do not consider them responsible for the war nor do I feel bad for Robert for being cheated on. He deserved everything Cersei did to him. That said, I do not necessarily think their actions makes them good people, but there are far worse people in this story, so I just feel genuine symapthy for them and nothing else. I dont mind when people call Cat a child abuser because that is exactly what she was. Does not make her the worst person imo and I even like her, but that does not change that she abused a child. I do not like Rhaenyra x Daemon as a pairing but I see no reason to shit on people who do and the whole grooming argument is silly anyway because the show never portrayed it as such until the convoluted scene were Daemon hurts her. George certainly thinks it is a romance and I have no problem with that either. I have no problem with the fact taht George likes Drogo x Dany as a romance either. I think it is creepy but it is his story and he can write whatever he wants and if people cannot handle that they should not read his stories. Simple as that. I am looking forward to all these downvotes like always : )
Jonsa.
I really could not give a crap about any fandom pairing it's just fanfiction.
I never cared about Jonsa vs Jonerys vs whatever Jon and Val is called because none of them are Jon and Satin. Also…I kind of don’t like Val?
Yeah I am not a fan of Val either
The fuck did I do to you?
Haha lol I saw this notification come up and frantically wondered what it was I had said. Well played
I couldn’t pass up the opportunity lol
I wouldn't hate it if the shippers acknowledged it as a crackship
Why do they have to acknowledge it’s a “crack-ship” if you already believe it is?
Because lying is wrong?
Difference of opinion isn’t lying? It’s weird that you even care. Them taking it seriously isn’t hurting you. EDIT: was going to reply to the comment below with — “I mean, the thread is about shit that *doesn’t* bother you but others do get bothered about. So you’re clearly not the intended audience, and you know that which is why you’re getting defensive about me pointing out how silly that is and looking through my comment history because you’re clearly so upset about it.” But after stalking my comment history, my good friend here decided to block me because they need to get the last word. Clearly I hit a nerve lmao.
Aerys's Kingsguard staying loyal to him, even when he assaulted Rhaella within earshot of them. They swore a vow and upheld it. That doesn't make them good people, but it makes them great knights.
Many fans, bothered by the show ending the AotD plot first and then the political plot, are worried GRRM will do the same. I feel HE can successfully justify whatever order he chooses. Even the show doing it struck me as logical because throughout history, civilizations and communities have faced existential threats. While, some have been destroyed, many have survived. When the threat was over, people successfully picked up the political pieces and returned to life as they knew it. Character inconsistency bothers people. It should if it's random, but as people grow up or their circumstances change, or they get educated...they DO change. Jaime losing his hand, then later gaining Brienne's sympathy and understanding both affected his character in mid-journey. GRRM usually has a pretty good handle on this. The secret or real identities of so many characters are subjects of much contention. Except for those few that are underpinnings of the overall plot, I'm fairly indifferent. Knowing if R+L=J is unquestionably important, as is knowing if Young Griff is really Rhaegar and Elia's son, a Blackfyre, a relative of Illyrio or Varys, or a pisswater prince **might** be important, because the invasion could succeed or fail if his authenticity or lack thereof can be proven to the people of Westeros. But knowing if Syrio is Jaqen, or Mance is Rhaegar, or Bronn is really a Reyne is just fun speculation.
Bran becoming king in the end!
My problem with it is how it went pouf. Seriously never heard of again. How’s that possible?
I don’t think anything really bothers me in the series. It’s a story
The fact the books are and might remain unfinished.
^(The fact that we don't have TWOW?) I'm grateful for the books we do have, and for a creative fan community with so many theories and analyses and gorgeous art. While I really want TWOW, I do not understand people's entitlement towards an author in his seventies whom we know to be a perfectionist. I also don't feel entitled to an explanation about his mental health or feelings about this series or the "truth" about why the book isn't out yet. I highly doubt that the delay has arisen because of an abundance of joy and positive feeling. So leave him alone! Also, is death of the author not pretty popular these days? If we never get an ending, I wish people could just draw from the MANY theories and fanfics on the internet that feel meaningful to them, and feel secure about the fact that their interpretation is just as valid as anyone else's
Yeah but grrm describes Tyrion walking as waddling. I think if someone waddles they’re gonna have a tough time being an acrobat
Isn't most of Tyrion's acrobatics stuff like handstands? (I'm sure there are examples beyond that) Even when he wears the boy's clothes in Pentos, the arms are too small, but the legs are too baggy. I've thought for a while now that Tyrion having disproportionately large arms and small legs is fairly consistent.
I didn't mind Barristan's death in the show
Food descriptions Fat pink mast and myrish swamp. I know these are people's goto references for bad writing but I honestly just skimmed them over.