I was listening to the Critical Drinker's after hours stream and they were talking about Winds of Winter due to the fact that GRRM recently released something Westeros related that wasn't WOW along with his many projects with HBO. They all pretty much agreed that it is highly doubtful it will ever be released, at least while he is alive.
Someone in the comments put out the whole "he owes you nothing" argument and that fans are entitled, but he did say GRRM made a mistake in constantly promising that he would end the series.
What do y'all think? I understand that he owes me nothing and I read the books between season 5 and 6 so I haven't been waiting since the 90s, but I would respect him more if he just said that he didn't want to finish and hire someone to finish. I will say now that whenever someone recommends a book series to me the first thing I ask is if the series is completed or not. I also remember someone saying that now people will be less willing to give a new author a chance if he has a multi book series.
I personally believe that once he dies (assuming he never releases the books) that his publisher will take what he had written and publish that or find someone to make it a coherent story. GOT could've been an epic show from start to finish had he finished the source material and even if he does release the last two the interest will be far less than what it could've been.
Almost as if a story rooted in an ideology that heroism both doesn't exist and if it does, is morally repugnant, cannot possibly resolve.
Such a story could be resolved, but definitely not over a course of 10,000+ pages of text devoted to rubbing in how shitty, shortsighted, and prone to corruption people are and why all fantasy tropes are bunk. That could have easily been done over the course of one book, where the protagonists' assorted flaws lead them to a tragic end.
That's the problem with tragedy, subversion, and deconstruction. They can make for powerful stories, but only in relatively concise works that end once they've made their point, which would typically be after the massive swerve happens that dashes what the audience expected. Continuing after that point is just wallowing in bitterness and nihilism.
Agreed. I should have specified a high fantasy story, since the genre is just folktales writ large.
The tale ending in a tragedy is basically the only ideologically consistent resolution, given those themes you mentioned.
Whether that tragedy is GRRM's death being a full Viking funeral pyre on a raft made of HBO's money, or the story not getting an ending... I really no longer care.
I tried to reread the first book when Dances came out, couldn't, and dropped the 4 I owned in a used book bin. Detaching early strikes me as an optimal outcome, given the shit show that's happened since.