Maybe it's because you're a lazy, whiny faggot, George.
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GRRM bitching about fans turning on him because HE STILL HASN'T RELEASED 'WINDS OF WINTER' YET!
The entirety of the GoT series came and went before GRRM managed to release another book. The times between book releases grew exponentially to the point many fans no longer expect him to release the second last book of the series let alone the final book. Since the series came out instead of writing those two books GRRM decided to write everything but the books his fans wanted and now he's reaping what he sowed by being a lazy talking head for so fucking long.
tl;dr old fatman shouts at [digital] clouds
Can you imagine the hype and money of Winds of Winter had been released around season 4 or 5
Sure plenty of fans were mad about it, but that's nothing compared to the violent rage that must have occurred behind closed doors amongst the intellectual property profit goblins that surrounded him.
And unlike genuine human beings they couldn't even address it to George for fear of their jobs. Looking at how George reacts to puplic opinion, just imagine how he reacts to private opinion. This is part of why influential people often live in personal la-la-lands.
Martin has gloated that he no longer has to listen to the opinions of his editors. He is 100% a complete terror.
I mean, that could have gone two ways.
George has gone down the rabbit-hole and the book itself is as bad as the show became once they ran out of source material. I.e favoring the message over consistent storytelling
George hasn't gone down the rabbit-hole and the show would've crumbled immediatly not just at the end.
At this point I don’t think he can. He probably knows the major plot points which he told to HBO when they made the ending, but then they fucked it up because they didn’t have a template for the final seasons and rushed it all. Now he can’t do that or people will be pissed, even though most of it’s what he wanted to do.
He knows he’s damned if he does and damned if he doesn’t.
If the series finale being as fucked up its own ass as it was came down to a lack of reference material beyond whatever post-it notes he gave to D&D, that's on him. Even if he had taken as long to publish TWOW (which he chronically boasted included a lot of already-written chapters that he just couldn't fit into ADWD and thus definitely wouldn't take as long to come out) as he did to publish ADWD - five years after the fourth book, AFFC - then it should've been out by 2016-17.
FFS, even D&D delayed Season 8 by an entire year (2018), that was an extra year Martin had to get the next book out. At this point I have to credit them for at least finishing their story and then dropping out of public view, however shit their ending was, unlike Martin who doesn't even have sufficient shame to just STFU about the series he'll never finish and retreat to obscurity for his remaining days. But nope, he insists on inflicting more of his unfinished universe on the world and talking shit about his dwindling fans instead.
I think he probably did give them enough reference material, they’d just need more seasons to finish it and that wasn’t in the cards. I’m not saying that to defend him, it just logistically makes sense. They’d pay him whatever he wanted so it’s not like they couldn’t have had him step in more directly on the final seasons if they were having trouble.
Although I liked it more than I didn’t, I don’t personally think the Song of Ice and Fire series is as good as people make it out to be. It is good, but probably not to the level people hold it. As a TV series it was probably the most ambitious in trying to recreate a book series of that scope though when it comes to plot and character dynamics. They cut things but still did alright. The main thing he did was make a super dark Tolkien universe where everybody dies with plot complexity found in other genres.
At least they didn’t pull a Walking Dead where it never ends and you stop caring and everyone’s just wandering around in circles and you really just don’t care anymore.
"The TV show screwed up Martin's perfect vision" is fan cope.
The show ending IS the book ending. Bran becomes king, and all the retardation that implies.
Martin can't finish the story because he knows its a turd and the show tells us exactly how badly it will be received by fans. So what, he writes a new ending? With 2 million words of baggage, good fucking luck.
Any author who can't finish a story with that many pages is a bad author. PERIOD.
The obvious ending is Jon Snow becoming king of Westeros, as he is both Stark and Targaryen, it's literally his destiny.
However, doing that would refute the entire thesis of GRRM's series, that there is no inherent good, no destiny, no saviors, etc. He started the series with a faulty premise as a refutation of Tolkien and now he can't come to terms with the fact that that necessarily leads to a shitty conclusion
I can see the plot points having been the same but if handled differently working out fine. That SPOILERS maybe Bran the whole time was controlling the white walkers or something. There’s a lot you can do to make them work. Or like the dragon lady just flipping her shit at the end on a dime. With more time to make it work it could have, but it seemingly happened out of nowhere like she was Amber Heard all along.
Martin's real writing flaw is his suffocating nihilism in the name of 'realism.' The man expresses such misanthropy through his writing it's really disgusting to read. It reminds me of Nite Owl's speech to Ozymandias:
https://youtu.be/xyJ4Nt3FN0Y?t=103
"You haven't idealized mankind but you've deformed it. Mutilated it. That's your legacy."
I don't think there's any level of in-story justification for a protagonist's villain turn that would be accepted by any audience, because that's just not how people and stories work. There aren't enough words in the universe to reverse 6,000 pages of sympathizing with Daenerys. Can't be done. The alternative is to accept that everyone in the story is shit, they all worthless, and always have been (which is how Martin feels) but then what is even the point of any of it?
I do completely agree with your spot on analysis of Martin. He’s kind of a one trick pony when it comes to that. Sometimes I think it works. It is fairly excessive to the extent he does it though. And hackish after a while since the series is so damn long and it’s the same shtick endlessly.
I think the Witcher series did fantasy storytelling better in some regards that Martin was trying to capture. Most of the stories and lore are complex and nuanced and it’s not complete nihilism. Some things are really bad and tragic. Others are victories. Some are just fanciful.
If Martin had written it, just pick any direction of growth any character had and then kill them off in a way that negates it or has them flip.
For all the shit JK Rowling gets, she managed to write the entirely of the Harry Potter series in the same amount of time between now and the release of ADWD. Now, you can debate the quality of writing in Harry Potter, but you can't pretend JKR didn't have a good amount of hussle.
It's written for children, it's not meant to be high quality. The fact so many adults made it the central pillar of their life was not Rowling's fault.
The woke trash she promoted was, but that snake came back and bit her as always happens.
There's tons of other authors who bring out stuff faster than Martin. There is entire series started and finished in the time he took to write one book. It feels like he wrote himself in a corner and just does not know how to finish it.
I liken him to another author I like who sadly turned out to be pretty woke, Patrick Rothfuss. His 2 books are great but it's been 12 years since the last book and the trilogy feels like it will never be finished because he's busy with anything but finishing his book.
At least Patrick Rothfuss has been apologetic about it and can at least fall back on his need for constantly revise what he's written due to his writing style. In fact, DoS as been "written" for years. The point that he at least has reasons and not exuses.
Contrast that to GRRM who lashes out at his fans while admitting he barely did any writing at all during the entire lockdowns.
No he hasn't. He's attacked his fans as entitled multiple times because they dare to ask him when the next book is coming out. You know, the thing he said he wrote already but then his editors and publisher demanded he make into a trilogy?
He's too busy showing up on shitty DnD podcasts to write
Pretty sure Harry Potter was ghost written anyway, or there's at least some other unnamed collaborator. Just compare it with her new crap and the difference is unreal.
That's a bit of a stretch mate.
I don't think it's reasonable to assume a writer doesn't change over time. They're humans, not automatons.
Yeah but they usually get better.
I think rather than ghost written she probably had a very strong active editorial team
Martin is a talentless hack and always has been.
When writing GoT he hired an "assistant"--one of the future authors of the Expanse (forget his name). It coincides with his highest productivity and popularity. When he left Martin's output took a nosedive. In an interview that author mentioned that Martin's best talents were connections; knowing people in the movie and publishing business. Not so much writing.
Whenever I point out the objective shittiness of the series (five books, no ending in sight) people respond with magic crystal ball logic--everything will change once more books are written. I think the show reveals that isn't true, but never mind. Past performance is the best indicator of future performance.
The first book came out in 1996. Looks like the next few came out about two years apart- which is a reasonable pace. The last one printed came out in 2011. That's 11 fucking years. And they say there's going to be two more. Not likely.
In 2011 I noticed that if at the pace he wrote ADwD my son would be the age I was when AGoT was released when ASOIAF is completed. That was apparently wildly optimistic because that would have been next year.
I'm glad he managed to finish that sentence. Now maybe if he could take that principle and extrapolate a little, he wouldn't be having this problem.
Step 1: Charge people money based on promises of your future labor
Step 2: schmooze at parties and write sports blogs and side projects for a decade.
Step 3: die of old
"why are people so ungrateful wahhh"
Can he just come out and admit he won’t finish. This is why I’ve learned to never read a series that isn’t finished.
Probably has contractual obligations to his publisher that prevent him from saying so out loud, lest he spend his last years locked in a legal battle with them.
But a few months ago, he blogged that he felt 'sorry' for fans who want the next mainline ASOIAF and not the bajillion prequels & side materials he has planned for the universe of Westeros. I think that's as clear an admission that he'll never finish which he can express without getting into legal hot water with the publisher.
I also think if he dies before they finish his publisher would still try to make some money out of it by having someone finish it
True, but then the likely trash fire of a book that will result very definitely will not be his problem.
I've never read his stuff. And I certainly don't credit him with the success of Elden Ring.
Never forget the part he played in the Hugos that one year. That one event alone tarnished what people considered a respectable award.
He didn’t have much to do with Elden Ring succeeding but the lore and all that was pretty good, albeit largely untold.
I think that's probably the biggest point against him. That a bunch of game devs were churning out quality stories that his contribution barely felt different than their normal output.
Because not a damn thing about the lore felt any different than normal despite his involvement.
Martin is greatly overrated as a writer, and his takes & themes aren't nearly as profound as he imagines them to be. It's also not the '90s anymore and a grimdark, nihilistic spin on medieval European-esque fantasies isn't particularly new or thrilling anymore. Because that's what Westeros is first & foremost, for all of Martin's boasting and that of his fans, the setting actually bears little resemblance to real-life medieval European society - or any other society period, he's been catching flak from not only right-wing medieval fans but also leftist wokies for how disconnected his depictions of the Dothraki & Ghiscari are from RL Mongols/ancient Carthaginians and instead being much more in-line with negative Victorian-era stereotypes of them. (The fantasy aspects also aren't very creative or even sensible, ex. the years or decades-long seasons, for that matter)
Anyway, if anything the opposite - an unironically noblebright, optimistic medieval fantasy - would be a fresher take these days. And the 'American Tolkien' he ain't, even if he did ever publish the next books in the series. FromSoft does 'dark edgy magical medieval fantasy' better than he does, funny enough.
Fromsoft paid GRRM for a short story about the world of Elden Ring before the Shattering, so the background lore of characters like Malenia, Radahn, Ranni, and I believe the golden order and outer will shit is his doing. Fromsoft took what GRRM gave them and built the modern timeline when the game actually takes place according to their own design.
So he wrote the part I press ‘X’ to skip.
He wrote the dialogue for Big Boggart.
To me it feels like he probably had more to do with the different motivations between the characters and the nature of what the Elden Ring was and how that was related to the key figures of the story, without spoiling anything. And I guess the fact that some characters are kind of incest babies or bastards as I recall.
I do think he was mostly intended as a name drop, and that if you just told someone to make some of the dynamics of the different warring families something like he would write they could pull it off, but if you get deeper into the lore on that it was feel someone like Martin had a hand. Would still be among the greatest games of all time if you’re into Souls games if he hadn’t though.
Until someone says something it’s kind of hard to say what he really did. He himself did say he didn’t do much, just some general direction on key themes and presumably the Game of Thronesy parts like the warring of the different shard barer siblings and such.
It feels like Martin's name was just stamped onto Elden Ring to attract the normies. "Buy our game featuring that guy whose books you've never read that were adapted into that show you used to like!" FromSoft is plenty good at crafting its own lore and doing its own worldbuilding. It's never needed his help and from what I've seen (don't have it yet), ER's story isn't all that different from their usual fare.
For what it's worth, his involvement impacted the game to me:
It made me pledge to not buy it until it is 75% off.
I feel like pandering to normies and rainbow rejects will backfire on FromSoft since neither of those groups would enjoy Souls gameplay.
They definitely did name drop him but I do believe the lore in ER is the best it’s ever been in a Souls game, not counting Bloodborne, mostly because I never played it. I would, I just don’t have a PS5 and would rather play the best version and I’m not jumping through hoops to buy a game console I don’t have much time to play anyway.
Are there people who do credit him?
Probably Kotaku
Rothfuss is a cunt, however.
Paging u/Bulbasaurusthe7th to tag in and explain why because I do so love reading her book rants.
Ohohoho, Paaaaat.
Now, even his books are.... well. Neckbeardy. At one point the main character goes on this little rant where he claims this female character he is obsessive about is a whore/medieval sugar baby because she is too perfect. Women like that just can't get a job. Only ugly ass bitches have real jobs.
But yeah, he is a repulsive one. He demands his fans donate to his charity if they ask about his book. He also claims he couldn't write for more than a decade because.... he has kids. Which is cool, us normies can stop working forever if we breed, right? Right????? He also blamed being on a diet for not writing. I get hangry. Bit this? Oh, also, Trump being president. He claimed he is too scared for the future of his kids. Because the kids of rich people are most affected, right? What if in 10 years they can't get a third trimester, free abortion??????
And when you mention anything like that, his fanboys will reeeeee. One told me I am closer for working in a workplace where I would be fired for not doing my job.
Another let me know people commit suicide because of the likes of me
His books are unreadable garbage.
Rothfuss's best (and perhaps only) writing skill is utilizing the Mystery Box effect for maximum suspense, whether intentionally or not. He spends so much time telling you about the amazing story you're going to read that you forget about the very dull and plodding story you're actually reading. 600,000 words and nothing fucking happens. Kfart's parents die and he goes to wizard school, the end.
I'm not going to say you couldn't have a good time reading the books, I just wonder what you actually enjoyed; the novel you read or the one you imagined? Perhaps it doesn't really matter.
Read this for a laugh: https://doinginthewizard.wordpress.com/2013/05/29/the-name-of-the-wind-review/
So the context of the article is he's talking about SHOW fans. That is, the people who were GoT obsessed the first few seasons and now talk shit about it.
I remember a blog post GRRM made sometime after 9/11. He was making fun of the TSA employees (or whatever the pre-TSA employees were at the time) and security theater. He's an old school, non-introspective lefty.
He's also a great author, made a ton of money, has spread it into new ventures, and good for him. I loved his damn books, I read 1-3 many times, and I've read 4-5 once each. I've read a lot of his science fiction as well.
He's not a slave. Yeah, I wish he would either admit he's done or finish the book, but he doesn't owe me a damn thing.
I guess the counterpoint would be, who cares if people are talking smack about a show?
People liked it, it turned to shit. Of course they are gunna shit talk the shit seasons, and nonsensical and unsatisfying finale.
I stopped watching after Season 5. I was (am) a book fan, I enjoyed what I saw of the TV show, but I'm not at all surprised that it went to shit when the series went past where the books were. I could see that train coming a mile away.
I don't really know what people are upset about (not having seen it), but yeah, not surprised.
Fair tak.
IMHO Patrick Rothfuss is the biggest asshole, most pretentious, most abusive to fans author out there today. GRRM, imho, normally comes across as an uberfan.
Best author for his fans--Brandon Sanderson.
What happens if the main priority of the thing you love is to say: "I hate you, kill yourself. If you don't love me, then you should kill yourself. Also, I hate you, kill yourself." ?
I feel like, when the demon is wearing the skin suit demanding you love them and to kill yourself if you don't, the problem isn't that the people didn't fall out of love of something they once loved. They are just refusing to love the thing that murdered it.
Basically this.
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/E7PALKkWQAgoV4L.jpg
because what they once loved has become an unrecognizable mess wearing the skinsuit of what it once was...
Fat fuck even stole Tolkien’s initials.
Yup.
I've been involved with creative work (publishing, etc.) for a long time and the unfortunate fact is that a person's creativity has a lifespan; eventually the writer runs out of things to say and can no longer find the voice that made them want to say it. Those who continue to grind out product can usually only manage a hollow approximation of what made their work appealing. I dunno if George is exactly there, but it sure looks like it.
Married man are ya, George?
Hate and love are barely any different than one another. Anyone whose ever had a breakup can tell you that, its the most basic bitch shit in the world when it comes to emotions.
So of course someone as mentally deficient as him couldn't understand that.
i'm not the one that changed.
He’s projecting and describing himself.
He will never be JRR Tolkien.