The monkeys growing?

[nedfart]

On 6/2/2016 at 3:14 AM, Amris said:

To me the main problem was Stannis. IMO GRRM's keeping him around so long after he had served his plot purpose messed the story up. Now Stannis was parked up north with an agenda and an army and it would have been hard to explain why he didn't do ANYthing in 5 years.

Agreed. Maybe the 5 year gap works if Stannis sits the Iron Throne for a couple years. 

[draft0]

9 hours ago, Maid So Fair said:

To be fair, a lot of the issues come down to the split and the lack of editing

I think this is by far the biggest problem with the last two books. They shouldn't have been split and they definitely shouldn't have been gutted because of technical bookbinding issues.

Heretical opinion: GRRM should have not published AFFC at all. That was his biggest mistake. He should have published a complete, unified fourth book--probably in two volumes--when he was totally done and ready. If that meant there was no new book until 2011 (or even later), so be it. The final product would have been significantly stronger.

[Maia]

I still think that maybe not 5, but 3-year gap was feasible. And that, in fact, the first 3 books should have progressed the time-line twice as quickly as they did, covering 4-5 years instead of about 2, given the distances all those armies and people had to cross, logistics, etc.

But as regards a 3-year-gap, yes, all the players _could_ have been believeably bogged down for a quiet before the storm for a few years - stuff like that often happened historically.

That's how I imagine it:

Ironborn? Throw in fierce Autumn storms that would have prevented much navigation. Euron could have just snuck in before they hit, taken the throne pretty much uncontested and had months to solidify his position before anybody could react. After which they'd have to settle for occasional skirmishes, because nobody could afford to commit and risk losing all their ships. Ditto Euron mounting a serious attack on the mainland. No need for any long recaps in order to explain the situation.

Stannis and the Boltons? Autumnal rains making much of the North impassable, northmen frantically filling their inadequate stores by any means possible whenever the weather allows, as  all the signs point at exceptionally long and severe Winter. Contending parties had to settle for Cold War with occasional skirmishes, because nothing would move the northmen to commit to war in such circumstances - they'll be there for a winter war, but not before every possible bit of food has been gathered. Again, minimal explanation would be needed, as the necessary bits of worldbuilding have been thoroughly established. 

Wildlings and NW? Herding the wildlings towards the Wall clearly has been a gambit of the Others. After wildlings breaking through it in a mass assualt failed, they leave the wildlings alone, to lull both them and NW (and Stannis's people now garrisoning the Wall) into complacency, while they hatch some other sinister plan. Wildlings spread through the lands around the Wall, there are desulatory parleys with NW/Stannis. Warm-ish Autumn weather helps. Again, very little would have been needed to be explained post-gap. Storyline could have  picked up directly during one such parley.

The south and KL? Nothing could be simpler. The south did appear mostly returned to King's peace. In all the areas the war has touched, people would be doing the same as in the North - desperately trying to get in a few harvests, lay stores, etc. Riverrun could remain besieged by a small force for years. Everywhere else, people would be preparing for winter too. Again, rains, impassable roads, etc. Given a few years, Cersei could believably unravel without her contrived prophecy. Maybe throw in an epidemy, to bout. Tommen almost dying from sickness could destabilze her nicely. That's where her chapters could have started, for example.

Dorne? They haven't done anything in 17 years, why should there be an immediate response to Oberyn's death?  Again, throw in sickness to slow them down, just in case. There is not enough disease in ASoIAF, compared to it's impact on events and historical developments iRL.

Dany? Her enemies would have been wary of directly engaging her, surely, and would have hoped that her makeshift utopia falls apart by itself, with some nudging of insurgency from within. Making coalitions, bringing troops, etc. takes time. Re-introduce her story in the middle of Harpy's spree of murders, while the enemy armies are approaching.  Would have been entirely feasible if it had been happening 3 years down the line. Most of Westerosi characters last seen  seeking Dany should have been already in her court, apart from, maybe Tyrion and the Greyjoys.  Oh, and hopefully, GRRM could have treated us to a better Dany POV, plausibly trying and failing to adress the problems surrounding her. He has an unfortunate tendency to convincingly and thoroughly explain the reasoning behind the actions of male PoVs, but to often rely on cliff-hangers and opaqness with the women, which makes them appear less relateable. 

Etc.

Now, I enjoyed AFFC and ADwD more than many, because I loved  many of the new PoVs/characters and the snippets of history and worldbuilding, as well as just in-depth human view of the prices for the great events that happened or are going to happen. But I am concerned that obssession with unneccessary minutiae is bogging GRRM down, as it has already happened to RJ and WoT, and that as a result, certain important plots aren't going to get the exposure and pay-off that they deserve. I mean, when will the Long Night finally come? When will we see more of the Others in action? I'd hate it if the long-touted apocalypse gets handled in a couple of chapters and with minimal heartbreak/casualities. I want it to be frightening and grand and have scope - geographically and time-wise, that will dwarf the human squabbles preceding it. So that survival of humanity will feel earned and uplifting and bitter-sweet...

And when GRRM says that fitting in a gap that would have put characters in situations close to those in which they found themselves in  mid-late ADwD couldn't be done convincingly - well, I disagree. In he really needs  to make more time pass between chapters, too. Everything has been happening impossibly quickly given level of technology in the series - it is not quite teleportation like certain character movements seem to be in the show, but still both implausible and inconvenient - kids have to grow up as much as possible, after all!

 

[sifth]

4 hours ago, Maia said:

And when GRRM says that fitting in a gap that would have put characters in situations close to those in which they found themselves in  mid-late ADwD couldn't be done convincingly - well, I disagree. In he really needs  to make more time pass between chapters, too. Everything has been happening impossibly quickly given level of technology in the series - it is not quite teleportation like certain character movements seem to be in the show, but still both implausible and inconvenient - kids have to grow up as much as possible, after all!

 

 

I agree, with just about everything you said. I too like AFFC's and ADwD for what they are, even though I realize a good chunk of the material consists of fat that could have been trimmed. The lack of the time skip also causes a few plot holes/narrative problems. For example Dany's dragon's suddenly grow insanely fast. The dragons are the size of dogs at the end of ASoS's, but are suddenly giant monsters that are rideable in a matter of months. The Faith Militant is another problem the lack of the skip causes. These guys quite literally come out of nowhere in AFFC's without even the slightest bit of foreshadowing in the previous 3 books that the Faith of the Seven is getting fed up with The War of the Five Kings and is suddenly turning violent. They also go from being a bunch of nobodies, to holding not one, but 2 Queens on trial for treason in a matter of months. The time skip would have really helped in these two areas.

[Lord Varys]

@Maia

You are right there that passing a lot more time could have greatly helped. Somebody should just replace 'fortnight' with 'two months' and look whether the story could work just as fine as it does right now. I doubt that this would ruin much of the stuff, especially not considering the travel time and the time to actually raise armies in such an environment. Renly gathering so many troops so quickly is just insane.

But I'm still skeptical with the gap idea. It would need plot devices of all sort to explain why suddenly nothing happened when usually always happened something. If George had finished ASoS not with cliffhanger but differently with some sort of real endings, like a peace treaty between the Iron Throne and Stannis, and other developments that would narratively allow things to cool down it might have made some sense.

But I still have major problems imagining how Dany wouldn't trigger now Euron's and Dorne's interest, why Varys/Illyrio would postpone the Aegon plan again,

And unless we started things in medias res (say around Daznak's Pit, or so) there would still be a lot of exposition to be done. Meeting Cersei again as prisoner of the Faith Militant could have been interesting, too, but I guess a lot of people would then have complained about never seeing her in power.

Other plots would be impossible to slow down - say, the Catelyn plot in the Riverlands. Would it make sense that her identity remain a secret for all those years? Those outlaws can't sit on their hands for years, either.

I actually fear we would have gotten a lot more exposition and flashbacks in a gap setting because it would have been very tempting to add new plots and mysteries this way by having people half-remember stuff that happened last year or so, and that then develop into a major plot point.

[JGP]

1 hour ago, Lord Varys said:

@Maia

You are right there that passing a lot more time could have greatly helped. Somebody should just replace 'fortnight' with 'two months' and look whether the story could work just as fine as it does right now. I doubt that this would ruin much of the stuff, especially not considering the travel time and the time to actually raise armies in such an environment. Renly gathering so many troops so quickly is just insane.

But I'm still skeptical with the gap idea. It would need plot devices of all sort to explain why suddenly nothing happened when usually always happened something. If George had finished ASoS not with cliffhanger but differently with some sort of real endings, like a peace treaty between the Iron Throne and Stannis, and other developments that would narratively allow things to cool down it might have made some sense.

Usually I balk at pointing out the obvious, but you do realize that most [not all] of the people in thread who speak out against the idea of Gap are also ok with Euron? Like, as you say above, about then needing plot devices to explain etc etc are then belied by the evidence of Euron's rise despite an actual lack of text? 

i. a prophecy in ACoK [retroactively applied]

ii. a few passing mentions in the entirety of ASoS

iii. very little, though a smidge more, by way of introduction and progression in AFfC and ADwD

iv. yet in TWoW, with one chapter, we get some prose, flashbacks, some dreams and visions and suddenly most are all, ok! Euron's well accounted for in all the years we didn't know him, and we're alright alright alright with this relatively unestablished guy becoming the next Big Bad?

The very devices you and others are using to dismiss Martin's ability to bridge the Gap, are the very same many of you have so eagerly embraced in the case of Euron. It's weird and amusing.

The Gap would've been more than fine.

   

[draft0]

1 hour ago, Lord Varys said:

You are right there that passing a lot more time could have greatly helped. Somebody should just replace 'fortnight' with 'two months' and look whether the story could work just as fine as it does right now. I doubt that this would ruin much of the stuff, especially not considering the travel time and the time to actually raise armies in such an environment. Renly gathering so many troops so quickly is just insane.

I agree. Let's remember the only reason GRRM wanted the gap in the first place was so Bran would not be 10 years old at the end of the series.

But narratively speaking, this doesn't matter.

Arya, Sansa, Bran, are all going to be years younger than they were supposed to be. They're still going to do the same things they would have done. Instead of teenage kids saving the world, preteen kids will do it. The end result is the same.

8 hours ago, Maia said:

I still think that maybe not 5, but 3-year gap was feasible. And that, in fact, the first 3 books should have progressed the time-line twice as quickly as they did, covering 4-5 years instead of about 2, given the distances all those armies and people had to cross, logistics, etc.

But as regards a 3-year-gap, yes, all the players _could_ have been believeably bogged down for a quiet before the storm for a few years - stuff like that often happened historically.

If you really wanted to, you could make even a ten year gap work. You can come up with a creative solution to make almost anything happen.

The question is, why do you want this gap to happen in the first place?

A lot of people like the idea of a gap so they can skip over all the boring stuff and get right to the Other invasion, like you said.

Obviously, GRRM does not think so. He wanted to age the kids up--that was his reason for the gap. When this conflicted with the story he was trying to tell with other characters, he dropped it.

7 minutes ago, JEORDHl said:

The very devices you and others are using to dismiss Martin's ability to bridge the Gap, are the very same you many have so eagerly embraced in the case of Euron. It's weird and amusing.

The Gap would've been more than fine.   

The gap was a terrible idea in the first place. There, I said it.

It doesn't matter how old the kids are, that was a bad reason to try to skip five years ahead.

Skipping over the "boring stuff" is also a bad reason. If you want the Other invasion to happen it can just happen. If you want Dany to invade Westeros it can just happen. Now, five years later, ten years later, whatever, it doesn't matter.

GRRM is going to tell the story he wants regardless. The gap doesn't fix anything important.

[cutuphalfdead]

On 5/11/2016 at 11:55 AM, JCRB's Honeypot said:

I thought this was about Victarion

same

[JGP]

Oh I don't think the gap would've fixed anything. What it would've done, however, is preclude a lot of the narrative issues that developed during the back fill after Martin decided to axe it. 

3 hours ago, draft0 said:

I agree. Let's remember the only reason GRRM wanted the gap in the first place was so Bran would not be 10 years old at the end of the series.

Source? I've never heard this statement before.

[draft0]

3 hours ago, JEORDHl said:

Oh I don't think the gap would've fixed anything. What it would've done, however, is preclude a lot of the narrative issues that developed during the back fill after Martin decided to axe it. 

Source? I've never heard this statement before.

Happy to provide.

GRRM interview with Charlie Jane Anders.

The whole interview is a doozy.

Quote

Originally, there was not supposed to be any gap. There was just supposed to be a passage of time, as the book went forward. My original concept back in 1991 was, I would start with these characters as children, and they would get older. If you pick up Arya at eight, the second chapter would be a couple months later, and she would be eight and a half and [then] she'd be nine. [This would happen] all within the space of a book.

But when I actually got into writing them, the events have a certain momentum. [...] So that really took hold of me for the first three books. When it became apparent that that had taken hold of me, I came up with the idea of the five-year gap. "Time is not passing here as I want it to pass, so I will jump forward five years in time." And I will come back to these characters when they're a little more grown up. 

 

[Maia]

9 hours ago, Lord Varys said:

But I'm still skeptical with the gap idea. It would need plot devices of all sort to explain why suddenly nothing happened when usually always happened something.

Plot device for the gap that organically fit into the worldbuilding was already in place - Autumn with all that it entailed re: severely curtailing everybody's mobility by land and sea (autumn storms). That's how it happened historically  iRL, too, but on Planetos there are additional existential considerations re: preparations for Winter, particularly one that is projected to be exceptionally long and severe. And you could always throw in some epidemics as well.

On the contrary, I feel that plot devices that GRRM had to employ to make the events in AFFC and ADwD unfold as they did in the short time-frame they were given, were highly contrived even within his setting.

 

Quote

But I still have major problems imagining how Dany wouldn't trigger now Euron's and Dorne's interest, why Varys/Illyrio would postpone the Aegon plan again

 

News of Dany's doings should have propagated far more slowly than they did in the first place, since Essos doesn't have raven mail, is very vast and the seas are capricious. Autumn is also a global phenomen on Planetos, not restricted to Westeros. So, by all means, some envoys could have made it through and been around her court. As long as sending a fleet remained unfeasible, no major action on their part should have been possible anyway. Also, iRL sea voyages sometimes took years, if people encountered enough misadventures along the way.

Varys and Illyrio - well, if sailing to Westeros was off the table for some years, would they truly risk sending Aegon to Dany? Not to mention that it would have made sense to season him a bit before his grand entry onto the stage of world politics.

As to Tyrion - just have his ship blown off-course and taken by pirates before he can reach Pentos. He spends the gap as a slave and we encounter him again as a member of Yurkhaz's grotesquerie.

 

Quote

And unless we started things in medias res (say around Daznak's Pit, or so) there would still be a lot of exposition to be done.

 

More than had to be done anyway in order to explain Dany's situation, the forces arrayed against her, etc? Not IMHO. Daznak's Pit was something that was clearly intended to happen on-screen after the gap. IMHO, the logical point for Dany's old ADwD plot-line to start was her receiving the news about the fall of Astapor and enemy armies moving towards Meeren. Cities in Slaver's bay and Volantys gradually becoming convinced that Dany won't fall on her own, but could be fought despite dragons and Unsullied, resolving their differences, making an alliance, assembling armies, etc. should have easily taken 3 years. In fact, some details such as Yunkai's ridiculous slave warriors don't even make sense in nuADwD and are obviously left-over pieces of the gap narrative, since the Yunkaii lost all their slaves several months prior and teaching people to move on stilts, say, takes longer than that.

 

Quote

Meeting Cersei again as prisoner of the Faith Militant could have been interesting, too, but I guess a lot of people would then have complained about never seeing her in power.

 

Cersei's post-gap plot should have started with her in power and deciding to remove Margaery via the plot she employs in AFFC. With Tommen being 11 - 12, her window of removing Marge on the grounds of not being a maiden and with Tommen being unable to fight against losing his wife  on trumped up infidelity charges would have been rapidly closing. And, after years of peace, it would have made sense that Cersei would feel secure enough to alienate the Tyrells without all the contrived  stuff that GRRM had to introduce to make it happen ASAP after he axed the gap.

 

Quote

Other plots would be impossible to slow down - say, the Catelyn plot in the Riverlands. Would it make sense that her identity remain a secret for all those years? Those outlaws can't sit on their hands for years, either.

Why on earth couldn't they remain a low-grade nuisance for years, like RL outlaws did? We don't even know if there is much of a plot for unCat. I still think that her ressurection was a mistake on GRRM's part, his succumbing to the temptation to commit a "shocking twist"(tm), like most of his excessive major character deaths fake-outs.

 

7 hours ago, draft0 said:

I agree. Let's remember the only reason GRRM wanted the gap in the first place was so Bran would not be 10 years old at the end of the series.

 

No, let's remember that GRRM made the kids as young as he did in the first place, because he intended the plot to unfold over the years and decades, not the 1-2 years time-frame that became the trope of post-Tolkien fantasy. He was inspired by Druon's "The Cursed Kings" series, after all, and other historical novels, which by necessity cover decade and generation-long time-spans and have no issues with introducing gaps when little was happening historically.

So, yes, as far as I understand it, the initial plan was for months and sometimes years to pass between PoVs when appropriate, rather than one big gap. Why GRRM found himself unable to do this is still a mystery to me, though. Even in the first 3 books, in most of the cases where he wrote an immediate response to events, it didn't have to be immediate and it didn't make sense that it would/could be. Yes, even with the raven post, given the huge distances and level of technology, it should have taken far longer for people to assemble, supply and move their armies and consequently people should have waited longer and negotiated in the background  before committing themselves, etc. 

 

Quote

 Instead of teenage kids saving the world, preteen kids will do it. The end result is the same.

 

But it would be vastly less believable within the framework of the setting and readers' own experience, so no, it would not be the same. The result would be much weaker, require more WSoD to swallow on psychological level, etc.

 

Quote

Skipping over the "boring stuff" is also a bad reason. If you want the Other invasion to happen it can just happen. If you want Dany to invade Westeros it can just happen. Now, five years later, ten years later, whatever, it doesn't matter.

Except that time-frame does matter, even apart from the ages of the kids. The siege of Troy wouldn't be the same epic event if it only took a couple of months instead of 10 years. The 100-year War wouldn't have been the same if it happened during a single year. Etc. 

Huge, shocking events, battles and wars following on each other's heels like energizer bunnies on steroids cheapen each individual event and it's outcome, as well as seriously undermine WSoD. This also diminishes the scope and grandeur of the upcoming apocalypse, the sense of danger it should inspire, etc.

Writers of good historical novels have no problems with gracefully implementing time-skips, I don't understand why so many (most?) fantasy writers have such a problem with it, even those who take history and historicals as their inspiration. And I don't see why we should  give them a free pass for it either.  

 

 

[JGP]

5 hours ago, draft0 said:

Happy to provide.

GRRM interview with Charlie Jane Anders.

The whole interview is a doozy.

 

Ah, yes. I knew that, even if I hadn't read that particular interview before.

I think it was your so baldly stating that it was Bran that threw me.

---

I couldn't agree with Maia more.

[draft0]

8 hours ago, Maia said:

On the contrary, I feel that plot devices that GRRM had to employ to make the events in AFFC and ADwD unfold as they did in the short time-frame they were given, were highly contrived even within his setting.

Totally disagree. However, this is really a minor dispute.

The larger point here is that GRRM wanted to write about the aftermath of the major conflicts that drove the first act of the series (the War of the Five Kings, the wilding attack on the Wall, and the sack of Slaver's Bay). This is the story he wanted to tell.

It's easy to come up with many creative solutions to manipulate the timeline, and very hard to get around that fact.

8 hours ago, Maia said:

In fact, some details such as Yunkai's ridiculous slave warriors don't even make sense in nuADwD and are obviously left-over pieces of the gap narrative, since the Yunkaii lost all their slaves several months prior and teaching people to move on stilts, say, takes longer than that.

That's true.

8 hours ago, Maia said:

No, let's remember that GRRM made the kids as young as he did in the first place, because he intended the plot to unfold over the years and decades, not the 1-2 years time-frame that became the trope of post-Tolkien fantasy. He was inspired by Druon's "The Cursed Kings" series, after all, and other historical novels, which by necessity cover decade and generation-long time-spans and have no issues with introducing gaps when little was happening historically.

So, yes, as far as I understand it, the initial plan was for months and sometimes years to pass between PoVs when appropriate, rather than one big gap. Why GRRM found himself unable to do this is still a mystery to me, though.

Well, I don't know why either. Agree GRRM should have made the kids older or allowed more time to pass between books. What I'm saying is the same stuff would have still happened regardless.

If you don't like Dany's plot in Meereen (and I don't), it still would have happened anyway, timeskips or not.

So this obsession with the five year gap is a bit of a mystery to me.

8 hours ago, Maia said:

But it would be vastly less believable within the framework of the setting and readers' own experience, so no, it would not be the same. The result would be much weaker, require more WSoD to swallow on psychological level, etc.

Strongly disagree. This seems to be our primary bone of contention?

Our culture readily accepts the concept of a 15 year old saving the universe. In ASOIAF it's probably going to be a 12 year old, so what? They're both pretty ridiculous notions in the first place. 99% of the stuff Arya does in the books is already age inappropriate, and nobody really cares because she's fun to read about.

Just imagine that Bran, Arya, and Sansa are a couple years older, and we're good to go.

8 hours ago, Maia said:

Except that time-frame does matter, even apart from the ages of the kids. The siege of Troy wouldn't be the same epic event if it only took a couple of months instead of 10 years. The 100-year War wouldn't have been the same if it happened during a single year. Etc. 

Huge, shocking events, battles and wars following on each other's heels like energizer bunnies on steroids cheapen each individual event and it's outcome, as well as seriously undermine WSoD. This also diminishes the scope and grandeur of the upcoming apocalypse, the sense of danger it should inspire, etc.

 Agree to an extent, but this seems to be the exact opposite of the argument you were making before. Most people dislike the last two books because they're boring, not because they are packed with epic events.

[Annarkie]

I like that it's growing, but him saying "one day" rather than "soon" is what is disheartening. Still he's been really quiet on his blog and has been travelling less, so I'm pleased to have confirmation that he's at least working on it. 

[JLE]

When GRR Martin said he initially wanted a five-year gap between books, he didn't mean in the characters' timeline.

I guess he got it...

[TheHouseHB]

On 6/6/2016 at 1:57 AM, Annarkie said:

I like that it's growing, but him saying "one day" rather than "soon" is what is disheartening. Still he's been really quiet on his blog and has been travelling less, so I'm pleased to have confirmation that he's at least working on it. 

 He does not want to say soon because if he did that then everyone on the internet would freak out. 

[Titan]

On 6/6/2016 at 10:57 PM, Annarkie said:

I like that it's growing, but him saying "one day" rather than "soon" is what is disheartening. Still he's been really quiet on his blog and has been travelling less, so I'm pleased to have confirmation that he's at least working on it. 

According to his latest blog entry (today), he just got back from a two week trip, and is now sick... So that's another month lost.

[Cas Stark]

42 minutes ago, Titan said:

According to his latest blog entry (today), he just got back from a two week trip, and is now sick... So that's another month lost.

I think, at this point, we will be lucky to see Winds before the start of next year's GOT in Spring 2017.

There is nothing that suggests he's near the end, almost finished...which he would have to be finished in the 2 months to get it out for Christmas shopping.

I wouldn't really be surprised if Winds now doesn't come out until the show has totally wrapped.

[JLE]

And, you know, that might not be the worst thing - keeping it back so that it doesn't ruin what's left of the show with the whole "this is how it REALLY should have happened".

But if that's the case, then he may well have gotten a headstart on the next book once he gets to the point that there are no more show-related tours and cons to show up.

[PCK]

Wouldn't Stannis have just gone to the Free Cities for a few years to replenish his army? Maybe establish contact with the Iron Bank.