Critiques of ASOIAF

[Sigella]

2 hours ago, SorcererOfAsshai said:

Gladly the famous theory of the three headed dragon requires three persons. I hope GRRM will break the cliches of fantasy literature & instead of choosing a male protagonist he will make Daenerys the savior of the world. Tyrion has more POV's, "book time" from both in any case. Plus Jaime seems like a potential AA. 

I was just gonna argue against that (Cersei has a strangling coming her way) and then I realised.... Don't make Jaime kill Brienne GRRM, its too cruel! And wouldn't it be "Hazzea all over again"?

[mankytoes]

8 minutes ago, Sigella said:

My two main critiques is all the teat-suckling    and the grease that runs down everybody's chins as they eat. (even Sansas, even as she eats in delicates nibbles)

 

Also we get to piss through pretty much every male POV but none of the female POVs. Not that I miss more pissing-reads. I could to with none  at all actually.

But there's nothing like suckling a good teat, you're missing out. I guess they just have really greasy food?

Arya did have probably the biggest pissing storyline, when she was pretending to be boy. I guess the men are always pissing, but any disparity is surely evened out by Dany's infamous "the more she drank, the more she shat"?

[DominusNovus]

On 9/22/2017 at 3:32 PM, GyantSpyder said:

Even between when A Game of Thrones and A Feast for Crows were written, the general cultural and social dialogue in America around gay people and sexual identity completely transformed.

This introduces some changes in the work that might be interpreted as inconsistencies, if you want to see the books as something that only exists within themselves. But if you see the books more reasonably as existing in a cultural context, it can be pretty interesting.

I’d like to ask what you mean here.  Are you saying that the later books should show more of the 21st century context in which GRRM lives, or that they should be more consistent in the fantasy-medieval context in which the characters live?

[SorcererOfAsshai]

2 hours ago, Sigella said:

I was just gonna argue against that (Cersei has a strangling coming her way) and then I realised.... 

I always believed Cersei will have a very glorious death. Strangling feels obvious. He used the same plot with Shae. 

[maudisdottir]

I love the books and think they're a fantastic read. However, for many of the reasons already posted above, I don't view these books through the rose-coloured glasses some people seem to.

I get sick of the criticism of the show from "book snobs" who seem to think ASOIAF is High Literature and that D&D have turned GOT into some lowbrow Michael Bay action fantasy. It's not all that.

[DominusNovus]

1 hour ago, SorcererOfAsshai said:

I always believed Cersei will have a very glorious death. Strangling feels obvious. He used the same plot with Shae. 

 Call me vindictive, but I really want to see Cersei burn.

[Joy Hill]

On 22/9/2017 at 9:36 PM, GyantSpyder said:

Also the female characters spend less time than they probably should noticing and thinking about specific things about male characters that are physically attractive. 

I agree, although I do think GRRM makes some effort in this area. Asha thinks about what she finds attractive in Qarl. There's also Brienne who, whenever she remembers her bath with Jaime, only thinks about how hot his naked body was and never about his Kingslayer origin story.

What's more, Dany sometimes randomly sexualises herself (thinks about how her breasts are moving as she walks, and it's unrelated to her comfort), which makes me roll my eyes.

And while this is a minor gripe, I find it a little ridiculous that while most male POVs are average-looking guys (like 95% of people in real life), the female POVs are either extremely beautiful or extremely ugly. 

[Joy Hill]

20 hours ago, SorcererOfAsshai said:

The choice to make some characters utterly superior than the rest feels to unrealistic for a world that's been based too much on raw honesty & real life history. Jon Snow has been presented as the absolute protagonist (along with Tyrion & Dany, even if she has less POV's). The "Chosen One" manichaeistic theory makes him somehow more valuable, worthy as an individual than Stannis, Cersei, Jaime etc for higher unexplained reasons. The plot would have been okay on a Tolkien-like story but not on GRRM's narrative about chopped Riverlanders laying on the Kingsroad & with Boltons flaying captives. The Mesiah story of Jon Snow feels too much of a boring cliche fan service.  

This. There are definitely characters who have special snowflake status (Jon, Dany, Arya), which is annoying.

16 hours ago, Sigella said:

My two main critiques is all the teat-suckling    and the grease that runs down everybody's chins as they eat. (even Sansas, even as she eats in delicates nibbles)

Yes and yes. Personally, the mere idea of tasting your own milk disgusts me, so all those scenes are hard to read (breastmilk fetish might be more common that I realize and that's fine, I just don't want to read about it). And Sansa is a girl who would never be caught with grease running down her chin.

17 hours ago, Sigella said:

Also we get to piss through pretty much every male POV but none of the female POVs. Not that I miss more pissing-reads. I could to with none  at all actually.

I'm sick of reading about Tyrion shaking off the last drops. 

To be fair about the male/female balance, Cersei did have a memorable pissing scene in Baelor's sept.

[Фейсал]

Jon Snow is a terrible character. An Aragorn-like archetype in a world devoid of said archetypes. There are so many interesting characters in the story - flawed, real people like Jaime and Jorah and Tyrion and Sandor and even Ned; but Jon is the one who's essential to the story.

 

 

[mankytoes]

All these Jon complaints seem to be regarding fan theories about what he might do in the future, not what he's actually done in the story, which is a pretty bizarre complaint.

[TMIFairy]

1 hour ago, mankytoes said:

All these Jon complaints seem to be regarding fan theories about what he might do in the future, not what he's actually done in the story.

And in a story where he is currently dead

[Walda]

On 23/09/2017 at 1:09 PM, Trigger Warning said:

Just because I started a reread recently so it's fresh but I absolutely checked out and skipped Bran's chapter where he sees Cersei and Jaime, we get it, you're good at climbing and know your way around Winterfell. Honestly I find quite a bit of the series pure tedium to read and think I've been drawn in mostly by the setting and characters and can't help feeling that a lot of it could be gutted without really losing much. 

That chapter disgusts me the way an ad with a shouty man threatening to kill a puppy if I don't buy something disgusts me. And I feel like the whole chapter is written with the assumption that the reader is a voyeur and cool with sexualising children. However, it is one I've gone back to because (like the Sansa snow-castle scene) it gives very specific detailed information on the layout of Winterfell. Little Walder was found in almost the exact same spot as Bran would have been, when he fell. Lady was buried in that lichyard.

I've also come to appreciate the way it builds Bran's character: his secretiveness, his refusal to accept his own unpleasant emotions (ie: he starts the chapter looking for Jon to say goodbye to, but not too hard because he rationalises Jon is angry with him. Then he does a bit of farting around and then, because he is feeling a bit teary, and frustrated by his failure to train his direwolf, he starts climbing.) Bran's pride, his love of underhand defiance, his desire to be one up on everyone else, to spy on people, be invisible, know better than anyone else...all the characteristics that come out as ethical issues when he skin-changes into Hodor, are all here in this chapter.  Climbing is an analog for warging.

I don't think there is a word wasted.

On 23/09/2017 at 7:12 AM, mankytoes said:

Also, some of the battle writing doesn't really grab me. The Blackwater battle especially- in the Davos chapter he goes a bit nuts with naming the ships, it's very hard to keep track of. And then Tyrion is a little super powered when he rides out, he seems to kill about twenty guys.

Yes it is hard to keep track of. I found this chapter extremely tedious the first time I read it - all that "Seahorse..Fury... Pride of Driftmark..wraith...lady marya...Black Betha...Harridan...Bold Laughter", like a horse race you have no money on, being played out in slow, slow motion.

Again, there is a lot in this chapter when you sift through it - heaps of foreshadowing in those ships, for example.

And there is a lot in Tryion's arc at that point, too. When he is killing those twenty guys, that is the precise time Mandon Moore, who started out carrying his banner and yelling out his orders in a proper battle voice, turns against him for no reason Tyrion can identify. Tyrion has crossed the bridge of galleys almost to the South bank - enough that he sees Stannis's men fighting, although he doesn't understand who. I think Mandon had crossed the bridge, received an order from his Real Boss, and that order was, specifically, to assassinate Tyrion. It is interesting, because up until then, Mandon has seemed completely loyal to the Lannisters. I suspect his Real Boss was Petyr Baelish (I'm still writing a long post about it, that I hope to post one day) but it could be Tywin, or the Tyrells, or even Renly's Ghost that turned him.  Anyway, it makes me pay particular attention to Tyrion's actions, and while I know the guy rates himself, his killing and his relative impunity, seem a little over the top, even supposing that Tyrion is feeling a lot more effectual than he really is, and counting every stab and slash as a confirmed kill.

Basically, most of the things I found dull and unnecessary on the first read were these kind of highly detailed things, that turned out to be really important and not at all unnecessary when I identified a reason why I wanted to know.

Although 'where whores go' does not come into that category. There is the needless, uninspired repetition that makes me suspect that GRRM has done himself a deal that he wouldn't eat breakfast until he has written a certain number of words, and that gives the general impression that his moments of desperation outnumbered those of inspiration when he was writing Dance. And then there is the fact that this is what Tyrion is saying to himself AFTER he has discovered that his first wife was not a prostitute. Apart from being angry with her for being a lying whore for years, and then being furious at his father for facilitating his participation in the gang-rape of a woman who was not a whore (with the 'omg, I raped my wife' thing - like a/It's ok to gang-rape prostitutes that give you the girlfriend experience and b/like he didn't know he married her, or that she was a virgin when he married her...married to a whore who had never had sex with anyone except him, he conveniently forgets for about fifteen years.)...But then, as soon as he kills his father for calling her a whore, he starts calling her a whore, constantly. And he doesn't seem to realise that the girls in SLAVE brothels, ARE NOT WHORES, because they are not PAID. 

I'm pretty sure that 'where whores go' is taking us on a rapey misogynistic tac, with as little excuse for doing so as is possible to have, and even then, it is needlessly repetitious.

[GyantSpyder]

22 hours ago, DominusNovus said:

I’d like to ask what you mean here.  Are you saying that the later books should show more of the 21st century context in which GRRM lives, or that they should be more consistent in the fantasy-medieval context in which the characters live?

Neither. But it's a good question. I'll try to clarify what I meant. Here's what I wrote.

22 hours ago, DominusNovus said:

the general cultural and social dialogue in America around gay people and sexual identity completely transformed.

This introduces some changes in the work that might be interpreted as inconsistencies,

What I'm specifically referring to here is the different ways the relationship between Renly and Loras in A Game of Thrones and the relationship between Cersei and Taena of Myr are depicted and talked about by the POV characters to themselves in A Feast for Crows.

• Renly and Loras are rarely if ever shown together, we don't get any direct references to their relationship while Renly is alive, and nobody really talks about it much in A Game of Thrones.
• But Cersei thinks pretty casually and openly to herself about her fooling around with Taena, and it is much more directly and explicitly mentioned in the text.

Now, between these two relationships in Westeros, only about two years have passed. Probably less. There's not too much reason to think that Cersei's way of thinking - or anybody else's way of thinking - about same-sex relationships has changed so much in less than two years that what had only recently been a pretty huge unspoken taboo has become a sort of frowned-upon but widely understood and talked about moral transgression.

But in the real world, 10 years passed between these two books. And the ideas about these kinds of relationships in the culture in the real world transformed during that time - perhaps more rapidly than any other 10 years in the last 200. We're talking about the difference between the age of Angels in America and Rent opening on Broadway in the latter part of the AIDS crisis and widespread gay marriage initiatives succeeding on a global scale.

I'm not saying the social rules in Westeros have changed (they haven't), but the willingness of the characters to even think and talk about it is much much greater. The very muted allusions in A Game of Thrones might have set off big alarm bells in 1996, but they barely register by 2005.

Either way of depicting it is fine with me, depending on what your goals are and what you're trying to do. But changing from one to the other, in terms of how the POVs work, isn't really 100% credible in the context of the world of the story.

But I don't really care about that either, because the story does exist in the context of readers.

It is a pretty big and interesting inconsistency.

To further clarify, because I suspect this is very strange for younger people - I'm young enough that I had an openly gay roommate in college, but old enough that I still lived under the general taboo in America of talking about gay people. At the time, it was thought of as a nice, courteous, helpful thing to do to not speculate that somebody was gay unless they told you, and it was still relatively common to think of men and women in the arts who were obviously broadcasting that they were gay or gender atypical (like Liberace or Boy George) as eccentric or flamboyant but not even really associate their manner of dress or mannerisms at all with their sexuality.

So people would chuckle and as me in hushed tones if my college roommate was gay, and I would scold them for prying into something that was none of their business. I never asked. It turned out it wasn't ever a secret, we just didn't talk about it.

It really felt profoundly different, in a way that's hard to accept, and really hard to explain. It just wasn't something that was talked about nearly as much by a lot of people. Humans have a really powerful mental plasticity to shape what they think is normal. Our ability to change how we look at the world is amazing and also kind of terrifying.

[SorcererOfAsshai]

18 hours ago, DominusNovus said:

 Call me vindictive, but I really want to see Cersei burn.

Ιn any case this girl is on fire. I believe the death scene will involve Tyrion, I always imagined she will die with Tyrion by her side holding her hand, the brother she always despised. Cersei is a complex, very grey, glorious character you meet once in a lifetime in fantasy literature & she deserves a death equal to this glory. 

[SorcererOfAsshai]

6 hours ago, Фейсал said:

Jon Snow is a terrible character. An Aragorn-like archetype in a world devoid of said archetypes. There are so many interesting characters in the story - flawed, real people like Jaime and Jorah and Tyrion and Sandor and even Ned; but Jon is the one who's essential to the story.

 

 

Agree completely with your stance about Jon Snow, I used to find him more likable as a broken, confused teenager back on Book #1, as he grow up he's been treated with much privileged writing (leader of Wall's resistance against Wildlings, very young Lord Commander, advices Stannis on warfare issues, expected to come back in life). I disagree on his essentiality though. The writers make the characters essentials. Martin could chose an other horse instead of Lord Snow anytime of the day. Jaime would make a good option. Even Cersei could do something gallant towards the end. There're so many ways a write can take. 

[mankytoes]

1 hour ago, Walda said:

Yes it is hard to keep track of. I found this chapter extremely tedious the first time I read it - all that "Seahorse..Fury... Pride of Driftmark..wraith...lady marya...Black Betha...Harridan...Bold Laughter", like a horse race you have no money on, being played out in slow, slow motion.

And there is a lot in Tryion's arc at that point, too. When he is killing those twenty guys, that is the precise time Mandon Moore, who started out carrying his banner and yelling out his orders in a proper battle voice, turns against him for no reason Tyrion can identify. Tyrion has crossed the bridge of galleys almost to the South bank - enough that he sees Stannis's men fighting, although he doesn't understand who. I think Mandon had crossed the bridge, received an order from his Real Boss, and that order was, specifically, to assassinate Tyrion. It is interesting, because up until then, Mandon has seemed completely loyal to the Lannisters. I suspect his Real Boss was Petyr Baelish (I'm still writing a long post about it, that I hope to post one day) but it could be Tywin, or the Tyrells, or even Renly's Ghost that turned him.  Anyway, it makes me pay particular attention to Tyrion's actions, and while I know the guy rates himself, his killing and his relative impunity, seem a little over the top, even supposing that Tyrion is feeling a lot more effectual than he really is, and counting every stab and slash as a confirmed kill.

 

Ha, that's a good way of putting it. Or someone telling a story about a load of their friends who you've never met.

The Westeros podcast did a great job of explaining why Baelish was behind Moore's actions. I can't remember the exact details, but it was when Tyrion was trying to find who Cersei's mole was, he said something which made Littlefinger think he was behind the poisoning of Jon Arryn. We don't know much about Arryn, but he is from the Vale. It was very convincing, anyway. Also, when in doubt, Littlefinger is probably behind something.

 

[DominusNovus]

1 hour ago, GyantSpyder said:

Neither. But it's a good question. I'll try to clarify what I meant. Here's what I wrote.

What I'm specifically referring to here is the different ways the relationship between Renly and Loras in A Game of Thrones and the relationship between Cersei and Taena of Myr are depicted and talked about by the POV characters to themselves in A Feast for Crows.

• Renly and Loras are rarely if ever shown together, we don't get any direct references to their relationship while Renly is alive, and nobody really talks about it much in A Game of Thrones.
• But Cersei thinks pretty casually and openly to herself about her fooling around with Taena, and it is much more directly and explicitly mentioned in the text.

Now, between these two relationships in Westeros, only about two years have passed. Probably less. There's not too much reason to think that Cersei's way of thinking - or anybody else's way of thinking - about same-sex relationships has changed so much in less than two years that what had only recently been a pretty huge unspoken taboo has become a sort of frowned-upon but widely understood and talked about moral transgression.

But in the real world, 10 years passed between these two books. And the ideas about these kinds of relationships in the culture in the real world transformed during that time - perhaps more rapidly than any other 10 years in the last 200. We're talking about the difference between the age of Angels in America and Rent opening on Broadway in the latter part of the AIDS crisis and widespread gay marriage initiatives succeeding on a global scale.

I'm not saying the social rules in Westeros have changed (they haven't), but the willingness of the characters to even think and talk about it is much much greater. The very muted allusions in A Game of Thrones might have set off big alarm bells in 1996, but they barely register by 2005.

Either way of depicting it is fine with me, depending on what your goals are and what you're trying to do. But changing from one to the other, in terms of how the POVs work, isn't really 100% credible in the context of the world of the story.

But I don't really care about that either, because the story does exist in the context of readers.

It is a pretty big and interesting inconsistency.

To further clarify, because I suspect this is very strange for younger people - I'm young enough that I had an openly gay roommate in college, but old enough that I still lived under the general taboo in America of talking about gay people. At the time, it was thought of as a nice, courteous, helpful thing to do to not speculate that somebody was gay unless they told you, and it was still relatively common to think of men and women in the arts who were obviously broadcasting that they were gay or gender atypical (like Liberace or Boy George) as eccentric or flamboyant but not even really associate their manner of dress or mannerisms at all with their sexuality.

So people would chuckle and as me in hushed tones if my college roommate was gay, and I would scold them for prying into something that was none of their business. I never asked. It turned out it wasn't ever a secret, we just didn't talk about it.

It really felt profoundly different, in a way that's hard to accept, and really hard to explain. It just wasn't something that was talked about nearly as much by a lot of people. Humans have a really powerful mental plasticity to shape what they think is normal. Our ability to change how we look at the world is amazing and also kind of terrifying.

That makes sense.

I never noticed much of change, perhaps its due to the POVs?  The only ones in AGOT that really interact with Renly and Loras are Ned (who doesn't strike me as having the time to care about who is sleeping with who, other than Cersei) and Sansa (who is a star-eyed naive kid).  Once Renly and Loras start spending more time on-page, with characters that know them well (Stannis and Jaime), their secret relationship is hinted at more.

[falcotron]

5 hours ago, Walda said:

Although 'where whores go' does not come into that category. There is the needless, uninspired repetition that makes me suspect that GRRM has done himself a deal that he wouldn't eat breakfast until he has written a certain number of words, and that gives the general impression that his moments of desperation outnumbered those of inspiration when he was writing Dance. And then there is the fact that this is what Tyrion is saying to himself AFTER he has discovered that his first wife was not a prostitute. Apart from being angry with her for being a lying whore for years, and then being furious at his father for facilitating his participation in the gang-rape of a woman who was not a whore (with the 'omg, I raped my wife' thing - like a/It's ok to gang-rape prostitutes that give you the girlfriend experience and b/like he didn't know he married her, or that she was a virgin when he married her...married to a whore who had never had sex with anyone except him, he conveniently forgets for about fifteen years.)...But then, as soon as he kills his father for calling her a whore, he starts calling her a whore, constantly. And he doesn't seem to realise that the girls in SLAVE brothels, ARE NOT WHORES, because they are not PAID. 

He's not seeking out his wife because she was a whore and he wants revenge on her, he's seeking her out because she wasn't a whore, and therefore finding her and rescuing her will both assuage his guilt and somehow make up for everything his father put him through.

And, of course, because searching for her allows him to put the two on the same level, to make the two of them equal victims of Tywin rather than making himself an accomplish in Tywin victimizing Tysha.

And because the quest allows him to avoid dealing with his guilt (both at the initial event, and at never asking after her even once during the intervening years).

So, it's not a healthy or positive thing, but it's not a rapey thing, either.

The reason he keeps thinking about where whores go is because the only clue he has to her whereabouts is Tywin telling him that she went wherever whores go.*

---

* By the way, I've never understood why Tyrion doesn't spend much time considering that one of Tywin's officers could probably have gotten a "finder's fee" for directing Tysha to, say, Petyr Baelish. Brothel owners are probably where most whores go, whether willingly or as de facto slaves, and there are plenty of brothels in Lannisport and in King's Landing for them to be sent to.

[Sigella]

On 2017-09-24 at 8:11 PM, mankytoes said:

But there's nothing like suckling a good teat, you're missing out. I guess they just have really greasy food?

Arya did have probably the biggest pissing storyline, when she was pretending to be boy. I guess the men are always pissing, but any disparity is surely evened out by Dany's infamous "the more she drank, the more she shat"?

Nah, I have no problem the the shitting since Dany's bowel movements is equaled to "Tywin Lannister did not, in the end, shit gold" and there are a nice sense of symmetry to it.  

 

And the whole thing with Aryas pissing storyline was about her not pissing. No symmetry just imbalance. 

[Sigella]

On 2017-09-24 at 10:30 PM, SorcererOfAsshai said:

I always believed Cersei will have a very glorious death. Strangling feels obvious. He used the same plot with Shae. 

Exactly! Shae's corpse revealed Tywin as an immense hypocrite. Cersei dying exactly the same way (and by the same hands) makes a similar statement. I bet that Tyrion will muse about killing Shae as he strangles Cersei.