WhatAnArtist!

6 hours ago, Nathan Stark said:

I also am more worried about fan discourse than the critical reviews. The critics I believe will largely judge Winds on its own merits. It's parts of the fandom who start acting in obnoxious ways on occasion that I am not especially looking forward to. Though as fandoms go, ASOIAF fans are pretty laid back.

In my experience, it's critics that are the ones that will trash something based on its ideological/political undertones, not the regular fans. 

I don't know about any objective judgements, but in my own personal opinion it's gotta be Arianne. Based on the absolutely exhaustive lengths that Martin goes to describe her physical appearance, I think he probably agrees too. Arianne is like a check-list of every single thing I find attractive in a woman. I certainly do not blame poor Ser Arys for dishonouring his vows.

5 hours ago, Le Cygne said:

GoT didn't have to be the way it was. Hey, let's cut a woman's story and use her body to prop up a psychopath instead. Hey, let's make a woman go bonkers over a man then have him put her down like a mad dog...

It isn't rocket science to not go there. Even if you made excuses for them, you'd still be left with this: they are crappy plots nobody wanted to see. Anyone could have told them this. Plenty of critics did tell them this.

Not only did they not read the room, when it was read for them, they just thumbed their noses at everyone.

I agree that they were poorly written plotlines - D&D were bad writers in general - but I don't agree with your sentiment that writers should write only what fans want to see. That's just fan-service, it's not real storytelling. As soon as a writer refuses to write something because he's scared of how people will respond, he loses integrity and credibility. 

On 11/25/2021 at 4:50 AM, Rondo said:

Ben's prospects were few.  Is Ned okay with having to support his brother beneath his roof?  Ned Stark is not rich like Walder Frey.  Supporting Ben would tax his household.  Ben would have kids eventually and they too will be extra mouths to feed.  

Ned Stark is like.... the last lord that would ever kick out family from his home so long as he was there. 

5 hours ago, Ser Drewy said:

Interestingly two people close to GRRM have interviews released today where they describe the second half of the show as a distortion, going against the books plans: 

His agent: https://www.westeros.org/News/Entry/New_Book_Gives_Insights_on_HBOs_Game_of_Thrones

Outlander author: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2021/nov/23/outlander-tv-series-author-diana-gabaldon

One can only imagine just how frustrated and upset Martin himself is, but obviously he's far too professional and tactful to say those things himself. 

1 hour ago, Thandros said:

This would leave the Westerlands in the hands of women, distant cousins or Freys if Tywin and Kevan die.

Assuming that in this timeline Ser Stafford Lannister still dies at Oxcross, that still leaves Ser Devan Lannister to take command in the westerlands. Since he was later made the Warden of the West by Cersei in Feast, it's not far-fetched to imagine that he'd be an acceptable choice to take charge of the westerlands should there be no other Lannisters available. He seemed to do a decent enough job in Feast (though granted at that time the war was all but over). 

25 minutes ago, TheLastWolf said:

But since she's LSH now (not exactly sane fueled by revenge) and the BwB aren't exactly going to be taken at their word, do the general public or at least nobility know?

I think this is what @WhatAnArtist! means, correct me if i'm wrong

Yeah that's what I meant. Obviously the Freys get plenty of hate for their involvement in the Red Wedding, and even the Lannisters to a lesser extent, but I was curious about how the Boltons are viewed, and if it's common knowledge that Roose was involved with it. That'd severely hurt his chances of pacifying the North, if that's the case.

5 hours ago, EggBlue said:

Quentyn was terrible in bringing Dany the marriage proposal. since he had only two knights with him there was no presentation of Dorne's power and since Q was awkward there was no way of some good seduction or persuasion

I just reread the chapter where Dany rejects him, and I really felt bad for Quentyn. I could relate to him somewhat. The fact that Dany even thought how much hotter one of his companions was, and that she wishes he was the prince instead, was both hilarious and pitiable. 

10 minutes ago, SeanF said:

She ought to have burned Yunkai to the ground

I don't know if this would have helped much, since Astapor rose up again after she left. What she needed to was conquer it - take the city, kill or expel the slavers, station some Unsullied and sellswords in the city, and add it to her little empire in Slaver's Bay. If all three cities were controlled by her and her soldiers, she'd be in a much better situation. Dany's problem was that she didn't fully commit - she needed to embrace being a Targaryen and emulate Aegon by conquering enough to make her too powerful to dislodge. Simply taking Meereen wasn't enough, she needed all three cities if she wanted to be self-sustaining.

With my current reread of Dance, I'll put forward the suggestion of Dany's "plan" to rule Meereen, which seems to boil down to "If I'm a really nice person maybe they'll just leave me alone". She receives good advice from several people around her - Barristan urges her to send the army out to fight their enemies in the field because they don't have the food to survive a siege, Daario urges her to massacre the slaver families after luring them in so she has no enemies inside the city, Skahaz urges her not to marry Hizdahr because he is almost certainly one of the Sons of the Harpy; a few people urge her to unleash her dragons on her enemies like a true Targaryen would have, since they're her best tool; even King Cleon urges her to join with him to help take down Yunkai, their common foe who has been plotting against them the whole time.

She ignores all of it, because it would violate her plan on being "a really nice person" and just sitting in her Pyramid and sort of.... hoping it all just goes away...? I don't even know if it can be called a plan. She rejects every single proposed plan that could have put her in a better situation, and her own "plan" seems to be to throw away every possible advantage she has and instead severely expose herself and her people to danger from all sides because she wasn't willing to make the hard choices. Being all nice and diplomatic and patient might work if you're in the shoes of someone like Doran Martell or Rodrik Harlaw, but it doesn't work when you're surrounded by enemies in the most hostile place in the known world as Slaver's Bay is.

Does anyone know that it was Roose Bolton that killed Robb Stark? I know Martin described him as wearing his armour when he did it, but does that mean he was wearing a helmet too, to obscure his face? 

2 hours ago, Jaenara Belarys said:

There is the problem of budget contraints as for all this

There aren't any major battles in Feast/Dance like there were in the first three books. There's no Green Fork or Whispering Wood or Blackwater or the Wall. The largest battle is the taking of the Shield Isles, which could be done easily by just having a couple of ships knocked into each other, 30 or 40 guys in a moshpit, and some CG burning ships in the background. All of the other action setpieces would be very small-scale, basically just fights, not battles, e.g. Brienne vs the Brave Companions, Arys vs Hotah. The siege of Riverrun doesn't involve any fighting, just a big army camped out around it (pretty easy to use CGI with). 

On 11/7/2021 at 9:15 AM, bigdickbaj said:

and Jaime will tell her that Arya is in Winterfell

But Jaime knows that the "Arya" in Winterfell isn't the real Arya. Or do you mean that he'd intentionally mislead Stoneheart?

On 11/7/2021 at 9:15 AM, bigdickbaj said:

Then Jaime and others will be sent to range over the wall and he will stumble onto Bran over the wall and either die protecting him or bring him back.

I don't think the Night's Watch ranges as far north as Bran is. Bran and co. are basically in the Land of Always Winter, unmapped territory; that's too far for the Watch to range, who usually limit themselves to the Haunted Forest.

3 minutes ago, Willam Stark said:

Dany can't expect to win only with them, she needs Westerosi support.

I can't see that happening until she beats Aegon. He seems to be better positioned to gathering Westerosi support; he got there first, and he has a better claim. Dany will need to unleash some fire and blood on him first, but that might make her lose potential supporters. An interesting dilemma. 

Frankly, I think Martin went too far in making the Dothraki so primitive. Even their historical inspirations - the nomadic Turks and the Mongols - used shields, armour and sophisticated tactics because of their proximity to more developed civilisations (e.g. China, Persia). That's how they were able to eventually beat them. They took things from their enemies and adapted them into new and innovative variations. The Dothraki adapt nothing and learn nothing. The history buff inside me desperately wants them to cross the Narrow Sea and be effortlessly exterminated in a single battle by a Westerosi army that actually wears armour and uses spears and shields.

36 minutes ago, Daenerysthegreat said:

Yes but many people who I've seen on the forum hate essos.

You keep saying this but there's no evidence.

36 minutes ago, Daenerysthegreat said:

Their real life names sound just as strange to me. 

Well that's on you for not being familiar with the types of names in other countries.

2 hours ago, Daenerysthegreat said:

I really don't understand why people hate essos and it's plotlines, especially meereen

This is a strawman. The majority of people do not "hate Essos and its plotlines"; they might prefer the storylines in Westeros, but that doesn't equate to hating the other ones. It's not a binary situation. People can enjoy both, but prefer one. And just because people have criticisms of one, doesn't mean they hate it. 

2 hours ago, Daenerysthegreat said:

They are well developed and created

They're good, but I don't think they're quite on the same level as the best regions of Westeros (i.e. the North, King's Landing).

2 hours ago, Daenerysthegreat said:

All of the meereenese are complex characters.

Perhaps, but again, I don't think they're on the same level as the characters in the most interesting regions of Westeros. 

2 hours ago, Daenerysthegreat said:

I agree that the names sound strange but so do names like Jaime, bran, robb etc

Not similar at all. A lot of the names in Westeros are directly derived from real-world names, some with only very minor alterations (e.g. Jaime instead of Jamie, Jon instead of John), and others are identical (e.g. Robert, Brandon). I don't see how one could consider most Westerosi names "strange" compared to the Essosi/Meereenese ones. To me they're like night and day.

9 hours ago, Mister Smikes said:

You don't owe me your time.  You don't have to engage.  You say you are tired of arguing, and then proceed to argue anyway.  I suppose if I respond to your points you will feel ill used?  Never mind.  I will respond to $erPounce, and you don't need to be interested.  Fair?

The fact that you've consistently failed to respond to my actual point says as much as I need to know, and says a lot about you. Enjoy your pointless arguing about something that can't be confirmed either way. If that's the type of thing that makes your day feel fulfilling, go right ahead. 

What a joke.

2 hours ago, Mister Smikes said:

Nobody said "exactly" except the people trying to straw man my position.  There is a middle ground between claiming, on the one hand that 13 POVs has no margin of error and is engraved in stone forever; and claiming, on the other hand, that it is completely meaningless information because GRRM is a big fat stupid who knows less about his own book than we fans do.

Margin of error or no, GRRMs statement to Le Nouvel Observateur indicates he is planning a different sort of book than many fans are planning for him.

I tire of this already. It's clear you seem to relish in this type of argument, hence why you seem unwilling to call a truce here and accept the obvious: This is a pointless debate, because any one of us could be entirely correct or entirely incorrect about everything. Even Martin's own statements aren't even a guarantee of accuracy, since the man has repeatedly over the last two decades rewritten large chunks of the books and restructured the PoVs drastically in the process of writing them. This pointless argument is just a symptom of the extraoardinarily long wait for Winds; nobody would sit here arguing semantics and the difference between one or two PoVs if the wait hadn't been as long as it is. You and @$erPounce can continue this argument for months and it won't matter - not until we actually have the book in our hands and can count up the number of PoVs.

3 hours ago, Daenerysthegreat said:

I'm thinking about one of the two sand snakes in kings landing

I would be very surprised if Martin added any new PoVs, and even if some were to be added, I highly doubt it'll be a Sand Snake. We already have Cersei's PoV in King's Landing, and we will soon have two that are nearby (JonCon and Arianne in the Stormlands). 

3 hours ago, Mister Smikes said:

Are you insinuating I have taken the position that Dany and Bran aren't important?  Or are you accusing me of not having read the books?

Okay, maybe his sarcasm did not miss by a mile, seeing as it has convinced you I said things I never said.

You said that @StarksInTheNorth's sarcasm about Dany and Bran being unimportant "missed by a mile". I said that it didn't, since I picked it up immediately. I implied that you hadn't read his comment carefully enough, if you thought he wasn't being sarcastic, since anyone claiming that Dany and Bran are unimportant obviously hadn't read the books, which surely isn't the case for anyone posting here.

2 hours ago, Mister Smikes said:

I don't think any person here has taken such a position.

This entire argument has been about exactly how many PoVs will be in Winds based on claims that Martin has made. My point was that it's futile to debate such things, since Martin constantly changes his plans and rewrites his books. He may have said there'll be 13 PoVs a while ago, but that could change any time. We won't know until we have the books in our hands.

2 hours ago, Daenerysthegreat said:

And the sand snakes are not evil

Yes they are. They want to murder innocent children and start a war which will kill many other innocent people. The people actually responsible for the crimes they want "justice" for are already dead. They just have a bloodlust.

Considering that Martin is well known for his extensive rewrites of his books, I'm surprised that people here are sticking so dogmatically to the believe that what he said in this interview or that is gospel and something that he will strictly adhere to. The guy has practically rewritten entire books and restructured the series in the past, midway through writing a book. Why is it so hard to believe that at some point he'll have changed his mind about how many PoVs will be included in Winds?

1 hour ago, Mister Smikes said:

Which missed by a mile of course.

Only to people unable to read things carefully, it seems. I picked up on it instantly. Only someone that hasn't read the books would say that Dany and Bran aren't important. 

29 minutes ago, Mister Smikes said:

Jaime's POV already ended.  He left for a day's ride, and has already been gone for weeks.  Something happened and we missed it

Possibly, but not necessarily. The books do not unfold in a 100% strictly chronological order. Swords opened with a few chapters that actually occurred during the same time as the end of Clash, according to Martin's "note on chronology" before the first chapter.

30 minutes ago, Mister Smikes said:

My evidence for this, apart from certain theories that I have, is that GRRM once told a French newspaper that TWOW would contain 13 POVs (which I suppose does not count prologue and epilogue one-offs).  That leaves little room for Sam, Brienne and Jaime.  

That's interesting. I think that, if that's still true, the surviving PoVs that will be lost will be Connington's, Brienne's, and possibly Melisandre's (less sure on this one). I don't believe for one second that Sam or Jaime will not have PoV chapters in Winds. Sam has too much important plot-relevant information to uncover (and he's our only PoV in the Reach), and Jaime's psychological journey has not yet been completed. 

3 minutes ago, Daenerysthegreat said:

Then why have brienne as a pov at all? She only met stoneheart in her last chapter. That could be easily explained in jaime's pov as well

Martin loves his travelogue storylines - Dany in Thrones, Arya in Clash and Storm, Bran in Storm, Jaime in Storm, Tyrion in Dance. Not much of these storylines are actually relevant to the larger story, but Martin enjoys the slow-paced worldbuilding that he can work into these chapters. That's enough of a reason for him to include them.

24 minutes ago, Daenerysthegreat said:

I didn't say jaime and theon wouldn't be pov in twow. They certainly will be. Mr Martin doesn't cut a pov just for the sake of it. 

You said that there would be "no purpose" to having them as PoVs in Winds.

24 minutes ago, Daenerysthegreat said:

Brienne has her arc. It's about stark loyalty her identity as a warrior and all.

Yes, and that was concluded in Feast. The culmination of her "warrior identity" was the final battle with Rorge and Biter at the Inn of the Crossroads, where she almost dies defending the innocent people at the inn despite being outnumbered. It showed both her bravery and honour as a warrior. And as for Stark loyalty - that was shown at the very end of her final chapter when she shouts out for "sword!" rather than be hanged, therefore seemingly prioritising her loyalty to the Starks over her loyalty to Jaime. We'll see the results of this fateful decision from Jaime's PoV in Winds.

24 minutes ago, Daenerysthegreat said:

Asha's arc is about being heir to iron islands a woman and all

Theon is actually heir to the Iron Islands. And the ironborn politics storyline was practically ended when Euron won the kingsmoot. Euron is a far more important character than Asha, despite not being a PoV. The Iron Islands storyline might come up again, but not for a while. The ironborn characters have more important things to do - Theon and Asha in the middle of a war in the north, Euron attacking the Reach, Victarian finding Daenerys. The Iron Islands storyline in Feast was just the necessary foundations for these later branching storylines. I don't think the fate of the Iron Islands themselves will be relevant again until the final book, and probably close to the end of it.

24 minutes ago, Daenerysthegreat said:

Their arcs are certainly not over just because they were introduced in the fourth book

A lot of the PoVs introduced in the fourth book were not intended to be major PoVs which long-running storylines like the PoVs in the first three books. They were just created to 1) introduce us to new regions/new political players, and 2) fill in the time while the more important characters' stories were a bit slower (e.g. Tyrion, Dany, Jon, Arya, Sansa). Asha was necessary firstly to give us an insight into ironborn politics since Theon has been gone for a long time, and then to give us a PoV on Stannis after he leaves the other PoV characters like Jon and Melisandre. Brienne was there because Martin needed a way for Jaime to eventually meet Stoneheart. Nothing else in her Feast storyline has any relevance to the larger plot whatsoever.

24 minutes ago, Daenerysthegreat said:

which are dislikied by some guys

Don't make this a bloody gender thing. It has nothing to do with it.