Equilibrium

Why would I take it personally, I'm the top tier feminist here. As for the justification of the calling out I'm sure it just wins hearts and minds wherever you go, but I would advise next time you try and educate specific persons in regards to specific incidents. I wouldn't consider this misspelled version of "The Some People on Reddit and Always Looking From a Male Perspective" to be a success either morally or instrumentally, among other things because it's here where we are all nice and progressive and not on Reddit where the rapscallions in question are so they will never get the chance to learn and grow. Oh no, no, no, did you read what I wrote? I couldn't call that curt dismissal of yours a straw argument because it's not an argument. How you contorted my reply to your first two points to mean "you are calling everyone who dislikes a female character sexist" is truly beyond my reasoning capabilities and I don't say that often. And how you didn't address my really pertinent reply to your fourth point... haven't I earned at least another "Nope"?

Do I hate "Fans are (negative X) and some, I assume, are good people" threads. Firstly they are intrinsically bad, you don't even have to look at the argument and secondly they are factually incorrect as it is the case here. There is no such thing as fandom as you present it, in any group of people you will find wide range of opinions but those are the opinions of individuals that can be addressed as such. In my decades in fandom I don't recall a single individual who "read the books wrong" in the way you presented here, I'm not claiming that they do not exist but observational data of my representative sample points to the fact they are not a large percentage. Even if they were they would not be representative of fandom, even if such thing existed. 1) Some people here dislike Daenerys and will interpret everything pertaining to Daenerys in a negative way. Is it possible that some fraction of those people dislike Daenerys because she is female, yes, but I would argue against ascribing anyone that label based on the discourse on that topic alone. 2) Again, considerable amount of people dislikes Sansa, I dislike Sansa very much while liking other female characters very much like Arya or Arianne. But I empathize, I really do which is part of why I dislike her chapters (I dislike her as a character too, but I dislike Cersei as a character and consider her chapters among the best in the series) Sansa's chapters have an issue of being both very traumatic and very boring, inconsequential even, pacing is off and all blame goes to GRRM, not me or any other fan. On the other hand even bigger proportion of people adores Tyrion, I am not one of those people, but they do, I doubt it's because he is male. Now take Venn diagram and it's bound to be some people who will have very biased view of Sansa Tyrion relationship because they both dislike Sansa and adore Tyrion. 3) Even though I've never encountered that particular argument, it's established that POVs are unreliable and as such you can't ascribe motivation for doubting the POV to sexism just because character is female and subject is rape. Particular subject is especially thorny because of several issues, but not to derail the conversation I will just point out that when that particular discussion was in the vogue, faction of Cersei stans was very obnoxious with Freudian excuses, so you might be "reading the posts wrong" 4) I honestly don't see the coherent argument here aside from rehashing previous three and some really tangential musings, but I highly doubt considerable number of people interpret the underlying message of ASOIAF as "people should just get in line with their society's codes of gendered actions" because a) it would be really hard to get the text to agree with that interpretation b) Large numbers of fans, I would dare to even say large percentages of fans love the characters of Arya, Brienne, Samwell just to name the few which most certainly don't "get in line with their society's codes of gendered actions"

In the Westerosi noblemen culture killing in the context of the war or rebellion is seen as a GOOD thing, ordering a rape of a noblewoman or being involved in the breaking of guest right are seen as bad things. They aren't seen as bad because gods ordered it, but because they undermine the government system and mutual trust nobles have for each other which is the thing that holds the system together even during the conflicts. Tywin's quote I used directly reinforces that fact and points out he is acutely aware of it. Pillaging isn't seen as belonging in that category because it is routinely done during conflicts, and Lannister vs Crown conflict already started because of Ned-Jaime confrontation. As for the last point you are ignoring the case I made that Tywin didn't approve Red Wedding, he ordered it, which is further strengthened by the fact that his treatment of Westerlings points out that he planned something like that for a long time.

Tywin desires revenge for slighting the honor of his house, but he doesn't want to be associated with retributions when it would in and of itself slight the honor of his house. If he was open about the thing that he "ordered a noblewomen be raped and killed because she through no fault of her own got married to a guy he wanted his daughter to marry" he wouldn't be respected as a man not to be trifled with, he would be reviled as a madman, Lannisters would be considered new Lothsons and no one would ever engage with them rationally. Tywin knows he can't just do that publicly so he maintains the deniability he knows that "Joffrey, when your enemies defy you, you must serve them steel and fire. When they go to their knees, however, you must help them back to their feet. Elsewise no man will ever bend the knee to you." Who would consider bending a knee to him if they knew he ordered Elia to be raped and killed over taking Cersei's place? Same with Red Wedding, he doesn't want to be associated with an act widely believed to be afront to laws of gods and men, and his behavior towards the Freys after betrays the true mastermind behind the plan (Lothar and the rest just did the technical side of the planning, it was Tywin's idea to murder Robb Stark) because if Freys just wanted to do it, there would be no endless Frey demands after it, Tywin would just made peace with them (or not even that, consider how he treats Balon Greyjoy's constant proposals for the alliance), the fact Freys demand so much from him means they did something on Tywin's behalf "There is a tool for every task, and a task for every tool."

Adverse possession Freeholders croaked, just me around hahaha

You know what else can be useful, term "padded" that signifies both insulated and way someone walked and probably has rich etymological connections as well.

Hahahaha squatting, no one's around LOL

There is a great quote about hands and shit AGOT Eddard XV And I think as a term connected both to the hands and shit "wiping" deserves a closer look

I've been thinking about extent of Tywin's involvement in Elia's death over the years and I've come to no definitive conclusion so I would like to hear out the reasoning of fine folks here, since we will likely never have the answer spelled out. We have Tywin explicitly go over the matter with Tyrion in ASOS Tyrion VI and we can take him at his word because he probably doesn't care about Tyrion's opinion enough to lie to him. On the other hand I think Tywin could have viewed Elia marrying Rhaegar as a slight to his family's honor by taking Cersei's place and he does have a history of using sexualized violence as punishment. If we take that view which was my initial hunch, we still have the dilemma whether Tywin did give THAT command or said nothing knowing the Mountain would make a mess of it if left to his own devices. Counter to that could be an attitude that Tywin is too rational to be like that as he would see clearly that 1) Elia wasn't culpable in her marriage, her mother and Aerys are 2) losing her children would be more than enough of the punishment for any perceived slight 3) it's a dicey political move with no real practical benefit and real drawbacks, banking on the both Martells and Robert not doing anything drastic over it, which was far from given as we know how Jon Arryn and Eddard Stark can be.

It never was about succession it was clearly stated in many places in the books. And Martin has a clear idea what he wants to say in ASOIAF, now I won't compare it with War and Peace or argue it's particularly innovative or smart idea, but it's clearly there, books have distinct themes and several layers of symbolism, again not arguing about the quality of execution just pointing out indisputable fact they exist. Characters gaining skills in different domains according to their history and inclinations has specific narrative purpose and is clearly meant to come into play later as those characters use their newfound skills to save the North they all know and love, which is clearly sentiment readers are meant to share. Martin obviously, again but I am not facetious majority of the people here take the points I make for granted, gave up on concluding a book that is structurally sound and well composed after ASOS, those books are meant to be seen as part of the greater narrative and their own structure is sacrificed as to facilitate branching of the narrative Martin clearly thinks will pay off in the end. But even considering that TFFC and ADWD combined make a book of pretty good structure, not ASOS let alone War and Peace, but pretty good and it would be even better if the huge pay off battles managed to make the cut and even better still if some of the choices mostly made to serve the split were done differently.

Have no fear Cas, we are talking about the man that wrote entire ASOS in year and a half! The quality trajectory is no where near concerning and mostly stems from editors being hesitant to edit him, due to scope, layers of symbolism, foreshadowing and representation, individual word significance, idiosyncratic style and deadlines as publishers can't afford having editors go back and forth on minor suggestions that Martin might consider disruptive. And as I have expounded at length previously, Martin has no business dying anytime soon and endgame should be far easier to write than preparation, as his main problem is perfecting the timeline leading up to it and he is still playing with his method of writing out multiple paths to everything and seeing which ones work best. We'll have TWOW in 2027 and ADOS in 2034 and only because he will write Fire and Blood 2 in between, after he gets major ASOIAF spoilers out of the way in TWOW. That said I am not excluding the possibility of one more book, but I think timeline would only marginally change as it likely won't be additional 1500 MS pages, more likely 600-700 of pages he already edited down that have to be included and necessitate the split.

There was zero need for timejump and if GRRM fudged a chronology of the main political events by several months here and there it would have been stellar in every aspect, he can still do that but there actually is little real need for it, Daenerys and Jon probably learned all they need to learn about ruling during those endless chapters in ADWD (Tyrion's chapters were many and fairly loose as well but they were at least varied) and rest of the "education" can be done with some anecdotes and training montages fairly quickly in the first part of TWOW, Daenerys will learn to somewhat control Drogon, Arya will learn few more bits of facechanging and assassination, Bran will greenseer some more (it would be major mistake to make him too powerful and GRRM knows that) and Sansa will catch up on political intrigue in the Vale, like three chapters each during which other things happen as well would do the job. What I want to be taken time for to be done properly is showcase the impact of all the calamities that will soon hit Westeros after the suffering War of Five Kings already caused. We should have Euron's invasion, Aegon's conquest, Stannis' war, coming of Daenerys, feudal anarchy as nobles scamper to right the wrongs amid the chaos of central governance, Faith fundamentalists, Brotherhood's campaign in Riverlands, general banditry, broken men, reavers, pirates (Aurane, Saan and others), slavers (opportunistic and desperate due to lack of slaves Daenerys caused), harsh winter, famine, wolves (Nymeria’s pack) and quite possibly a grey plague epidemic. It should take almost whole of the two upcoming books inter-spaced with some political maneuvering and we should see it relent only at the very end, when spring comes after Others are defeated and central power is reasserted aggressively.

Being not successful enough can have vast negative reprecussions for the writer's career for variety of reasons. Reading GRRM's latest post I think I can safely say George got too successful.

Worked out for Kafka, didn't it? People worry to much about imaginary problems. I have detailed it elsewhere so I won't repeat myself but GRRM shouldn't be dying any time soon. To add to it, even if he does he will change his mind about publication, and even if he doesn't sooner or later rights will come to people who simply do not care, hard to enforce one's will when you are dead.

So whether I get Grisham or GRRM or Abercrombie and no matter the publisher all the books would be the same size? I never visited US but I traveled all across Europe and in every country in bookstores there are bunch of different formats of books and they usually have some space extra above and in front, and bookstores don't have standardized shelves, some have this kind or that and they are visibly of different sizes. One ASOIAF set for Harper Collins is 12.9 x 19.8 cm, other 11 x 18 cm and Pengiun Random House hardcover is 16.3 x 20.4 cm which is significantly larger, but still much smaller than TWOIAF 23.7 x 30.9 cm What is the standard than and what is the upper limit those American shelves can receive? Would any bookstore realistically refuse to carry TWOW?