Black of Hair and Heart

On 4/20/2022 at 2:18 PM, The Dragon Demands said:

This is very confusing, it may even necessitate a letter to the big guy.

I'm sure he'll drop everything. You know how much George loves math!

14 hours ago, SeanF said:

I think if it was still wildly popular, the show runners would be doing victory laps, and they would have been kept on for Star Wars.

I mean, Disney pulled all future Star Wars movies after they fucked up the sequel trilogy. Rian Johnson's further Star Wars movies got canceled as well. Feels like Disney is going to be keeping Star Wars out of the theaters for the foreseeable future. But I guess I don't really know what "victory laps" showrunners take after successful shows beyond making more shows.

14 hours ago, SeanF said:

 Rotten Tomatoes’ rating for Season 8 is grim.

I'm sure it is. Rotten Tomatoes isn't really a great indicator of quality for anything though, especially given the dismal state of television criticism. 

32 minutes ago, The Bard of Banefort said:

it’s kind of like how The Last Jedi did well commercially, but you can’t talk about it anywhere online without it getting ripped to shreds. So while I agree that it’s still popular among casual viewers, a big part of what made it a phenomenon is gone.

I think this conversation on r/naath (a pro-GOT subreddit) kind of sums up what I’m trying to get at:

I mean, people are going to be dicks on the internet. That's true of everything. Things like The Last Jedi or Game of Thrones are going to be flashpoints precisely because they're so popular. I dunno. As somone who likes the show a lot more than I imagine most people here do, I sympathize with that reddit user you quoted, but I also think there's plenty of places to talk about GoT without getting pilloried for it, not to mention insightful, non-negative writing about the ending. 

15 minutes ago, Takiedevushkikakzvezdy said:

For what it's worth, John Campea said that each season was better than the last, and season 8 was the best of the bunch. I'm sure there are others who agree with him. 

Sean T. Collins and Gretchen Felker-Martin are two writers I like who have written beautifully (and positively) about the 8th season and the show in general. I always recommend them if people are ever looking for "dissenting" opinions regarding the show and the ending. 

Just now, Takiedevushkikakzvezdy said:

I guess the worst thing about the MCU is that it made Hollywood believe that there is no such thing as oversaturation.

For sure. It's almost strange that the whole shared universe approach took as long to take off as it did. But it's perfect for maintaining the level of popularity we're talking about. Now instead of having a hit show or movie where you need to maintain word of mouth/popularity for years until there's a second season or a sequel, you have something adjacent to it to immediately follow it and make sure that people never stop talking about the wider franchise.

Marvel has more or less perfected it now that they have the Disney+ shows. Moon Knight is going to wrap up the week Dr. Strange 2 comes out and I'm sure by then we'll know that Ms. Marvel will be starting in June and wrap just in time for Thor Love and Thunder. 

HBO will have a tougher time making the same thing with GoT since the different spin-offs aren't set at the same time or directly overlapping, but I don't know that they're necessarily going for the same carpet-bomb approach that Disney does. 

35 minutes ago, The Bard of Banefort said:

The dip in merchandise sales is noteworthy though. I suppose GOT may have gone from being a hit like Stat Wars to a hit like the Sopranos or the West Wing, where lots of people still watch it but there isn’t as much of a “fandom” (T-shirts, mugs, posters, board games, cosplay, etc.) around it anymore. Before season 8, that stuff was everywhere.

I kind of just think that's how...time works? And people's interest? Like, Breaking Bad was hugely popular during its 2008-2013 run, and people broadly liked the ending. But would you rather have been selling Breaking Bad merch in 2012 during the run up to the finale, or in late 2013 after it was over and all anyone was talking about was the Red Wedding?

Tens of millions of dollars in marketing, press tours by the actors and creators, people speculating on what's going to happen; all of this drives "popularity" or whatever you want to call it, and all of it goes away once a show is over, whether people liked the ending or not. 

Star Wars is an anomaly (or used to be, before they started cranking out new content monthly under Disney) in that it's a once-in-a-lifetime property in terms of popularity. And even that was more or less fashioned by Lucas himself to sell merch, to say nothing of it now being part of the all consuming Disney empire. You can't really use that as a metric for something like this. 

14 minutes ago, The Bard of Banefort said:

I finally got HBO back, and I was looking at their popular/trending titles. GOT is still on there, so maybe it has passed into the realm of being a popular show that people are too embarrassed to admit that they watch. 

 

The ending of the show was broadly considered a disappointment, but the idea that the show isn't still wildly popular only really exists within the bubble of this site, the subreddit and other places where die-hard book fans congregate. The show is still enormously popular. That's why they're making half a dozen spinoffs. 

5 hours ago, SeanF said:

Rohane Webber’s disappearance is something I’d love to get the answer to.  Did she sell her soul to become Lady of Casterly Rock, and the infernal powers claimed their due?  Was it a magical experiment gone wrong?

It'll be interesting to see if there's a similar escalation of magic in the D&E stories the way there is in the main series. The only clear magic I think we see in the three stories so far are Daeron and Daemon's dragon dreams and Bloodraven's glamour. 

Obviously the series will end at Summerhall, and further appearences by Bloodraven might bring some magic as well, but I'm looking forward to seeing if/how Martin works magic into what seems to be a fairly grounded series by design.

1 hour ago, Takiedevushkikakzvezdy said:

What does that mean?

That it's going to take three volumes to finish Fire & Blood

7 minutes ago, Ran said:

Yes, probably so, though I admit to not understanding exactly how that will work. I've not asked George about it as of yet.

Remember that appearence George had a million years ago where George said it would be six books and Paris was standing behind him holding up seven fingers? Right now I'm standing behind you holding up three. 

13 minutes ago, Lord Varys said:

Not really, I meant the online community of the folks I discuss things with, not the people who barely read the series as such.

This isn't real history, nor is FaB a collection of shorter novellas which were eventually collected in a single book - like the three Dunk & Egg novellas. The history up to Jaehaerys I and from Viserys I to the end of the Regency was mostly finished during the writing process of TWoIaF.

Now, a publication of complete chapters from that material in novella form could have been great. I'd never argue against that. I also do enjoy each Dunk & Egg novella on its own - I don't need to wait for a book collecting a couple of novellas.

But instead TPatQ was a heavily edited accout, which, through omissions, changed the meaning of the work to no small degree. I refer to the complete erasure of the conflicting sources material and the decision to go with one (seemingly canonical) version of a historical event, rather than giving the entire spectrum of conflicting versions. The most important such event, I think, is the death of Lyman Beesbury which is just given in the 'cut throat version' in TPatQ.

I mean, consider the irony - the biggest and most famous of the historical novels is called 'The Princess and the Queen', yet it does not reveal or reference the ultimate fate of the queen in the title. Rhaenyra's story sort of ended with her death (although her cause survived and the war continued in her name) but Alicent's did not. That was either not a good idea for a title (in fact, it would have been a much more fitting title for a novella about the reign of Viserys I when Rhaenyra was the princess and Alicent the queen - during the Dance Rhaenyra and Helaena are queens, and Alicent is just a dowager queen, i.e. a former queen) or folks made terrible editing choices.

TRP was more complete but there were changes and omissions there as well. And while TSotD was complete ... it was a mess will of errors, so a letdown for a different reason.

He elaborated on her backstory during the revision of TSotD and turned her into a lesbian - in the original version there was no Elissa Farman and it was implied that she was in love with Androw Farman (who wasn't conceived as a complete loser in the original version, either).

But while Rhaena is a great character, it is still somewhat of a letdown that Aerea was literally burned for a little horror episode (although the context provided very interesting worldbuilding background) and Rhaella literally disappeared. George to create one big and three-dimensional Targaryen woman in addition to Alysanne where there could have been three.

Yeah, the history novellas don't really fly as in-universe accounts, but it doesn't really matter since they got superceded by F&B anyway. It's not like we ever have to go back and read them again. For me, they fall more into the same category as preview chapters from the main novels. I'd rather have them than not. 

2 hours ago, zionius said:

Rhaena materials are not deleted from the world book/TSotD. GRRM apparently had better concept of her in c.2017-8.

Ah, right, I had forgotten that was the case. Whether it was by original design or Martin's gardening, it still made for a cool reveal. 

3 hours ago, Lord Varys said:

To a point ... but I seemed to noticed that quite a few people didn't even bother getting the full picture by reading through all of FaB.

I get it that people do have pre-conceived notions and pet ideas years and years after they got their first impressions of certain characters/events, but the full picture deepened the whole experience to no small degree. And it is kind of odd that this didn't have a larger impact.

I thought everybody would celebrate Rhaena as a character. But very few people actually did.

I feel like you're profoundly overestimating the number of people who read the world-building volumes of the fantasy series they like. 

And anyway, varying interpretations is most of the fun of fake history. You don't learn real history in a straight line from beginning to end. You learn bits and pieces and have to put the puzzle together as you go. That's a big part of what Martin's doing here. Why do you think we know Dunk and Egg die at Summerhall but still need a series of novellas to tell us why. It's not just crossing the eyes and dotting the tees on a Wiki. 

51 minutes ago, Ran said:

There's material for Aegon IV and Aerys II that was very condensed for TWoIaF and not used for F&B, but that would be only a fraction of the couple hundred pages GRRM refers to.

That's cool to hear. Would have expected it re: Aegon IV considering Martin said he could write a whole novel about him. Neat that there would be that much material about Aerys II. I'm guessing some of that overlaps with the expanded Westerlands material from the World Book?

I guess it's a testament to how well all the Regency stuff was done in the first volume, but the part of F&BII I'm looking forward to most is probably the reign of Aegon III. It's kind of a 20 year blank spot and there's so much cool stuff teed up at the end of the first volume:

* Torrhen Manderly's beef with Aegon and what I assume is an upcoming alliance with Cregan Stark (assuming the Jeyne Manderly that marries Rickon Stark is Torrhen's daughter).
* Unwin Peake still scheming in the Reach.
* Whatever the fuck is going on with Alys Rivers in Harrenhal
* The deaths of the final dragons (I'm especially interested to see what becomes of Morning and what the realm finally does about Silverwing).
* Further voyages of the Oakenfist.
* What I'm assuming will be a lot of regional strife due to all the local regencies. I don't know how intentional this was on Martin's part or how much he'll follow through on it, but I was struck on a re-read of F&B by the fact that, as of 136, roughly half the Lords Paramount in the kingdom are minors. Lyonel Tyrell is 7, Loreon Lannister is 10, Royce Baratheon is 5 and Toron Greyjoy is 9. Plus, you've got Kermit Tully and Aliandra Martell who, although they're in their twenties, have reputations as being impulsive hotheads. There's definitely a lot of set-up for inter- and intra-kingdom strife in the late 130s/early 140s if Martin wants to go there. 

3 minutes ago, Lord Varys said:

I really hope we won't get the silly 'historical novellas' thing we had with the FaB material. The fact that it took us years to actually read the complete material in order caused many people to develop queer notions and interpretations about the characters and events in the historical framework and that's entirely due to the fact that the readership got only bits and pieces of the full story.

I'd prefer it, if that didn't happen with any of the new material.

That was half the fun. My personal favorite example of this was how Rhaena comes off in the World Book and "Sons of the Dragon" vs. what she's revealed as in Fire & Blood. In the abbreviated works she seems like just another one of Martin's sad widows, but then you get the curveball and she turns out to be (in my opinion) one of the coolest and most interesting characters in all of F&B. 

36 minutes ago, Ran said:

@Black of Hair and Heart

Interesting thoughts, but afraid I can't comment on any of it!

Interesting. I'm afraid I'll have to take that as confirmation of me being right about everything!

But yeah. It is what it is (or isn't) when it comes to Winds, as someone who's been following the series since '06, I can accept that. But it would be nice to get anything new at this point. I was just thinking about it the other day and we're approaching the longest drought between new material in the history of the series.

It's currently been about 3 years and 4 months since Fire & Blood was released, which is a tie for the second longest gap, which came between A Storm of Swords getting released in August of 2000 and The Sworn Sword coming out in December of 2003. The longest gap was between the release of A Feast for Crows in November of 2005 and The Mystery Knight in March of 2010, about 4 years and 4 months. Just thought that was kind of interesting. As much as the main series has gotten away from him over the last decade, he was pretty good about releasing new material every year or so even if it was just the histories. Hopefully something new will come out in the next year, in some form or another. I don't expect it to be Winds but at this point, I'll take what I can get. 

@Ran I doubt you have any insider info in this regard (or would be able to share if you did) but if you had a personal opinion, I'd be interested to hear it. With George bringing the histories back into focus (more D&E, F&BII, etc), do you think we'll see a return of anthology installments over the next few years? They seem to have been on pause since the passing of Gardner Dozois, which is understandable, but as someone who's worked with George, I wonder if you have any insight into his calculus on this going forward. 

If he's going to try to crank out more D&E novellas in advance of the show and if he plans on making them longer to encompass important events like the Third Blackfyre Rebellion, it would probably make sense to just continue with A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms, Vol. 2, containing the fourth and fifth stories (or the fourth, fifth and sixth, depending on how long they are and how quickly he can finish them) rather than first releasing them individually as part of anthologies. 

The fact that he already has hundreds of pages of F&BII already written (which was a really nice surprise) makes me wonder if we'll get another historical anthology entry soon in the vein of "The Princess and the Queen" or "The Rogue Prince". I know George doesn't like to sit on finished material so if he has a lot written for F&BII but the book as a whole is still a long way from done, it would be nice to see some of it, even in an abbreviated form. "The Reign of the Broken King" detailing the 20 post-regency years of Aegon III's reign? "The Conquest of Dorne"?

Although I've always been curious about George's release strategy when it comes to those anthologies. If he's serious about getting this stuff out there, tying each one to an anthology involving a dozen plus other authors that also must vaguely align with the subject or theme of the story itself seems like a needlessly difficult way to go about it. 

4 hours ago, The hairy bear said:

I think that the fact that he is considering to name the second volume Blood & Fire is a big clue suggesting that he doesn't plan to do that.

 

 

The fact that literally every aspect of this series gets orders of magnitude bigger than Martin initially plans feels like an even bigger clue.  I'm sure he'll change his tune when he hits 1000 MS pages in Blood & Fire and he's still writing about Aegon the Unworthy. 

1 hour ago, GuestRights said:

Can GRRM publish F&B 2 without spoiling D&E? I think the 200 pages he mentioned are D&E stuff he wrote to help the show runner, and we won't see F&B 2 not until D&E is done. 

Hopefully the new show nudges GRRM to wrap up the two stories he partially wrote years ago.

I think 136-209 is the smartest move for F&BII. It allows him to cover 75 more years while still not spoiling any D&E stories. Also, while the page to time ratio could be lopsided in the first volume (Aegon I's reign after the First Dornish War is covered in a few pages; the first dozen years of Jaehaerys' reign vs. the rest) Martin was pretty good at having the pace match what was narratively intersting. But when you think about how much gets teed up at the end of F&BI plus the things we know Martin could write a lot about over the next 75 years (the Conquest of Dorne, the reign of the Unworthy, the First Blackfyre Rebellion, all the crazy shit going on with the Starks in the second half of the second century), it seems pretty clear that there's no way he could do this all in one more volume. Unless of course he skimps on the 209-283 period in favor of D&E stories, but that kind of defeats the in-world premise of it being a complete history of the Targaryens. 

He has kind of made an interesting challenge for himself, telling the same story via multiple perspectives and series of books. I'm curious to see what his solution is.