Parts of the Series You Have Trouble Taking Seriously

[Max of the Magic Friends]

I quite like this series, as evidenced by me spending my spare time talking about it breathlessly on the Internet. I might be preaching to the choir here, but it is very, very good. I do think, however, that there are some limits to imagination when it comes to a fantasy series, and moments where it's a little hard to come fully on board with some aspects of this wonderful world George made.

I do realize, of course, that this is a fantasy, and that some incredulous things are forgivable - no argument from me there. But I do think that we can all agree that are some things that play a little too fast and close with creative license in some cases. So here's my question: what are some things in the series that have made you scoff, roll your eyes, or otherwise caused you to flare up in skepticism? Again, this is not at all a negative thread, just one that acknowledges that, even in such a grim franchise, there is room for silliness.

I personally found a couple moments like this in The World of Ice and Fire, when I read through it. The cities that guard the Bone Mountains were definitely first and foremost. Being confronted with Bayasabhad, Samyriana, and Kayakayanaya is sort of a tall order. So these cities are...

1. Ruled by a patriarchal clan of "Great Fathers."

- Sure, that makes sense. Plenty of old cultures were organized in a similar way.

2. All of their warriors are women, as only those who give life may take it. They are the greatest warriors in the world.

- OK George, that's perfectly reasonable. I'm with you so far.

3. All of the women pierce their cheeks with rubies and their nipples with iron rings.

- Yeah, that's a little weird. But hey, strange fashion is all the rage in plenty of places in the world. I can still dig it.

4. Women are constantly bare-chested, walking around and fighting hog-wild.

- Starting to strain the mind a little bit here. I sort of imagined that the greatest warriors in the world would want to wear armor, rather than running it dirty-style. Is there something you should be telling us, George?

5. 99 percent of all men in their societies are castrated.

- Alright George, you lost me. I am lost and cannot be found. This is a bit silly.

Also, I don't know if this is just because I'm a very anthrocentric person, but I found myself put a bit out of sorts by all the weird, non-human intelligent species out there. Children of the forest and giants, fair enough. But when we got to the Ibbenese apparently being neanderthals and green fish-people living in the Thousand Islands, it started to to be a bit much.

[Jon's Queen Consort]

As much as I would want to take it seriously I cannot understand Cersei and her KL's storyline. Cersei is an idiot, it's obvious for anyone to see even the Westerosi. How on GRRTH she is still alive and have some kind of power. I just don't get it. Also I don't get most of the things in TWOIAF, I can understand that the author needs to built a mythology and some kind of history for his story but he has made some of those stories really silly.

[Jon Fossoway]

2 hours ago, Max of the Magic Friends said:

I quite like this series, as evidenced by me spending my spare time talking about it breathlessly on the Internet. I might be preaching to the choir here, but it is very, very good. I do think, however, that there are some limits to imagination when it comes to a fantasy series, and moments where it's a little hard to come fully on board with some aspects of this wonderful world George made.

I do realize, of course, that this is a fantasy, and that some incredulous things are forgivable - no argument from me there. But I do think that we can all agree that are some things that play a little too fast and close with creative license in some cases. So here's my question: what are some things in the series that have made you scoff, roll your eyes, or otherwise caused you to flare up in skepticism? Again, this is not at all a negative thread, just one that acknowledges that, even in such a grim franchise, there is room for silliness.

I personally found a couple moments like this in The World of Ice and Fire, when I read through it. The cities that guard the Bone Mountains were definitely first and foremost. Being confronted with Bayasabhad, Samyriana, and Kayakayanaya is sort of a tall order. So these cities are...

1. Ruled by a patriarchal clan of "Great Fathers."

- Sure, that makes sense. Plenty of old cultures were organized in a similar way.

2. All of their warriors are women, as only those who give life may take it. They are the greatest warriors in the world.

- OK George, that's perfectly reasonable. I'm with you so far.

3. All of the women pierce their cheeks with rubies and their nipples with iron rings.

- Yeah, that's a little weird. But hey, strange fashion is all the rage in plenty of places in the world. I can still dig it.

4. Women are constantly bare-chested, walking around and fighting hog-wild.

- Starting to strain the mind a little bit here. I sort of imagined that the greatest warriors in the world would want to wear armor, rather than running it dirty-style. Is there something you should be telling us, George?

5. 99 percent of all men in their societies are castrated.

- Alright George, you lost me. I am lost and cannot be found. This is a bit silly.

Also, I don't know if this is just because I'm a very anthrocentric person, but I found myself put a bit out of sorts by all the weird, non-human intelligent species out there. Children of the forest and giants, fair enough. But when we got to the Ibbenese apparently being neanderthals and green fish-people living in the Thousand Islands, it started to to be a bit much.

I'm sure there's a lot of tellings in the world book that is taken from rumors about the east. Rumors of rumors. Places and cultures get a lot more erratic further east: Bone Town, cities of the bloodless men, K'Dath and even the Five Forts.

For me, Baelor Breakspear, a crowned prince, risking his life in a trial of seven for a dude that broke his nephew's arm was something bordering the absurd.

[The Wolves]

Cersei is a mess and ridiculous especially in AFFC. 

The Boltons are boring and try way to hard to be whatever it is they are trying to be. Seriously the Dredfort? Flaying? Ramsey? Leeching? 

Baelish is ridiculous is period. 

[Criston of House Shapper]

On 25.3.2016 at 10:43 PM, Jon's Queen Consort said:

As much as I would want to take it seriously I cannot understand Cersei and her KL's storyline. Cersei is an idiot, it's obvious for anyone to see even the Westerosi. How on GRRTH she is still alive and have some kind of power. I just don't get it. Also I don't get most of the things in TWOIAF, I can understand that the author needs to built a mythology and some kind of history for his story but he has made some of those stories really silly.

There's plenty of people in history who were incompetent and ended up in a position of power anyways, so that's kind of realistic. I don't take the later part of TWOIAF seriously at all, because it is meant to be an over-exageration of the truth.

I sometimes can't take Vargo Hoat seriously, but then again, how could you?

[Jon's Queen Consort]

45 minutes ago, Criston of House Shapper said:

There's plenty of people in history who were incompetent and ended up in a position of power anyways, so that's kind of realistic. I don't take the later part of TWOIAF seriously at all, because it is meant to be an over-exageration of the truth.

I sometimes can't take Vargo Hoat seriously, but then again, how could you?

I agree. An incompetent person can end up in a position of power but Cersei has hold that position even against her much smarter opponents.

[The Mountain That Flies]

On March 26, 2016 at 7:41 PM, King Merrett I Frey said:

For me, Baelor Breakspear, a crowned prince, risking his life in a trial of seven for a dude that broke his nephew's arm was something bordering the absurd.

Seriously. Even if he knew Dunk was in the right, Baelor was the Hand of the King and Prince of Dragonstone. If he felt so passionately about justice he could have just told Aerion to eat a dick and drop the charges.

For me I'd say the various slaving Masters of Slaver's Bay push the bounds of reason. Not that a group of people couldn't be so horrible (plenty have been through real history), but that they would be so cartoonishly evil across the board while doing it. 

[The Ice Wolf of Loki]

1 hour ago, Jon's Queen Consort said:

I agree. An incompetent person can end up in a position of power but Cersei has hold that position even against her much smarter opponents.

It's called dumb luck and it's quickly running out.

[The Fattest Leech]

My Scooby Doo "rooh" head tilting moment came when Sam encountered the Black Gate. Ya know, the talking ice gate that opens its mouth for you to walk through. 

This seemed to cross the streams from one type of fantasy story to another. 

http://m.westeros.org/index.php/Black_Gate#The_Black_Gate

[Kingmonkey]

The size of the Wall. It's just insane. Assume a very conservative 4:1 height to width ratio giving us 50m*200m*500,000m and  we're talking 5 billion cubic metres, minimum. That's 2000 Great Pyramids. If we were to take the biggest possible measurement for the Great Wall of China (i.e. including every little ridge and spur and ditch that some people count as being part of it) and pretend that all of its length were the same size as the most massive sections, it would fit inside the Wall of Westeros ten times at the very least. But yeah, it's fantasy, right? Ignore the man behind the curtain...

Then it got silly and GRRM had the watch fighting with the tiny little dots standing below. The chances of anyone hitting anyone else are negligible. The chances of anyone being able to fire an arrow to the top of the wall are zero. 

[redtree]

8000 years and there seems to be so little of innovation in technology, health, social standing etc. 
 

And 5 years of winter, oh dear god! Even if people store grain properly they'd still have to survive without veggies and fruits. It's impossible to store those food for more than 6 months

[Criston of House Shapper]

17 hours ago, Kingmonkey said:

The size of the Wall. It's just insane. Assume a very conservative 4:1 height to width ratio giving us 50m*200m*500,000m and  we're talking 5 billion cubic metres, minimum. That's 2000 Great Pyramids. If we were to take the biggest possible measurement for the Great Wall of China (i.e. including every little ridge and spur and ditch that some people count as being part of it) and pretend that all of its length were the same size as the most massive sections, it would fit inside the Wall of Westeros ten times at the very least. But yeah, it's fantasy, right? Ignore the man behind the curtain...

Then it got silly and GRRM had the watch fighting with the tiny little dots standing below. The chances of anyone hitting anyone else are negligible. The chances of anyone being able to fire an arrow to the top of the wall are zero. 

It really is pretty big. I'm not a weapons expert, but using some numbers from wikipedia I calculated (roughly and very inaccurately) the heights to which one can shoot an arrow. If you shoot it straight up at about 50 m/s, you could get to about 250m or so, and then it probably wouldn't have the speed to actually injure anyone. I don't see an issue with shooting the other way, though.

[SevasTra82]

I have trouble believing that certain families have been around for 10,000+ years without ever being wiped out.  So you are telling me that Starks and the Boltons have been at war for 8,000 years?  So for 500+ generations, not a single Stark family failed to have a male heir, or fought and where wiped out?  The odds of a family fruitfully surviving for that length of time is hard to believe, IMO.....

.....especially considering in just ASOIAF, we get 3-4 of Westeros's main families wiped out in a single couple years?  So for 8-10k years, the Baratheons, Starks, Boltons, Lannisters, etc survive with no issue...but in the span of 2 years of ASOIAF they almost all get wiped out?

Something about that just never set well with me.

[Philokles]

40 minutes ago, Criston of House Shapper said:

It really is pretty big. I'm not a weapons expert, but using some numbers from wikipedia I calculated (roughly and very inaccurately) the heights to which one can shoot an arrow. If you shoot it straight up at about 50 m/s, you could get to about 250m or so, and then it probably wouldn't have the speed to actually injure anyone. I don't see an issue with shooting the other way, though.

That figure seems quite high as trained longbowmen could only reach under 400m forward. If true, it would require a better bow than the wildlings possessed and a large amount of training at shooting super-long distances. Even if you could manage the range then the target is so small that if your aim was only a fraction of a degree out then the arrow would hit the wall or go over the defenders' heads. The same problem occurs if you are shooting downwards, unless the attackers are so densely packed that it is easier, quicker and deadlier just to drop stones.

[Bennis of the Brown Shield]

On 3/25/2016 at 0:41 AM, King Merrett I Frey said:

I'm sure there's a lot of tellings in the world book that is taken from rumors about the east. Rumors of rumors. Places and cultures get a lot more erratic further east: Bone Town, cities of the bloodless men, K'Dath and even the Five Forts.

For me, Baelor Breakspear, a crowned prince, risking his life in a trial of seven for a dude that broke his nephew's arm was something bordering the absurd.

Yeah, pretty sure GRRM intentionally made it like that to mirror real medieval ideas about faraway lands. Or not even all that faraway, really. Take a look at this map of Northern Europe from the 1530's for example. https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/ea/Carta_Marina.jpeg 

Note the island of Thule in the North Sea which in reality doesn't exist at all, but here is labelled with cities and everything. Or the sea monsters and other supernatural creatures that are all over the place. 

[Kyll.Ing.]

My biggest gripe is also the time frame of the series, and how much history has survived. Eight thousand years is twice as far back as the Abrahamic religions go. They still manage to pass down a somewhat accurate account on the nature of the Others, and actually have the stories be common knowledge. That's twice as old as the Epic of Gilgamesh, transferred orally from generation to generation, seemingly without loss of information or addition of fantasy elements (though I suspect the ice spiders to have been some hodgepodge tacked on somewhere along the way). Lineage has also somehow been preserved perfectly for all those thousands of years, yet ancient families such as the Starks number less than half a dozen at the start of the series, and the Boltons are down to TWO members. If being this close to extinction is the norm (at no point is a greater family in the past alluded to), it seems strange that the lines have been unbroken for so long. Always the eldest son succeeding the eldest son. Otherwise, they're really good at pretending.

Then there's the lack of development in Westeros. Not only technological, but also lingustic. Westeros is the size of South America, yet Dornishmen and Notherners have been speaking the same language since time immemorial. The Ironborn are isolated from the rest of the continent, but haven't even developed slang words unique to themselves. There has been trade and war between the continental kingdoms for millennia, yet the road network is only a couple hundred years old.

As a result of this, it seems like events hundreds of years in the past is treated like only yesterday. Consider for a moment that the newest major castle in the series is Harrenhal (Whitewalls was built during the reign of the Targaryens, then subsequently torn down). The Manderlys moved across town more than one thousand years ago, yet still call their holdings "New Castle". The North abandoned Moat Cailin thousands of years before the Targaryens, despite it being a hard counter to any land invasions, raids or surprise attacks across the southern border. The Night's Watch has traditions going back eight thousand years as well, no problem at all.

 

Anyway, history partially aside, there was one particularly cringe-worthy moment in ADWD. Tyrion and co. sail past Chroyane. It is stated to have been abandoned a thousand years past. Since then, the city has been located in a river. Not next to the river, IN the river. It is also been stated to have been mainly built out of wood. It is also, despite every law physics ever wrote, nearly completely intact. In fact, Tyrion and co. almost crash into a half-sunken wooden tower somewhere on their merry voyage.

Folks, wood and water don't mix at all when there's air nearby. Unless pre-treated really well, and regularly maintained, a half-submerged wooden post will rot away to nothing in a decade or less. Even shipwrecks (ships are usually treated to withstand water), unless preserved in clay or oxygen-poor water, will be completely gone after 4-500 years. Even well-preserved wood will degrade to cookie-crumble levels of structural integrity after a thousand years. Structures on dry land will collapse after a century and rot after two or three. Fallen trees in the forest seldom last more than a couple decades. Yet Chroyane still stands, in the midst of the river current, while passing ships, silt, debris and practically every raindrop that falls in the Rhoyne watershed (which is roughly the size of Australia) rushes past. For a thousand years. Without maintenance.

Logic dictates that Chroyane should have been eradicated completely by the time of the Doom, if not a lot sooner. Wooden structures that weren't built to stand in the river would be gone after 10-50 years. Those that were would also be gone a century or two later. Stone structures would have eroded, and bridges subsequently collapsed as their foundations were undermined. Silt and floating debris would have filled the old palaces and made large sand banks. The first flood (and on a river the size of the Rhoyne, those would have been annual) would have spread the remains of the city all the way to Volantis. Heck, the wind alone would probably have levelled the city within a few hundred years.

I know that Martin really likes his ruins, but couldn't he have found a way to put the destruction of Chroyane in more recent times? The Chroyane seen in ADWD is a city submerged for a decade or two, not a full millennium.

[Ser Gareth]

On ‎25‎/‎03‎/‎2016 at 11:57 PM, The Wolves said:

Cersei is a mess and ridiculous especially in AFFC. 

The Boltons are boring and try way to hard to be whatever it is they are trying to be. Seriously the Dredfort? Flaying? Ramsey? Leeching? 

Baelish is ridiculous is period. 

Totally this.  Littlefinger and Varys being these great game players stretches the imagination well beyond belief.

[Ser Gareth]

Penny.  The whole storyline with Tyrion simply doesn't fit in with the rest of the series.

[239JMFL34109]

When it comes to the World of ice and fire book i assume the the farther you are from westeros. the more BS the book is filled with like there is probably a lot of true things but also a lot of false things.  Like in the book we are told that nothing grows asshai but yet they make wines according to tyrion's meeting in a dance of dragons with illyrio? so either those are not really 'wine' or something does grow in the city and etc...

[239JMFL34109]

Here is my question has there been ANY technological development in westeros in the 300 years since aegon the conqueror?