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Dinner with GRRM - what should I ask?


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If you're hoping to get some actual ASoIaF facts, asking about some non-spoilery superfluous info about your favourite minor character might be your best bet. 

Mine would be "how did Arthur Dayne and Rhaegar become friends" or if that's too big "How old was Arthur when he died" or "How did he look like". It's just meaningless bits of trivia, which, he might feel like providing if I'd butter him up beforehand and if he's feeling generous.

Most of all, I'd want to hear from him why did he change the writing style so drastically mid-series (between ASoS and AFfC) but it's a sore subject and one that I'd have to thread really lightly around to not to come off as a dick. 

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17 minutes ago, StarkofWinterfell said:

Easy. It's the New York Giants. 

This is a well known fact

Except when it's the Jets (tbf, the Jets have not done much to earn the love in the last couple of seasons, so maybe don't mention the Jets ;) )

To the OP:
Honestly, I would just talk to him like you'd talk to any new acquaintance at a dinner party (although I'd avoid talking about GoT/ASOIAF). If you know that you already have some common interests -- pizza or helmetball or chess or the writings of Jack Vance or Roger Zelazny or miniatures or travel -- ask him about one of those. Or you could ask him about the main benefits of living in Santa Fe or if he's glad he bought a Tesla, and if it's easy to have an electric car in Santa Fe. Ask him about the movie he wishes he could bring to the Jean Cocteau.

If you treat him like a fellow human being, rather than a resource to be exploited, then it'll likely go a lot more smoothly. :)

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12 hours ago, Jimmy is not No One said:

So I will be attending Balticon this weekend and to kick it off I will be going to a charity dinner where I will meet (and eat with) GRRM.  So, what questions should I ask?  What topics should I bring up?  Here's what I have so far.

1) talk about Eli and the Gmen.  Hopefully 2016 will go better than the last few seasons...

2)  be completely tongue tied bc I'm in the presence of GRRM

 

Help!!!

Cool! I'm going to the dinner as well. Along with @The Fattest Leech

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I agree with those saying to ask about minor things, you are far less likely to get an evasive answer to those than if you ask about the big stuff. 

That said I'd be tempted to ask if Darkstar ever squired for a known character and if so who. 

I might also like to ask something about a sword, such as will we find out what happened to some of the VS and significant swords the whereabouts of which are currently unknown. 

Or maybe We know Tywin loved his wife Joanna, even if he did use whores(maybe that was only after her death? we don't really know.) but did she love him also? was it a love match. Or was it an arranged marriage between their parents to retain Lannister lands and power within the house? 

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Did any unknown Tarbecks or Reynes survive Tywin's blitzkrieg, and are they working for revenge behind the scenes?

It seems as if certain characters are the personification of weapons. Did he create any characters who are trebuchets?

Can we learn something about where whores go by examining where horses go?

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In your place, I don't think I could resist asking him about writing at some point, though - what he thinks is the hardest part of the writing process, tips for young players, that sort of thing, but I don't think that is a great idea either. He was a writing teacher for years, so I'm sure he would have some definite ideas (and I'd probably ask him stuff like what he thinks is the most important thing about teaching writing as well). He probably has been asked so often, he has rote answers for it, but at least it would prevent me from peppering him with questions about oily stones at Moat Calin and Orthanc, or unicorns on Skagos, or the average height of the Norvoshi, or peppering him with a hundred questions like @Paxter Redwyne's.

I'm sure you won't go in with an attitude like you have paid for this and he owes you your two minutes worth. Dealing with fans might be work for him, but he is more likely to engage if you are not a chore to talk to.

I'd make some effort to think of things he might be intrested in, that I might know of, to break the ice. Things that draw on my personal strengths and secret powers. For instance, if I was a Baltimore local and knew what was happening around the harbour and the intrigues of local politics and football at the moment, I would make a point of thinking of a few things that might interest someone from out of town, and things they might want to see or do if they had a few hours to spare (not ones contingent on me meeting them again - no ulterior motive) Not the sort of things that anyone who reads a tour brochure or a national newspaper would know, things that draw on my personal strength of local knowledge.

So, for instance, the football would probably not be the NFL, but if there was a team in the local league undergoing a dramatic resurgence and looked like winning the cup for the first time in decades, I would know who was playing who at which ground when, Likewise, if the local political events were all about rates and development plans, I wouldn't bore him with the town talk, but if a Presidential candidate had been doing or saying something to our mayor, or there were rumours of some doubts about the potability of the local water supply, I'd make a point of visiting my local politico or water board friends to get my facts straight and my gossip hot.

For my own area, I know stuff like where you could find this native bird nesting, or that frog croaking, and how the fish are running at this point, and even though it is nearly winter now, at the beach the water is still wonderfully warm, thanks to this endless Indian summer we have been having - that is one of the hidden great points of my city, how you can be in a genuine wilderness area looking at some rare endemic and endangered wildlife, half an hour's drive from the city centre (albeit, not at peak hour, although there are some birds you don't even have to leave the city centre to spot, if you are into that sort of thing).

Also, there are interesting bits of hidden history around the city - but I'm guessing, not so interesting for an American history buff as the hidden bits of history around Baltimore. On the other hand, GRRM has probably been visiting Baltimore since before we were born, so unless its been recently uncovered or renovated or something, he might already know more about it than the locals. But maybe you have some special area of interest that ties into something in his life, like you work in harbour services and have access to normally inaccessible areas, like the location wrecks on the harbour floor or something similar - that is the sort of thing I class as hidden powers and strengths, anyway.

So that would be my trick - think of things going down in the local area right now, and things unique to the area, that might interest him, and that he wouldn't learn right away somewhere else.

 Also, being brought up Catholic, but at a different time and place to him, I would be asking him stuff like "How old were you when you were confirmed? Did you choose Richard of Chichester?" because there is a lot of scope for enlightening and amusing, comfortable conversation there, and I might have a point or two in common with him (like a confirmation name that begins with an R, inspired by Tolkien), and how Catholicism was in Bayonne in the fifties, v  in Queensland in the eighties, is just something that fascinates me.

I know that politics and religion are supposedly out of bounds, but if you are not partisan, and don't say anything likely to offend or trigger people who don't share your point of view, you should be fine.

I'm confident from my reading of the Song that Martin is unlikely to take offence at my agnostic attitude and interest in the sacraments and teachings of Catholicism,  but I would still be careful about my tone - for all I know his wife is a devout Catholic, and even if she wasn't, I wouldn't want to come across as a bigot or an ignorant moron to someone who shared the faith of Tolkien and  Lewis - nor would I want to alienate someone who wasn't a Christian, or doesn't class Catholics as Christians, with obscure Illuminati talk. But it would be easier for me to get a conversation on this aspect of Song of Ice and Fire started, than by starting with some recently unearthed tit-bit about the slave trade in Baltimore or the impact of the Civil war, subjects I don't know much about and have no personal anecdotal knowledge to disguise the fact that I'm really asking him what is going to happen in the Winds of Winter and how close is he to finishing.

Normally, with a person of his age, I would ask about health, and be happy to hear as much as they have to share (I'm a bit of a hypochondriac, and like to know what things I should be keeping an eye on over the next couple of decades, assuming I live that long.) But not with him. Don't go there.

On the other hand, it doesn't hurt to remember that people his age may or may not get gout, or arthritis, be hard of hearing, or short sighted, and to notice if he is limping, or has knuckles the size of pomegranates, or turns his head to one side when he wants to listen to something. There are some quietly considerate things you can do - like wear a name tag with your name in BIG letters, or when you are reading the tiny, tiny font on the menu, maybe offer to swap your fish with his chicken, if he would prefer it ( the point of this is if he didn't bring his other glasses with him, he doesn't have to squint and frown and guess what fuzzy thing he is to look forward to - or even what it is he is supposed to be eating.) Of course, he might prefer to squint and frown and guess regardless, and also of course, you could talk about the menu options with the person on your other side, and he could merely overhear you while he frowned at his menu. Achieves the same effect without appearing to be too desperately eager to be of service, or too officiously rendering 'services' that might be unnecessary- the aim is to be considerate to the human being, not patronising to the doddering old guy.

You don't want to betray any concern for his health, or be patronising,  but you do want him to be comfortable, and comfortable talking to you.  I would definitely have a magic marker as well as a normal pen on me, just because, if the font on my name tag was not so big, I could write JIM in big letters on the other side, and wear that side to the table. Especially if you are one of the five or ten fans sitting at the table, it's easier for him if he doesn't have to begin every attempt to talk with you with mentally keeping track of which one you are.

When it comes to being considerate, don't forget his peeps. I'm not sure if he is attending with his wife or not, but if he is, and you have the good luck to be sitting near her, it wouldn't hurt to think of a few things she might be interested in talking about. I'd still ask her about religion and spiritual beliefs, even if it wasn't as directly relevant to ASoIaF, and I'd probably ask her if Portland has always been hip, or if that was some kind of millennial phenomenon (I've never been to Portland, and practically the only thing I know about it is that Parris McBride and hipsters come from there.) As well as finding more out about her that way, I'd probably be asking about her travels - the one other thing I know about Parris McBride is that she is well travelled, and I'm all ears if anyone wants to talk about their journey up the silk road, or their special tour of a medieval castle, their elk sighting in Jasper National Park, any kind of travellers tale (hell, even how someone slipped on an icy footpath in exotic Putney last spring can rivet an antipodean like me - but I'm sure she would have better travellers tales than that.)  

Even if I wasn't lucky enough to meet his wife, whomever his peeps were, I'd make an effort to treat them with special consideration, as VIP's in their own right. I would certainly not lean across them in order to monopolise GRRM. If someone treated my peeps like they were invisible and didn't matter, I'd reciprocate in form. He might be too professional to be rude to rude fans, but still.

Also, I would bother to get to know a little about the other people at the table, even if they were just desperately keen fans like myself. It's a bit boring when the 'conversation' consists of one person being interrogated by a panel of interviewers that behave not unlike a pack of salivating dogs watching for a crumb to drop from the table. Having a bit of side conversation that brings out the interests of the person next to you on the other side, can take some of the pressure off the main guy, and let him give someone else their 'turn'. Its great if you can bring out a really cool introvert, and also if you can temporarily distract an extrovert greedy for more than his fair share of GRRM time. Not that you are the talk police, its just great when you can do that. 

And I'm guessing that most of the people at the table will come ready with their best questions to put to GRRM, and some of them might be very similar to yours, so if he says something really interesting to someone else and you didn't quite catch it, you can always catch up with the person later, if you bothered to notice who they were in the first place. Also, for my top three SoIaF questions, I would re-read the relevant chapters very closely one more time, just to be sure it isn't already answered in the text.

Luckily for me, most of the famous people I have met have been nowhere near as famous as GRRM amid his fandom. I didn't even recognise the famous rapper, or the national news announcer (although when people ask me why I am so particular about the hygiene in the staff toilets, I cite these occasions, and mostly they are duly impressed.) Even so, it is amazing how fame draws all the attention in the room, and sucks the oxygen out of interesting conversations, and onto banal topics like 'what is he saying? Did he have the meat or the fish? Where is he looking now?'.

I'm so jealous of you, and thrilled for you, and want to hear all about what he had to say, of course, but if I was in your shoes, I'd concentrate on making the night a pleasant one for him and his peeps.

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Wow, someone got lucky here! 

If you want to ask something ASOIAF-related, you can try and mine the site for threads "what to ask GRRM at XY", there appear some good ones from time to time.

Personally, I am intrigued by the details of the Purple Wedding - Olenna seems too short to be able to put the strangler in Joff's chalice, so I wonder who did it and whether her mention of the "Rains of Castamere" was a signal for the poisoner to do the job.

 

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2 hours ago, Joan Jett said:

Cool! I'm going to the dinner as well. Along with @The Fattest Leech

We are down to about 55 hours and counting!!!  :cheers:

I also have a list of things I would like to throw out there, but anyway it works, I will be happy to be part of the conversation.

This is the only topic limitation that Balticon is asking attendees to respect and I could not agree any more :thumbsup:

"Please be respectful of George, and refrain from questioning him about his writing deadlines, etc."

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57 minutes ago, The Fattest Leech said:

We are down to about 55 hours and counting!!!  :cheers:

I also have a list of things I would like to throw out there, but anyway it works, I will be happy to be part of the conversation.

This is the only topic limitation that Balticon is asking attendees to respect and I could not agree any more :thumbsup:

"Please be respectful of George, and refrain from questioning him about his writing deadlines, etc."

Nice!  I can't wait! Glad to hear some other westeros.org followers will be in attendance. 

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[mod] Guys, please. No TV spoilers. No allusions to TV spoilers, even. Not even under spoiler tags. That's the rule for this forum. [/mod]

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Have you read Tad Williams' Memory, Sorrow and Thorn?

GRRM has packed tons of 'easter eggs' from that series into his own works. I'd first have to tell him I love finding them and then ask what inspired him to give us these little hidden gifts.

Maybe this type of question wouldn't fall into that thousand-time repeated pool of topics that he's tired of, or bored with. It will probably be the only question of its kind that night

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What did Tyrion do from the time he was sixteen until the start of AGOT?

How much experience as a military leader does Jaime actually have? He found himself in charge of the defense of the Red Keep when he was seventeen (and he didn't exactly lead an army). After that, he lived during fourteen years of nearly uninterrupted peace. We don't hear about him doing anything during the Greyjoy rebellion. Was his campaign in AGOT his first time leading an army?

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