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Heresy 201 and onward we go...


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23 hours ago, Tucu said:

There is where it gets messy. He married the daugther of those gods. It seems to also be a tale of how the First Men abandoned their previous gods (in this case the Sea God and the Goddess of the Wind) and adopted the Old Gods and befriended the CoTF. They assisted in the construction of Storm's End (maybe via Bran The Builder)

There may be more to House Durrandon and Storm's End.  This is an unusual place for a castle,  especially one with walls 80 feet thick.  Normally a settlement would be built near water either because access to the water is useful or to defend against attack by water.  But the cliffs below Storm's End are too steep.  We have the Rainwood and caves and their association with the Children, and we know stories about magic in the walls are true becuase the shadow baby could not pass.  GRRM gave us more details on members of House Durrandon than any other house except Stark and Targaryan.

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11 minutes ago, Brad Stark said:

GRRM gave us more details on members of House Durrandon than any other house except Stark and Targaryan.

I suspect we can count Baratheon and Durrandon but I am not so sure in that regard and if there is really more detail like say for house Lannister or Hightower.  It would be incredible funny if all those elk references in dreams or signs like the dead elk in Bran I should hint at Durrandon and not at Baratheon. 

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2 hours ago, JNR said:

Well, style is really in the eye of the beholder.  Austen and Hemingway and Chaucer and Faulker and Wodehouse are all extraordinary stylists, but I wouldn't try to rank them.  Would you?

As a matter of fact, I might internally rank them, but there is no need for anyone else to be particularly bothered that I have done so, yes? My tastes in style are subjective, and I'd go so far as to say my tastes in puzzles are subjective as well. The answer to Jon's parentage is not exciting to me, because I already inherently dislike secret parentage puzzles.  

I also found it a bit curious that my qualifications to have an opinion on Martin relative to Wolfe was something that needed to be assessed--if I said "the Rolling Stones are better than the Beatles," would you demand that I play the guitar for you, to prove that I'm qualified to have an opinion about music?
 

2 hours ago, JNR said:

How can you say GRRM "falls short" as a puzzle-builder if the solutions haven't been revealed, and you don't know what they are and can't even be sure you've recognized the existence of the puzzles?  One has to come to the end of Lost before one can pronounce it a turd someone dropped on one's doorstep (as GRRM so famously did).

I don't really agree with this premise, at least as regards the quality of a novel, show, movie, whatever--that the destination defines whether or not the journey was worth it. Nothing that GRRM does in his future volumes will make my favorite POVs - Tyrion, Jaime, and Arya - retroactively unenjoyable, nor obviate the established merits of the published novels. Not even the Omni-Bran could ruin that stuff, IMHO.

Not having seen Lost, I can't really speak to this idea that it became a turd by virtue of its ending, but it seems strange to me to suggest that several seasons of (I'm assuming) quality cinematography, engaging performances, and enjoyable characters could be "ruined" by the mysteries being disappointing. Though, perhaps the answers do retroactively ruin it, if the only merit it had in the first place was the hype surrounding its questions.

Quite possible, given that we live in the Franchise era, where a work being compelling becomes the responsibility of the fan theory/fan hype machine, rather than the artist. Take, for example, the character of Snoke (speaking of J.J. Abrams attached projects...), who is boring within the contents of the film The Force Awakens, so it is up to the fans to make him interesting with speculation over origins, motives, and true identities--to express creativity where the filmmakers have failed. 

Now, I don't really feel that's possible with ASOIAF, which I think is enjoyable independent of its puzzles and unresolved plots, but for those that have put all their interest in those areas, maybe ASOIAF can be retroactively ruined. :dunno: Even that, in its own way, would be clever in a meta sort of way. It would be GRRM's greatest twist of all: ASOIAF was bad all along.

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In any case, I also don't agree that we need to see all of Wolfe and Martin's respective puzzles and their solutions to come to an opinion, as I already explained why I think certain aspects of what is published is already falling short--most significantly, the prophecies. My criticism is not that there is an absence of the clever and subtle within Martin's work, only that it also comes packed with stuff that is unsubtle and clumsy. 

Out of curiosity - and this is not meant as a challenge, but out of sincere interest - what do you feel is a mystery that is under analyzed?

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2 hours ago, JNR said:

For twenty years (literally -- 1997) people have been discussing and developing it.  Tens of thousands of fans, writing millions of words, over two decades, all over the Internet have been developing it.  Every major media analyst I'm aware of, bar none, sees it as factual. It's so accepted, people like Ran (who is often cited as GRRM's #1 fan) say it's "not even a theory," and it's routinely described as "unwritten canon" on this site.  All the polls, going back many years, confirm all of this.

So... if Jon's parents are not R and L, and GRRM did provide sufficient evidence in his books for Jon's true parents to be deduced long before the revelation... and that can irrefutably be demonstrated prior to the release of TWOW... what will that tell you, following the release of TWOW, about GRRM's skill as a puzzle-builder?  In fooling people so utterly for twenty years that they think they can't possibly be wrong, yet are? 

I'd call it such an impressive stunt as to elevate GRRM over all other puzzlers in F/SF history.

Technically, GRRM has provided sufficient evidence that Jon's true parents could be Eddard and Wylla, so it's not as though it would be hard to disappoint a bunch of RLJ believers.

What you describe here is that GRRM has crafted what might be the most popular twist, if it's a twist at all, but whether it's the most 'well-built' seems a more tricky question.

For example, couldn't an author devise a more clever puzzle than Jon's parentage within a standalone novel? Is the suggestion that, for this theoretical author to be the "better puzzle builder," they should have written one volume, dragged their feet for twenty years, and then published the answer--to allow for plenty of time for people to produce incorrect conclusions?

What of a work that has a clever puzzle, but cannot reach the level of pop culture saturation that surrounds ASOIAF and GOT? By default, regardless of how well the puzzle builder has written, they are not fooling the largest number of people.
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All of this just really brings me back to the sentiment that caused me to characterize ASOIAF as pulp in the first place: that I can't really relate to this thing where people (such as RLJ fanatics) attach weight and significance to the idea that it is Very Good and Important to be numbered among those that have correctly predicted who-was-fucking-who in the Books with Dragons and Ice Faeries, that it sorts the worthy from the unworthy.

No matter who was "right," those people that were doing things such as comparing RLJ disbelief to being a moon landing conspiracy theorist are not somehow vindicated by the passage of time--because such a sentiment was always ridiculous, relative to how silly the disagreement is.

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