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Critiques of ASOIAF


TheWitch

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4 minutes ago, falcotron said:

It is a bit odd that Westeros is so far behind late-medieval Europe in this respect.

And it's even odder that GRRM doesn't seem to recognize that.

In interviews, he's described Westeros as having "something like English common law", but his world doesn't actually have any of the features that make up common law. Law isn't common; it varies from region to region and lord to lord. Appeal to precedent is pretty weak, rather than being the fundamental justification for all judgments. There's no professional judiciary. There are no officers of the court or legal experts. Their legal system bears more resemblance to pre-codification Germanic tribal law than to Plantagenet common law.

Which makes all the other ways his society is like late medieval England (or even late Renaissance, in some cases) a bit less plausible. It's hard to imagine how you could have Age of Exploration-style world trade and Dutch-style early-modern banking in a world without even the prerequisites for a concept of rule of law.

I'd need some context for that, but yeah, it certainly doesn't seem like Westeros has common law. I recently learnt that England was actually exceptional in terms of how early it developed a common law system, compared to most European societies. So I don't think it's that implausable generally.

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14 minutes ago, mankytoes said:

I'd need some context for that, but yeah, it certainly doesn't seem like Westeros has common law.

I'm not sure what context you want. But every legal case that we see, or hear about, that isn't resolved by trial by combat is judged by the liege, at best on purely pragmatic grounds, at worst based on the whims and prejudices of that liege. That's not even remotely like common law.

14 minutes ago, mankytoes said:

I recently learnt that England was actually exceptional in terms of how early it developed a common law system, compared to most European societies. So I don't think it's that implausable generally.

No, what's unique about England isn't that they developed a common law system early, but the very fact that they developed a common law system instead of a civil law system. And, in fact, they were pretty far behind the curve for Europe.

Oversimplifying a bit:

Everyone in the early middle ages had a somewhat idealistic notion of the perfect lost Roman legal system. The Franks took the late-Roman codifications of Germanic law as a foundation, and decided they could write new laws to cover everything that was left out, and eventually they'd have a perfect system again. And almost everyone in Europe ultimately just cribbed off the Franks and their successors in France and the Holy Roman Empire. And most other legal systems in the rest of the world are pretty similar.

The English had a more chaotic and poorly organized system, and William declaring Edward's law as the "finished" civil law of the land didn't help. But over the next few generations—and especially after Bracton in the 13th century—they came up with this crazy notion that by following the precedents of past judgments, they could actually recover that lost perfect system that God intended. Which sounds insane, but it turned out to work just about as well. This isn't entirely unique (e.g., the Confucian system that competed with legalism in China have some similarities), but it's unique in western Europe.

But anyway, Westeros's system is nothing like either common law or civil law. It has more in common with pre-codification Germanic tribal law, but with feudalism laid over the top.

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I think AGOT, maybe ACOK too, were written with a different story in mind.   Yes, I've read that old outline and I can see where some characters were specifically changed particularly in ASOS.  Jorah's changes particularly bother me and I don't even know where this guy is definitely going.  Jamie and Theon are brilliant characters and their stories are told so well.   I just wonder where and why Jamie changed and if Theon's change was planned far in advance.  GRRM has made mention of a gardner style writing and I imagine that's a type of organic creativity, but it often felt like trickery to me.   At least from the information given in AGOT.   

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7 hours ago, falcotron said:

But Tolkien isn't the end of fantasy. Fritz Leiber's Lankhmar has some attempt at making the economics work. Even Discworld manages to be somewhat realistic, even though it's a satirical world that advances implausibly from faux-medieval to magitech-Victorian in a generation. Clark Ashton-Smith developed realistic bronze age economics, which some later writers have expanded on. Paul Cornell, Charles Stross, and other writers try to work out how magic would fit into modern economics. There are even hundreds of letters and articles in Dragon Magazine trying to make the economics of D&D more realistic, and Mystara and some of their other settings tried to make things work more believably than the default Greyhawk setting.

You are much better read than I am :)

RPG is a bit different from "books only" settings, IMO. It is supposed to make some sense :)

But never mind :wub:

 

 

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On ‎22‎/‎09‎/‎2017 at 4:57 PM, TheWitch said:

What critiques do we all have of ASOIAF?

In terms of world building, story arch, structure, plot etc

Not here to bash GRRM or the books, but we can all critique things we enjoy!

 

1) Poorly explained and developed magic system. Lot of it feels like plot devices.

2) Dany still in Essos whilst whole narrative is in a holding pattern. 

3) Zombie horde as main antagonists. Most vanilla enemy imaginable.

4) Too humancentric. Sci-fi and Fantasy gives you chance to make interesting and cool species. Making everyone human is a bit vanilla. 

5) Cutting the Battles of Ice and Fire from ADWD.

6) Characters unnecessarily young having sex. Most fantasy has 16-18 year old characters for a reason.

7) His obsession with incest. 

8) Occasional nihilism that can break immersion. ie Tywin Lannister starts war that could have went incredibly wrong for him but for inexplicable circumstances. Making his decision to attack appear irrational and should not have been rewarded.

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6 hours ago, Curled Finger said:

GRRM has made mention of a gardner style writing and I imagine that's a type of organic creativity, but it often felt like trickery to me. 

Judging by what other "gardener type" writers have said, I think he creates his characters, puts them in situations, and then sees what they do. And if what they do isn't what he wants, or doesn't point them in the direction he needs them to be for the next major situation, he can't force them to act differently, he has to throw other events at them and see if that fixes things.

That leads to characters generally acting very organically and believably—but when things get too far off track and you have to come up with too many events to throw at them, the rest of the world outside your characters can start to look artificial and implausible.

His solution to that problems seems to have been to take some of the background characters he'd used as plot devices and turn them into real characters, so their actions become understandable. But that just means he has even more characters doing what comes natural to them, and eventually some of them start to go off the rails, so you have to start throwing plot devices at them.

I think he's for the most part done a great job with this, but there are a few places where it falls down and you can see his hand behind the scenes. They don't bother me that much, but I can see how they might bother you. (Plus, it may be largely because of this way of doing things that his fourth book ballooned into two massively oversized books that took a decade to write…)

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In between the GoT and FfC something changed. My opinion is that his editors and confidants did not encourage him to weed his garden and if they did he ignored their counsel.

One of the things that drove me mad was the switch to chapter titles and the introduction of characters that I had no interest in.

Martin was on track with GoT (1996), CoK (1998) and SoS (2000). Then the FfC (2005) which had a message MEANWHILE BACK AT THE WALL… and DwD (2011) that had the cavil on chronology.

He did a good job of portraying human emotion and motivations. He did not do a good job at maintaining continuity.

An example of which is characters with two monikers – Euron (Crow’s Eye), Damphair (Areon) or the Umbers’ all of which I had to make a cheat sheet to remember.

With the understanding that FfC (2005) and DwD (2011) are running concurrently the author left me with a boat load of unsolved issues (cliffhangers).

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On 9/23/2017 at 5:43 PM, OtherFromAnotherMother said:

Oh, thanks. I must have skipped all those chapters...

I said a POV from a commoner.

Some POV chapters, like Arya's, do mention what the common people think or feel about what the people in power do. It's mostly along the lines of "this is how things are".  So that's already established. Having just one commoner POV would do terrible injustice the number of opinions being involved. GRRM may include like a prologue or standalone chapter coming from a commoner POV exclusively in the upcoming books, mostly to show what the war has done to things like the food supply and how that fares with the coming winter. 

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The Battle of Blackwater disappointed me. Pages and pages wasted on ship's names? I couldn't wait to end the battle chapters. 

Also the gatherings before battle. I noticed this in AGoT when the northern army is gathering in Winterfell. Whenever the writer does the listings, it gets cheesy. 

The "and...and...and''s mostly in Sansa's and Arya's chapters in AGoT. But I was happy when I noticed there was less from it in the second book. 

 

 

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The choice to make some characters utterly superior than the rest feels to unrealistic for a world that's been based too much on raw honesty & real life history. Jon Snow has been presented as the absolute protagonist (along with Tyrion & Dany, even if she has less POV's). The "Chosen One" manichaeistic theory makes him somehow more valuable, worthy as an individual than Stannis, Cersei, Jaime etc for higher unexplained reasons. The plot would have been okay on a Tolkien-like story but not on GRRM's narrative about chopped Riverlanders laying on the Kingsroad & with Boltons flaying captives. The Mesiah story of Jon Snow feels too much of a boring cliche fan service.  

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1 hour ago, The Sunland Lord said:

The "and...and...and''s mostly in Sansa's and Arya's chapters in AGoT. But I was happy when I noticed there was less from it in the second book.

Try reading the infamous "legolas by laura" - practically every sentence begins with "and then legolas" :D

 

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54 minutes ago, SorcererOfAsshai said:

The choice to make some characters utterly superior than the rest feels to unrealistic for a world that's been based too much on raw honesty & real life history. Jon Snow has been presented as the absolute protagonist (along with Tyrion & Dany, even if she has less POV's). The "Chosen One" manichaeistic theory makes him somehow more valuable, worthy as an individual than Stannis, Cersei, Jaime etc for higher unexplained reasons. The plot would have been okay on a Tolkien-like story but not on GRRM's narrative about chopped Riverlanders laying on the Kingsroad & with Boltons flaying captives. The Mesiah story of Jon Snow feels too much of a boring cliche fan service.  

As a fantasy writer, GRRM respects "The Chosen One" rule. 

 

31 minutes ago, TMIFairy said:

Try reading the infamous "legolas by laura" - practically every sentence begins with "and then legolas" :D

 

Maybe I should :)

 

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16 minutes ago, The Sunland Lord said:

As a fantasy writer, GRRM respects "The Chosen One" rule. 

 

 

Gladly the famous theory of the three headed dragon requires three persons. I hope GRRM will break the cliches of fantasy literature & instead of choosing a male protagonist he will make Daenerys the savior of the world. Tyrion has more POV's, "book time" from both in any case. Plus Jaime seems like a potential AA. 

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3 minutes ago, SorcererOfAsshai said:

Gladly the famous theory of the three headed dragon requires three persons. I hope GRRM will break the cliches of fantasy literature & instead of choosing a male protagonist he will make Daenerys the savior of the world. Tyrion has more POV's, "book time" from both in any case. Plus Jaime seems like a potential AA. 

Then we'll have three people able to get away with more than others. Again they are the chosen three, instead of one. Not that it's a bad thing though.

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3 minutes ago, The Sunland Lord said:

Then we'll have three people able to get away with more than others. Again they are the chosen three, instead of one. Not that it's a bad thing though.

In this case the "Chosen One" becomes less cliche & more of a cooperation work. That would be more "realistic". Even in that case though Jon still remains the most privileged out of the three protagonists. The only actual obstacle he has faced during his adult life (aside the emo Catelyn drama) is his murder by the brothers of the NW, but it's irrelevant since a ressurection is almost certain & the reasons behind this plot device will benefit the character in the future. 

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8 minutes ago, SorcererOfAsshai said:

 his murder by the brothers of the NW, but it's irrelevant since a ressurection is almost certain & the reasons behind this plot device will benefit the character in the future. 

I pledge to laugh myself silly if "that which is dead .. stays dead" :D

 

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13 minutes ago, TMIFairy said:

I pledge to laugh myself silly if "that which is dead .. stays dead" :D

 

I wish you are right sista. Lord Snow remaining dead would be very nice plot surprize. BUT as George said in a recent interview Beric is dead even if he's resurected, a fire wight, so I bet it wont be any different for Jonie. 

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My two main critiques is all the teat-suckling  :stillsick:  and the grease that runs down everybody's chins as they eat. (even Sansas, even as she eats in delicates nibbles)

 

Also we get to piss through pretty much every male POV but none of the female POVs. Not that I miss more pissing-reads. I could to with none  at all actually.

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