ASOIAF or Memory Sorrow and Thorn?

[Starkz]

Everyone should give this whole thread a read through and please tell me your opinions/thoughts on this.

 

 

[Starkz]

6 minutes ago, Starkz said:

Everyone should give this whole thread a read through and please tell me your opinions/thoughts on this.

 

 

The ending of this has “Marya”(Arya) marrying Simon(Jon Snow) who has Kings blood and becomes King which coincides with George’s original outline of Arya/Jon. 

[sweetsunray]

 I wrote a reply to one of the twitterers claiming George ripped/plagiarized MST

 

 

 and this one

 

And this one

 

Now, it's not just my tweets that are important here, but two significant people who liked them:

1 & 3 liked by Tad Williams

2&3 liked by Tad Williams' wife

Meanwhile his wife tweeted this

After MST comes another trilogy and there's a post-immediately-after-MST too... so 6 out of 7 have been published. That happy Simon-Miri ending of MST is sort of on the rocks 30 years later... and so it goes. 

Tad himself retweeted this today: 

/thread

 

[miyuki]

This is interesting... but if ASoIaF really is a ripoff, why hasn't there been a widespread controversy already?

[Starkz]

1 hour ago, sweetsunray said:

 I wrote a reply to one of the twitterers claiming George ripped/plagiarized MST

 

 

 and this one

 

And this one

 

Now, it's not just my tweets that are important here, but two significant people who liked them:

1 & 3 liked by Tad Williams

2&3 liked by Tad Williams' wife

Meanwhile his wife tweeted this

After MST comes another trilogy and there's a post-immediately-after-MST too... so 6 out of 7 have been published. That happy Simon-Miri ending of MST is sort of on the rocks 30 years later... and so it goes. 

Tad himself retweeted this today: 

/thread

 

It’s interesting to see how much GRRM ASOIAF is exactly like this trilogy. With GRRM original outline of Arya/Jon it’s seems very likely he is going completely off these books which means he will have the ending be similar as well. I wont be surprised to see a Jon/Arya ending.

[Starkz]

37 minutes ago, miyuki said:

This is interesting... but if ASoIaF really is a ripoff, why hasn't there been a widespread controversy already?

I wouldn’t say it’s a rip off but 90% of it is based of Tad Williams series and spun around to be slightly different and the author is apparently okay with this. It’s an interesting read through to see all the similarities and how Tad ended his books compared to the direction ASOIAF is heading in. In George’s original outline he had the pairing of Arya/Jon and I think this revelation gives it even more plausibility and hints at the ending George had originally drafted. Whether or not he’s changed it we can’t be sure.

[sweetsunray]

46 minutes ago, Starkz said:

It’s interesting to see how much GRRM ASOIAF is exactly like this trilogy. With GRRM original outline of Arya/Jon it’s seems very likely he is going completely off these books which means he will have the ending be similar as well. I wont be surprised to see a Jon/Arya ending.

GRRM's endng was blacked out. And no, in MST, Miri and Simon didn't grow up as half-siblings, nor are they first cousins. 

[sweetsunray]

57 minutes ago, Starkz said:

I wouldn’t say it’s a rip off but 90% of it is based of Tad Williams series and spun around to be slightly different and the author is apparently okay with this. It’s an interesting read through to see all the similarities and how Tad ended his books compared to the direction ASOIAF is heading in. In George’s original outline he had the pairing of Arya/Jon and I think this revelation gives it even more plausibility and hints at the ending George had originally drafted. Whether or not he’s changed it we can’t be sure.

Yeah, sure, so interesting that the reddit poster had  to include "long descriptions of food" as a comparison  

ETA: If 90% of it was based on MST, Jon would have grown up as a kitchen boy alongside Myrcella in the Red Keep. And then Myrcella would run off with him together after her brother Joffrey gets the throne. 

[corbon]

1 hour ago, Starkz said:

I wouldn’t say it’s a rip off but 90% of it is based of Tad Williams series and spun around to be slightly different 

You are aware that they are both taking themes from various cultural mythologies, right?

I read MST a long long time ago, but didn't find ASoIaF to be very similar at all. There are a few very, very superficial similarities...

[The Mother of The Others]

TAD!

I like how he handled his big evil gods & mole people in dat Shadowmarch series.   Made me incredibly horny.   As does this news that his mythos and George's are touching each other like the roots of Essosi and Westerosi weirs under the sea.

[Daendrew]

1 hour ago, The Mother of The Others said:

TAD!

I like how he handled his big evil gods & mole people in dat Shadowmarch series.   Made me incredibly horny.   As does this news that his mythos and George's are touching each other like the roots of Essosi and Westerosi weirs under the sea.

Mole people made you horny? Say what? 

Different strokes I guess.

[SeanF]

George Martin has never denied that Tad Williams has been a big influence on him.

But, there are very big differences in the plot, characterisation, and structure  of ASOIAF and MST.

Jon Snow and Daenerys are very different characters to Simon and Miriamelle.

 

 

[JNR]

23 hours ago, Starkz said:

Everyone should give this whole thread a read through and please tell me your opinions/thoughts on this.

I think the most important point is evident immediately in the thread:

Quote

I read this book series entitled Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn, and Game of Thrones is a complete rip-off of it. So many similarities it is almost like a incest loving fan fic. There’s a Storm King (Night King) who brings the winter and wants to wipe out mankind.

This was written about the HBO series called Game of Thrones... not ASOIAF.  The creator of the thread does not even seem to have read ASOIAF.

Notice, for instance, that in ASOIAF, the phrase "Storm King" means "historical ruler of the Stormlands in the southeast of Westeros."  It does not mean "entity who brings the winter and wants to wipe out mankind." 

In ASOIAF, in fact, there is no demonstrable leader of the Others of any sort, except in the imaginations of red priests like Melisandre and Moqorro.  Night King is only a mythological human being who lived thousands of years before, and who so far from leading the Others, supposedly made submissive sacrifices to the Others.

Personally, I find ASOIAF and MST vastly different in tone and content.  The most blatant similarity across the two series IMO is a red comet, which in both cases is interpreted in different ways by different people, none of whom have the scientific foundation to understand objective reality.

As for this:

23 hours ago, Starkz said:

George’s original outline of Arya/Jon

Bear in mind that in that original outline, ASOIAF was going to be exactly three books long... each book was going to be "700 to 800 manuscript pages" long... Robb was killed in battle... Tyrion besieged and burned Winterfell... Benjen was LC... Catelyn ran to the Wall for safety with Arya, then went north and hung out with Mance and finally was murdered by the Others... and Jaime became king after Joffrey "by the simple expedient of killing everyone ahead of him in the line of succession and blaming his brother Tyrion."

Needless to say, GRRM's thinking has evolved just a tad since 1993.

[Starkz]

18 hours ago, sweetsunray said:

GRRM's endng was blacked out. And no, in MST, Miri and Simon didn't grow up as half-siblings, nor are they first cousins. 

Tad has a character who pretends to be a boy and goes by the name Marya. George creates a character called Arya who pretends to be a boy.  “Marya” ends up with Simon, Arya ends up with Jon Snow. Both Jon and Simon have secret Kings blood and fight the mystical winter creatures. You see the correlation don’t you?

[John Suburbs]

23 hours ago, Starkz said:

Everyone should give this whole thread a read through and please tell me your opinions/thoughts on this.

 

 

Read the tale of Pyramus and Thisbe in Ovid's Metamorphoses and see if it doesn't remind you of another famous play about star-crossed lovers. Then watch West Side Story and see if it doesn't do the same.

Watch Wagner's Dei Ring des Nebelungen and see if the tale of gods, elves, giants and humans struggling over a magic ring of ultimate power doesn't remind you of a similar epic tale.

Some people look at Moby Dick and say it was Macbeth or King Lear on a boat.

Mary Shelley literally subtitled Frankenstein as "the modern Prometheus."

The Magnificent Seven is pretty much The Seven Samurai, as is the Guns of Navarone.

And pretty much all of the epic heroic poems by Greek and Roman authors were rip-offs of the original: Gilgamesh. And Gilgamesh itself was probably ripped off from earlier works that are now lost, or from oral traditions.

It's called literary adaptation. It happens all the time.

 

 

[sweetsunray]

4 hours ago, Starkz said:

Tad has a character who pretends to be a boy and goes by the name Marya. George creates a character called Arya who pretends to be a boy.  “Marya” ends up with Simon, Arya ends up with Jon Snow. Both Jon and Simon have secret Kings blood and fight the mystical winter creatures. You see the correlation don’t you?

George has been written Aryas since the 70s. Marya pretends to be a boy to make it out of the castle and to reach her uncle Joshua. But she's no tomboy, nor interested in learning to handle a sword. That said, Marya was one of the first fleshed out female POV characters in decades of fantasy that almost always was written with male protagonists. WoT introduced female protagonists too, many more, but they were barely realistic imo. Marya was complex, real to me. But no, I do not think of her as Arya whatsoever.  And I have read MST since it was published every few years. 

[The Map Guy]

You guys know there is already a Marya in ASOIAF ... Davos' wife.

Anyways, did the original AGOT draft have Jon marrying Arya? Or just them liking each other?
Arya is suppose to be the closest thing that reminds Ned of his sister Lyanna ... wolfsblood
Perhaps in the original draft, GRRM was intending to get the R+L=J foreshadowing-ball rolling early

[Wolf's Bane]

I have read the first book in SMT.  It too was brutal.  Okay though.  It is much easier to enjoy your experience if you keep your thoughts within the pages.  Take each in isolation and you will enjoy.

[Lord Varys]

George may have ended up telling his own story, but the basic setting of his world and his story (if broken down to a short outline or summary) and quite a few characters and their qualities are remarkably similar.

Osten Ard is to Westeros what Middle-earth was to Shannara - with the difference that Terry Brooks isn't George R. R. Martin.

George made a great work out of his story once he started it - but the basic setting and setup of his story is actually very derivatory. George's own input often revolves around polishing or changing the original setup, not so much about coming up with truly original ideas or themes.

[Frey family reunion]

On 8/13/2019 at 10:33 AM, John Suburbs said:

Read the tale of Pyramus and Thisbe in Ovid's Metamorphoses and see if it doesn't remind you of another famous play about star-crossed lovers. Then watch West Side Story and see if it doesn't do the same.

To be fair, Shakespeare doesn't run from the comparison.  Fairly soon after he wrote R + J (heh) he writes A Midsummer's Night dream, and the tale of Pyramus and Thisbe was the play being performed in that play.  GRRM also is probably referencing Pyramus and Thisbe and AMND when he writes of  the blue flower growing from the "chink in the wall" of ice.  

On 8/13/2019 at 10:33 AM, John Suburbs said:

Watch Wagner's Dei Ring des Nebelungen and see if the tale of gods, elves, giants and humans struggling over a magic ring of ultimate power doesn't remind you of a similar epic tale.

And Wagner's Ring cycle in turn is referencing the Norse Volsunga Saga.  My suspicion is that all three are also major influences on GRRM. (by the way, it's my understanding that Tolkien always denied that Wagner's Ring cycle was much of an inspiration, always claiming he was inspired by the original Norse tales.)

When GRRM started writing AGOT, Tad Williams and Robert Jordan had already made a good deal of money with their massive epic fantasy series.  Probably enough money for a life long sci-fi writer to try his hand at the genre.  So I think it's very evident that GRRM was closely following their lead, while putting his own unique (dare I say sci-fi) take on the genre.