Heresy 227 and the Great Turtle

[JNR]

13 hours ago, Feather Crystal said:

GRRM posted more excited updates about The Long Night (Bloodmoon) than any of the other pilots. Clearly he was invested in the kind of story that was being proposed.

An interesting point, but not one I'd deny. 

In fact I made it myself, earlier, in wondering why GRRM would want to play ball with a story that almost certainly couldn't be true to Book World, or anywhere even close.

However, GRRM's appreciation of whatever it was clearly doesn't agree with HBO's.  I suspect HBO has the right of this matter, and that it would have been a turd. 

(I'm also not sure any prequel could avoid being a turd... with the possible exception of Dunk and Egg, because I've read actual D&E canon, and it's pretty good.)

Also, although this is a subtle point, GRRM clearly did not like the title Bloodmoon.  He preferred The Long Night as title of choice. 

This doesn't surprise me, because the phrase "Long Night" is canonical, "Bloodmoon" is not (and sounds like a hokey Twilight book)... and in fact, I doubt it was even possible to see the moon during the canonical Long Night.  So we know even GRRM had his reservations about how Bloodmoon was shaping up creatively.

[JNR]

18 minutes ago, JNR said:

(I'm also not sure any prequel could avoid being a turd... with the possible exception of Dunk and Egg, because I've read actual D&E canon, and it's pretty good.)

This reminds me that GRRM doesn't like the idea of a D&E series simply because there isn't enough canon.

But seriously, there's already more canon of D&E than there is for House of Dragons or Bloodmoon.  What a maester wrote about Targs in a book (example: Fire and Blood) is not even close to a true, canonical account featuring word-for-word dialogue and unimpeachable plotting such as you find in the D&E stories.

So the writers of all the prequels are having to fill in a ton of blanks anyway.  They are all taking huge risks right from day one.

This is exactly why they all need some exceedingly good analysts to help them out.  Because if they guess poorly, they're just going to recreate the situation D&D created in the second half of GOT... in which the fans look at the design and know immediately that it's bullshit and laugh it off, even though they don't know the truth.

I also recall that GRRM predicted in season one of the show that by the end of its run, there would be spectacular differences compared to his books.  Then he said that over and over and over, for years after that.  How did he know that would happen, back in 2011?

Answer: He could see D&D were already guessing wrong, in season one, in basic ways... and he knew he wasn't going to correct them.  The best he could hope for was that it would still satisfy himself and the fans.  But that hope was not borne out.

[Lord Aegon The Compromiser]

It's worth considering that GRRM was "more excited about" and talked about Bloodmoon more because it was further along in development. It had a pilot, House of the Dragon was ordered straight to series.

[JNR]

16 hours ago, Lord Aegon The Compromiser said:

It's worth considering that GRRM was "more excited about" and talked about Bloodmoon more because it was further along in development.

It's possible. He did however like Jane Goldman too, and thought well of the actors who were on board.

What he's said was pretty typically evasive:

Quote

I do not know why HBO decided not to go to series on this one, but I do not think it had to do with House of the Dragon.

Not sure what to make of that. 

He may not have the complete story, since he doesn't work at HBO... but he's bound to know more than he says there.  He's surely communicated with Goldman about it, and she was there when HBO dropped the axe.

Doesn't matter, in the end. House of the Dragon is a really strange project -- a family of dark lords from an author who famously hates dark lords, as symbolized by a fantasy animal he also considers a cliche and nearly decided not to include in ASOIAF at all. So I don't think I'll be watching it.

[Brad Stark]

On 11/5/2019 at 4:44 PM, Black Crow said:

I think that there's going to be a fairly fundamental problem with the Targaryen series in the potential time-span. In his original synopsis for ASOIF said that it was going to be a generational thing; following the children of Winterfell as they grew up and shaped or were shaped by the world around them. While the Mummers may have failed spectacularly they did indeed follow this basic premise and casualties aside the major characters in the last episode were met in the first.

Is House of the Dragon going to be similarly confined but set 200 years before AGoT or is it going to be a chronicle of House targaryen through the ages?

Part of why GoT failed is people got tired of it and wanted to move on. 

If this were my project, I'd set each season as it's own time period with it's own set of actors.  No one from season 1 is allowed to continue as there character for season 2.  Unlike GoT, actual canon is smaller than show scripts if this were stretched out.   Of course, that means you need some great writers, but a whole season from the conquest to Maegor's death gives opportunities for other stories not in canon.

[JNR]

It occurs to me that we have a possible explanation for a mystery we've discussed before: why GRRM oddly did an about-face a few years ago, and suddenly became fascinated with Targs, to the point of writing all this fake history.

It now seems likely to me that he had been told, at that point, that HBO would be interested in seeing more such shows developed from the same franchise.

So he simply got busy manufacturing raw show material.  And now there's a big pile, with another big pile promised.

Well... I never bought or read any of it because the subject matter didn't interest me and I knew it wasn't relevant to ASOIAF. At this point, I'm still not interested, and HOD isn't relevant to ASOIAF any more than the fake history, and it doesn't even seem like the HBO project will be true to the fake history.

Finally, it crosses my mind that HOD fans are probably going to be called "HODors." 

Yet another reason to give the show a miss...

[Melifeather]

3 hours ago, JNR said:

Finally, it crosses my mind that HOD fans are probably going to be called "HODors." 

Har! Clever!

I actually think its more the other way around. I think HBO took note of the criticism of the last few seasons of GoT and wanted something based off of already written canon.

GRRM filled out the Targaryen tree, because he could without giving away any spoilers.

[JNR]

36 minutes ago, Feather Crystal said:

I actually think its more the other way around. I think HBO took note of the criticism of the last few seasons of GoT and wanted something based off of already written canon.

Maybe, but here's why I think not:

1. GRRM was planning to do another Dunk and Egg novella -- "She-Wolves of Winterfell" -- in 2011 for an anthology called Dangerous Women.

Then all of a sudden... he dropped it completely.   And instead Dangerous Women featured.... wait for it... fake Targ history (PatQ). He's never written "She-Wolves" in the eight years since then, either.

That's a pretty blatant shift from canon to non-canon, and it happened around 2012-2013, which is also when the show was clearly doing pretty well.

2. Fire and Blood, like the novellas, is not canon. It's just a maester writing what GRRM calls "fake history."   The maester wasn't there and hence is not a POV, such as we find in the actual canon.

HBO can use the two volumes as a rough guide to do a Targy show, but it isn't really written in literal dialogue and Hollywoodian scenes that involve different perspectives, as the true canon is.  

That makes it an even uglier transition to HBO than the canon.  The writers will have to fill in even more blanks, guess even more often, and they are bound to get it obviously and ludicrously wrong even more than D&D did.  (I just have to laugh at that concept.)

3. Finally, GRRM doing two volumes of Fire and Blood is just... crazy. 

I can't think of any plausible explanation for him to generate so much intensely boring content, at the direct expense of time he might have spent writing ASOIAF and D&E, except to cut deals with HBO.

[divica]

19 minutes ago, JNR said:

Maybe, but here's why I think not:

1. GRRM was planning to do another Dunk and Egg novella -- "She-Wolves of Winterfell" -- in 2011 for an anthology called Dangerous Women.

Then all of a sudden... he dropped it completely.   And instead Dangerous Women featured.... wait for it... fake Targ history (PatQ). He's never written "She-Wolves" in the eight years since then, either.

That's a pretty blatant shift from canon to non-canon, and it happened around 2012-2013, which is also when the show was clearly doing pretty well.

2. Fire and Blood, like the novellas, is not canon. It's just a maester writing what GRRM calls "fake history."   The maester wasn't there and hence is not a POV, such as we find in the actual canon.

HBO can use the two volumes as a rough guide to do a Targy show, but it isn't really written in literal dialogue and Hollywoodian scenes that involve different perspectives, as the true canon is.  

That makes it an even uglier transition to HBO than the canon.  The writers will have to fill in even more blanks, guess even more often, and they are bound to get it obviously and ludicrously wrong even more than D&D did.  (I just have to laugh at that concept.)

3. Finally, GRRM doing two volumes of Fire and Blood is just... crazy. 

I can't think of any plausible explanation for him to generate so much intensely boring content, at the direct expense of time he might have spent writing ASOIAF and D&E, except to cut deals with HBO.

well I think you are forgeting that as he wroter asoiaf and D&E he also developed the story of the targs like the blackfyre rebelions and the conflicts with the faith and dorne or the death of dragons… It isn t strange that along the way he decided to write it to make it canon for him. And the show also created a lot of interest in the targs that might have influenced him...

 

It is easier to adapt something they already know the key events than something unwritten. They just have to write dialogues and create scenes that fit what they already know has to happen in the future.

 

In regards to 2 volumes of FaB I agree, D&E start 90 years before asoiaf and they also talk about events in their recent past. There isn t a reason to write a second FaB instead of a bunch of D&E novels...

[Melifeather]

55 minutes ago, JNR said:

Then all of a sudden... he dropped it completely.   And instead Dangerous Women featured.... wait for it... fake Targ history (PatQ). He's never written "She-Wolves" in the eight years since then, either.

She-Wolves might be too spoilerish for ASOIAF. The plot is a Dance of Dragon’s like fight over inheritance of Winterfell. It will feature Ser Duncan the Tall and his squire Egg, who will meet "the She-Wolves": a group of formidable Stark wives, widows, mothers and grandmothers. Four may be widows of previous Lords of Winterfell, and one the current Lady Stark whose husband Beron Stark is dying from a wound taken while fighting Ironborn.

[Lord Aegon The Compromiser]

6 hours ago, JNR said:

Maybe, but here's why I think not:

1. GRRM was planning to do another Dunk and Egg novella -- "She-Wolves of Winterfell" -- in 2011 for an anthology called Dangerous Women.

Then all of a sudden... he dropped it completely.   And instead Dangerous Women featured.... wait for it... fake Targ history (PatQ). He's never written "She-Wolves" in the eight years since then, either.

That's a pretty blatant shift from canon to non-canon, and it happened around 2012-2013, which is also when the show was clearly doing pretty well.

2. Fire and Blood, like the novellas, is not canon. It's just a maester writing what GRRM calls "fake history."   The maester wasn't there and hence is not a POV, such as we find in the actual canon.

HBO can use the two volumes as a rough guide to do a Targy show, but it isn't really written in literal dialogue and Hollywoodian scenes that involve different perspectives, as the true canon is.  

That makes it an even uglier transition to HBO than the canon.  The writers will have to fill in even more blanks, guess even more often, and they are bound to get it obviously and ludicrously wrong even more than D&D did.  (I just have to laugh at that concept.)

3. Finally, GRRM doing two volumes of Fire and Blood is just... crazy. 

I can't think of any plausible explanation for him to generate so much intensely boring content, at the direct expense of time he might have spent writing ASOIAF and D&E, except to cut deals with HBO.

Can any conclusion be reached that isn't "George RR Martin gives zero f*cks whether or not he finishes ASOIAF"?

Because that's all I've heard in my head since the news he was writing the World Book. 

[JNR]

19 hours ago, divica said:

It isn t strange that along the way he decided to write it to make it canon for him.

What's strange is that he would drop planned Dunk and Egg content, for eight years, in favor of this stuff. 

GRRM calls it fake history for a reason -- that's what it is.  Most of Heresy couldn't even get through all the Targ stuff in the World book, never mind all this crap.

And it's not canon; it's not even really what I would call fiction. It's just a summary of what might become fiction, that was written in a maester's voice so it could be published.

19 hours ago, divica said:

And the show also created a lot of interest in the targs that might have influenced him...

Yes, this is about HBO and probably always has been.

18 hours ago, Feather Crystal said:

She-Wolves might be too spoilerish for ASOIAF.

If that were true, GRRM would never have planned to write She-Wolves as late as 2011 in the first place. He certainly knew in 2011 that he was nowhere near being finished with ASOIAF

And he'd already turned out three D&E novellas at that point. I think he was up to writing a fourth without spoiling ASOIAF.

13 hours ago, Lord Aegon The Compromiser said:

Can any conclusion be reached that isn't "George RR Martin gives zero f*cks whether or not he finishes ASOIAF"?

Well, to be fair to him, all those sample chapters from TWOW -- about 1/7th of the whole book -- required serious effort on his part and conclusively prove to me that he is serious about finishing and always has been.

I just don't think he is serious about what that means.  He shows every sign in those sample chapters of falling back on his old habits -- letting the story grow spontaneously -- instead of focusing on the essentials and writing them in an efficient way. 

If he keeps that up, it means letting ASOIAF go to eight books.  And if that happens, he will probably not finish.

I wonder if he really sees that, or if he is simply telling himself it won't happen... much like he told himself for years that he would not allow the show to pass his narrative.

[Black Crow]

There could be a really simple reason for all of this. GRRM has a bit of a task in front of him in that ASoIF is more than the game of thrones, which in reality fizzled out back when the Lannisters cut off Lord Eddard's head. You can write a seguel to that event easily enough. GRRM outlines it in his original synopsis. The difficulty revolves around the horror from the north and the Stark version of the Musgrave ritual. Not straightforward. Having decided that he couldn't resolve it before the Mummers' version had run its course - and perhaps disliking the way it was turning out - he put on the brakes. She-Wolves and anything else which would spoil his outcome for ASoIF goes on hold and in the meantime the harmless Targ spin off keeps him writing.

[St Daga]

7 minutes ago, Black Crow said:

The difficulty revolves around the horror from the north and the Stark version of the Musgrave ritual. Not straightforward. Having decided that he couldn't resolve it before the Mummers' version had run its course - and perhaps disliking the way it was turning out - he put on the brakes. She-Wolves and anything else which would spoil his outcome for ASoIF goes on hold and in the meantime the harmless Targ spin off keeps him writing.

One thing that GRRM did say about working on Fire and Blood was that it reignited his interest in the world of Westeros, and for that I am glad. It was also a clue about disengaged he was prior to that, which is really sad.  However, all the Targaryen backstory in F&B also serves to distract him, and he doesn't need that. My hope was that he was trying to outlast the show, AND then give us Winds. He can pretty much flip off d&d and take the story where he wants/needs it to be without giving them any more material to butcher. However, now that this House of the Dragon show has been given a green light, I fear this will just be more of a distraction for our author. Even if Winds is close to being finished (are we not about 6 months away from potentially imprisoning him in New Zealand if it's not?) he still needs to work on Dream of Spring. HotD will only deflect and distract him from his task of finishing ASOIAF. This whole mess feels pretty hopeless! 

[Lord Aegon The Compromiser]

4 hours ago, JNR said:

What's strange is that he would drop planned Dunk and Egg content, for eight years, in favor of this stuff. 

GRRM calls it fake history for a reason -- that's what it is.  Most of Heresy couldn't even get through all the Targ stuff in the World book, never mind all this crap.

And it's not canon; it's not even really what I would call fiction. It's just a summary of what might become fiction, that was written in a maester's voice so it could be published.

Yes, this is about HBO and probably always has been.

If that were true, GRRM would never have planned to write She-Wolves as late as 2011 in the first place. He certainly knew in 2011 that he was nowhere near being finished with ASOIAF

And he'd already turned out three D&E novellas at that point. I think he was up to writing a fourth without spoiling ASOIAF.

Well, to be fair to him, all those sample chapters from TWOW -- about 1/7th of the whole book -- required serious effort on his part and conclusively prove to me that he is serious about finishing and always has been.

I just don't think he is serious about what that means.  He shows every sign in those sample chapters of falling back on his old habits -- letting the story grow spontaneously -- instead of focusing on the essentials and writing them in an efficient way. 

If he keeps that up, it means letting ASOIAF go to eight books.  And if that happens, he will probably not finish.

I wonder if he really sees that, or if he is simply telling himself it won't happen... much like he told himself for years that he would not allow the show to pass his narrative.

Yeah, but he just lets years and years pass by. It's been 8 1/2 years since he delivered Dance. A delivery that resulted in him already having 100-200 pages of TWOW written. He then didn't even write again for over a year after that. He has then spent 7+ years mostly either traveling somewhere or writing something other than TWOW. If he was serious about sitting down and writing ASOIAF, he could have delivered three or four 1500 manuscript page books since ADWD by now. 

[Lord Aegon The Compromiser]

1 hour ago, St Daga said:

One thing that GRRM did say about working on Fire and Blood was that it reignited his interest in the world of Westeros, and for that I am glad. It was also a clue about disengaged he was prior to that, which is really sad.  However, all the Targaryen backstory in F&B also serves to distract him, and he doesn't need that. My hope was that he was trying to outlast the show, AND then give us Winds. He can pretty much flip off d&d and take the story where he wants/needs it to be without giving them any more material to butcher. However, now that this House of the Dragon show has been given a green light, I fear this will just be more of a distraction for our author. Even if Winds is close to being finished (are we not about 6 months away from potentially imprisoning him in New Zealand if it's not?) he still needs to work on Dream of Spring. HotD will only deflect and distract him from his task of finishing ASOIAF. This whole mess feels pretty hopeless! 

Not to mention that he almost certainly needs an 8th book to finish. Maybe a 9th.

[Melifeather]

23 hours ago, JNR said:

If that were true, GRRM would never have planned to write She-Wolves as late as 2011 in the first place. He certainly knew in 2011 that he was nowhere near being finished with ASOIAF

We’ve debated the idea of an overthrow involving Winterfell before and I suspect “She-Wolves” tells that story in detail. And if that story is spoilerish, then the succession crisis is tied somehow to the current story and the threat coming from the north. It’s possible the Starks will be distressed by their origin story - the secrets that Winterfell “forgot”, but that the North “remembers”.

[JNR]

11 minutes ago, Feather Crystal said:

We’ve debated the idea of an overthrow involving Winterfell before and I suspect “She-Wolves” tells that story in detail. And if that story is spoilerish

Why would the world's cagiest writer have planned to spoil his own book series in a D&E story?

But even if you imagine he did, it's still peculiar he would switch to fake history, of all things, knowing it would bore his readers.  As it has bored us -- here's what The Times' review had to say:

Quote

Essentially, it is all one long synopsis for about 50 books that he will never get around to writing, which itself has only been written because he can’t get around to writing the other two Game of Thrones books that his fans are waiting for. Worse still, after a doorstop of a thing, we’re still a century and a half short of GoT even beginning, which means there’s another volume of this interminable, self-indulgent crap to come.

I think he switched to fake history because it's exactly what it says above: it's just a synopsis of fiction.  Which is much simpler to write than actual fiction. GRRM knew he could turn it out easily, and then use it to help sell one or more prequels. Fire and Blood, vols I and II, is just more of the same thing he started doing then.

The boldfaced also reminds us that HBO still doesn't even have all the necessary info, or anywhere close. As they did with GOT, they are launching a series on the assumption GRRM will provide key info later, and if he doesn't, they will just have to make it up. 

 

[JNR]

21 hours ago, Black Crow said:

Having decided that he couldn't resolve it before the Mummers' version had run its course - and perhaps disliking the way it was turning out - he put on the brakes.

In other words, first he planned in 2011 to spoil ASOIAF in a D&E story... then months later, he realized he didn't want to spoil ASOIAF... so in 2012 he decided D&D were definitely going to beat him to the end of ASOIAF... and then for years after that, he blatantly and repeatedly lied to the public, claiming that he was stiill going to beat D&D, even though he knew he couldn't possibly beat them.

Yeah, I've got my doubts.

19 hours ago, Lord Aegon The Compromiser said:

Yeah, but he just lets years and years pass by. It's been 8 1/2 years since he delivered Dance.

Ah, I see, we basically agree. I think he really wants to finish ASOIAF (is seriously interested in being finished) but is in some sort of denial about his power to do so based on current trends.

But he isn't serious about execution of his plan. His decisions don't lead to that outcome by anything resembling a seriously logical path.

[Melifeather]

I think the reason why it’s taking GRRM so long to complete Winds is because of the way he’s writing it.

Beginning with Feast he started inserting titled chapters, which I believe tell two stories with one hidden among parallels, metaphors, and symbolism. And apparently it’s a feature that he intends to continue if The Foresaken is any indication. It must be insanely difficult to write this way! Ironic too, because deciphering the chapters is similar to interpreting flames! You may see a young girl fleeing a marriage on a dying horse, but is she Jon’s sister? Oh wait, she isn’t the sister he was expecting, but she’s still a relative and also fleeing a forced marriage... 

The provided example was of course Melisandre’s vision and it materialized when Alys Karstark arrived at the Wall. There are multiple prophets in the story - not just Melisandre - there’s Patchface and the woods witch too, but GRRM has provided the means for the reader to also become a prophet should you decide to study the titled chapters.

You can, of course, read and enjoy the series without interpreting the hidden story, but you’re missing out on a fuller explanation of historic events and how it applies to the current story, as well as a fuller understanding of what Bloodraven has been up to, and what he’s training Bran to do.

The repetitive nature of history is the mechanism that demonstrates that “time” is being manipulated to “undo” past “wrongs”. The knowledge that history repeats and having the foresight to capitalize on that fact, is in itself a kind of power. Mankind has the tendency to repeat the same mistakes generation after generation. It’s truly the definition of insanity to keep doing the same things and then to expect a different outcome.

What Bloodraven has done was to make a slight correction in alignment so that the historic events happen to different people. Did he know that Dany would still hatch her dragon eggs thereby breaking the wheel, and send history careening into reverse? I think he did. Leaf’s words to Bran indicate that they know what the future holds.