Have posters actually read the books?

[The Fattest Leech]

On 3/6/2020 at 3:09 AM, Ser Leftwich said:

With many threads posted in the last few years, I have to ask the question "Have the posters actually read the books?"   With a mostly anecdotal opinion, I would have to say, no. Posts are mostly not based on the text, period.  Mostly they are questions about the text based on erroneous ideas/'head-cannon" ideas (things that never actually happened), or are 'What Ifs' which are fan-fic discussions about what would be different, if AAA happened to have not died at time XXX and/or BBBB was left handed therefore the fight would have been different, or if Hoster ate mutton instead of beef at a meal before talking to Rickard, then the discussion was different and then would not have agreed to the marriage then ... AKA fan-fic. 

Analysis of what happened in the text seems to have gone away. Please try to bring it back.

1) Quote the text. (Multiple quotes from different parties/characters can help solidify an argument.)

If anyone reading this does not already know of the 'search site', here is a link, but use it wisely. Information overload is possible which leads to reductive theories that veer too far off course. For instance, not at "silver" is the same as it depends on who is using it, when, and why, and what does it mean in the world Martin created (real world need not apply in many cases).

https://asearchoficeandfire.com/

and for extra help there is the SSM's- So Spake Martin

https://cse.google.com/cse?cx=006888510641072775866:vm4n1jrzsdy

There are also plenty of GRRM interviews online in other places such as YouTube to get info straight from the tricksy birds beak.

On 3/6/2020 at 3:09 AM, Ser Leftwich said:

2) Please discuss what actually happen in the books, not 'head-cannon.' (Just like journalism, multiple quotes of an event/action makes it more likely to have actually happened.)

THIS is why I don't frequent this forum as much anymore. It is so filled with head-cannon, fanfiction, and plain ol' ridiculous hate threads started by admitted 'haters' that it is boring. Not unique, or deeper analysis, just plain ol' uberfan juvenile crap. Honestly it is a huge bummer because I still want to talk about ASOIAF as often as possible with other deep/meta thinkers, but that has changed, and hopefully it is just temporary.

If you "stan" a villain, then admit it and acknowledge what they are to the story and stan them anyway. That is perfectly fine. Everyone loves a good villain. But don't try the argument that the villain (to whatever shade of dark grey) isn't actually dark grey, and that everyone else is wrong. Same with the other extreme; ex; Eddard was actually morally corrupt. This series is about balance and we will have both very dark grey characters and light-grey characters. We DO have character villains growing as well as hot-tempers cooling.

Personally, I do not care one bit for "what-if" threads, because as mentioned already (and deftly handled by @Dorian Martell's son ) we would have a totally different story, and I prefer Martin's voice and trajectory perfectly fine as is. This isn't the type of series that many are used to, it's not plug-and-play with caradboard cutouts. This series has a purpose and specified ending.

On 3/6/2020 at 3:09 AM, Ser Leftwich said:

3) Give back up of quotes/ideas. (There are multiple POVs, it is often unsure as to what actually happened.)

4) Quote the text, again! (Yes, this needs to be repeated, because people don't get it. "Your idea/question/opinion is not clear to most other people on this forum, therefore you have to make it clear in six or seven different ways. Quote the text and explain what you mean.)

Agree. In addition, we all know that sometimes our ideas don't always come through on such a large platform as this. We also have regional/global differences in some meanings that may need to be clarified. Instead of knee-jerk arguing negatively with someone, moving goalposts, or strawmanning to appear "superior", just frickin' ask for more info.

As mentioned by others, I am sure a majority of this is because of the wait between the main series of books. TWOW just can't get here fast enough, but in the meantime there are Dunk & Egg books to catch up on, the World book, Fire & Blood if you want to expand your thoughts and ideas of ASOIAF as a whole.

Those who are biased are missing the point of the story and are going to be caught with their pants down. Oh well

I agree with @sweetsunray here:

In general, (pun intended) topics can be classified as

1. Which one is the better fighter: x or y?
2. What if ... ?
3. X was justified/not justified (aka morality threads)
4. Theories
   1. for potential answers to mysteries
   2. rethinking a mystery people believe to have been answered already
5. Predictions

[The Fattest Leech]

19 hours ago, Lyanna<3Rhaegar said:

Yeah, I'm not a fan of the 'what if' threads. I do think they are spawned from a lack of new info though. The most frustrating thing to me, as you said, is every thread turning into a Stark hate thread. 

I don't mind discussing things that have already been discussed though, especially if it's been long enough ago that I don't remember much of the previous discussion 

 

Haha. this often happens to me as well. Little bits of info slip my mind if they go too long without thought. I don't mind fresh takes on older topics because sometimes we do find new gems with new poster perspectives, or even new info from additions like Fire & Blood, as another example.

[The Fattest Leech]

 

Quote

And sure, the fact that we haven’t had a new book in almost 9 years plays a part. Most things have been discussed unto death. That said, though, there are still interesting convos to be had... there’s still much that we don’t know, much that hasn’t been confirmed, etc. And even if some of these topics have been done to death, like the Pink Letter, Jon’s parentage, and others, it is still possible to have interesting discussions about them. @three-eyed monkey had a few threads recently on old subjects that were great and interesting. More interesting is that he’s gonna be buying many drinks to yours truly, but that’s a different topic. 

Pffft! I have my own that will owe me (3+6+1+9+++=...) let's just say a nice round 36 pints It's all good, though.

 

 

[SeanF]

On 3/7/2020 at 1:38 AM, Lord Varys said:

Sure, and the best discussions seem to come about when people had the time to reread a book once or twice, i.e. mostly 1-3 years or so after it originally came out (or after they read it).

I'd say it was this way with AFfC and with ADwD.

Original reactions/discussion focus far too much on the actual plot and have people still cope with how the new book changed their expectance of the overall plot.

For example, if you check the discussions about Aegon shortly after ADwD came out then there was a pretty strong section of the fandom trying to view him only as some sort of failure that would quickly die - it took quite some time until most, if not all, people acknowledged that he might be a very crucial plot element for the remainder of the story. A similar thing happened with Euron back in AFfC.

The failure of the show helped me to understand just how important Aegon/Arianne are likely to be for the remainder of the story.  Keeping them out, meant that Cersei had to be kept in for far too long, and in very implausible ways.

[The Drunkard]

I for one think there is a clear lack of threads concerning Stannis and that the character has never had the volume of discussion it deserves.

[Ser Leftwich]

Not advocating for regulating the forum, just that "What If" topic go to 'Games' or elsewhere or are segregated. They are 99% of the time, not about the books. Period. They are about opinion, head-canon, and fanfic. However much insight it might give into characters (however biased and mitigated by discussion), they are fundamentally, not about the books.

More often than not, 'What if' topics are not about the books. Period. Your opinion about how heavy Robert's warhammer was and how much a dent it could make can have no bearing on the plot.

And, frankly, to no one in particular, stop with the "the black oily rocks made Euron warg into the kracken that will conquer King's Landing for Sheira Seastar, because they are magically both Urrathon Night-Walker" theories, you have no idea about how books work.

[Ser Leftwich]

Also, thanks to everyone participating in this meta-discussion.

[kissdbyfire]

11 hours ago, The Drunkard said:

I for one think there is a clear lack of threads concerning Stannis and that the character has never had the volume of discussion it deserves.

You can never have too many threads about Stannis; there’s no such thing.

[Putin]

39 minutes ago, Ser Leftwich said:

 

More often than not, 'What if' topics are not about the books. Period. Your opinion about how heavy Robert's warhammer was and how much a dent it could make can have no bearing on the plot

How dare you say that. 

Weight of Robert´s warhammer is the biggest mystery in ASOIAF universe , and cause of many sleepless nights I had.

I wake up thinking about it and go to bed thinking about it.

I slack at my job an every other activity because of it .

Hot woman passes by , but do I think about her desirable body ??? No instead I think about Robert Baratheon , man muscled like a maiden's fantasy , and wonder how huge muscles he has in order to lift that warhammer.

My soul will never be able to  rest in peace , without data about exact weight of Robert´s warhammer.

 

[John Suburbs]

On 3/6/2020 at 1:40 PM, Alyn Oakenfist said:

That would be the Rashomon effect but to be fair it's fairly underused. We never see a POV character see something else then what was happening, just them focusing on different details. Like we have Sam and Jon's conversation told from 2 different POV's but it is the same thing just with the focus on different things. It would be fun if in TWOW or ADOS we see characters seeing actually different things due to their own predispositions.

I dunno, it seems like many of the major events turned out to have a deeper truth that what originally appeared in the text: Jon's heritage, the Arryn murder, the Westerling Conspiracy . . . I think we will soon see that much of what has transpired so far is not what it seemed --particularly with Sansa, who tends to be clueless as to what is happening around her. And because she is clueless, the reader is clueless because they are seeing things through her eyes, not their own.

[OtherFromAnotherMother]

On 3/7/2020 at 11:35 AM, The Fattest Leech said:

Personally, I do not care one bit for "what-if" threads, because as mentioned already (and deftly handled by @Dorian Martell's son ) we would have a totally different story, and I prefer Martin's voice and trajectory perfectly fine as is. This isn't the type of series that many are used to, it's not plug-and-play with caradboard cutouts. This series has a purpose and specified ending.

I miss @Dorian Martell's son, and @Dorian Martell for that matter. 

[Lord Lannister]

Well I would argue that some people just want to come here for some casual discussion, not to write a thesis with a multiple citations for every paragraph. There's nothing wrong with that and attacking people because their posts don't meet your standards seems rather disingenuous to me. If what they type offends you so, there's a basic solution. We have an ignore feature to use.

To the larger scope of the problem that I think this thread is a symptom of, yes both the quality and quantity of posts on this board have been down. I know dang well I haven't been around near as much as I used to be. There's a lot of reasons for that. The way the show ended left a sour taste in a lot of people's mouths, every facet of the books has been dissected again and again by this point, speculation based on the show is down right discouraged with the odd way the board is set up(why do I have to go to the show forum to speculate how the books might end based on show info again? We needed a hybrid board for both), and so on.

Though I think the primary reason this board is declining is very simple: It's been nearly ten years since Martin has published an ASoIaF novel and we have no more idea when(or if) Martin will publish the next one now than we did the day after Dance came out.

If we see Dream of Spring(or even a publication date) I have no doubt we'll see a huge surge of activity and excitement on the board. Until then, the ship will keep slowly sinking as interest fades from lack of new material. We don't even have the show to.... look forward... to anymore.

[Therae]

On 3/7/2020 at 10:35 AM, The Fattest Leech said:

Personally, I do not care one bit for "what-if" threads, because as mentioned already (and deftly handled by @Dorian Martell's son ) we would have a totally different story, and I prefer Martin's voice and trajectory perfectly fine as is.

This.

I'd second @Ser Leftwich's suggestion about putting the What Ifs and suchlike into their own sub. Clearly a lot of folks enjoy them, but at least as many do not.

[Nagini's Neville]

On 9. März 2020 at 4:24 PM, John Suburbs said:

I think we will soon see that much of what has transpired so far is not what it seemed --particularly with Sansa, who tends to be clueless as to what is happening around her. And because she is clueless, the reader is clueless because they are seeing things through her eyes, not their own.

I don't think Sansa is clueless, just that she doesn't yell everything out for the reader. So the less perceptive readers might miss things, that Sansa actually knows/ is aware of, but chooses to not spell out for her self or the reader at the moment.

[Lyanna<3Rhaegar]

5 minutes ago, Nagini's Neville said:

I don't think Sansa is clueless, just that she doesn't yell everything out for the reader. So the less perceptive readers might miss things, that Sansa actually knows/ is aware of, but chooses to not spell out for her self or the reader at the moment.

I agree. She isn't clueless at all & I think has a very good grasp of what is going on around her. She is playing the part she needs to play, for the time being, in order to survive. But that doesn't indicate cluelessness, that indicates awareness. 

[Nagini's Neville]

On 8. März 2020 at 10:07 PM, Ser Leftwich said:

Not advocating for regulating the forum, just that "What If" topic go to 'Games' or elsewhere or are segregated.

That's a good idea. Why don't you purpose that? 

[Nagini's Neville]

On 8. März 2020 at 11:11 PM, Putin said:

Hot woman passes by , but do I think about her desirable body ??? No instead I think about Robert Baratheon , man muscled like a maiden's fantasy , and wonder how huge muscles he has in order to lift that warhammer.

My soul will never be able to  rest in peace , without data about exact weight of Robert´s warhammer.

We know, Ned, we know!

[AryaRegina]

Couldn't agree more, I created this account in 2014, but I've barely used it since every time I've tried to use this site more, I've encountered posts after posts of Anti-Arya content that made me wonder when those people last read her chapters.
Not liking Arya is fine, we can't all like the same characters, but dislike her for what actually happened in the books, or because of personal preference, and not for whatever fanon has twisted her into.
Sometimes it was even worse than Quora (and the "Asoiaf" content on there is basically GOT Jonsas answering ASOIAF questions with show only facts... so that's saying something)...
So more people using quotes to back up their statements would be lovely, and I'll get better about using quotes as well:)

 

[Davjos]

I agree completely with this sentiment. Personally I just feel I don’t have deep/creative enough analysis of the books to come up with any original “content” but I have been reading along with you all for a long time now. So I kinda feel like there’s nothing I can do about it.  
A lot of old schoolers and big contributors are responding to this thread. Maybe an idea is for them to revive their old OPs they loved from a while ago and see if new discussions arise. As stated before people forget and the participants change. Could be a good idea to get some of the post you talk about back on the front pages? I’d surely appreciate it

[kissdbyfire]

2 hours ago, AryaRegina said:

Couldn't agree more, I created this account in 2014, but I've barely used it since every time I've tried to use this site more, I've encountered posts after posts of Anti-Arya content that made me wonder when those people last read her chapters.
Not liking Arya is fine, we can't all like the same characters, but dislike her for what actually happened in the books, or because of personal preference, and not for whatever fanon has twisted her into.
Sometimes it was even worse than Quora (and the "Asoiaf" content on there is basically GOT Jonsas answering ASOIAF questions with show only facts... so that's saying something)...
So more people using quotes to back up their statements would be lovely, and I'll get better about using quotes as well:)

 

All very true. Sadly, there’s a trend to turn any thread into a Stark Hate Thread, and that certainly takes a lot of joy out of the whole experience. As you said, we all have our faves and characters we don’t really like that much. And that’s totally fine. That’s part of the beauty of the world Martin created, there’s something for everyone, and enough mysteries to keep us all busy. 

Funnily enough, you don’t see Stark fans viciously hating on Targs... I wonder why.

23 minutes ago, Davjos said:

I agree completely with this sentiment. Personally I just feel I don’t have deep/creative enough analysis of the books to come up with any original “content” but I have been reading along with you all for a long time now. So I kinda feel like there’s nothing I can do about it.  

Course there is something you can do about it! New topics don’t have to be hugely “creative”. As a matter of fact, sometimes too much creativity is a minus. That’s why we have all the insane fan fic, for instance. Leave creativity to Martin, and let’s get talking!

 

23 minutes ago, Davjos said:

A lot of old schoolers and big contributors are responding to this thread. Maybe an idea is for them to revive their old OPs they loved from a while ago and see if new discussions arise. As stated before people forget and the participants change. Could be a good idea to get some of the post you talk about back on the front pages? I’d surely appreciate it

Or we could go w/ members who think they’re not creative enough start a new topic for discussion. If it isn’t [yet] another dumb “Stark hate thread” I promise I’ll be there!