How the Five-Year Gap Would Have Changed ASOIAF

[Takiedevushkikakzvezdy]

6 minutes ago, Lord Varys said:

Tyrion could have had another tragic romance that ended badly just before the beginning of the book, giving him another heartache the reader had no clue about.

Come to think of it, people almost never talk about Tyrion in the context of the 5- year gap. What would he have done for five years? Wandered around in Essos?

[Nevets]

6 hours ago, The Bard of Banefort said:

This is why I think George should retcon the ages. He doesn’t even have to worry about doing it himself, he can just hire an assistant to handle it. 

There’s still the problem of training periods for characters like Bran and Sam, and the dragons. But as long as the dragons are big enough to carry someone on their back, it doesn’t really matter if they aren’t fully grown.

Retconning the ages wouldn't work.  If you raise them more than a year or two, you run into problems with the early books.  The characters are written pretty much congruent with their ages. It's in the later books that it becomes a problem.

And some stories in the early books could get quite problematic.  Arya at Harrenhal at 10 is bad enough.  At 13+, it becomes untenable.  Sansa going to Cersei becomes really stupid at 14, and Tyrion's arguments against marriage because of her age are laughable at 16.  And that's just off the top of my head. 

Raising all the ages by a year would be helpful, but the effort it would take is probably more than it would be worth.  Essentially, a small increase is probably not worth the effort, and a large one would probably cause more problems than it solved. 

Edited March 21, 2022 by Nevets

[Curled Finger]

6 hours ago, Aejohn the Conqueroo said:

Can't help but think that Pretty Maris would have been Brienne in exile had the gap taken place.  That might have been an interesting tale. It's also why I think that if anyone gets killed in the care of LSH it will be her (as her second act has been given to another). I'm a big fan of Brienne, so if she's a casualty of the 5 year gap that's a strike against it for me.

One of the youtube guys I watch has some great ideas about who some of the characters in Essos are what GRRM intended for his 5 year gap.   Brienne becomes Pretty Maris, Sandor Clegane is Corpsekiller and you will just have to listen yourself to see who the Tattered Prince is thought to be.  Mercifully, we have Brienne as her young self as things turned out.  She is a great character.  

[SeanF]

I agree with Pretty Meris being intended to be Brienne after five years, stripped of any idealism, and now working as a professional torturer.

[Fool Stands On Giant’s Toe]

A thought is a seed planted. 

Some like to watch them grow and others just want the harvest.

Meh, mine rarely bare fruit. Whatever comes I’ll still be vexed.

Edited March 22, 2022 by Fool Stands On Giant’s Toe

[Takiedevushkikakzvezdy]

I feel like the show is the 5-year gap version of the story, in many ways.

[Aejohn the Conqueroo]

15 hours ago, Curled Finger said:

One of the youtube guys I watch has some great ideas about who some of the characters in Essos are what GRRM intended for his 5 year gap.   Brienne becomes Pretty Maris, Sandor Clegane is Corpsekiller and you will just have to listen yourself to see who the Tattered Prince is thought to be.  Mercifully, we have Brienne as her young self as things turned out.  She is a great character.  

I much prefer reading to listening, but my interest is piqued. Tatters is a compelling dude.  Got a link?

Couldn't wait and did some hunting.  That's Joe the Magician you're talking about, huh?  Very interesting theory of his. I kind of wish Martin  kept the gap now...

Edited March 22, 2022 by Aejohn the Conqueroo
update

[Curled Finger]

1 hour ago, Aejohn the Conqueroo said:

I much prefer reading to listening, but my interest is piqued. Tatters is a compelling dude.  Got a link?

Couldn't wait and did some hunting.  That's Joe the Magician you're talking about, huh?  Very interesting theory of his. I kind of wish Martin  kept the gap now...

You found it yourself.  I don't know if it's true or not, but I really dug Joe's take on it.  

[Aejohn the Conqueroo]

8 minutes ago, Curled Finger said:

You found it yourself.  I don't know if it's true or not, but I really dug Joe's take on it.  

Yeah I had to skip through to the payoff so I didn't get to hear much of his support. I'll give it a proper viewing later.  It's funny because on one hand it's moot, but at the same time these characters exist now and they have their own origins. I don't know how much to read into what might have happened to characters had the gap remained, but we do get a sort of preview of how the author originally intended these characters to develop by looking at their Esossi doppelgangers.

[The Bard of Banefort]

19 hours ago, Nevets said:

Retconning the ages wouldn't work.  If you raise them more than a year or two, you run into problems with the early books.  The characters are written pretty much congruent with their ages. It's in the later books that it becomes a problem.

And some stories in the early books could get quite problematic.  Arya at Harrenhal at 10 is bad enough.  At 13+, it becomes untenable.  Sansa going to Cersei becomes really stupid at 14, and Tyrion's arguments against marriage because of her age are laughable at 16.  And that's just off the top of my head. 

Raising all the ages by a year would be helpful, but the effort it would take is probably more than it would be worth.  Essentially, a small increase is probably not worth the effort, and a large one would probably cause more problems than it solved. 

I don’t think it would present too much of a dilemma. A sheltered 14-year-old girl with little experience of the real world trusting Cersei isn’t hard to imagine. Just look at Arianne, who, despite being a 23-year-old Empowered (TM) sex goddess comes across as more immature than either of the Stark girls, precisely because she hasn’t been forced to grow up as they have. And an older Arya at Harrenhal could still work when you consider that Sarella, who’s much older, has been able to pass as a boy.

Tyrion not wanting to marry Sansa is admittedly a bigger hurdle, but George is already pretty inconsistent about age/sex/marriage, which I talked about in (I think) the writing critique thread. Tyrion also appears to be the only one who thinks her age is a problem. Cat and Robb were upset about the marriage, but not because of her age, and Jon didn’t seem to think his 11-year-old sister was too young to be married to Ramsay.

[GMantis]

On 3/21/2022 at 4:38 AM, The Bard of Banefort said:

• (Side-note: by the time we see them in AFFC/ADWD, the Stark siblings are essentially written as if they are the ages they would be had George gone forward with the gap).

Not even remotely true. Just for an example, Sansa is considered still not old enough to marry in AFFC. Nor do any of them act like their age should be.

 

[GMantis]

On 3/22/2022 at 8:50 PM, The Bard of Banefort said:

Tyrion not wanting to marry Sansa is admittedly a bigger hurdle, but George is already pretty inconsistent about age/sex/marriage, which I talked about in (I think) the writing critique thread. Tyrion also appears to be the only one who thinks her age is a problem. Cat and Robb were upset about the marriage, but not because of her age, and Jon didn’t seem to think his 11-year-old sister was too young to be married to Ramsay.

Catelyn specifically arranged for Arya's marriage with Elmar to be delayed until she was 16. She certainly wouldn't believe that 12 is old enough for Sansa to marry. Not everything has to be stated directly to be clear to the reader, the horrified reaction of Catelyn is enough to express her feelings.

Jon outright calls Arya "still a child", so it's certainly incorrect that he doesn't think she's too young to marry.

[The Bard of Banefort]

1 hour ago, GMantis said:

Not even remotely true. Just for an example, Sansa is considered still not old enough to marry in AFFC. Nor do any of them act like their age should be.

 

She already is married in AFFC.

If I read the books without having any knowledge of what age the characters are supposed to be, I would think they were several years older than they are. And I’ve seen other people make this observation as well, so it isn’t just me.

[GMantis]

6 minutes ago, The Bard of Banefort said:

She already is married in AFFC.

She's married because Tywin who didn't give a damn about her well-being ordered her married. People who aren't in a hurry to steal her birthright don't think she's old enough to marry even at fourteen.

 

6 minutes ago, The Bard of Banefort said:

If I read the books without having any knowledge of what age the characters are supposed to be, I would think they were several years older than they are. And I’ve seen other people make this observation as well, so it isn’t just me.

Arya sometimes (not always) acts older than eleven, but certainly not sixteen. I don't agree at all with Sansa and Bran sounding older than they actually are.

The only exception are Sansa and Arya's sample chapters from TWOW, but they're likely barely edited from they were supposed to be set after the five year gap.

[Darryk]

I agree that Bran and Arya would benefit the most from it, but I would add Jon to the list of people who benefit. Five years makes him a more experienced Lord Commander who's potentially found out more about the White Walker threat.

I also agree Stannis would be the biggest problem. No sense for him to stay stuck at The Wall for five years.

I don't think Cersei would've been a problem, we don't need to see her toxic thought processes, we can easily imagine how bad her leadership would've been.

Ultimately I would've liked a five-year gap because I like epic stories that span years. That's one of the things I like about The Expanse.

[Takiedevushkikakzvezdy]

3 minutes ago, Darryk said:

I also agree Stannis would be the biggest problem. No sense for him to stay stuck at The Wall for five years.

Unless it's five years of failed military campaigns.

[BlackLightning]

I think the five-year-gap would've helped the story move faster (I don't think we can 100% say for sure that the story would be finished by now) but there would've been a lot of holes and missed opportunities that a lot of people -- critics, fans, casual readers -- would have taken issue with.

It would have been jarring.

I think the whole time jump concept is residue/proof of GRRM's time as a TV writer.

Big time jumps work in movies and sometimes in TV. On the first page, someone mentioned something along the lines that the bigger time jump, the more likely it is that you have to created a new character which means you have to spend more time developing or explaining this new character than if you did it all in real-time.

Outside of prologues and epilogues, I don't think huge time jumps work in books in general. Least of all in the middle of a story...and especially not after a series of events that were as explosive and controversial as the ones that happened at the end of A Storm of Swords.

With the way that Storm ended, a five-year-gap for most of the adult characters would have been -- at best -- very difficult to write coherently and stylistically. Like the only way a five-year-gap for northern Westeros with Jon, Stannis and the Boltons would have worked is if 1) Balon Greyjoy didn't die (off-screen) in the middle of Storm, 2) if Mance Rayder's army was more organized and/or bigger, and 3) if the Neck became so much more dangerous to travel through. In the case of the Watch, they probably would've needed a new, short-lived commander to assume control before Jon. In other words, that's A LOT.

It only would've worked for the Stark kids, Edric Dayne, Samwell Tarly and MAYBE Tyrion Lannister. It sure as hell would not have worked for UnCat and the Brotherhood. And I don't even think it would work that well with Dany (too much exposition and her story is not standing still for that long....she has too many enemies) or fAegon (plot holes galore!)

On 3/20/2022 at 9:38 PM, The Bard of Banefort said:

Daenerys: (now 21) Possibly a controversial one, but Dany's story already begins in ADWD with us catching up on what went on in the time since her last chapter in ASOS. It would also give the dragons more time to grow, and would better explain Dany's weariness by the end of ADWD if she was already doing this for five years.

Now keep in mind this with Daenerys.

Her post-5-year-gap would have started with Daenerys IX not Daenerys I. Meaning the first Dany POV chapter that we would've gotten would've been the one where Dany leaves Meereen on dragonback not the one where she holds court and learns that Drogon has eaten a child. Allegedly.

In other words, most of Dany's story in the new version of A Dance with Dragons would've largely revolved around her time with the Dothraki.

On 3/21/2022 at 4:40 PM, Fool Stands On Giant’s Toe said:

I’ve heard him lament the lack of perspective of the story from the bottom of society. A slow swap of viewpoint to, commoners, peasants, and small folk could bridge a new gap. We all know GRRM is a tricky cheater! He could deal from the bottom of the deck.

Just made myself think of a ship and “below deck”…bah! 
I have other books to read Martin! (Shake fist at sky.) Why you gotta have me keep coming back!

This works. It's a really good idea.

I'm hearing about people talk about the series' lack of poor, working class or "middle-income" characters in a not-so-great light a lot recently.

However,

1. He already has lowborn characters as POVs. Granted, they are all self-made men and women, but they are of common birth. And Arya is the de facto commoner POV because she spends almost all of her time in this story living like or hanging around commoners.
2. I know GRRM really wanted a pre-gap interlude book with the Ironborn...and the Dornish kinda just fell into that idea. Would the new smallfolk POVs for that majority-Ironborn gap book? Or would they be incorporated into the main story by the time? People were already irritated at having new highborn characters in the mix, people dislike the travelogue and foodie passages, people were very bored by Brienne's story. Let's be honest; the life of the average highborn POVs is more interesting (thus, more writable) than the life of the average smallfolk POV. Particularly in terms of the food stuff because the smallfolk are likely consumed with thoughts about their last meal and their next meal. People would've been really bored.
3. What would the peasants and commoners be doing? Melisandre and Aeron (I know only Melisandre is lowborn but still...) cover the territory of sorcerers and clergymen. Sure, it wouldn't hurt to have a POV for the coup of the sparrows within the Faith. But in a series that is close to being widely considered bloated, is that a good thing? Is it necessary? Areo went from being a well-kept slave from a "strange-as-in-unknown" country to a deeply respected soldier within a country we know well. GRRM is almost definitely dropping the ball there what with all that subtext because, for the time being, he'd rather use Areo as a cameraman. But he's still there. Arys was an unassuming knight (re: servant) who fell in love with a noblewoman, made some silly decisions and died for it. He could've been a lowborn knight or sworn shield from anywhere or even someone's cook: not much would've changed at all. Sam is becoming an academic: which any lowborn could do but Sam had already been introduced as a POV for a reason. Plus, Sam already knows how to read and write; you'd have to create a story line where someone learns how to read and write. Speaking of the devil, Davos is a rags-to-riches, salt-of-the-earth politician and admiral. Granted, I'm not quite sure why we have so few Davos POV chapters, I'm not sure why we hardly hear about his family or upbringing and I'm also not quite sure why Stannis' theater of the story is so barebones (explaining why there is just not that much Davos) ...but there you have it. He's the quintessential lowborn POV but, I guess the issue is that he hasn't stayed lowborn? Jon and Sam are members of the Watch (which any lowborn can fulfill that role) and, with Jon, the whole "secret prince" and "rags-to-riches lord commander" can be done as a lowborn.

In other words, what would that look like?

The only place where I feel like there is any real room for a truly and consistently peasant POV is with the Faith (specifically from among the Silent Sisters, the sparrows...or both) or in Essos. But it would be hard for the Essos POV to not end up becoming an extension of the Dany POV.

 

[BlackLightning]

5 hours ago, Darryk said:

I don't think Cersei would've been a problem, we don't need to see her toxic thought processes, we can easily imagine how bad her leadership would've been.

Author: You know what, instead of writing or talking about it, I'll just let the readers imagine how bad her leadership would've been

Rest of the World: Bad writing.

[Takiedevushkikakzvezdy]

3 minutes ago, BlackLightning said:

Author: You know what, instead of writing or talking about it, I'll just let the readers imagine how bad her leadership would've been

Rest of the World: Bad writing.

Not necessarily. We don't need a POV, from, say, Joffrey to know that he was a horrible person and king.

[BlackLightning]

18 hours ago, Takiedevushkikakzvezdy said:

Not necessarily. We don't need a POV, from, say, Joffrey to know that he was a horrible person and king.

Right but we have always had POVs in King's Landing to illustrate the governance and management of these big plot events. We had POVs adjacent to Joffrey that dealt with the fact that Joffrey was a horrible person and king.

Not having a Cersei POV and leaving the ins and outs of her rule as Queen Regent to people's imagination is just like not having a Ned Stark POV in the first book or reading the next two books without Tyrion POV.

Just take a moment of silence to sit there and think of how much information is disseminated in the Ned and Tyrion POVs...

 

And then to leave it up to the reader's imagination?

Edited March 25, 2022 by BlackLightning