Your Unpopular ASOIAF Opinions/Hot Takes

[SeanBeanedMeUp]

8 hours ago, Nevets said:

It's not that surprising.  A couple of generations of bad luck, and you can whittle a decent size family down to nothing.  Early deaths, marriages that produce no offspring, unmarried offspring, too many girls, and your main line can go poof!  Then you're stuck going back several generations to find a branch, and it likely will have a minimal connection.

Look at any royal family tree and you will find lots of backtracking when the main line ends.  Admittedly, having several major families suffer it simultaneously is a bit much, but they did have a big war a few years back, and just finished another one.  So not too absurd.  Plus I expect GRRM is mainly giving us only the parts of family trees that are relevant to the story.

Yeah but before there should’ve been more than enough time for them to have at least a couple cadet branches.

5 hours ago, Alester Florent said:

 

Precisely.

Look at the last two generations of Starks. Rickard had four kids, of whom three were boys. Two of them died before producing (official) offspring and a third joined the Night's Watch, so only one was available to continue the Stark line. Then of Ned's children, one dies before having children, one is crippled and presumably rendered infertile, one joins the Night's Watch... 

Steffon Baratheon had three sons. More than enough to guarantee the succession, you'd have thought. But one of them had his children poisoned in utero by his wife, another one produced only one girl, and the third was murdered by his brother before he could have children. And sure, the circumstances in both the Starks' and Baratheons' case were exceptional, but it goes to show that it doesn't take much to whittle down what should be a healthy number of descedants to pretty much zero. And of course the same circumstances are affecting all these houses simultaneously! The Arryns and Starks took a lot of damage during Robert's rebellion and the buildup, and the Baratheons and Starks again during the WotFK. 

There are probably some cadet Starks from Artos's line. These would be third or fourth cousins of Robb's generation. But because succession can pass through the female line, they're just not relevant to the story. The only relevant Stark cadet branch is the Karstarks. Succession through the female line, though, that is relevant, and it comes up fairly frequently: Harry the Heir, of course, the Royces as potential successors to Robb, Sansa/Arya's claim to Winterfell, Daenerys's whole thing. 

 

And before that there should be more than enough time for these dynasties to establish cadet branches.

1 hour ago, Takiedevushkikakzvezdy said:

I mean, a story can only handle so many characters, and ASOIAF already has more characters than most stories.

George can always kill them off lol.

[Alester Florent]

1 hour ago, SeanBeanedMeUp said:

Yeah but before there should’ve been more than enough time for them to have at least a couple cadet branches.

And before that there should be more than enough time for these dynasties to establish cadet branches.

Sure, and they did. The Arryns of Gulltown, (probably) the descendants of Artos Stark, the Karstarks... It's just that most of these aren't relevant to the story, so they don't get much mention.

[SeanBeanedMeUp]

7 hours ago, Alester Florent said:

Sure, and they did. The Arryns of Gulltown, (probably) the descendants of Artos Stark, the Karstarks... It's just that most of these aren't relevant to the story, so they don't get much mention.

But issues like this weight the story down a bit because the worldbuilding issues just distract from the story overall.

[SaffronLady]

12 hours ago, SeanBeanedMeUp said:

But issues like this weight the story down a bit because the worldbuilding issues just distract from the story overall.

Oh I'm sure this doesn't distract the hypocrites who just want to bash the Starks for this or that reason.

[Craving Peaches]

13 hours ago, SeanBeanedMeUp said:

But issues like this weight the story down a bit because the worldbuilding issues just distract from the story overall.

Worldbuilding does distract a bit for me too, but it is more the scale issues that irk me. Many things are just really large or really big for no reason, and the world would be much better and more plausible if it was scaled down.

[SeanBeanedMeUp]

4 hours ago, SaffronLady said:

Oh I'm sure this doesn't distract the hypocrites who just want to bash the Starks for this or that reason.

?

4 hours ago, Craving Peaches said:

Worldbuilding does distract a bit for me too, but it is more the scale issues that irk me. Many things are just really large or really big for no reason, and the world would be much better and more plausible if it was scaled down.

Agreed, though I've heard people create headcanons where the units of measurement vary across the world hence the real heights of buildings aren't what people claim to be. 

[Craving Peaches]

1 hour ago, SeanBeanedMeUp said:

Agreed, though I've heard people create headcanons where the units of measurement vary across the world hence the real heights of buildings aren't what people claim to be. 

Hasn't GRRM confirmed the heights/sizes are real though?

[Craving Peaches]

1 hour ago, SeanBeanedMeUp said:

?

There is a group on here who hate the Starks for some reason and will come up with any nonsense they can to bash them. Stuff like Walder Frey did nothing wrong, Janos Slynt the Martyr, Bowen the Hero of the Watch, Ramsay the Reasonable etc.

[SeanBeanedMeUp]

5 minutes ago, Craving Peaches said:

Hasn't GRRM confirmed the heights/sizes are real though?

Where?

3 minutes ago, Craving Peaches said:

There is a group on here who hate the Starks for some reason and will come up with any nonsense they can to bash them. Stuff like Walder Frey did nothing wrong, Janos Slynt the Martyr, Bowen the Hero of the Watch, Ramsay the Reasonable etc.

Oh dear. 

[Craving Peaches]

2 minutes ago, SeanBeanedMeUp said:

Where?

I am certain he confirmed Westeros was indeed the size of South America, and I think he also said he regretted making some of the things that big/high. @Ran will know more details than me.

[Craving Peaches]

3 minutes ago, SeanBeanedMeUp said:

Oh dear.

What really made me go 'Oh Dear' was the number of them, I think there is at least 35...

[Ran]

2 minutes ago, Craving Peaches said:

I am certain he confirmed Westeros was indeed the size of South America, and I think he also said he regretted making some of the things that big/high. @Ran will know more details than me.

George cited the South America thing here, but that must include the uncharted region beyond the Wall... and even so, it's probably a tad too large. But George is not great with numbers!

As to the height of things, well, the main example is from when I was with him visiting the set during the first season of GoT, and he pointed to the Magheramorne quarry (that served for the Wall) and asked if I could guess how tall the quarry's face was from its base to the top. Then he revealed he was told it was about 400 feet, and he realized that he made the actual Wall "too tall" -- as in, he didn't realize how tall 400 feet actually was. He even half-seriously mused about changing it in later editions, but Parris said no way, and in any case I don't think he really cared that much. It was more that he was amused by the fact that he didn't realize quite how far past 11 he had dialed things up... but he had always intended to dial them past 11, to some degree.

[Alester Florent]

18 hours ago, SeanBeanedMeUp said:

But issues like this weight the story down a bit because the worldbuilding issues just distract from the story overall.

I disagree. I think it would weigh the story down more to digress into explaining that there are all these cadet branches and here are the details of them etc. only for them not to be relevant to the story.

GRRM's worldbuilding isn't flawless, but a universal about worldbuilding is that it's there to underpin and service the plot, not vice versa. The place that the author may gloss over in a sentence might have 25 pages of background on it somewhere, but the reader doesn't need to know that unless it's plot-relevant. The Stark cadet branches (except the Karstarks), the Arryn cadet branches, and any Tully and Baratheon ones, just aren't relevant to the plot. So we don't need to get bogged down in hearing about what they're up to.

[kissdbyfire]

7 minutes ago, SeanBeanedMeUp said:

Oh dear. 

You ain’t seen nothing yet. Not to worry though, these posts are really easy to spot due to their insane content, total lack of connection to the text, utter unfamiliarity with the story, unabashed bias, and absolute adherence to bad fanfic.

 

[Craving Peaches]

3 minutes ago, kissdbyfire said:

You ain’t seen nothing yet. Not to worry though, these posts are really easy to spot due to their insane content, total lack of connection to the text, utter unfamiliarity with the story, unabashed bias, and absolute adherence to bad fanfic.

 

They all have a weirdly similar flow, phrasing, spacing and syntax as well...

[kissdbyfire]

Just now, Craving Peaches said:

They all have a weirdly similar flow, phrasing, spacing and syntax as well...

Yeah, they do. They all read the same, regardless of who’s the poster. 

[Kal-L]

12 minutes ago, Craving Peaches said:

There is a group on here who hate the Starks for some reason and will come up with any nonsense they can to bash them. Stuff like Walder Frey did nothing wrong, Janos Slynt the Martyr, Bowen the Hero of the Watch, Ramsay the Reasonable etc.

To be fair, it's really hard to take their comments seriously. Things like Littlefinger is a positive character in Sansa's life, Arya is little monster that should been drown at birth is a poort bait not really worth answering. Lol at Ramsay "the Reasonable", I like that one

[LongRider]

It's hard to take them seriously, however, they bog up the threads that mention the Starks, or have started Stark hate threads.  Gets old. 

[Craving Peaches]

7 minutes ago, Kal-L said:

To be fair, it's really hard to take their comments seriously. Things like Littlefinger is a positive character in Sansa's life, Arya is little monster that should been drown at birth is a poort bait not really worth answering. Lol at Ramsay "the Reasonable", I like that one

That's true, but on the other hand sometimes I spend time making a topic for serious discussion and it just gets clogged up with all this nonsense. It's not like most of them ever respond to critiques of the posts anyway. It is especially irritating when they basically post the same thing as each other every time with only a few minor changes. There is no real attempt made to engage with anything, including the text. Of course, no one is obliged to respond to me or anyone else, but you would hope they at least would respect the book we are supposed to be discussing.

[Craving Peaches]

3 minutes ago, LongRider said:

It's hard to take them seriously, however, they bog up the threads that mention the Starks, or have started Stark hate threads.  Gets old. 

I just don't really understand the mentality behind it. I don't like Stannis, but I don't try and paint Davos as the Devil, or Shireen as a psycho, or Cressen as a senile old fool who had it coming.