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Too many half-witted characters being added


lyvyathan

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Is everyone a tad little tired of second rate one dimensional characters like Darkstar, the Sand Snakes, Lady Stoneheart being added to the burgeoning cast of characters?

I can understand characters like Penny, Margaery, Queen of Thorns, Mel, Asha, Theon, Manderly even the role of the Sons of Harpy's etc.. but I'm really hoping that all the Sand Snakes

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I'll admit on the first reading through the series, both the Dornish and the characters that Daenerys started to meddle with in aDwD grew very tiresome.

While I may have acquired a favorable opinion of the Dornish in general in my re-reads, a majority of the characters for the region still bug me.... and Daenerys' situation just compounds my frustration with the characters on that side of Essos.

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I don't mind them, so long as he develops them eventually or kills them off. With over 1000 characters I can't blame him for not characterizing everyone fully. I imagine that we'll get personalities for at least the Sand Snakes going to KL, and it seems like there is more to Darkstar.

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Darkstar was a crappy character, but of the over 5,000 pages the make up A Song of Ice and Fire, he appears in about 5 and is mentioned at most half a dozen times afterwards... so why do you care about him? He's not worth complaining about

Plus none of these characters are being "added" but Lady Stoneheart... Sandsnakes, Queen of Thornes, Margaery, Manderly, Asha have all been known and in the appendix since A Game of Thrones... and Theon appears in A Game of Thrones... He doesn't have a big role but he has plenty of speaking lines and actually saves Bran's life...

and Melissandre is a huge component of the books and is first mentioned in A Game of Thrones, though not by name

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My problem with the Sand Snakes is that I find them totally lacking credibility as people and characters. They are supposed to have all of Oberyn's bad-assness, but they are stupid and stupidly disloyal, neither of which Oberyn was. Entrusting them with carrying out all these various spy games is equally stupid. They have all the tact and careful forethought of Jaime mixed with all of Cersei's political aptitude.

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I'm not sure that half-witted is the right way to describe these characters. Most of them seem fairly intelligent and interesting in their own ways. I really liked Manderly in ADWD and I'm intrigued to see what will happen with the Sand Snakes. I think my biggest problem with new characters is if Martin tries to slot any of the more recent arrivals into big, important roles in the story. I care more about the ones we've been following for 5 books now, not the ones that put in their first appearance in the last two.

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Maybe an easier way to discuss this would be to talk about which characters we feel have not been fully threshed out as well as they could/should have.

For me, the first that jumps to mind is Mel. For someone who has so much control over so many other people, we sure don't know jack-all about her. Where did she really come from, how did she become a Red Rahloo convert (sorry, too funny not to use), and how on EARTH did she meet Stannis and come to the amazingly retarded conclusion that he is AA? Does she really believe it, or is she using him as a means to reach the real AA? And what is UP with all her epic fails at reading fires? Again, real or faked to shape events to suit her? The way she has been presented so far is as someone with the judgment and fortune telling ability of my Pomeranian, so if there is more to her than mistakes and hilarious ineptitude, I hope the truth starts to come out shortly. So far as a big bad scary fortune telling witch, she is a total joke.

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i just wonder if GRRM opened too many POVs. I don't find the sand snakes interesting..rather i find them corny,like a knock off of the 5 deadly venoms only female. The people around Dany were mostly annoying. Quentyn was the most useless...a prince of dorne and he did pretty much nothing and wasted whole pages before getting lit up .

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I dont' mind not knowing much about Mel as I like the mystery that surrounds her and I wouldn't mind if we never found out. Darkstar could do with some backround but I never really cared about any of the Dornish. I was happy when Quentyn died and I hope Doran and the sandsnakes got it. I liked the Red Viper but thats because I was imagining David O'Hara in the role (Lord Surrey in the Tudors)

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Is everyone a tad little tired of second rate one dimensional characters like Darkstar, the Sand Snakes, Lady Stoneheart being added to the burgeoning cast of characters?

I can understand characters like Penny, Margaery, Queen of Thorns, Mel, Asha, Theon, Manderly even the role of the Sons of Harpy's etc.. but I'm really hoping that all the Sand Snakes

I would say it's not so much half wits I'm tired of as it is ball-peen brutes.

On the other hand looking at the real medieval ages of our world (which George seems to use as a hook for the whole series) there were even more!

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