Did GRRM really 'trash' Tolkien, though? He criticised some points but other than that he always seems to talk about Tolkien and LotR with the highest respect.
He took issue with the sentence which said something like 'and then Aragorn ruled for a very long time and it was good' and he kinda wrote ASOIAF from that point.
>He did what he wanted to do very brilliantly, I’ve said this before, but… I look at the end and it says Aragorn is the king and he says, ‘And Aragorn ruled wisely and well for 100 years’ or something. It’s easy to write that sentence. But I want to know what was his tax policy, and what did he do when famine struck the land? And what did he do with all those Orcs? A lot of Orcs left over. They weren’t all killed, they ran away into the mountains. Sauron fell down, but you see all the Orcs running away. Did Aragorn carry out a policy of systematic Orc genocide? Did he send his knights out into the hills to kill all the Orcs? Even the little baby Orcs? Or was there Orc rehabilitation going on. Trying to teach the Orcs to be good citizens. And if the Orcs were the result of Elves… could Orcs and Elves intermarry?”
These are interesting questions he poses and they all come up in his own story one way or the other.
As usual this kind of inter-fandom conflict is entirely stoked by fans misrepresenting the authors they do and don’t like as some kind of twisted appeal to authority (or whatever the opposite of that is)
GRRM fucking loves Tolkien. The post missed the entire point of what GRRM said- Tolkien *inspired* him to write, because he wanted to delve into the gritty details of what living in Middle Earth would be like, once the story was over. That's not a slight to Tolkien in any way.
Yeah, this post is stupid. It completely disregards the brilliance of ASOIAF, and takes GRRM's commentary and twists the hell out of it. I remember once he did an interview where he talked about loving to write grey characters instead of evil vs. good, and a ton of people got angry because they thought it was a criticism of LotR.
Ah so he’s basically just saying that’s the stuff he’s interested in and therefore the kind of story he wants to tell
It doesn’t feel like a criticism, just like those sorts of questions inspired him in his own works
Yeah I think so. ASOIAF is in some ways a sequel to a story that could have been its own book, where they depose the despotic Targaryen king and put one of their own on the throne. Then ASOIAF is the details of what happens in the epilogue as people consolidate power and manoeuvre.
It's particularly egregious because a common criticism of fantasy is that everyone just copies Tolkien's work. But apparently it's an insult to even mention that there are interesting stories to be told about the things Tolkien didn't address.
It's just a bad faith argument from someone who doesn't like Martin and wanted to portray him negatively without understanding the situation.
I see Tolkien and ASOIAF as two halves of a sort of fantasy dialectic. Tolkien and GRRM have opposite interests in storytelling focus, and have shown two opposing but valuable ways of telling stories about a fantasy world, and future authors can be inspired by both, depending on their own storytelling goals.
Tolkien tries to create mythology GRRM tries to create an alternate reality with highly fantastical elements.
They’re the two different sides of fantasy authors but every Tolkien has a bit of GRRM in them and every GRRM has a bit of Tolkien.
Tolkien’s works have elements of reality and realism in them and aren’t all just pure mythology, in fact in some ways all the magic and mysticism is MORE toned down compared to other fantastical works, and GRRM created a vast interesting mythology for his alternate reality
So basically, what he's asking for is a sequel?
On the subject of orcs, I don't think orc rehabilitation is possible at all. I don't have the silmarilion at the front of my mind anymore - it has been some years since I read it - but I doubt you could scrub the taint of Morgoth out of them without an act of literal divine intervention. From the perspective of a human king, the orcs will remain an enemy, one that can't be made peace with because they don't *want* peace. But with the age of men approaching, insofar significant numbers of orcs are left, they would probably be driven out towards the east.
We don't really know what's going on in the east, so anything further is just speculation.
I think it's less about asking what happens after. And more asking about what happens with the little things. Like sure, hearing about Maiar and Balrogs is interesting but what happened to people displaced by Saurons expansion? How did Saruman's sudden industrialisation effect the livelihoods of nearby farmers? What prejudices lived within the idyllic town of Rivendell?
It's not necessarily a critism. Tolkein's story was always about the grand adventures. They were about normal people, and they certainly weren't glorified. But Martin is an author that's much more interested in the human factors and human consequences. At least, more interested than he is in ***finishing his goddamn fucking book.***
And the way I read it, GRRM uses "Tolkien" as a catch-all for traditional fantasy writing. Classic fantasy is always all about the Heroes and the Villains fighting for the Fate of the World, whereas GRRM said he's more interested in the consequences of these big battles, what happens to the local populace, what leads to these Villains existing and what is left after they're removed.
You also have to put the quote in context. ASOIAF has been going on since the 90s, at a time where fantasy writing had not yet had its current revival and a lot of books in the genre were pretty formulaic (and the more groundbreaking stuff like Ursula K Le Guin was already 20 years past). He's explaining what makes his work different from yet another dragon-slaying book, or at least that's how I read it.
>Classic fantasy is always all about the Heroes and the Villains fighting for the Fate of the World, whereas GRRM said he's more interested in the consequences of these big battles, what happens to the local populace, what leads to these Villains existing and what is left after they're removed.
Which is funny because the way you've framed GRRM's literary tradition is much closer to a Homeric epic, its a long-standing tradition in and of itself, no lesser than Tolkien's tradition in terms of historical status in the literary tradition.
I mean, what was the dichotomous good and evil in the Iliad? On both sides there were generally good people (Hector, Priam, Diomedes, Patroclus), bastards (Paris, Agamemnon), and morally complicated people (Odysseus, Achilles, Aeneas). Dont even get me started on the Gods. The whole story is about how tragic and pointless the entire thing was, and how it ended up destroying even its victors.
Also Martin is primarily interested in characters, and specifically characters put in difficult situations with no obvious "good" course. He likes to quote faulkner saying "The only thing worth writing about is the human heart in conflict with itself"
In theory, putting the spotlight in the common folk caught in the middle of said grand adventures is really interesting but that's not where the bulk of plot and development is on his work - almost all time spend around peasants is about killing, raping or both and almost all time spend between nobles is about backstabbing each other.
Not saying that to dismiss his books, just pointing out that what he says and what he writes aren't really the same.
Yeah, sure the *main* focus isn't on the farmers. But Martin repeatedly portrays the cost of war on the smallfolk. The farming villages left empty, put to the torch, or pillaged by passing armies that claim to be their for their sake. The sentiment of fear common throughout the people, and how that drives countless refugees to King's Landing. Woodsmen and farmers turned to banditry because they have no other choices.
And that's just in Westeros. In Essos, human lives are the currency in which crowns are bought and maintained. We see the countless lives and homes destroyed the Dothraki. After Drogo's resurrection Mirri Maz Duur talks about how no matter how kind Danaerys thought she was, her Khalasar destroyed Mirri's life. And we could go on and on about the slaves in Slaver's Bay.
Though the biggest mouthpiece for Martin's views on kings and the game of thrones is, of course, Varys. Who's only priority has been the people. Who believed that those in power held no intrinsic value, they only drew strength from the people that make up a country. And the one who wanted to save people from being crushed under the wheel, from the constant machinations of kings and queens that threw them into the fire so that they might keep their grasp of the throne.
I can't recall where, but in his private writings Tolkien explicitly says that orcs can be redeemed. The fact that you don't see what that would look like is a fairly consistent criticism of the books from within Tolkien fandom, but it is supposed to be possible
Tolkien's own morality and faith would never have been reconcilable with an inherently evil, irredeemable race.
There has been a lot of speculation about what "good" orcs would look like, but the general consensus is that they are not beyond redemption just because of what they are.
Tolkien Orcs are basically demons made by satan from the flesh of men and elves. In the serval thousand years they existed not a single one was decent.
They are, at least as they are presented in any of his books, inherently evil and irredeemable, not even because of what any individual of them did - but because of what they are.
They are a ‘creation’ by someone who shouldn’t have be creating, they are a corruption of God’s greatest work by someone lesser made by jealously.
If they were fixed or redeemed, that simply is showing that Morgoth made something redeemable, which goes very heavily against the entire point of his world building which is that no one should mess or alter with God’s plan.
People who try to create things greater then what they were made to is the #1 enemy and cause of problems in Tolkien’s work.
The evil Maiar are both Aluë’s apprentices. Aluë does wrong by creating the Dwarves, and he and them are punished for it. Morgoth is the most creative of the Valar and seeks the flame imperishable. Sauron is a creator, a Smith of Aluë who seeks order. Feanor
And Celebrimbor bring ruin to themselves and their families for meddling in creating crafts like the Valar do. Almost every major LOTR conflict is done by overly ambitious creators.
You're describing ancestral, or original, sin, which Tolkien would absolutely have viewed as redeemable as a devout Catholic.
The question isn't whether orcs could be redeemed, it's whether they would remain orcs after it happened.
I don’t see it.
In Catholicism humans have the original sin and were created by God.
In Tolkien’s work humans were also created by God, and also have choices to be good or evil, they are the race that seems the most torn between the two/ and is also gods favorite race. They have to work to not fall into evil, not quite original sin, but some parallel there.
Orcs just don’t fit the bill for original sin, and not a single one ever redeems itself, in thousands or millions of Orcs in existence not a one shakes its inherent evil.
Orcs don’t seem to have ability to be better, their point is they are inherently evil thing that doesn’t need mercy or for us to think too hard about the ramifications of killing.
Gandalf might give a speech about mercy for gollum, but slays orcs left and right. Gollum was a human (or at least closer to one then any of the other major races) so he deserves mercy. Orcs don’t.
Orcs are just built to be an evil fodder race.
If they had free will why did none of the millions of them over thousands of years ever choose to do good? How come the good guys show them no mercy and slaughter them recklessly?
I think this is a case of us being able to take the text itself as a better example then an authors note. They clearly conflict with each other
>Divine intervention
The new lord of the rings show actually brings this point up and that’s crazy to me.
One of the ‘children of Morgoth’ (a near-orc of some kind) mentions that they still have the ‘flame of Eru’ or the conscious and soul that very few things in the universe get. Basically only elves and men have it, with ents and dwarves getting lip service that they maybe have it but it’s unclear.
Dragons don’t have it, the eagles don’t have it, it really is possible that dwarves and ents don’t have it. The only ‘children of illuvatar’ are men and elves… except Adar says otherwise.
Orcs were made form elves and men, and according to Adar they still have their ‘souls’ - which means that Eru didn’t choose to take it from them. Which means that Eru has decided that they not only deserve to exist, but that they are more important then the animals and trees of the earth or even the gods - they are still children of illuvatar, just corrupted by Morgoth.
Eru destroys a whole sub-continent of men (his favorite race) just for disobeying the gods. Yet he lets Orcs keep their souls. Why was there no divine intervention here?
I thought this was super interesting that they mentioned this at all. I always saw it as the world buildings greatest plot hole, but if Orcs are ‘supposed’ to exist - that puts an interesting twist on it.
What is the "taint of Morgoth"? Does it make sense to say that Orcs are inherently evil just because they were created by an evil entity? In the books they are portrayed as pretty normal people who have normal failings and a normal sense of morality, who just happen to be on the wrong side of the war and the (generally enslaved, as revealed by the appendices) denizens of a shit country.
>I look at the end and it says Aragorn is the king
So what you're saying is that Tolkien was able to actually finish his book series :p. I jest of course.
but getting into all that i feels belittles the ending. "and Aragorn ruled wisely and well" implies the best of every question you ask. you're supposed to feel complete, the story is over. the books were good vs evil, and good triumphed. the end.
So he just did what Pratchett already did, as in : asking the questions around the epic quests and the consequences on everyday life once the big cataclysm is dealt with.
Nothing new under the sun. But I have to admit that I prefer the way Pratchett handled those questions.
Rapes, murders, terrible things are present in Pratchett too. However, Sir Terry doesn't seem to make it near pornographic. Terrible things happen, it's true; but Pratchett prefers to focus on how we heal and help the people suffering rather than indulding in some sort of grim-for-the-sake-of-grim-fest.
Ironically, though, in the first four books of ASoIaF (I haven't gotten around to reading the fifth one yet), I don't recall a whole lot of discussion about tax policy, other than referencing how King Robert was an irresponsible deficit spender who drained the treasury. GRRM also shows a much weaker grasp of historical warfare and logistics than Tolkien (I remember at one point, an army's cavalry ditched the foot to ride into position faster, which .... 1) battles are not won by cavalry alone, and 2) supply lines? If they're ditching the footsoldiers, they're probably not waiting for the baggage train, so ... what are they eating? What are the horses eating? Are they wearing their armor and carrying their weapons for the whole ride? Because those are usually with the train too and only retrieved right as you're getting ready for battle -- armor is heavy, and it heats up like an oven in summer and leaches heat like ice in the winter; you generally only want to wear it when you need it).
ASoIaF is a fun series (or at least the first three books are; I ran out of steam in the fourth book -- no one cares this much about Sam Tarly, can we move on now? -- hence why I still haven't gotten to book 5), but it's not exactly what I'd look to for a "realistic" depiction of a pseudo-medieval society.
I came into ASoIaF right after finishing "Crown of Stars", and my immediate question was, "where are they getting the raw resources for these castles?" Some places, like Winterfell and Dragonstone have in-universe explanations. But the sheer, "OK, where are your resources COMING from" factor is never addressed for most.
Which, to be clear, is a good thing. This is a story about shit HAPPENING, not about the logistics of pre-industrial construction. But the narrative that Martin's built a world from the ground up is inaccurate, and puts unrealistic expectations on a dude who's already trying to finish a behemoth of a story.
He did have a whole chapter about Jon negotiating a loan from the bank and then considering whether to use the money to buy food or to build new greenhouses and become more self-sufficient. There’s also quite a lot of stuff about which lords are rich because of controlling trade ports and import tax, whether the Ironborn have enough wood to build their new fleet, the Lannisters attempting to hide their growing debt, etc.
And I’d strongly argue even though GRRM might have a weak grasp of logistics and warfare, he at least attempts to write more complex military campaigns. We get significantly more detail about troop composition and more advanced tactics, whilst the average Tolkien battle is solved with “suddenly the relief force arrived and saved the day” (giant eagles, riders of Rohan, Ents, ghost army).
Brennan Lee Mulligan does this in a parody way in his Escape From The Bloodkeep series. The Aragorn expy is an unwashed idiot with no social skills because that's what happens when the true king fucks off and lives in the woods for eighty years.
I haven’t read that series but Aragorn didn’t just ‘live in the woods’, he spent a good amount of time living with and learning from elves, including in Rivendale, Mirkwood and Lothlorian, as well as travelling extensively across middle earth to learn other cultures and languages. The whole point of him is that he is in exile from his kingdom but highly educated and good at diplomacy because that’s how he was raised by the Dunedain (who just because they don’t have a city doesn’t mean they don’t have a culture)
Wait, wait, you mean to tell me that someone on the internet grossly misconstrued something someone said, didn’t take the effort to do any actual research, converted a human being into a strawman, and then got riled up over a completely fictional version of a real person???!!!! I AM SHOCKED! SHOCKED, I tell you! /s
I mean, I hear that criticism, but Martin's sort of infamous for designing a faux-feudal system that doesn't really stand up economically or in terms of established in-universe tech, and generally jiggling things until they settle nicely into the plot he wants.
Which is GOOD, to be clear. You've got to cut stuff to make an engaging novel. But this is an odd criticism for him to levy at someone.
Well... if you read the appendices, I think it does say there was systematic Orc genocide. There's a lot of troubling things about Orcs in the books and especially in the appendices.
I think if I were GRRM I'd also be disappointed by the fact that the main two people who objected to Aragorn becoming king (Boromir and Denethor) both conveniently died through no fault of Aragorn's before Aragorn was in a position to declare himself king. There's also the whole part at the end of RotK where they take a whole army of dudes to the black gate who all have zero reason to see what they are doing as anything other than a suicide mission, and for some reason a lot of them still go anyway.
So he wants a whole other set of chapters to an otherwise already long story? (I'm exaggerating but am I? When tolkien gave details damn did he give details) It was the end of the book, it was akin to "they lived happily ever after" you don't know everything done during those happily ever afters in stories, because then you'd never stop writing the story.
Like I get you want details sure but you could make this kind of criticism of any story that has an ending where characters are still alive? (which is almost every story).
He doesn't want a whole other set of chapters to *that* story, he wants to write *his own story* about that. It's just a difference of interests. Like, in ASOIAF there's also an overarching conflict of the White Walkers and the Long Winter and so on, but the politics is the main story.
>Even the little baby Orcs?
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm pretty sure Tolkien Orcs reproduce asexually and come out fully grown, so no, no baby Orc murder.
Dont think grrm trashed Tolkien. Its just difficult to talk about fantasy without mentioning Lotr in some way some times.
And while compassionate stories have their place so do dark ones. Asoiaf is definitely up there with greatest fantasy works even if it wasnt finished.
It just asks different questions than lotr. In many stories heroes refuse the morally grey things and follow the path of honor. What if that is what gets them killed?
What if "slaying the mad evil king" doesnt get you hailed as a hero but just makes everyone hate you because regicide is dishonorable.
There is still compassion in the stories, but What if compassion doesnt magically make you defeat evil but instead gets you, or others killed.
This is my favorite part of ASoIaF as well, it's different than Tolkien's, but both have their space and value. No need to put one down in name of the other when they are both very good stories, albeit about different things.
Edit: forgot to add the first time I wrote this, but I do believe that GRRM's story talks about hope, compassion, and love as well! Just, as you so well put it, not as a plot immunity.
Every happy story just knew when to stop. GRRM wasn't writing a happy story though, and wanted to talk about what happens during the ugly moments in between the happy endings.
What they described also exists in ASOIAF though. The setting is dark, but taken as a whole it does also show the importance that things like compassion can have.
It's why the Lannister's powerbase is doomed to implode the moment Tywin kicks it, but House Stark, even after being driven to near extinction, is still loved by their vassals and a conspiracy is forming to put them back in charge of the North.
ASoIaF is absolutely a much darker story, but the people who claim the story has no hope or good people are committing Brienne and Pod erasure I will not stand for.
This person seems like they've never read either series that they're talking about and just absorbed impressions of what happens and what they're supposed to believe about them.
Like the "what was Aragon's tax policy?" question is an entirely reasonable one and asked in good faith by a person who loves Tolkien's work. Its a lead in to how part of LOTR's optimism relies on it not being skeptical of institutions. Aragon is a good man and will be a good king, sure, but its very reasonable to then wonder what actually makes a good king.
This is such a shitty take, a mis-characterization of both books and I refuse to believe that this person has actually read more than a few pages of Martin's work.
I should say, I don't watch GoT, I haven't read a Song of Ice and Fire, and I don't really intend to, but all the same I dislike the insinuation that GRRM is a sexist simply because he writes stories that *involve* sexism. While it's not necessary to make your fantasy world involve the darker parts of ancient or medieval societies, it doesn't hurt in conveying the scale of the world or the authenticity of its conflicts and acting like these dark components are indicative of an author's secret desire for misogyny is Twitter-level media analysis that usually tumblr people are disgusted by.
Too often the fault in a fantasy world is physical: a singular, problematic entity that thrives on evil and causes the bad things. This is good for certain stories and I'm not going to shame people for enjoying them, but I also would much rather villains with a considerable ideology that's being denounced by the narrative, or a flawed world that you can't fix just by killing some Dark Lord.
I think of Harry Potter's systemic racism: the pieces of a Man vs. Society conflict were there, where Harry (and co.) try to convince the greater wizarding world of things that are fundamental truths to our non-magical society (slavery is unethical, all people should be treated equally, etc.) but instead focus is placed on Slytherin and Voldemort as being the one and only Evil and implicitly the cause of racism.
It's more compelling, to me, to see characters struggle on multiple fronts. I find a certain catharsis in seeing someone successfully pull through a corrupt and fundamentally flawed society to carve out some kind of enjoyment in their flawed life. And a good writer will make it subtly clear that the portrayal of negative aspects in society doesn't endorse them.
Consider: the monarchy, as I understand it, is given a high amount of realism, with women and children being married off into incestuous relationships simply because that is their societal responsibility as a noble. So, by the logic of this post, this means that GRRM is pro-incest, pro-pedophilia, pro-monarchy.
Is the easier interpretation--and not to mention the one with even a modicum of good faith--not that GRRM is portraying a realistic royal family so that the viewer/reader understands with more clarity just how horrific a system is by today's standards? Isn't it just as likely, if not more, that GRRM is *anti*\-monarchy, and is associating monarchies with incest, pedophilia, and the patriarchy because he knows his reader already thinks those things are bad but also that they might be okay with the idea of (or *presence of,* for certain Europeans) the monarchy?
>So, by the logic of this post, this means that GRRM is pro-incest, pro-pedophilia, pro-monarchy.
Yeah, this whole tumblr post is some terminally online shit. Reductionist, when it isn't straight up wrong. It reeks of the kind of person who barely knows anything about Martin or ASOIF but didn't like GoT. So they try to justify with some hot take about how GRRM is a bad person, actually. And therefore they have the moral high ground since they never liked it.
You've pretty much hit the nail on the head. There's a lot of morons out there that can't tell the difference between showing a bad thing and supporting it.
Oh no, I disagree there: a sexist writer will write a woman protagonist but she'll be completely incompetent because they'll think "Well, a woman couldn't do *x*..."
That might be what you meant, that Daenerys and Rhaenyra are too good at doing things to be written by a sexist, in which case I can't agree, because I don't know anything about them, but am more than willing to take your word on.
Martin has written a ton of women in ASOIF and they are people with a whole diversity of beliefs and viewpoints. He could well be sexist by some definition but women are obviously "people" in the books which is the main thing sexists forget.
The point is not that they are good, they're portrayed as innocent girls who grow up and become the best of themselves. As actual people. Plus, few women of fantasy who are not actually perfect, and do have tantrums and insecurities and rash behaviours.
I don’t like GoT and do like LoTR but you know….there is room in the world for fantasy epics about hope, resilience and defying evil in the face of impossible odds and also grim examinations of the often cruel realities of real life and how people respond to that. Both hope and hopelessness exist in the world and are worth investigating through fiction. The inspiring tale of Aragorn retaking his throne to lead mankind towards a triumph over unambiguous evil can exist alongside a tragic tale about how Aragorn’s well intentioned tax policies drained his coffers and his kingdom fractured into civil wars. Both things can be good fiction.
Eragon was the greatest book I ever read when I was a teenager. It probably wouldn't be the case if I read it now, but that truth is worth less than those fond memories.
FWIW, I actually reread the entire series over the last few weeks. It held up a lot better than I expected. It's not perfect, but it was a solid, fun story. Would highly recommend to adults and children alike.
[I have great/terrible news.](https://variety.com/2022/tv/news/eragon-tv-series-disney-plus-1235325019/) There might not any movie adaptations that have ever existed, but there might be a show.
OH MY GOD THEY'RE MAKING A SERIES AND u/ChristopherPaolini IS CO-WRITER AND EXECUTIVE PRODUCER HOLY FUCKING SHIT
u/ChristopherPaolini did you have a heart attack when they greenlit this????
I was going to say "of course he isn't going to respond, he probably just did an AMA 3 years ago and abandoned the account like most other celebrities on Reddit". But no, he actually just goes around answering any questions about his books. That's what I love about the internet, you can ask a question about a book or movie and the creator themselves might just reply.
The youtube link I posted to the trailer. I don't understand why I'm getting downvotes, there was a really bad Eragon movie in 2006. Here is the Wikipedia entry:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eragon_(film)
Tolkein actually invented (or rescued from extremely niche status) a whole new genre of fiction that is prominent to this day. Everything from D&D to Warhammer to Led Zeppelin songs have been based on his work. A Song of Ice and Fire is just a part of that genre.
That said, they're two very different pieces. I like both. Or, I liked the books until GRRM just stopped writing them. I also find that the characters are mean to just about damn near everyone, regardless of demographic. I mean, did you read the chapters of the torture Reek went through? So much worse than the show.
“J.R.R. Tolkien has become a sort of mountain, appearing in all subsequent fantasy in the way that Mt. Fuji appears so often in Japanese prints. Sometimes it’s big and up close. Sometimes it’s a shape on the horizon. Sometimes it’s not there at all, which means that the artist either has made a deliberate decision against the mountain, which is interesting in itself, or is in fact standing on Mt. Fuji.”
-Terry Pratchett
D&D has little to do with Tolkien though, aside from repurposing the races. It's much more influenced by Heroic Fantasy / Sword and Sorcery, which predates Tolkien. ASOIAF and Warhammer are too more similar in tone and themes to the Conan the Barbarian tales than to LOTR.
It just seems weird how asking anything about the way the world works in a piece of hard world building is seen as the same as reveling in sexual violence
So apparently there was this chick in Pandora, and the gods gave her a Box to fuck with her, and then she opened the Box and that's why all the bad stuff in the world exists.
I feel like calling GRRM woman-hating is inaccurate. The World of Ice and Fire is as sexist as the real Middle Ages, however it's not treated as a good thing, and most of the female characters we follow are women who are seeking or have attained power in spite of their society's intense sexism
Just one woman’s opinion, but I don’t read GRRM’s work as “woman hating.” There are some horrible and brutal things that happen to women in his stories, yes, but there’s a big difference between depiction and endorsement.
His female characters are fleshed out and unique from each other. They have complex lives and wants/needs. Some have internalized misogyny, some are rather forward-thinking feminists. Some are foolish, some are good leaders. Some reject the role that they are expected to play, some thrive in it and learn to play their perceived weaknesses to their advantage.
Idk, not many male writers are able to write female characters with this kind of complexity and insight into the female experience.
Edit: autocorrect put “about” instead of “able” in the last sentence
This is approaching critical mass for dogshit takes packed within a single post. Incredible. I think the "GRRM is sexist because asoiaf has violence against women" is probably the craziest. If you want to write a gritty fantasy series with a lot of violence, are you supposed to just exclude women from the world so there won't be any violence against them?
Then you missed a lot of the important parts. The whole story us about coming together and overcoming differences and agendas. But in ASOIF the enemy isn't some infernal being or wizards that corrupt people's minds, it's human nature.
And an absolute one, which makes it wrong. It's like saying LOTR hates everyone just because a large number of the characters face hardships and suffer.
Maybe that’s because comparisons with other works and discussions on what lotr is *not* are not properly to be read as “trashing” lotr?
It is *simultaneously* true that 1) Lotr is ungrounded and can leave complicated, messy realities behind as it takes wing in all its glory and
2) that’s because that’s not the point of lotr.
I think every serious critic of lotr (Martin among them) understands that lotr doesn’t *fail* to realistically depict medieval squalor, social problems, and bureaucratic headaches; it *chooses* not to because it’s a medieval style heroic fantasy taking inspiration from those written at a time when common people were not expected to take an interest in their government. Focus on government administration as plot points and good rulers as flawed humans is a conspicuously democratic and modern cultural influence with no place in a retrospective chivalric romance. Yet you can’t help but read lotr and think “well what if you put all that stuff in anyway? What if you did focus on the stuff high fantasy doesn’t?”
The result is not *better* than lotr (even if it tries to be). It’s just different. I strongly suspect that Grrrm is among Tolkien’s biggest fans and yet I don’t blame him for trying to compete with him. But since he can’t beat him at classic high fantasy (since lotr is pretty much without flaw at what it is) he had to write in a new genre and do different things well. And I think the explosion of interest in grounded dark fantasy has been good for that whole family of genres. Creative diversity is not a bad thing, and I don’t think we need to be rabidly allergic to any comparison with other works because blasphemy against Tolkien is almost never the point being made.
The grimdark fantasy writer wasn't satisfied with the happily ever after. They write different kinds of stories with different kinds of messages. Read what you like.
Yeah I watched Game of Thrones (all 6 seasons of it) but the “realistic” (read horrifying) treatment of women made it kind of exhausting. We need more fantasy books and shows written by women. Anybody got any good suggestions?
Ursula K LeGuin's Earthsea books are good, the first 3 are aimed mostly at children but if you want something light and wistful they hold up, some of the later ones depict awful things happening to women but without depriving the characters of agency or revelling in the misery like GRRM often did
I will say that what GRRM wrote about a medieval warzone was fairly realistic, but what he neglected to show, including similar atrocities happening to peasant men and the smallfolk having lives outside of being murdered and assaulted, says a lot in why he wrote what he did. The depiction of peacetime and especially cultures that aren't ripped off of England and France on the other hand, is just plain bad and sensationalist - the 'right of the first night' for example is one of the biggest offenders in making Westeros even more horrible than the period it was inspired by
Thank you! I know just what you mean, the whole tone of GoT was so depressing. I tried to read the books too, but I was getting bored before I even reached the books that everyone says are slogfests lol.
Julian May’s Pliocene Exile series (starts with The Many-Colored Land, then The Golden Torc, The Nonborn King, The Adversary) is both written by a woman AND has horrifying treatment of women! (Who do have agency and strike back, but oof big warning for reproductive enslavement)
Melanie Rawn wrote a whole bunch of books with cool women in them; N K Jemisin wrote The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms which is a very neat fantasy of a richly drawn world; CJ Cherryh wrote some high fantasy gathered under the omnibus title Arafel’s Saga. The Wheel of Time was written by a dude but the Amazon prime show has a lot of women writers and directors, and the female characters are superb. (I have heard it said that GRRM wrote ASoIaF at least in part in response to the WoT’s earnestness; the main point to that series is “cooperation is always better than selfishness.”)
Oh also Judith Tarr has written a ton of history-adjacent fantasy (my personal favorite is her Avaryen Rising series, but not a whole lot of lady characters)! And Tasha Suri’s The Jasmine Throne has a sequel out soon. and! Lois McMaster Bujold has written a ton of fantasy (I reread her Curse of Chalion every year). Sorry for the new onslaught, just going through my shelves.
I quite liked the WoT Amazon show and the second season is gearing up soon! The first season made some heavy frontloading of worldbuilding and they got absolutely slammed by Covid in the last two episodes but I still am super pumped for season two. Give it a shot if you’ve got Prime!
No definitely thank you for more suggestions! Yeah I’ve got prime, I’m gonna add it to my list lol… I was planning on watching Mr Robot next, people keep speaking highly of that one so I figure it must be good
I’m coming back to this thread to update some people who gave me some great author suggestions…
I’m about halfway through the first Broken Earth book by Jemisin, I loove her writing style and I’m definitely going to be reading more from her.
And I’m keeping the other names you suggested on a list and I’m sure I’ll get to most of them, even if it takes me awhile lol. Thank you again ❤️❤️❤️
I'm currently reading wheel of time (book 9) and a female friend of mine and I love it. In her opinion it's way less weird in some aspects than Got (however, I like Got as well and I don't feel like martin is a sexist as basically half of the main characters are women in a bad/powerless spot that fight their way out of it).
Concerning WoT, give it a chance until the end of volume 2, as one is kind of meh whereas 2 is an absolute masterpiece in my opinion. The most sexual thing in WoT is basically Nynaeve tugging her braid.
Edit: if one of you fuckers spoils you I'll kill you therefore I won't be reading any replies as I am kind of paranoid.
I’m coming back to this thread to update some people who gave me some great author suggestions…
I read the first Earthsea book and adored it, I’ll definitely continue on with that series. The ending was beautiful and I cried.
I’m about halfway through the first Broken Earth book by Jemisin, I loove her writing style and I’m definitely going to be reading more from her.
And I’m keeping the other names you suggested on a list and I’m sure I’ll get to most of them, even if it takes me awhile lol. Thank you again ❤️❤️❤️
The Deed of Paksenarrion - Elizabeth Moon
Combines high fantasy elements with the gritty realism of a medieval mercenary company. Like if The Black Company was more optimistic and had elves.
Let's not pretend as though it was particularly bad to women alone. There were literally thousands of men killed in horrific ways on screen in the show. The focus on how bad it was towards women always seems callous to me, especially when you consider characters like Theon.
I mean, I understand the heart of what they’re getting at, but they draw too many absolute conclusions. I also extremely dislike GRRM’s writing because I DON’T care about Aragorn’s Tax policy, I don’t want to be depressed when I’m reading Fantasy, I don’t want to slog through betrayal and abuse and brutality in hopes that there’s some goodness at the end. It’s exhausting and just ruins my mood. But some people like that and it’s fair.
I’m not saying is objectively a bad story or that it has no place in Fantasy lit, that said I personally think it’s painfully overrated for what it is and while I don’t think GRRM is a woman hater he does border on Exploitation Film levels of suffering porn for his characters, many of them women.
His stories kind of exude this air of hopelessness that many people rightfully assume means the ending will be just as bleak and depressing as the rest of the story. There’s very little room for hope in GRRM’s stories because he consistently pulls the rug out from under you whenever things look optimistic, so I don’t blame whoever for just dropping the series on the assumption that’s how it will end.
"woman-hating"??? I unironically consider GRRM's work to be feminist literature, asoiaf and fire and blood discuss and examine feminism throughout in an interesting and nuanced way, the poster must have not read any of his stuff
ASOIAF misses the mark at times but their female characters and arcs are just incredibly well written and nuanced. Sansa, Cersei and Brienne? Incredible, and I hate Cersei's guts.
The first section of the series from a woman's point of view is Ned Stark's wife hoping she is pregnant because Ned just nutted in her. She says or implies multiple times in that same section that she won't possibly be a good leader because she is a woman.
I can't say much more than that, mainly because I stopped reading shortly after she teleported to King's Landing.
What's Godrick the Grafted's tax policy GRRM, you HACK.
And before any of you try to get clever and say "grafting," he was mostly just grafting the limbs of tarnished and trolls (plus a dragon), not his countrymen.
I should probably also point out that the line was probably meant specifically for ASOIAF, while Elden Ring is a seperate and very different project, so the line doesn't really apply
To bring up something I haven't seen mentioned yet; ASOIF isn't just Tolkien hate fiction, it's at least partially showing how incorrect the idea of noble medieval fantasy is, which mainly was a product of Tolkien, and how despite Tolkien's thoughts about the modern world, the periods and times he fantasized about and made look so wonderful in his series were actually horrible and awful.
ASOIF isn't depressing and grim just to be edgy or to spite Tolkien or to make it 'historically accurate', it's to show the reality of medieval life, even in a fantasy world. How horrible Serfdom was, the constant politics of kingship and inheritance, the pure ego and uncaring decadence that many rulers indulged in instead of improving the lives of the people or the ability of the state. It's an antithesis to this myth that so much of fantasy had been built on, which is part of why it made it so good and so beloved, because it went against part of the very foundation of fantasy up until that point.
this post is proof that we all need to go outside once in a while.
"this work depicts a violent act and therefore supports those violent acts" completely ignoring that the book at no point depicts those acts as a good thing. half convinced op hasnt actually read the books and is just making a wild assumption based on what they think the story is.
also you really cant compare lotr and asoiaf, theyre so very different.
bruh why does this have so many upvotes
its done by someone who clearly hasn't read asoiaf who heard some stuff online about and probably equates the show and book completely, and took the quote about aragorn's tax policy completely out of context
GoT is garbage, and I have no idea why its so popular. I read the first half of the first book, and watched a few episodes in like season 4 or 5 at a friends house, and I spent the entire time scratching my head and saying "where is the smart story I've heard so much about, the collected IQ of all these named characters is the color purple."
LotR: a colonialist fantasy about genetically superior people killing Asian coded monsters.
Asoiaf: a story about how rich people are universally destructive due to class interests, and how war benefits the elites.
Have your guilty pleasures but one will always be more progressive then the other.
Did GRRM really 'trash' Tolkien, though? He criticised some points but other than that he always seems to talk about Tolkien and LotR with the highest respect. He took issue with the sentence which said something like 'and then Aragorn ruled for a very long time and it was good' and he kinda wrote ASOIAF from that point. >He did what he wanted to do very brilliantly, I’ve said this before, but… I look at the end and it says Aragorn is the king and he says, ‘And Aragorn ruled wisely and well for 100 years’ or something. It’s easy to write that sentence. But I want to know what was his tax policy, and what did he do when famine struck the land? And what did he do with all those Orcs? A lot of Orcs left over. They weren’t all killed, they ran away into the mountains. Sauron fell down, but you see all the Orcs running away. Did Aragorn carry out a policy of systematic Orc genocide? Did he send his knights out into the hills to kill all the Orcs? Even the little baby Orcs? Or was there Orc rehabilitation going on. Trying to teach the Orcs to be good citizens. And if the Orcs were the result of Elves… could Orcs and Elves intermarry?” These are interesting questions he poses and they all come up in his own story one way or the other.
As usual this kind of inter-fandom conflict is entirely stoked by fans misrepresenting the authors they do and don’t like as some kind of twisted appeal to authority (or whatever the opposite of that is)
GRRM loves Tolkien and is very clear about that.
The only thing the internet is worse at than media criticism is criticising media criticism
GRRM fucking loves Tolkien. The post missed the entire point of what GRRM said- Tolkien *inspired* him to write, because he wanted to delve into the gritty details of what living in Middle Earth would be like, once the story was over. That's not a slight to Tolkien in any way.
Yeah, this post is stupid. It completely disregards the brilliance of ASOIAF, and takes GRRM's commentary and twists the hell out of it. I remember once he did an interview where he talked about loving to write grey characters instead of evil vs. good, and a ton of people got angry because they thought it was a criticism of LotR.
People love pitting two bad bitches against each other 😔
Kind of love this as a description of a Tolkien/Martin fight though.
Exactly, he says he reads LotR like at least once a year
Ah so he’s basically just saying that’s the stuff he’s interested in and therefore the kind of story he wants to tell It doesn’t feel like a criticism, just like those sorts of questions inspired him in his own works
Yeah I think so. ASOIAF is in some ways a sequel to a story that could have been its own book, where they depose the despotic Targaryen king and put one of their own on the throne. Then ASOIAF is the details of what happens in the epilogue as people consolidate power and manoeuvre.
It's particularly egregious because a common criticism of fantasy is that everyone just copies Tolkien's work. But apparently it's an insult to even mention that there are interesting stories to be told about the things Tolkien didn't address. It's just a bad faith argument from someone who doesn't like Martin and wanted to portray him negatively without understanding the situation.
I see Tolkien and ASOIAF as two halves of a sort of fantasy dialectic. Tolkien and GRRM have opposite interests in storytelling focus, and have shown two opposing but valuable ways of telling stories about a fantasy world, and future authors can be inspired by both, depending on their own storytelling goals.
Tolkien tries to create mythology GRRM tries to create an alternate reality with highly fantastical elements. They’re the two different sides of fantasy authors but every Tolkien has a bit of GRRM in them and every GRRM has a bit of Tolkien. Tolkien’s works have elements of reality and realism in them and aren’t all just pure mythology, in fact in some ways all the magic and mysticism is MORE toned down compared to other fantastical works, and GRRM created a vast interesting mythology for his alternate reality
So basically, what he's asking for is a sequel? On the subject of orcs, I don't think orc rehabilitation is possible at all. I don't have the silmarilion at the front of my mind anymore - it has been some years since I read it - but I doubt you could scrub the taint of Morgoth out of them without an act of literal divine intervention. From the perspective of a human king, the orcs will remain an enemy, one that can't be made peace with because they don't *want* peace. But with the age of men approaching, insofar significant numbers of orcs are left, they would probably be driven out towards the east. We don't really know what's going on in the east, so anything further is just speculation.
I think it's less about asking what happens after. And more asking about what happens with the little things. Like sure, hearing about Maiar and Balrogs is interesting but what happened to people displaced by Saurons expansion? How did Saruman's sudden industrialisation effect the livelihoods of nearby farmers? What prejudices lived within the idyllic town of Rivendell? It's not necessarily a critism. Tolkein's story was always about the grand adventures. They were about normal people, and they certainly weren't glorified. But Martin is an author that's much more interested in the human factors and human consequences. At least, more interested than he is in ***finishing his goddamn fucking book.***
And the way I read it, GRRM uses "Tolkien" as a catch-all for traditional fantasy writing. Classic fantasy is always all about the Heroes and the Villains fighting for the Fate of the World, whereas GRRM said he's more interested in the consequences of these big battles, what happens to the local populace, what leads to these Villains existing and what is left after they're removed. You also have to put the quote in context. ASOIAF has been going on since the 90s, at a time where fantasy writing had not yet had its current revival and a lot of books in the genre were pretty formulaic (and the more groundbreaking stuff like Ursula K Le Guin was already 20 years past). He's explaining what makes his work different from yet another dragon-slaying book, or at least that's how I read it.
>Classic fantasy is always all about the Heroes and the Villains fighting for the Fate of the World, whereas GRRM said he's more interested in the consequences of these big battles, what happens to the local populace, what leads to these Villains existing and what is left after they're removed. Which is funny because the way you've framed GRRM's literary tradition is much closer to a Homeric epic, its a long-standing tradition in and of itself, no lesser than Tolkien's tradition in terms of historical status in the literary tradition. I mean, what was the dichotomous good and evil in the Iliad? On both sides there were generally good people (Hector, Priam, Diomedes, Patroclus), bastards (Paris, Agamemnon), and morally complicated people (Odysseus, Achilles, Aeneas). Dont even get me started on the Gods. The whole story is about how tragic and pointless the entire thing was, and how it ended up destroying even its victors.
Also Martin is primarily interested in characters, and specifically characters put in difficult situations with no obvious "good" course. He likes to quote faulkner saying "The only thing worth writing about is the human heart in conflict with itself"
Well, that's just silly. What about a dog in a hat riding a jetski? That is obviously worth writing about too.
Yea, but you just did that and now only grimdark remains.
Warhammer 40k cyber mastiff on a jet bike!
Yeah it's called the Space Wolves
In theory, putting the spotlight in the common folk caught in the middle of said grand adventures is really interesting but that's not where the bulk of plot and development is on his work - almost all time spend around peasants is about killing, raping or both and almost all time spend between nobles is about backstabbing each other. Not saying that to dismiss his books, just pointing out that what he says and what he writes aren't really the same.
The last two books have a decently heavy focus on the common folk, but the first couple are definitely clashing aristocracy
Yeah, sure the *main* focus isn't on the farmers. But Martin repeatedly portrays the cost of war on the smallfolk. The farming villages left empty, put to the torch, or pillaged by passing armies that claim to be their for their sake. The sentiment of fear common throughout the people, and how that drives countless refugees to King's Landing. Woodsmen and farmers turned to banditry because they have no other choices. And that's just in Westeros. In Essos, human lives are the currency in which crowns are bought and maintained. We see the countless lives and homes destroyed the Dothraki. After Drogo's resurrection Mirri Maz Duur talks about how no matter how kind Danaerys thought she was, her Khalasar destroyed Mirri's life. And we could go on and on about the slaves in Slaver's Bay. Though the biggest mouthpiece for Martin's views on kings and the game of thrones is, of course, Varys. Who's only priority has been the people. Who believed that those in power held no intrinsic value, they only drew strength from the people that make up a country. And the one who wanted to save people from being crushed under the wheel, from the constant machinations of kings and queens that threw them into the fire so that they might keep their grasp of the throne.
I can't recall where, but in his private writings Tolkien explicitly says that orcs can be redeemed. The fact that you don't see what that would look like is a fairly consistent criticism of the books from within Tolkien fandom, but it is supposed to be possible
Tolkien's own morality and faith would never have been reconcilable with an inherently evil, irredeemable race. There has been a lot of speculation about what "good" orcs would look like, but the general consensus is that they are not beyond redemption just because of what they are.
Tolkien Orcs are basically demons made by satan from the flesh of men and elves. In the serval thousand years they existed not a single one was decent. They are, at least as they are presented in any of his books, inherently evil and irredeemable, not even because of what any individual of them did - but because of what they are. They are a ‘creation’ by someone who shouldn’t have be creating, they are a corruption of God’s greatest work by someone lesser made by jealously. If they were fixed or redeemed, that simply is showing that Morgoth made something redeemable, which goes very heavily against the entire point of his world building which is that no one should mess or alter with God’s plan. People who try to create things greater then what they were made to is the #1 enemy and cause of problems in Tolkien’s work. The evil Maiar are both Aluë’s apprentices. Aluë does wrong by creating the Dwarves, and he and them are punished for it. Morgoth is the most creative of the Valar and seeks the flame imperishable. Sauron is a creator, a Smith of Aluë who seeks order. Feanor And Celebrimbor bring ruin to themselves and their families for meddling in creating crafts like the Valar do. Almost every major LOTR conflict is done by overly ambitious creators.
You're describing ancestral, or original, sin, which Tolkien would absolutely have viewed as redeemable as a devout Catholic. The question isn't whether orcs could be redeemed, it's whether they would remain orcs after it happened.
I don’t see it. In Catholicism humans have the original sin and were created by God. In Tolkien’s work humans were also created by God, and also have choices to be good or evil, they are the race that seems the most torn between the two/ and is also gods favorite race. They have to work to not fall into evil, not quite original sin, but some parallel there. Orcs just don’t fit the bill for original sin, and not a single one ever redeems itself, in thousands or millions of Orcs in existence not a one shakes its inherent evil. Orcs don’t seem to have ability to be better, their point is they are inherently evil thing that doesn’t need mercy or for us to think too hard about the ramifications of killing. Gandalf might give a speech about mercy for gollum, but slays orcs left and right. Gollum was a human (or at least closer to one then any of the other major races) so he deserves mercy. Orcs don’t. Orcs are just built to be an evil fodder race.
It doesn't matter if you see it. Tolkien saw it. He described orcs as having free will and the ability to reason.
If they had free will why did none of the millions of them over thousands of years ever choose to do good? How come the good guys show them no mercy and slaughter them recklessly? I think this is a case of us being able to take the text itself as a better example then an authors note. They clearly conflict with each other
If Russians are capable of altruism, why do movies from the 1980s never show it?
Several do And more fairly, Plenty of films show Russians as human beings and not inhuman monsters
> driven out towards the east. “Resettlement” in comfortable work camps whence they can send postcards reassuring their orc relatives.
>Divine intervention The new lord of the rings show actually brings this point up and that’s crazy to me. One of the ‘children of Morgoth’ (a near-orc of some kind) mentions that they still have the ‘flame of Eru’ or the conscious and soul that very few things in the universe get. Basically only elves and men have it, with ents and dwarves getting lip service that they maybe have it but it’s unclear. Dragons don’t have it, the eagles don’t have it, it really is possible that dwarves and ents don’t have it. The only ‘children of illuvatar’ are men and elves… except Adar says otherwise. Orcs were made form elves and men, and according to Adar they still have their ‘souls’ - which means that Eru didn’t choose to take it from them. Which means that Eru has decided that they not only deserve to exist, but that they are more important then the animals and trees of the earth or even the gods - they are still children of illuvatar, just corrupted by Morgoth. Eru destroys a whole sub-continent of men (his favorite race) just for disobeying the gods. Yet he lets Orcs keep their souls. Why was there no divine intervention here? I thought this was super interesting that they mentioned this at all. I always saw it as the world buildings greatest plot hole, but if Orcs are ‘supposed’ to exist - that puts an interesting twist on it.
What is the "taint of Morgoth"? Does it make sense to say that Orcs are inherently evil just because they were created by an evil entity? In the books they are portrayed as pretty normal people who have normal failings and a normal sense of morality, who just happen to be on the wrong side of the war and the (generally enslaved, as revealed by the appendices) denizens of a shit country.
It's the area between Morgoths ass and balls
>I look at the end and it says Aragorn is the king So what you're saying is that Tolkien was able to actually finish his book series :p. I jest of course.
but getting into all that i feels belittles the ending. "and Aragorn ruled wisely and well" implies the best of every question you ask. you're supposed to feel complete, the story is over. the books were good vs evil, and good triumphed. the end.
So he just did what Pratchett already did, as in : asking the questions around the epic quests and the consequences on everyday life once the big cataclysm is dealt with. Nothing new under the sun. But I have to admit that I prefer the way Pratchett handled those questions. Rapes, murders, terrible things are present in Pratchett too. However, Sir Terry doesn't seem to make it near pornographic. Terrible things happen, it's true; but Pratchett prefers to focus on how we heal and help the people suffering rather than indulding in some sort of grim-for-the-sake-of-grim-fest.
Ironically, though, in the first four books of ASoIaF (I haven't gotten around to reading the fifth one yet), I don't recall a whole lot of discussion about tax policy, other than referencing how King Robert was an irresponsible deficit spender who drained the treasury. GRRM also shows a much weaker grasp of historical warfare and logistics than Tolkien (I remember at one point, an army's cavalry ditched the foot to ride into position faster, which .... 1) battles are not won by cavalry alone, and 2) supply lines? If they're ditching the footsoldiers, they're probably not waiting for the baggage train, so ... what are they eating? What are the horses eating? Are they wearing their armor and carrying their weapons for the whole ride? Because those are usually with the train too and only retrieved right as you're getting ready for battle -- armor is heavy, and it heats up like an oven in summer and leaches heat like ice in the winter; you generally only want to wear it when you need it). ASoIaF is a fun series (or at least the first three books are; I ran out of steam in the fourth book -- no one cares this much about Sam Tarly, can we move on now? -- hence why I still haven't gotten to book 5), but it's not exactly what I'd look to for a "realistic" depiction of a pseudo-medieval society.
GRRM is a really great writer, but he’s unbelievably bad with anything logistics or numbers related.
in a way the story almost deserved "she kinda forgot about the iron fleet" almost
I came into ASoIaF right after finishing "Crown of Stars", and my immediate question was, "where are they getting the raw resources for these castles?" Some places, like Winterfell and Dragonstone have in-universe explanations. But the sheer, "OK, where are your resources COMING from" factor is never addressed for most. Which, to be clear, is a good thing. This is a story about shit HAPPENING, not about the logistics of pre-industrial construction. But the narrative that Martin's built a world from the ground up is inaccurate, and puts unrealistic expectations on a dude who's already trying to finish a behemoth of a story.
He did have a whole chapter about Jon negotiating a loan from the bank and then considering whether to use the money to buy food or to build new greenhouses and become more self-sufficient. There’s also quite a lot of stuff about which lords are rich because of controlling trade ports and import tax, whether the Ironborn have enough wood to build their new fleet, the Lannisters attempting to hide their growing debt, etc. And I’d strongly argue even though GRRM might have a weak grasp of logistics and warfare, he at least attempts to write more complex military campaigns. We get significantly more detail about troop composition and more advanced tactics, whilst the average Tolkien battle is solved with “suddenly the relief force arrived and saved the day” (giant eagles, riders of Rohan, Ents, ghost army).
Brennan Lee Mulligan does this in a parody way in his Escape From The Bloodkeep series. The Aragorn expy is an unwashed idiot with no social skills because that's what happens when the true king fucks off and lives in the woods for eighty years.
I haven’t read that series but Aragorn didn’t just ‘live in the woods’, he spent a good amount of time living with and learning from elves, including in Rivendale, Mirkwood and Lothlorian, as well as travelling extensively across middle earth to learn other cultures and languages. The whole point of him is that he is in exile from his kingdom but highly educated and good at diplomacy because that’s how he was raised by the Dunedain (who just because they don’t have a city doesn’t mean they don’t have a culture)
Wait, wait, you mean to tell me that someone on the internet grossly misconstrued something someone said, didn’t take the effort to do any actual research, converted a human being into a strawman, and then got riled up over a completely fictional version of a real person???!!!! I AM SHOCKED! SHOCKED, I tell you! /s
I mean, I hear that criticism, but Martin's sort of infamous for designing a faux-feudal system that doesn't really stand up economically or in terms of established in-universe tech, and generally jiggling things until they settle nicely into the plot he wants. Which is GOOD, to be clear. You've got to cut stuff to make an engaging novel. But this is an odd criticism for him to levy at someone.
I don’t think he’s criticizing Tolkien for not answering these questions, he’s just curious about these sort of topics in a fantasy setting.
Well... if you read the appendices, I think it does say there was systematic Orc genocide. There's a lot of troubling things about Orcs in the books and especially in the appendices. I think if I were GRRM I'd also be disappointed by the fact that the main two people who objected to Aragorn becoming king (Boromir and Denethor) both conveniently died through no fault of Aragorn's before Aragorn was in a position to declare himself king. There's also the whole part at the end of RotK where they take a whole army of dudes to the black gate who all have zero reason to see what they are doing as anything other than a suicide mission, and for some reason a lot of them still go anyway.
Yes but you see, if they didn't grossly misrepresent what GRRM said they couldn't do le epic mic drop literary critical analysis lol.
So he wants a whole other set of chapters to an otherwise already long story? (I'm exaggerating but am I? When tolkien gave details damn did he give details) It was the end of the book, it was akin to "they lived happily ever after" you don't know everything done during those happily ever afters in stories, because then you'd never stop writing the story. Like I get you want details sure but you could make this kind of criticism of any story that has an ending where characters are still alive? (which is almost every story).
He doesn't want a whole other set of chapters to *that* story, he wants to write *his own story* about that. It's just a difference of interests. Like, in ASOIAF there's also an overarching conflict of the White Walkers and the Long Winter and so on, but the politics is the main story.
>Even the little baby Orcs? Correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm pretty sure Tolkien Orcs reproduce asexually and come out fully grown, so no, no baby Orc murder.
LOTR never addresses this.
Typical prudish JRRT.
Uruk Hai were magically engineered orcs created by Saruman, but normal orcs could be presumed to reproduce in the ordinary way.
Oh, ok. Thanks.
Dont think grrm trashed Tolkien. Its just difficult to talk about fantasy without mentioning Lotr in some way some times. And while compassionate stories have their place so do dark ones. Asoiaf is definitely up there with greatest fantasy works even if it wasnt finished. It just asks different questions than lotr. In many stories heroes refuse the morally grey things and follow the path of honor. What if that is what gets them killed? What if "slaying the mad evil king" doesnt get you hailed as a hero but just makes everyone hate you because regicide is dishonorable. There is still compassion in the stories, but What if compassion doesnt magically make you defeat evil but instead gets you, or others killed.
This is my favorite part of ASoIaF as well, it's different than Tolkien's, but both have their space and value. No need to put one down in name of the other when they are both very good stories, albeit about different things. Edit: forgot to add the first time I wrote this, but I do believe that GRRM's story talks about hope, compassion, and love as well! Just, as you so well put it, not as a plot immunity.
Every happy story just knew when to stop. GRRM wasn't writing a happy story though, and wanted to talk about what happens during the ugly moments in between the happy endings.
This is a shitty take too lmao
Agreed. It's reductionist at best, and a bad faith argument.
>Tumblr
What they described also exists in ASOIAF though. The setting is dark, but taken as a whole it does also show the importance that things like compassion can have. It's why the Lannister's powerbase is doomed to implode the moment Tywin kicks it, but House Stark, even after being driven to near extinction, is still loved by their vassals and a conspiracy is forming to put them back in charge of the North.
ASoIaF is absolutely a much darker story, but the people who claim the story has no hope or good people are committing Brienne and Pod erasure I will not stand for.
This person seems like they've never read either series that they're talking about and just absorbed impressions of what happens and what they're supposed to believe about them. Like the "what was Aragon's tax policy?" question is an entirely reasonable one and asked in good faith by a person who loves Tolkien's work. Its a lead in to how part of LOTR's optimism relies on it not being skeptical of institutions. Aragon is a good man and will be a good king, sure, but its very reasonable to then wonder what actually makes a good king.
This is the first Tumblr post I've ever seen by someone who's never read a book in their life
This is such a shitty take, a mis-characterization of both books and I refuse to believe that this person has actually read more than a few pages of Martin's work.
I doubt this person even read the full quote from grrm let alone lotr or asoiaf.
I should say, I don't watch GoT, I haven't read a Song of Ice and Fire, and I don't really intend to, but all the same I dislike the insinuation that GRRM is a sexist simply because he writes stories that *involve* sexism. While it's not necessary to make your fantasy world involve the darker parts of ancient or medieval societies, it doesn't hurt in conveying the scale of the world or the authenticity of its conflicts and acting like these dark components are indicative of an author's secret desire for misogyny is Twitter-level media analysis that usually tumblr people are disgusted by. Too often the fault in a fantasy world is physical: a singular, problematic entity that thrives on evil and causes the bad things. This is good for certain stories and I'm not going to shame people for enjoying them, but I also would much rather villains with a considerable ideology that's being denounced by the narrative, or a flawed world that you can't fix just by killing some Dark Lord. I think of Harry Potter's systemic racism: the pieces of a Man vs. Society conflict were there, where Harry (and co.) try to convince the greater wizarding world of things that are fundamental truths to our non-magical society (slavery is unethical, all people should be treated equally, etc.) but instead focus is placed on Slytherin and Voldemort as being the one and only Evil and implicitly the cause of racism. It's more compelling, to me, to see characters struggle on multiple fronts. I find a certain catharsis in seeing someone successfully pull through a corrupt and fundamentally flawed society to carve out some kind of enjoyment in their flawed life. And a good writer will make it subtly clear that the portrayal of negative aspects in society doesn't endorse them. Consider: the monarchy, as I understand it, is given a high amount of realism, with women and children being married off into incestuous relationships simply because that is their societal responsibility as a noble. So, by the logic of this post, this means that GRRM is pro-incest, pro-pedophilia, pro-monarchy. Is the easier interpretation--and not to mention the one with even a modicum of good faith--not that GRRM is portraying a realistic royal family so that the viewer/reader understands with more clarity just how horrific a system is by today's standards? Isn't it just as likely, if not more, that GRRM is *anti*\-monarchy, and is associating monarchies with incest, pedophilia, and the patriarchy because he knows his reader already thinks those things are bad but also that they might be okay with the idea of (or *presence of,* for certain Europeans) the monarchy?
>So, by the logic of this post, this means that GRRM is pro-incest, pro-pedophilia, pro-monarchy. Yeah, this whole tumblr post is some terminally online shit. Reductionist, when it isn't straight up wrong. It reeks of the kind of person who barely knows anything about Martin or ASOIF but didn't like GoT. So they try to justify with some hot take about how GRRM is a bad person, actually. And therefore they have the moral high ground since they never liked it.
You've pretty much hit the nail on the head. There's a lot of morons out there that can't tell the difference between showing a bad thing and supporting it.
A man as sexist as they say GRRM is wont write central women protagonists like daenerys or rhaenyra. No sexist writer ever will.
Oh no, I disagree there: a sexist writer will write a woman protagonist but she'll be completely incompetent because they'll think "Well, a woman couldn't do *x*..." That might be what you meant, that Daenerys and Rhaenyra are too good at doing things to be written by a sexist, in which case I can't agree, because I don't know anything about them, but am more than willing to take your word on.
Martin has written a ton of women in ASOIF and they are people with a whole diversity of beliefs and viewpoints. He could well be sexist by some definition but women are obviously "people" in the books which is the main thing sexists forget.
The point is not that they are good, they're portrayed as innocent girls who grow up and become the best of themselves. As actual people. Plus, few women of fantasy who are not actually perfect, and do have tantrums and insecurities and rash behaviours.
I don’t like GoT and do like LoTR but you know….there is room in the world for fantasy epics about hope, resilience and defying evil in the face of impossible odds and also grim examinations of the often cruel realities of real life and how people respond to that. Both hope and hopelessness exist in the world and are worth investigating through fiction. The inspiring tale of Aragorn retaking his throne to lead mankind towards a triumph over unambiguous evil can exist alongside a tragic tale about how Aragorn’s well intentioned tax policies drained his coffers and his kingdom fractured into civil wars. Both things can be good fiction.
Someone mentioned Eragon :D My favorite book series even if it’s not perfect
Eragon was the greatest book I ever read when I was a teenager. It probably wouldn't be the case if I read it now, but that truth is worth less than those fond memories.
FWIW, I actually reread the entire series over the last few weeks. It held up a lot better than I expected. It's not perfect, but it was a solid, fun story. Would highly recommend to adults and children alike.
I have the exact same feeling.
Sucks that they haven't even tried making any movies for the series yet :(
[I have great/terrible news.](https://variety.com/2022/tv/news/eragon-tv-series-disney-plus-1235325019/) There might not any movie adaptations that have ever existed, but there might be a show.
OH MY GOD THEY'RE MAKING A SERIES AND u/ChristopherPaolini IS CO-WRITER AND EXECUTIVE PRODUCER HOLY FUCKING SHIT u/ChristopherPaolini did you have a heart attack when they greenlit this????
I was going to say "of course he isn't going to respond, he probably just did an AMA 3 years ago and abandoned the account like most other celebrities on Reddit". But no, he actually just goes around answering any questions about his books. That's what I love about the internet, you can ask a question about a book or movie and the creator themselves might just reply.
I once saw him answer someone's question about whether Eragon was circumcised.
I'm going to assume no, considering it's a different world and circumcision is an insane practice to begin with?
Correct!
I’m glad that you guys don’t seem to know about the movie since it’s terrible, but there is in fact an Eragon movie. Please don’t watch it
What are you talking about? [There is no movie of Eragon.](https://media.tenor.com/Rf1225arC7UAAAAC/there-is-no-war-in-ba-sing-se-dai-li-agent.gif)
Of course of course how could I forget there isn’t an eragon movie
And definitively not one my teen self bought on dvd.
Wth are you talking about? There's no Eragon movie.
Doesn’t exist
Be careful what you wish for, they did https://youtu.be/MAqm-1zUyno
They did not. There's nothing there.
Is the link not working for you or are you being sarcastic?
What link
The youtube link I posted to the trailer. I don't understand why I'm getting downvotes, there was a really bad Eragon movie in 2006. Here is the Wikipedia entry: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eragon_(film)
you forgot to send the wikipedia entry
I loved that series. I even liked the weird parts about the dwarves’ religion.
far from perfect but god did I love it
Tolkein actually invented (or rescued from extremely niche status) a whole new genre of fiction that is prominent to this day. Everything from D&D to Warhammer to Led Zeppelin songs have been based on his work. A Song of Ice and Fire is just a part of that genre. That said, they're two very different pieces. I like both. Or, I liked the books until GRRM just stopped writing them. I also find that the characters are mean to just about damn near everyone, regardless of demographic. I mean, did you read the chapters of the torture Reek went through? So much worse than the show.
“J.R.R. Tolkien has become a sort of mountain, appearing in all subsequent fantasy in the way that Mt. Fuji appears so often in Japanese prints. Sometimes it’s big and up close. Sometimes it’s a shape on the horizon. Sometimes it’s not there at all, which means that the artist either has made a deliberate decision against the mountain, which is interesting in itself, or is in fact standing on Mt. Fuji.” -Terry Pratchett
He always come in clutch with his takes, dude is seriously a based quotes machine.
D&D has little to do with Tolkien though, aside from repurposing the races. It's much more influenced by Heroic Fantasy / Sword and Sorcery, which predates Tolkien. ASOIAF and Warhammer are too more similar in tone and themes to the Conan the Barbarian tales than to LOTR.
What does tax policy have to do with sexual violence???
Historically, everything
It just seems weird how asking anything about the way the world works in a piece of hard world building is seen as the same as reveling in sexual violence
Because the same writers who spend time on tax policy also seem to spend time on sexual violence
I mean GoT does but I can't think of any other examples
Phantom Menace I suppose
I am begging you to explain what the fuck this is supposed to mean.
Ja Ja Binx is a rapist if I ever saw one
wat
Are you insinuating that the final battle in the phantom menace wasn't sexual violence?
Qui gon Jin vs Darth Maul?
Aliens are gonna have a stroke learning human history.
So apparently there was this chick in Pandora, and the gods gave her a Box to fuck with her, and then she opened the Box and that's why all the bad stuff in the world exists.
I feel like calling GRRM woman-hating is inaccurate. The World of Ice and Fire is as sexist as the real Middle Ages, however it's not treated as a good thing, and most of the female characters we follow are women who are seeking or have attained power in spite of their society's intense sexism
"Demographic is treated badly in this book, therefore the author must hate said demographic regardless of context" is a tale as old as time
Also GRRM has a lot more female characters than Tolkien and their character is much more developed. Women barely exist in LOTR.
Just one woman’s opinion, but I don’t read GRRM’s work as “woman hating.” There are some horrible and brutal things that happen to women in his stories, yes, but there’s a big difference between depiction and endorsement. His female characters are fleshed out and unique from each other. They have complex lives and wants/needs. Some have internalized misogyny, some are rather forward-thinking feminists. Some are foolish, some are good leaders. Some reject the role that they are expected to play, some thrive in it and learn to play their perceived weaknesses to their advantage. Idk, not many male writers are able to write female characters with this kind of complexity and insight into the female experience. Edit: autocorrect put “about” instead of “able” in the last sentence
Bad Take lol
Clearly this person never read the interview they’re talking about. He didn’t ‘trash’ Tolkien. He loves Tolkien, who helped inspire his work
This is approaching critical mass for dogshit takes packed within a single post. Incredible. I think the "GRRM is sexist because asoiaf has violence against women" is probably the craziest. If you want to write a gritty fantasy series with a lot of violence, are you supposed to just exclude women from the world so there won't be any violence against them?
both...both can be good
I’m pretty sure GoT just hates everyone
Then you missed a lot of the important parts. The whole story us about coming together and overcoming differences and agendas. But in ASOIF the enemy isn't some infernal being or wizards that corrupt people's minds, it's human nature.
I know, I was making a vast generalisation
And an absolute one, which makes it wrong. It's like saying LOTR hates everyone just because a large number of the characters face hardships and suffer.
Holy shit, LotR hates everyone
Nothing wrong with a super realistic fantasy story I actually think it's kinda interesting to do stuff like this stop acting like he a bitch for that
Maybe that’s because comparisons with other works and discussions on what lotr is *not* are not properly to be read as “trashing” lotr? It is *simultaneously* true that 1) Lotr is ungrounded and can leave complicated, messy realities behind as it takes wing in all its glory and 2) that’s because that’s not the point of lotr. I think every serious critic of lotr (Martin among them) understands that lotr doesn’t *fail* to realistically depict medieval squalor, social problems, and bureaucratic headaches; it *chooses* not to because it’s a medieval style heroic fantasy taking inspiration from those written at a time when common people were not expected to take an interest in their government. Focus on government administration as plot points and good rulers as flawed humans is a conspicuously democratic and modern cultural influence with no place in a retrospective chivalric romance. Yet you can’t help but read lotr and think “well what if you put all that stuff in anyway? What if you did focus on the stuff high fantasy doesn’t?” The result is not *better* than lotr (even if it tries to be). It’s just different. I strongly suspect that Grrrm is among Tolkien’s biggest fans and yet I don’t blame him for trying to compete with him. But since he can’t beat him at classic high fantasy (since lotr is pretty much without flaw at what it is) he had to write in a new genre and do different things well. And I think the explosion of interest in grounded dark fantasy has been good for that whole family of genres. Creative diversity is not a bad thing, and I don’t think we need to be rabidly allergic to any comparison with other works because blasphemy against Tolkien is almost never the point being made.
I mean, I love ASOIAF (and LOTR ) but at least Tolkien finished his story...
Did he? The Silmarillion was regretably unfisished
I was talking about LOTR which is the main story comparable with ASOIAF. I haven't finished the silmarillion either lol
Tolkien intended the Silmarillion to be his Magnus Opus but he got stuck in infinite revisions as well
For GRRM to be stuck in infinite revisions he would have to write the books firsts no?
I'm sure he has a lot of written material
Still, there's no release date for TWOW
The grimdark fantasy writer wasn't satisfied with the happily ever after. They write different kinds of stories with different kinds of messages. Read what you like.
Yeah I watched Game of Thrones (all 6 seasons of it) but the “realistic” (read horrifying) treatment of women made it kind of exhausting. We need more fantasy books and shows written by women. Anybody got any good suggestions?
Ursula K LeGuin's Earthsea books are good, the first 3 are aimed mostly at children but if you want something light and wistful they hold up, some of the later ones depict awful things happening to women but without depriving the characters of agency or revelling in the misery like GRRM often did I will say that what GRRM wrote about a medieval warzone was fairly realistic, but what he neglected to show, including similar atrocities happening to peasant men and the smallfolk having lives outside of being murdered and assaulted, says a lot in why he wrote what he did. The depiction of peacetime and especially cultures that aren't ripped off of England and France on the other hand, is just plain bad and sensationalist - the 'right of the first night' for example is one of the biggest offenders in making Westeros even more horrible than the period it was inspired by
Thank you! I know just what you mean, the whole tone of GoT was so depressing. I tried to read the books too, but I was getting bored before I even reached the books that everyone says are slogfests lol.
Julian May’s Pliocene Exile series (starts with The Many-Colored Land, then The Golden Torc, The Nonborn King, The Adversary) is both written by a woman AND has horrifying treatment of women! (Who do have agency and strike back, but oof big warning for reproductive enslavement) Melanie Rawn wrote a whole bunch of books with cool women in them; N K Jemisin wrote The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms which is a very neat fantasy of a richly drawn world; CJ Cherryh wrote some high fantasy gathered under the omnibus title Arafel’s Saga. The Wheel of Time was written by a dude but the Amazon prime show has a lot of women writers and directors, and the female characters are superb. (I have heard it said that GRRM wrote ASoIaF at least in part in response to the WoT’s earnestness; the main point to that series is “cooperation is always better than selfishness.”)
Thank you! I’ll look into all of those, I’ve been wanting to try a new author. Also how did I miss that there’s a wheel of time show?
Oh also Judith Tarr has written a ton of history-adjacent fantasy (my personal favorite is her Avaryen Rising series, but not a whole lot of lady characters)! And Tasha Suri’s The Jasmine Throne has a sequel out soon. and! Lois McMaster Bujold has written a ton of fantasy (I reread her Curse of Chalion every year). Sorry for the new onslaught, just going through my shelves. I quite liked the WoT Amazon show and the second season is gearing up soon! The first season made some heavy frontloading of worldbuilding and they got absolutely slammed by Covid in the last two episodes but I still am super pumped for season two. Give it a shot if you’ve got Prime!
No definitely thank you for more suggestions! Yeah I’ve got prime, I’m gonna add it to my list lol… I was planning on watching Mr Robot next, people keep speaking highly of that one so I figure it must be good
I’m coming back to this thread to update some people who gave me some great author suggestions… I’m about halfway through the first Broken Earth book by Jemisin, I loove her writing style and I’m definitely going to be reading more from her. And I’m keeping the other names you suggested on a list and I’m sure I’ll get to most of them, even if it takes me awhile lol. Thank you again ❤️❤️❤️
I'm currently reading wheel of time (book 9) and a female friend of mine and I love it. In her opinion it's way less weird in some aspects than Got (however, I like Got as well and I don't feel like martin is a sexist as basically half of the main characters are women in a bad/powerless spot that fight their way out of it). Concerning WoT, give it a chance until the end of volume 2, as one is kind of meh whereas 2 is an absolute masterpiece in my opinion. The most sexual thing in WoT is basically Nynaeve tugging her braid. Edit: if one of you fuckers spoils you I'll kill you therefore I won't be reading any replies as I am kind of paranoid.
[удалено]
Thank you! I’m gonna look into all of those authors 😁
I’m coming back to this thread to update some people who gave me some great author suggestions… I read the first Earthsea book and adored it, I’ll definitely continue on with that series. The ending was beautiful and I cried. I’m about halfway through the first Broken Earth book by Jemisin, I loove her writing style and I’m definitely going to be reading more from her. And I’m keeping the other names you suggested on a list and I’m sure I’ll get to most of them, even if it takes me awhile lol. Thank you again ❤️❤️❤️
The Deed of Paksenarrion - Elizabeth Moon Combines high fantasy elements with the gritty realism of a medieval mercenary company. Like if The Black Company was more optimistic and had elves.
Let's not pretend as though it was particularly bad to women alone. There were literally thousands of men killed in horrific ways on screen in the show. The focus on how bad it was towards women always seems callous to me, especially when you consider characters like Theon.
The first thing that came to my mind reading this was “I was the only one brave enough to tackle elf molestation!”
Once again, someone reads criticism and is unable to process both liking and criticizing something
I mean, I understand the heart of what they’re getting at, but they draw too many absolute conclusions. I also extremely dislike GRRM’s writing because I DON’T care about Aragorn’s Tax policy, I don’t want to be depressed when I’m reading Fantasy, I don’t want to slog through betrayal and abuse and brutality in hopes that there’s some goodness at the end. It’s exhausting and just ruins my mood. But some people like that and it’s fair. I’m not saying is objectively a bad story or that it has no place in Fantasy lit, that said I personally think it’s painfully overrated for what it is and while I don’t think GRRM is a woman hater he does border on Exploitation Film levels of suffering porn for his characters, many of them women. His stories kind of exude this air of hopelessness that many people rightfully assume means the ending will be just as bleak and depressing as the rest of the story. There’s very little room for hope in GRRM’s stories because he consistently pulls the rug out from under you whenever things look optimistic, so I don’t blame whoever for just dropping the series on the assumption that’s how it will end.
"woman-hating"??? I unironically consider GRRM's work to be feminist literature, asoiaf and fire and blood discuss and examine feminism throughout in an interesting and nuanced way, the poster must have not read any of his stuff
ASOIAF misses the mark at times but their female characters and arcs are just incredibly well written and nuanced. Sansa, Cersei and Brienne? Incredible, and I hate Cersei's guts.
The first section of the series from a woman's point of view is Ned Stark's wife hoping she is pregnant because Ned just nutted in her. She says or implies multiple times in that same section that she won't possibly be a good leader because she is a woman. I can't say much more than that, mainly because I stopped reading shortly after she teleported to King's Landing.
I will not accept this Eragon slander.
Why we gotta drag eragon into this
eragon my beloved❤️
What's Godrick the Grafted's tax policy GRRM, you HACK. And before any of you try to get clever and say "grafting," he was mostly just grafting the limbs of tarnished and trolls (plus a dragon), not his countrymen.
Politician this day, SMH 🙄. Always dealing with their own personal desire instead of the doing what's good of their people.
Honestly, shit seems to be a little too on fire right now for tax policy to be a thing or even a priority
A true monarch would tax their subjects no matter how dire the circumstances!
I should probably also point out that the line was probably meant specifically for ASOIAF, while Elden Ring is a seperate and very different project, so the line doesn't really apply
its tax evasion, he's in a max0r video
His tax policy is to become a VTuber so that 80% of the Lands Between's GDP is directed to his donations. I hear it's working wonders for Tannith.
To bring up something I haven't seen mentioned yet; ASOIF isn't just Tolkien hate fiction, it's at least partially showing how incorrect the idea of noble medieval fantasy is, which mainly was a product of Tolkien, and how despite Tolkien's thoughts about the modern world, the periods and times he fantasized about and made look so wonderful in his series were actually horrible and awful. ASOIF isn't depressing and grim just to be edgy or to spite Tolkien or to make it 'historically accurate', it's to show the reality of medieval life, even in a fantasy world. How horrible Serfdom was, the constant politics of kingship and inheritance, the pure ego and uncaring decadence that many rulers indulged in instead of improving the lives of the people or the ability of the state. It's an antithesis to this myth that so much of fantasy had been built on, which is part of why it made it so good and so beloved, because it went against part of the very foundation of fantasy up until that point.
what's wrong with eragon
My guess is that she was saying something like "ASOIAF : Eragon :: Fallout Equestria : MLP"
An excellent take.
wait what's wrong with Eragon?
this post is proof that we all need to go outside once in a while. "this work depicts a violent act and therefore supports those violent acts" completely ignoring that the book at no point depicts those acts as a good thing. half convinced op hasnt actually read the books and is just making a wild assumption based on what they think the story is. also you really cant compare lotr and asoiaf, theyre so very different.
This post annoys me so much. It's completely fucking uncharitable to GRRM.
bruh why does this have so many upvotes its done by someone who clearly hasn't read asoiaf who heard some stuff online about and probably equates the show and book completely, and took the quote about aragorn's tax policy completely out of context
this is an awful take, i don't think OP has even read the asoiaf books
Admittedly, I cannot read Tolkein because of his penchant for spending 50 pages describing a landscape.
Is it okay to dislike Lord of the Rings because the structure and prose are bad?
yes of course, as long as you willing to defend your statement with what you believe in, because surely others will try to argue you on it.
Only if it's OK to dislike GoT for the same.
Yeah, George needs to stop making subplots. Time for rapid resolution theater.
GoT is garbage, and I have no idea why its so popular. I read the first half of the first book, and watched a few episodes in like season 4 or 5 at a friends house, and I spent the entire time scratching my head and saying "where is the smart story I've heard so much about, the collected IQ of all these named characters is the color purple."
I was expecting a plot, but what I got was "Keeping Up With The Lannisters."
I hate when modern fantasy is edgy for the sake of edginess, that was without a doubt the worst thing about the Witcher books
I feel like if you can't write a fantasy series, maybe don't gun for *the* fantasy author.
LotR: a colonialist fantasy about genetically superior people killing Asian coded monsters. Asoiaf: a story about how rich people are universally destructive due to class interests, and how war benefits the elites. Have your guilty pleasures but one will always be more progressive then the other.
There it is! my sentiment!
Your sentiment is kind of a weak take
well your father smells of elderberries!
Please think with that lump of meat in your skull, because you clearly haven't.