Better than never having the series finished, tbh.
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A Song of Ice and Fire BOOK Discussion |OT2| Unmarked SPOILERS for Published Material
- Thread starter Basileus777
- Start date
Better than never having the series finished, tbh.
I don't think he's lost the will to complete the series, just he's easily distracted and, I don't blame him at all, really enjoys the celebrity that it has brought him since HBO made the show.
The real problem is the end of the show. I reckon he'll get the WoW out before the show finishes but there will be some much hype, expectation, interviews, conventions, awards shows, etc etc when the show ends in 2018 I could see him not starting on the next book until 2020.
The real problem is the end of the show. I reckon he'll get the WoW out before the show finishes but there will be some much hype, expectation, interviews, conventions, awards shows, etc etc when the show ends in 2018 I could see him not starting on the next book until 2020.
D & D have already said that seasons 6 and beyond don't spoil the books aside from a few key points.
As they've said, the show has become its own thing.
And if you read the new confirmed show leaks, you should be more certain of that.
The big bombs for the show next season are very unlikely to be in the show.
Morrigan Stark
Arrogant Smirk
Wut? Isn't the show ending this year?
Have they? Last I saw, they admitted that season 5 would spoil some TWoW stuff. I haven't watched the show past S4 myself.
RatskyWatsky
Hunky Nostradamus
7 episodes this year, 6(ish) more next year.
That's assuming the final season doesn't get pushed back to 2019.
Morrigan Stark
Arrogant Smirk
lol, even HBO doing that shit now? Jesus.
HBO started the trend with the Sopranos.
Morrigan Stark
Arrogant Smirk
I scrolled past that post quickly. Please don't talk about the show here without at least using spoiler tags.
Cornballer
Member
From the OP:
Knock off the TV discussion.
No one sits the Iron Throne at the end.
Here's some bullet endpoints:
Jon, Tyrion and Daenerys die going beyond the curtain of light north of the wall on their dragons. We don't see them die but we see them destroy the Heart of Winter and they have ambiguous deaths.
"Aegon" is going to be the last King of Westeros before KL along with the Iron Throne go boom with all that wildfire underneath his feet because of Daenerys and her dragons to her horror thereby making her the ultimate villain in the eyes of the people. That kills Arianne, Jon Con, the High Sparrow, Lancel Lannister, Varys, Aegon, Nymeria and Tyene Sand and whoever else is stuck there.
Jaime and Cersei are under lockdown at Casterly Rock(during and after KL'sexplosion) to Jaime's anger. It's becomes too much for him and
he chokes Cersei to death because of how furious he is at her that she cheated on him and betrayed their love. A Lannister always pays his debts and Jaime proves himself Tywin's heir as Tyrion shakes off Tywin's mantle to go save the world.
As Cersei lays dying, Jaime realizes to his horror that there are true knights like Brienne around but he could not prove one of them. Then Robert Strong aka the Mountain,the representation of Lannister cruelty and specifically his father's cruelty, murders him.
Bran goes to Winterfell and underneath the Heart Tree of Winterfell to build his own weirwood throne to become Winterfell's new protector. It's also from where he fights the Others when they're under siege.
Arya might die by the end. I can't see what else she can do besides leave Winterfell forever realizing she has no place there anymore because she's too changed.
Sansa helps Bran rule Winterfell along with the North and the rest of the Stark rulers that come after Bran descend from Sansa.
Euron Greyjoy gets that dragon, brings the Doom to Valyria and brings down the Wall with the Horn of Joramun but only right after he sacrifices the Redwyne Fleet along with is own to become something more than human. By the time Daenerys kills him, Euron sends his own spirit to infiltrate the weirwood network to take over the godhood which means he has to contend with Bran while everyone fights the Others. Bran wins and he dies for good here.
Sweetrobin die, Rickon dies, Harry the Heir dies and Shireen dies.
Stannis becomes the 1000th Lord Commander of the Night's Watch (or he dies) going full circle as the man who was obsessed with his rights gives them up.
In the absence of heirs, Stannis legitimizes Edric Storm as his last act as king and Davos brings back Edric to take back the Stormlands.
Because of the Others going past the Twins and the Red Wedding 2.0, Old Walder loses most of his heirs before he dies. By the end of the series, Big Walder Frey ascends.
Daenerys Targaryen goes to the Water Gardens to barbecue Doran Martell after KL blows up. The only thing revenge brought him was more dead relatives. When Daenerys meets Doran there she burns everything there. As the fires rage all around him in the Water Gardens, he thinks to himself "Oh....I forgot about the children" signifying that in his anger and vengeance he forgot the most important lesson that his mother taught him. He burns to a crisp just like Quentyn and Arianne. Unbowed, Unbent and Unbroken but apparently not Unburnt like Daenerys.
Marge either dies in the KL explosion or loses her trial and is executed by the High Sparrow and Cersei/Aegon.
These are my thoughts.
Purple Cheeto
Member
He absolutely lost the will to finish the books. He wrote these as a younger, angry man who was upset about being ousted from Hollywood.
Now he's rich and beloved and can spend his time on his true love, editing Wild Cards anthologies.
He will go to great lengths to tell you all about Wild Cards but if you ask him even the most basic question about ASOIAF he will get very upset (And that's putting it mildly). ASOIAF was supposed to be a trilogy that he was supposed to be done with 20 years ago so that he could go back to TV writing or Wild Cards. Instead it became some giant thing beyond his control and he doesn't have the writing ability to solve the structural issues he created.
TwntyOneTwlv
Member
THE NOT A BLOG HAS BEEN UPDATED. GRRM HAS HEARD OUR CRIES AND HE HAS DELIVERED.
http://grrm.livejournal.com/514373.html
http://grrm.livejournal.com/514373.html
kill me now please
Those are probably more words than he wrote for TWOW in the past month.
Incandenza
Banned
George R. R. Martin is Not Our Bitch, But the Dude Could Throw Us a Damn Bone
It's been a real shame to see the state of the fanbase recently. It used to be so vibrant with cool theories and excitement but visiting r/asoiaf feels a bit depressing now. Not that I can blame them. Luckily the Cosmere is gaining traction so there's somewhere else to go.
It's been a real shame to see the state of the fanbase recently. It used to be so vibrant with cool theories and excitement but visiting r/asoiaf feels a bit depressing now. Not that I can blame them. Luckily the Cosmere is gaining traction so there's somewhere else to go.
Where does one start with the Cosmere, Mistborn?
Incandenza
Banned
That's what Sanderson recommends. Stormlight Archive is usually considered his best work but it has a slow start. His novellas are good too.
Thread here: http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=1126115
RatskyWatsky
Hunky Nostradamus
Good article. GRRM absolutely owes his fans an update - even if it's of a brief and disappointing nature.
unless the real reason he hasn't given us an update yet is because he's legitimately almost finished with the book and is planning a surprise announcement in the next month or two zomg
Steelyuhas
Member
Don't do that to yourself
RatskyWatsky
Hunky Nostradamus
BELIEVE
Uhhh obviously TWOW was finished several years ago and he has been secretly working on ADOS all this time and will release both books at the same time on March of this year.
Fans hype themselves up too much.
GRRM only gave one New Years update on TWOW in the past 5 years and only because he publically said that he thought he was close a couple months before New Years.
He does hate the fans that keep hounding him about when he'll be done and talk about how he's going to die before he even finishes the next book.
RatskyWatsky
Hunky Nostradamus
Sounds plausible. I like the way you think!
Purple Cheeto
Member
He wrote more words in 2016 about the NFL than he has released/written for TWOW.
And he's secretly already dead. The samples chapters we've seen are all he wrote before he passed.
HBO is hiding the body until the show is done to reveal the truth.
Like he really thinks anyone gives a damn about his opinions on football. He wrote that just to troll us.
KuwabaraTheMan
Banned
He's been writing weekly posts on football for as long as I've been aware of his livejournal. If it's a troll, it's one of the longest ones in history.
Jack Scofield
Member
ASOIAF should end with an alien invasion, just to throw things on their head. We always get aliens invading modern earth. Let's have an alien invasion in the psuedo-Medieval times of the book series.
Bounceounce
Member
People try to force too much of their dislike of the last two books as being indicative of Grrms perspective on those plots and why he's moving slow.
You would think. But this is GRRM we're talking about here.
Cesare Borgia
Banned
He also thought he'd finish Feast and Dance nearly every year of their delays. Seems clear he's facing structural problems and doesn't know how to deal with it.
If TWOW comes out this year it'll be in like...November.
I think he simply doesn't write much. He either lost his passion for it. Or has so much money now that there is no pressure to write and he is procrastinating.
I mean, all the power to him, it is his life. But with the story coming to an end, I find it very unlikely he is having trouble getting to the end point. The hard part is long behind him on that front.
That's definitely not it. GRRM is constantly putting out new pages. The real problem is that he's constantly unwriting those pages or rewriting them because he always thinks it could be better.
That's why you see GRRM doing thing likes writing 3 different versions of the same scenario to pick which one he wants to go with. He has to see it on paper before he can decide. He's extremely inefficient.
What I mean by that is look at Quentyn. GRRM couldn't decide when he should arrive and how that would affect the plot so he wrote chapters of Quentyn arriving 100 days before Dany's wedding, the day before Dany's Wedding and after Dany's wedding. And he wrote through them to see which worked better.
Purple Cheeto
Member
Basileus777
Member
Well this was the case with ADWD. With Winds we are pretty much in the dark as he's said nothing useful about what has been going on.
It was the case in AFFC too. AGOT- ASOS had a smaller scope than AFFC-ADWD. He was overambitious and overreached.
Now he has a lot of POV arcs he has to end in TWOW to make ADOS as focused as AGOT(the ideal) of at least back at ASOS' level.
And remember when his POVS die, it's always tragically as a result of their own mistakes.
Apparently we only have 13 POVs by the end of TWOW so take your picks on who makes it out alive.
Anyways if he thought he could finish in months but then failed to deliver even a year afterwards then chances are it's less that he didn't write close to enough and more that he was unhappy with what he put out.
So he's probably re-writing and unwriting a lot of things.
I think someone made a pretty good theory that he's stuck on a Northern Knot and can't see who should arrive first at Winterfell between Sansa, Jon, Rickon and all the rest. Because that'll have a domino effect on what happens that he'll lose control ovee once he finalizes it.
Okay so speaking on that, Adam Whitehead(GRRM's friend) released this on the factual history of A Song of Ice and Fire:
https://www.reddit.com/r/asoiaf/comments/5mgn8i/spoilers_main_the_factual_history_of_a_song_of/
So I'll give you a summary of the parts are relevant to the current discussion:
The first is that ASOS was published on 2000. GRRM started on his fourth book with the timeskip and wrote for a year. In late 2001, he decided it wouldn't work and scrapped the whole thing. So then from late 2001 onwards he had a merged novel of AFFC and ADWD that he wanted to write.
By 2005, he decided to split it in half by geographic location. And in May of 2005, he had AFFC published, a second Dunk and Egg novella done and had about half of ADWD finished(550 MS pages of a book he only expected to be 1100 MS pages.) So in 3 and a half years of actual writing he had finished a novella, and 1.5 ASOIAF books. That's only a very slight slow down on his former speed.
The second thing, and here is where it gets interesting, after he had finished AFFC and promised ADWD the next year(he had written 550 pages and he wrote the last 300 pages of AFFC on 6 months so he thought it was possible), his publishing company forced to do an ambitious book signing tour which took 6 months So those were 6 months that he wasn't working on the book. He came back to ADWD in early 2006 and at that point he reconsidered the plans for his book and rewrote the leftover material(the 550 MS pages). This is also where he decided to become over-ambitious and decided to expand the book by furthering the plotlines leftover from AFFC. The previous ADWD was only supposed to get as far as the timeline of AFFC went with none of the AFFC POVs showing up. That's why he expected it to be a novel as big as AFFC but when he made the change that meant the novel became 400 pages longer as a result.
He also had trouble solving the Meereenese Knot which is one of the reasons that the book was stalled so long. And this is where his pressure from outside sources his own growing perfectionism started to kick in(especially when TIME Magazine called him the American Tolkien). Anyways he decided to move the climaxes of the Battles of Ice and Fire to the next book and he published it in 2011.
Okay the third thing is on the progress of TWOW:
1) GRRM had 100-150 MS pass carried over from ADWD to the new novel so he was already 10 % done with it by 2011.
2) He took a year long break from writing TWOW. He did a huge signing tour and then prioritized the 4th Dunk and Egg novel over The Winds of Winter. He also committed himself to writing TWOIAF at this point too. Also editing anthologies. He finished all these commitments by early 2013 besides the 4th Dunk and Egg novel which he put on the backburner.
3) GRRM didn't concentrate on seriously writing TWOW until 2013. I repeat he didn't seriously start writing it until early 2013.
4) By April of 2013, he said had a quarter of TWOW done though. So he wrote 225-275 pages in the time he wasn't seriously prioritizing it. That's about 375 MS pages since he expected TWOW to be as big as ASOS(1500 pages) and not the size of AFFC (1100 pages.) So 25 % done.
5) He thought he could finish by October of 2015 at one point and then December.
6) By January 2016, he said he had hundreds of pages and dozens of chapters done. So dozens implies he had at least 36 chapters done. 72 chapters would mean he was done.
36 chapters is a very lowball estimate though. His chapters tend to be 20 pages long each.
It's unlikely that in 3 years, where he did prioritize it, he went from 375 MS pages to only 720 MS pages especially if he thought he was close to finishing in 2015 unless he rewrote huge swathes of it again. And 60 chapters is more plausible but a kind of highball estimate which dictates he had 1200 pages done by then. I mean that would hold with him thinking he was close but this would mean that GRRM is going to announce TWOW any day now but I'm not optimistic enough for that.
------
Personally, I think at that point he had closer to 48 chapters done by January 2016. That's around 960 MS. So I guess he thought he was recently on a roll in early to mid 2015 that got him optimistic.
But anyways I feel very confident in saying that GRRM finished somewhere between 720-1200 MS by January 2016.
It it's the low-ball estimate aka only 36 chapters then GRRM won't finish until late 2022 based on that writing speed. But he always writers faster at the end so I'm going to arbitrarily take off one-two years and say 2020-2021. The lowball estimate is basically our worst nightmate but it's also the unlikeliest scenario.
The realistic estimate is that he's done 48 chapters (960 MS pages). That's 600 pages in 3 years. So he should've written 200 pages this year probably more since again he writes faster at the end and also because he dedicated 2016 to concentrate on the book. Based on that, he should be anywhere from 1200-1300 pages done by now. So that would mean he'd finish by the end of this year/early next year. This the realistic scenario.
The optimistic scenario is that he finished 60 chapters by January 2016. That's 1200 MS pages. Basically that means he's about to announce it any day now.
This is all barring any huge rewrites like he did in AFFC and ADWD but I think he has a better idea of what he wants TWOW to be than he did for AFFC and ADWD.
https://www.reddit.com/r/asoiaf/comments/5mgn8i/spoilers_main_the_factual_history_of_a_song_of/
So I'll give you a summary of the parts are relevant to the current discussion:
The first is that ASOS was published on 2000. GRRM started on his fourth book with the timeskip and wrote for a year. In late 2001, he decided it wouldn't work and scrapped the whole thing. So then from late 2001 onwards he had a merged novel of AFFC and ADWD that he wanted to write.
By 2005, he decided to split it in half by geographic location. And in May of 2005, he had AFFC published, a second Dunk and Egg novella done and had about half of ADWD finished(550 MS pages of a book he only expected to be 1100 MS pages.) So in 3 and a half years of actual writing he had finished a novella, and 1.5 ASOIAF books. That's only a very slight slow down on his former speed.
The second thing, and here is where it gets interesting, after he had finished AFFC and promised ADWD the next year(he had written 550 pages and he wrote the last 300 pages of AFFC on 6 months so he thought it was possible), his publishing company forced to do an ambitious book signing tour which took 6 months So those were 6 months that he wasn't working on the book. He came back to ADWD in early 2006 and at that point he reconsidered the plans for his book and rewrote the leftover material(the 550 MS pages). This is also where he decided to become over-ambitious and decided to expand the book by furthering the plotlines leftover from AFFC. The previous ADWD was only supposed to get as far as the timeline of AFFC went with none of the AFFC POVs showing up. That's why he expected it to be a novel as big as AFFC but when he made the change that meant the novel became 400 pages longer as a result.
He also had trouble solving the Meereenese Knot which is one of the reasons that the book was stalled so long. And this is where his pressure from outside sources his own growing perfectionism started to kick in(especially when TIME Magazine called him the American Tolkien). Anyways he decided to move the climaxes of the Battles of Ice and Fire to the next book and he published it in 2011.
Okay the third thing is on the progress of TWOW:
1) GRRM had 100-150 MS pass carried over from ADWD to the new novel so he was already 10 % done with it by 2011.
2) He took a year long break from writing TWOW. He did a huge signing tour and then prioritized the 4th Dunk and Egg novel over The Winds of Winter. He also committed himself to writing TWOIAF at this point too. Also editing anthologies. He finished all these commitments by early 2013 besides the 4th Dunk and Egg novel which he put on the backburner.
3) GRRM didn't concentrate on seriously writing TWOW until 2013. I repeat he didn't seriously start writing it until early 2013.
4) By April of 2013, he said had a quarter of TWOW done though. So he wrote 225-275 pages in the time he wasn't seriously prioritizing it. That's about 375 MS pages since he expected TWOW to be as big as ASOS(1500 pages) and not the size of AFFC (1100 pages.) So 25 % done.
5) He thought he could finish by October of 2015 at one point and then December.
6) By January 2016, he said he had hundreds of pages and dozens of chapters done. So dozens implies he had at least 36 chapters done. 72 chapters would mean he was done.
36 chapters is a very lowball estimate though. His chapters tend to be 20 pages long each.
It's unlikely that in 3 years, where he did prioritize it, he went from 375 MS pages to only 720 MS pages especially if he thought he was close to finishing in 2015 unless he rewrote huge swathes of it again. And 60 chapters is more plausible but a kind of highball estimate which dictates he had 1200 pages done by then. I mean that would hold with him thinking he was close but this would mean that GRRM is going to announce TWOW any day now but I'm not optimistic enough for that.
------
Personally, I think at that point he had closer to 48 chapters done by January 2016. That's around 960 MS. So I guess he thought he was recently on a roll in early to mid 2015 that got him optimistic.
But anyways I feel very confident in saying that GRRM finished somewhere between 720-1200 MS by January 2016.
It it's the low-ball estimate aka only 36 chapters then GRRM won't finish until late 2022 based on that writing speed. But he always writers faster at the end so I'm going to arbitrarily take off one-two years and say 2020-2021. The lowball estimate is basically our worst nightmate but it's also the unlikeliest scenario.
The realistic estimate is that he's done 48 chapters (960 MS pages). That's 600 pages in 3 years. So he should've written 200 pages this year probably more since again he writes faster at the end and also because he dedicated 2016 to concentrate on the book. Based on that, he should be anywhere from 1200-1300 pages done by now. So that would mean he'd finish by the end of this year/early next year. This the realistic scenario.
The optimistic scenario is that he finished 60 chapters by January 2016. That's 1200 MS pages. Basically that means he's about to announce it any day now.
This is all barring any huge rewrites like he did in AFFC and ADWD but I think he has a better idea of what he wants TWOW to be than he did for AFFC and ADWD.
RatskyWatsky
Hunky Nostradamus
KuwabaraTheMan
Banned
I'm all for being cautiously optimistic, but I wouldn't try and parse a statement by Martin saying he's written "dozens of chapters" to mean "at least three dozen" rather than "quite a few".
Nor would I try and extrapolate a writing speed. The main issue GRRM has is that his speed is really inconsistent depending on the part of the story he's working on. I certainly hope we get the book this year (ideally in the first half of the year), but I don't think you can really calculate things out just by looking at public statements.
Nor would I try and extrapolate a writing speed. The main issue GRRM has is that his speed is really inconsistent depending on the part of the story he's working on. I certainly hope we get the book this year (ideally in the first half of the year), but I don't think you can really calculate things out just by looking at public statements.
Winter's not over yet, boy.
TwntyOneTwlv
Member
Whelp, the Giants lost to the Packers. GRRM is going to be so depressed, he won't be able to write for weeks. Months, maybe. We won't get TWOW till at least 2022 now.
Totally worth it. Fuck the Giants.
Because of him I've come to hate the Jets and the Giants, and I don't even follow american football.