George RR Martin, his fanboys, and former fanbase

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Laburnum said:
Some choice quotes:
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Where is his love for storytelling? Where is his love for his characters and the world he created? Where is his desire to tell the world the story he's had in his head for nearly 30 years now?

Is this all a consequence of his cynical worldview? Is this age and bad health draining him of his youthful desires? How does an author, with tens of millions of fans worldwide, lose any and all desire to bring his creations into the world?
 
Stab You in the Back said:
Where is his love for storytelling? Where is his love for his characters and the world he created? Where is his desire to tell the world the story he's had in his head for nearly 30 years now?

Is this all a consequence of his cynical worldview? Is this age and bad health draining him of his youthful desires? How does an author, with tens of millions of fans worldwide, lose any and all desire to bring his creations into the world?
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His hippie upbringing caused him to think successful, wealthy people are lazy and libertine, spending their weekends at the Hamptons on pet projects and drawing from income from Mother or their trust fund.

He hit it rich, his "trust fund" became royalties from ASOIAF/GoT, and he decided to embrace the stereotype. He does what he wants (starting new things), and doesn't do what he doesn't want to do (the very hard work of finishing what he started.) If his bookstore ran into trouble it would simply fail because he would have started something else in the meantime.
 
Stab You in the Back said:
Where is his love for storytelling? Where is his love for his characters and the world he created? Where is his desire to tell the world the story he's had in his head for nearly 30 years now?

Is this all a consequence of his cynical worldview? Is this age and bad health draining him of his youthful desires? How does an author, with tens of millions of fans worldwide, lose any and all desire to bring his creations into the world?
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Because he knows the average person will hate it. I've seen Youtube critics go "The reason people hated the TV show ending was because it was rushed. All of the plot points were okay, they just needed to be built up to", and that is patently false. It's the ending itself that's hated, not the lack of lead up to it. All of the characters get screwed in some way - people do things for idiotic reasons, people abandon relationships for idiotic reasons, people die for idiotic reasons. Expectations are subverted, because GRRM the Hippie can't allow anything to have a traditional ending. He'd rather see the franchise fizzle out into nothing than see the Rightful King Restored, the Villain Defeated Satisfactorily, the Wayward Soul Redeemed By Love, the Happy Couples Marry and Have Children, etc.
 
The Dunk and Egg prequel show is now delayed to 2026. Rumor is that House of the Dragon season three will be out in 2027 now.
Stab You in the Back said:
Where is his desire to tell the world the story he's had in his head for nearly 30 years now?
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The problem is that he hasn't had the story in his head for more than five minutes before he 'gardens' again and changes his mind. His inability to plan or commit to anything is the worst approach to writing. He's probably written enough for ten books already that had to be thrown into the garbage for various reasons.
 
WhiskeyJack said:
Only one in four lives to become a trained Unsullied, with each trainee getting a puppy the day they are castrated to raise and then strangle to death one year later. Then they have to buy a newborn in the slave market and kill it in front of its mother to finish their training and earn their helmet.
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people dont realize how much of a shitty edgy writer this fat fuck is. what the fuck is this gart ennis shit
 
WhiskeyJack said:
Somewhere in Essos is a hell of a puppy mill.
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This is all taken into account in the story. The Unsullied are a hideously expensive, highly inefficient army produced by a monstrous industry. Their strength is their inhuman discipline and loyalty through indoctrination, something no conventional free or slave army can match. Their tactics are limited - they're basically trading off their reputation as paper to the Dothraki's rock - and most customers can only afford a few who they use a bodyguards to show off how rich and important they are.

Leading up to the battle of Maureen there's a lot of discussion on how to properly employ the Unsullied in an open battle against combined arms. The biggest challenge is getting them setup in formation without getting slaughtered from all sides in the process. If they can manage that then the block of Unsullied becomes an immovable object that will resist any charge thrown at it until they're all dead.
 
South Park totally called it when they parodied GOT. I thought Matt & Trey got it wrong because we did get dragons. But thematically they were correct that the series was directionless and and ultimately a waste of time.
 
Pedophobe said:
This is all taken into account in the story. The Unsullied are a hideously expensive, highly inefficient army produced by a monstrous industry. Their strength is their inhuman discipline and loyalty through indoctrination, something no conventional free or slave army can match. Their tactics are limited - they're basically trading off their reputation as paper to the Dothraki's rock - and most customers can only afford a few who they use a bodyguards to show off how rich and important they are.

Leading up to the battle of Maureen there's a lot of discussion on how to properly employ the Unsullied in an open battle against combined arms. The biggest challenge is getting them setup in formation without getting slaughtered from all sides in the process. If they can manage that then the block of Unsullied becomes an immovable object that will resist any charge thrown at it until they're all dead.
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What is even the point? You purposely raise a slave for his entire life for a glorified pikeman? Like yeah having good discipline is important in that type of military unit, and some of those units were historically extremely powerful, but not to this extent of insanity. This kind of money would be better spent training those children to be a jack of all trade warriors that can fulfill as many role on the battlefield as needed, making them incredibly versatile to fill any holes, while also having them loyal enough to go on suicide attacks a la' Fremen.
 
Pedophobe said:
I guess it's a prestige product that sells for a profit to rich assholes. But yeah at the end of the day it's just a literary device that says "slavery bad, Easteners are fucking weird".
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I think I talked about it before how slavery is weirdly portrayed in the series with having it be argued to be superior to being a serf, and whether it's arguing for how the Arabian slave trade not being as harmful as the white one.
 
The eastern side of Essos is portrayed as primitive but also decadent. The Free Cities have commerce and a developed society that's also growing at their own pace like Westeros.

But all that's close to Slavers' Bay and similar is full of primitive nuts or new-rich types. The ones with money just buy people because of the status, not the practicality. At least the Unsullied have some training.
 
Chapalapachapa said:
people dont realize how much of a shitty edgy writer this fat fuck is. what the fuck is this gart ennis shit
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The Unsullied are what happens when you're an edgy fantasy writer who wants an even more "hardcore super soldier" version of the Sardaukar for your book series, but you know even less about warrior societies or military training than Herbert. So you invent some weird uber-Spartan training regimen and just keep adding layers to it because it's not "bad-ass enough yet".

They're just a lamer version of the Janissaries, though. That forgotten Kurt Russel "Soldier" movie did a better version of the same idea:


(Fun fact, the kid holding the flag is Russel's son, who I think is the new Captain America in the MCU.)

Pedophobe said:
This is all taken into account in the story. The Unsullied are a hideously expensive, highly inefficient army produced by a monstrous industry. Their strength is their inhuman discipline and loyalty through indoctrination, something no conventional free or slave army can match. Their tactics are limited - they're basically trading off their reputation as paper to the Dothraki's rock - and most customers can only afford a few who they use a bodyguards to show off how rich and important they are.

Leading up to the battle of Maureen there's a lot of discussion on how to properly employ the Unsullied in an open battle against combined arms. The biggest challenge is getting them setup in formation without getting slaughtered from all sides in the process. If they can manage that then the block of Unsullied becomes an immovable object that will resist any charge thrown at it until they're all dead.
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The real issue with them is that they're all castrated before age 5 just because GRRM thought it made them sound more hardcore. There's no amount of discipline and loyalty that will overcome being trapped in weak, testosterone-free bodies with osteoporosis, no matter what GRRM has his characters say to the contrary:
“Why do you cut them?” she asked Kraznys through the slave girl. “Whole men are stronger than eunuchs, I have always heard.”

“A eunuch who is cut young will never have the brute strength of one of your Westerosi knights, this is true,” said Kraznys mo Nakloz when the question was put to him. “A bull is strong as well, but bulls die every day in the fighting pits. A girl of nine killed one not three days past in Jothiel’s Pit. The Unsullied have something better than strength, tell her. They have discipline. We fight in the fashion of the Old Empire, yes. They are the lockstep legions of Old Ghis come again, absolutely obedient, absolutely loyal, and utterly without fear.”
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At least the Dothraki are mobile and numerous, even if they are a less functional Mongol-knockoff. The Unsullied are just an attempt at rule-of-cool, except GRRM's idea of cool is painfully lame and try-hard. It's the sort of idea I'd have thought up as a teen when reading about the Spartans or Janissaries.
 
mindlessobserver said:
while Aria won't become a fully enrobed Death Priestess because fuck religion, rules, hierarchy and shit. I am Boomer, hear my kvetch about Dad
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Did anybody really expect that to happen? She fails at becoming a faceless man at every step of the journey, holding onto to sense of self and identity as a Stark while the Faceless priest goes on about how the house of Black and White isn't a place for her.
Even with her getting moved along in the training, she only increases in ability, not in her aptitude for being no one. Honestly her fucking off from the House and Black and White is so obvious I think her not doing that would be a bigger subversion.
 
WhiskeyJack said:
There's no amount of discipline and loyalty that will overcome being trapped in weak, testosterone-free bodies with osteoporosis
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He could have just had them drink some retarded magical potion that would permanently chemically castrated them, but didn't cause any of the side effects typical of eunuchs. Could have helped explain why no one else in the world is able to create the Unsullied, which is another plot hole now that I think about it.

It's not like the slavemasters make it a secret how they are created, beyond the slavery and brutality of it there is no cultural component like there was with the Roman Legionnaires (and the inability of neighboring kingdoms to replicate them, despite numerous attempts), and since they're apparently so effective, why is no one else trying to make their own version?

What's stopping some other city or kingdom from buying a bunch Unsullied, or bribing away one of the trainers, and starting their own slave army program?

Also, I always loved how GRRM clearly had no idea how Dany was going to get her army and keep her dragon eggs, so he just made the slavemasters complete imbeciles and hoped no one would call him on it.
 
regalterry said:
He could have just had them drink some retarded magical potion that would permanently chemically castrated them, but didn't cause any of the side effects typical of eunuchs. Could have helped explain why no one else in the world is able to create the Unsullied, which is another plot hole now that I think about it.
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Worse, he literally has them drinking a retarded magical potion that causes them to develop nerve damage so they feel no pain (ala that recent Novocain movie), but it never occurred to him to just make impotence a side-effect and avoid castrating toddlers and expecting the reader to believe they grow up into effective close-quarters fighters.
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wtfNeedSignUp said:
What is even the point? You purposely raise a slave for his entire life for a glorified pikeman? Like yeah having good discipline is important in that type of military unit, and some of those units were historically extremely powerful, but not to this extent of insanity. This kind of money would be better spent training those children to be a jack of all trade warriors that can fulfill as many role on the battlefield as needed, making them incredibly versatile to fill any holes, while also having them loyal enough to go on suicide attacks a la' Fremen.
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In Gurm's mind the Unsullied seem to be a super combination of Greek phalanx strength ("the lock-step legions of Old Ghis reborn") and the discipline and flexibility of Roman legions in the golden age of the Empire. Which doesn't make any sense but it's Gurm, whether something makes sense or not doesn't matter
 
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