Thar Be Spoilers...A Song of Ice and Fire. WARNING A LOT OF SPOILERS!!!
Something has been bugging me. For one thing, GRRM is killing me with these books. I needs to know all the answers to my questions. Needs!
In the meantime, I have been lurking the forums and reading the theories and such that run rampant across the interwebs. I was reading some theories about what Bran sees through the Weirwood tree, and have come to the realization that a lot of these fans know jack shit.
It's basic. See, the author sets up a progression in linear time about things that happened recently in front of the tree and then he goes further and further back until some kooky looking chick with white hair is ceremoniously slashing a man's throat with a copper sickle.
If you know the first thing about structure, or I don't know, saw "The Time Machine" when you were a kid and those fast forward shots of things aging or becoming younger depending on how the time machine is travelling, you would understand this.
So why is it that the readers are all "ZOMG! It's Dany cutting Jojen Reed's throat!!!11111"
I mean for shit's sake, people. You might have memorized the entirety of the story, the most minute details, but you obviously don't know how to comprehend what you are reading, do you? They remember that Septa Lemore has no specific eye color to indicate she is Ashara Dayne, but they cannot comprehend that the Three Eyed Crow is WITHOUT A FRAKKING DOUBT Brynden "Bloodraven" Rivers from the Dunk and Egg stories. For %^&*()^klj sakes people!!!
Maybe that's what's frustrating about all of this. As a writer, I understand that there is a LOT of detail. Sometimes you get carried away and just toss something into a story for flavor, or maybe you have read the same pages so many times you just take a detail for granted. Maybe you even edited it out. You try to write without insulting the intelligence of your readers. Maybe GRRM figures Ned is praying in front of the tree, he hears something on the wind (Bran called out to him via the tree), he answers with "Who dat?!" It's pretty plain to see that Bran was able to communicate with his father, even though Bloodraven said it couldn't be done. Can we say UNRELIABLE NARRATOR? Or PEOPLE SOMETIMES JUST FUCKING LIE TO KIDS?!?!!
Bobby, did you know that after curfew, your girlfriend is 600 times more likely to get pregnant, even with contraception/birth control pills?
Go ahead, tell your kid that and see how late he stays out with his GF.
But these knuckleheads are taking things literal that aren't, and things figurative that are literal. Learn to fucking read!
My point is that as a writer, it's like herding cats to catch all of these details, and I'm betting for someone with the popularity of GRRM, EVERY SINGLE THING you write comes under such scrutiny. Especially if you are 5 years between sequels. In that amount of time, your work could run the full spectrum of being well-received, gathering obsessive fandom, slash fan fic, a TV series, a couple movies, action figures, video games, post-modern interpretation from a Queer Theorist, interpretations back from bootlegged copies written in Romanian that fans are now saying are CANNON because the babelfish! People are going to have a lot of time on their hands, and an infinite amount of time left to let their imaginations run wild. And if you just never get back to something, or it gets cut, or you just don't remember it and all of a sudden characters start looking like Season 3 of the Transformers (where the animators just fucking gave up), you are going to have problems.
And if you are a reader who doesn't get things like unreliable narration, character arc, irony, symbolism, metaphor, idiom, then you are going to have problems too.
*Microphone drop*
My ENGLISH BA translation of Ned's prayer that says "let them grow as close as brothers" means this. Jon Snow isn't Robb's brother. Why? Because he's not Ned's son. The big scandal, the big secret is that Jon is the issue of a Targaryen/Lyanna love connection. Why? Why keep it secret? Because Robert would go apeshit if he thought Ned had suffered a Targaryen to live. And Lyanna, being Ned's flesh and blood, made him promise to protect the boy. Everybody has bastards in Westeros. So what if Ned takes a ding on his honor. Cat will get over it. Ned was her Third Round Draft Pick anyway. (after Littlefinger and Brandon Stark) But it's also the courtly love/medieval romantic ideal that a knight's honor can contradict itself. Read "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight" if you don't feel me.
Another thing about ASoIaF I have learned. If they aren't dead ON THE PAGE, as in we see arterial bleeding and heads swapped with other animals, they probably aren't dead.
Those who are dead:
Ned, Robb, Tywin, Joffrey, Anyone Jaqen H'gar kills, Lady, Viserys, Khal Drogo, Raeghar, Crazy Breastfeeding Lady, the Halfhand
Those who aren't dead:
The Mountain, Ashara Dayne, the Hound, Uncle Night's Watch Ranger Guy, Briennne, Cat, Jon Snow, Pretty Much EVERYONE else, etc.
In the meantime, I have been lurking the forums and reading the theories and such that run rampant across the interwebs. I was reading some theories about what Bran sees through the Weirwood tree, and have come to the realization that a lot of these fans know jack shit.
It's basic. See, the author sets up a progression in linear time about things that happened recently in front of the tree and then he goes further and further back until some kooky looking chick with white hair is ceremoniously slashing a man's throat with a copper sickle.
If you know the first thing about structure, or I don't know, saw "The Time Machine" when you were a kid and those fast forward shots of things aging or becoming younger depending on how the time machine is travelling, you would understand this.
So why is it that the readers are all "ZOMG! It's Dany cutting Jojen Reed's throat!!!11111"
I mean for shit's sake, people. You might have memorized the entirety of the story, the most minute details, but you obviously don't know how to comprehend what you are reading, do you? They remember that Septa Lemore has no specific eye color to indicate she is Ashara Dayne, but they cannot comprehend that the Three Eyed Crow is WITHOUT A FRAKKING DOUBT Brynden "Bloodraven" Rivers from the Dunk and Egg stories. For %^&*()^klj sakes people!!!
Maybe that's what's frustrating about all of this. As a writer, I understand that there is a LOT of detail. Sometimes you get carried away and just toss something into a story for flavor, or maybe you have read the same pages so many times you just take a detail for granted. Maybe you even edited it out. You try to write without insulting the intelligence of your readers. Maybe GRRM figures Ned is praying in front of the tree, he hears something on the wind (Bran called out to him via the tree), he answers with "Who dat?!" It's pretty plain to see that Bran was able to communicate with his father, even though Bloodraven said it couldn't be done. Can we say UNRELIABLE NARRATOR? Or PEOPLE SOMETIMES JUST FUCKING LIE TO KIDS?!?!!
Bobby, did you know that after curfew, your girlfriend is 600 times more likely to get pregnant, even with contraception/birth control pills?
Go ahead, tell your kid that and see how late he stays out with his GF.
But these knuckleheads are taking things literal that aren't, and things figurative that are literal. Learn to fucking read!
My point is that as a writer, it's like herding cats to catch all of these details, and I'm betting for someone with the popularity of GRRM, EVERY SINGLE THING you write comes under such scrutiny. Especially if you are 5 years between sequels. In that amount of time, your work could run the full spectrum of being well-received, gathering obsessive fandom, slash fan fic, a TV series, a couple movies, action figures, video games, post-modern interpretation from a Queer Theorist, interpretations back from bootlegged copies written in Romanian that fans are now saying are CANNON because the babelfish! People are going to have a lot of time on their hands, and an infinite amount of time left to let their imaginations run wild. And if you just never get back to something, or it gets cut, or you just don't remember it and all of a sudden characters start looking like Season 3 of the Transformers (where the animators just fucking gave up), you are going to have problems.
And if you are a reader who doesn't get things like unreliable narration, character arc, irony, symbolism, metaphor, idiom, then you are going to have problems too.
*Microphone drop*
My ENGLISH BA translation of Ned's prayer that says "let them grow as close as brothers" means this. Jon Snow isn't Robb's brother. Why? Because he's not Ned's son. The big scandal, the big secret is that Jon is the issue of a Targaryen/Lyanna love connection. Why? Why keep it secret? Because Robert would go apeshit if he thought Ned had suffered a Targaryen to live. And Lyanna, being Ned's flesh and blood, made him promise to protect the boy. Everybody has bastards in Westeros. So what if Ned takes a ding on his honor. Cat will get over it. Ned was her Third Round Draft Pick anyway. (after Littlefinger and Brandon Stark) But it's also the courtly love/medieval romantic ideal that a knight's honor can contradict itself. Read "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight" if you don't feel me.
Another thing about ASoIaF I have learned. If they aren't dead ON THE PAGE, as in we see arterial bleeding and heads swapped with other animals, they probably aren't dead.
Those who are dead:
Ned, Robb, Tywin, Joffrey, Anyone Jaqen H'gar kills, Lady, Viserys, Khal Drogo, Raeghar, Crazy Breastfeeding Lady, the Halfhand
Those who aren't dead:
The Mountain, Ashara Dayne, the Hound, Uncle Night's Watch Ranger Guy, Briennne, Cat, Jon Snow, Pretty Much EVERYONE else, etc.