as a test on the Ten Thousand Ships idea, i asked my little brother who's seen every episode of the show as it came out and never touched the books, what he thinks of a show about the origins of Dorne. his first question was to remind him which bit was Dorne again.
Really, the choices for shows are so moronic. The First Long Night wasn’t a bad idea, if done right. Besides that, Robert’s Rebellion and Aegon’s Conquest are the only areas people actually might care about. Dance of the Dragons too I guess. Anything else is catering to a very small and select group of passionate fans, and most of that core GOT audience will be confused and skip it over. And that’s not even mentioning that most of these shows like Corlys Velayron and Yi Ti just sound boring on their own terms, never mind as ASOIAF spin offs.
@@Longshanks1690 back when got was first coming out I looked up alot of the lore. The things I want most are the pennykings war (after tywin cleaning house) and the dance dragons. I want to see how the dragons fought and Targaryens fought.
"I've decided to put Return of the King on the back burner because I'm really into producing a Silmarillion TV mini-series." - Something Tolkien would never say
This is a bad analogy. Tolkien did not consider Lord of the Rings to be the be all end all of his world by any means. He absolutely cared more about the Silmarillion and the greater vehicle
Tolkien wanted to publish the silmarillion right after The Hobbit, but they rejected it and told him he needed to publish a hobbit sequel. Then he wrote lotr, pretty much just so his publisher would let him do silmarillion. He never finished and his son finished and published the silmarillion
We will get Winds... when the sun rises in the west and sets in the east, when the seas go dry and mountains blow in the wind like leaves... we'll get it.
I think the reason why the Robert Jordan comparison doesn't hold any weight is due to the fact that there isn't anything to suggest Jordan would not have finished his book series had he lived. He was diagnosed with a rare heart condition and died 18 months later at the age of 58, still relatively young. He obviously wanted to finish his magnum opus himself, but when faced with his own mortality he put things in place for his wife to choose a successor. And before his diagnosis he was still putting out a book every 2 years or so, and that was his slower pace compared to one book a year in the early 90's. George hasn't released an ASOIAF book in going on 11 years now with no real excuses left to make.
I think the comparison has a small amount of weight, mainly bc Jordan kept on extending the series. A lot of people when experiencing the “slug” books 7-10 people were saying he was dragging it out, bc he doesn’t know how to end it (something people are saying why grrm is waiting so long, bc he just doesn’t know how to finish it). Everyone, myself included, was waiting for this last chapter or maybe even last paragraph that he had already written. But then he would say this book isn’t the ending. Even Brandon Sanderson himself had this complaint. This is like a 5% kinda pain compared to what grrm is doing to us tho. And RJ was never this condescending to the people that have been loyal to him.
@@Yavin4 RJ did actually start a side project. New spring, the Moiraine prequel book, was going to be the first in a series of books that would explore side characters in the WOT world. Im too young to have been a fan back then so I'm not sure what exactly stopped him from doing this, but he changed his mind and focused on the main series instead.
The fact that he doesn't owe us anything is a deeply unhelpful thing to bring up. When you have a friend who flakes out on you too many times and doesn't do anything you want to do with them, you don't sue them, but you do stop inviting them to things. You move on and find more compatible friends. You go your separate ways and forget about each other. And I think that's the correct reaction to GRRM at this point.
@@alinaCatwatcher It'll be out two years after he dies, finished by someone else. And that will be true no matter whether he lives another 20 years or dies tomorrow.
@@billvolk4236 Preston mentioned that as well, but said he doesn't have a replacement writer or whatever they are called? Do you think perhaps he has given his story outline to someone who understands his writing style enough to complete this series properly?
@@billvolk4236 It really comes down to his estate and his contract with the publisher. He doesn't have children, so who inherits after his wife? Does he have siblings? Nieces & Nephews? How close are they?
Robert Jordan personally made some plans to finish Wheel of Time when he got sick. He left behind notes to make sure the series would finish in the way he wanted. And he was writing a book every 2 - 3 years so if he hadn't gotten sick, he would have been able to finish Wheel of Time.
Not only is he not going to be remembered as one of the greats he is going to be a joke, a by word for procrastination, teachers will warn students to finish their work and not pull a George Martin.
@@stupidhandles 20 years from now there will be support groups for disaffected fans who wasted decades on a series that was never finished and the groups will be titled "Still dreaming of Spring"
Miura didn’t give many interviews, but when he did, he never had the sneering attitude towards the fans that George does. He was having trouble finishing Berserk, and was doing everything he could in his life to finish it. Because of that, the two aren’t really comparable
Also, as others have pointed out, the arcs of Berserk (epecially Golden Age) are kind of enclosed. Berserk ending on Elfheim with Casca's memories restored isn't perfect, but I'd say the story is in a much better place and more statisfying than ASOIAF.
Fun Fact: There is an Expanded Universe series from Legends that is based around the cantina band and they have infinitely more interesting stories than any of the Skywalkers lol
@@KateHikes1933 I haven’t read about his appearance in the books are you sure that it wasn’t a summer islander mother? I mean wouldn’t be the first character to have a mother from there and Valaryian was a big world traveler. Idk I figure you’d be able to find out or already know quicker then me lol
@@KateHikes1933 but like… not all the starks* have red hair like the tullys but a single woman turned that into a possibly more common thing for the starks in the future. What stops Corlys dad from marrying a summer islander? I mean Oberyn does exactly that we have a summer islander descendent on Westerosie mainland why would a house living on an island not be even more likely to pull a wife from across the sea.
The whole "George doesn't owe us anything" is a joke because George promised he would do it. Not that we forced him to do it. If he just did a dance of dragons and didn't say anything after that then i would say he didn't need to do another book but George hanged himself with that promise. Not us.
Just saying... Since the release of ADWD he wrote about 12 to 14 words a day on average. That's literally 2 minutes of work each day for most writers. 4 minutes if those words really matter on quality > quantity.
After Twin died, it felt like the characters were roaming around with nothing to do. He lost his heart in Feast for Crows. That and Dragons were awful books. We need to just let it go.
Most people forget George is and always has been a short story writer with as many plot threads he has hanging around and they all have to tie in somehow it's almost impossible for him to figure out since he is so out of his element
This is exactly why I dont believe the theory that hes lost interest in the story. If a fan whos been invested for over 20 years is still very interested then how the fuck is the CREATOR of that series not interested? Hes become a greedy piece of shit, thats his problem.
I really appreciate the occasional switching between good cop and bad cop with Carmine and Preston. Carmine was flowing with bad cop energy and I appreciate it a lot. Great job as always gentleman. 🤣👍🏿👏🏿💯🇺🇸
Not only does GRRM not have advocates like Robert Jordan did, GRRM has also flatly stated that he will not allow anyone else to finish his works. Now maybe that will change if he knows he's about to die within months and has years of writing left, but based on his own words you can't count on it. Also, it's worth noting that Jordan died relatively young and simply ran out of time due to his diagnosis. GRRM is doing this by choice, knowing he's 73 years old and morbidly obese.
What George and HBO don’t seem to get is that WoW is really the only thing that can win people back. The world-building is great and all but we got invested in those characters and their stories, not what happened to the Targaryens a thousand years ago. Unless we get an ending to the main series that actually satisfies people, no one is gonna give two shits about a fuckin animated Yi Ti series 🤦🏻
I’m not even reading Winds until the final book is at the publishers nor do I have any interest in his prequel series . I bought the DVDs for the first 5 seasons but I never bothered to even watch season 8 outside of TH-cam videos.
@@EGH10 the show are most likely not going to succeed the average view may watch house of the dragon and ducan &egg shows but doubt any series outside of westeros will succeed
@@jokeing7 Unless you're Brynden Rivers you don't know that, you're seriously underestimating the franchise and you're in for a surprise, only like a lot of people into the books, they're extremely annoying and I don't blame them, they're kind of right, but God , how bitter they have become thinking that the franchise is totally devastated and will never have any success, literally House Of The Dragon is the most anticipated show of this year according to IMDB, the number of likes in the teaser is overwhelmingly higher than the dislikes, a single tweet announcing the premiere date has almost 300,000 likes, if house of the dragon does well you will watch tons more shows and none will flop so stop being so annoying.
@@EGH10 you’re probably right that most GoT viewers don’t care about the books but I think a good portion of those people also hated the last season and don’t really care about seeing more stories in that world. I hope the new shows are great cause the original show is what got me and most people into the books in first place. But I think these will likely be kinda meh and so will the reception, and most of these shows will get cancelled in development. Just a hunch tho
Unlike Berserk which has a the 'Golden Age' (on its own one of the best mangas in history), which can be consumed as a standalone piece like Frank Herbert's Dune, ASOIAF has no such standalone section. Game of Thrones acts as too much of a set up for later events. People don't like to start incomplete works that will never be finished. A legacy ruined.
Frank wrote over an entire trilogy of books. And Dune isn't standalone imo, though it sets up less than usual. The Hobbit or Lord of the Rings are standalone. (Remember, LOTR was entirely written and meant to be published as one book, the publisher split it up due to a high paper price)
@@WritingGeekNL It is standalone. I think I heard that he struggled a lot to publish it so in his mind it might have been a one and done deal, and it shows as the books speeds the fuck up in the latter half. There's practically no big plot lines that aren't finished.
Dune is standalone because the Messiah of Dune was cut and published as it's own book where it was supposed to be part of Dune. And it pretty much seta up Childern of Dune.
Berserk was never finished. The author died with the story incomplete. The publishers just gave it an ending for closure but left everything unresolved.
@Immortal Science of Hauntology Agreed. And there’s a good reason for that. While entertaining and interesting with some good ideas, the sequels really don’t live up to the first book. What made the first book so great to me was the combination of incredibly rich world building and the treatment of real world issues that remain relevant today. God Emperor of Dune, for instance, is a fan favorite, but much of it is just Herbert quoting famous people to justify begging the question (So why does the Golden Path save humanity? Because Leto is omniscient! Okay...). The first book is a classic that transcends the sci-fi/fantasy genre. The other books, not so much.
I wish GRRM could at least give an estimated percentage of where he is at in TWOW. 60%? 75%?. I remember when he said he would not write Fire and Blood Vol2 and D&E until Winds was finished but now says "Westeros has become bigger than THE WINDS OF WINTER, or even ASOIAF."
This is honestly what I want the most right now. Just come out and say "I have 1000 finished pages and 200 in progress, so yeah, hundreds of pages away". The only downside is that people would be breathing down his neck even harder when a year goes by and they know he wrote like 20 pages. But god damn.
It's time we all just acknowledged that the series isn't likely to finish. The only way it could is if he's writing multiple books simultaneously. I mean let's be honest, we essentially had 2 years where people (including George) were practically stuck at home so if he didn't get it done during that time then chances are he's not going to.
He cant give an estimated % on it because he isn't focused on it. That means what he has worked on in the past often gets changed and rewritten. What's currently done means nothing.
"George doesn't owe you anything!" According to the Author-Reader Contract, he does, and any decent writer ought to be aware of this. GRRM is breaching an implicit agreement with his audience, and he has the gall to then openly complain when they get justifiably upset. He is 100% in the wrong and he's kidding himself if he thinks this won't severely sully his legacy if he doesn't finish ASOIAF.
Nah dude. You only get a book if an author decides to write it. If he decides to no longer continue a story he started he can do that. Learn to live with it.
Surely they will be seasons of 5 chapters in the Marvel style, I would not worry much about that, I do not think they want to stretch those stories too much.
It could work as 6 X 30-40minute episodes, or even as 3-4part 1hour episode mini series, but stretching it out more isn't going to work. It makes sense to have each novella work as a season, but they have to be short. I also worry about an aging boy actor for egg being an issue, it would work better as an animated series Imo
I disagree with the “George owes you nothing argument”. When he set out to write Ice and Fire and told everyone it would be 7 books. The fans from ‘92 deserve the series to be finished. It doesn’t matter though. He will never finish so you’re better on moving on. Lots of other great fantasy writers out there.
For Robert Jordan it helps that 1. He work until he physically couldn't any more so no blame can be put on him for not finishing his work 2. His wife was literally just his editor so she would of course be very involved and have the expertise to carry the work on and 3. He was succeeded by an author who is himself on a fast track to putting himself on the mount Rushmore of authors
"He's not going to be remembered as one of the Greats." Indeed. Maybe he'll actually finish before dying, though I severely doubt it. But by writing this "unfinished tale", he will secure his place as one of the "couldabeens"
Geroge RR Martin is NOT an author. He's a fiction historian because he can not control a plot and he is more interested in the fictional world he has created with his nihulistic point of view than the actual story we all miss. He had 8 years to finish his story while the TV show was running. And if you can not finish your own book in 8 years, you never will.
@@DVFHAFYT I have dyslexia so sometimes I make mistakes in spelling but why is it a stupid question to ask if someone has lost faith in grrm I know he’s taking a long time with winds but I still believe he can do it
The most believable theory I've heard is that the show ended mostly, if a poorer version, of how he is planning to end the series. Because of that George probably gave up on finishing after seeing the fan reaction.
Yeah and that’s what’s so sad. George might think people hated the actual ending but I think it was mostly just the execution. If he builds up to the ending like he was probably planning, I think most people would enjoy it. But it’s sort of tragic that the fumbled cliff-notes version we got in the show kinda spoiled it.
Yea horrible ending... It didnt have to be a good ending... Just not that one.. that one was just... Not rewarding at all... I feel they could have saved face a bit if there was an epic battle with night king... Instead it just went out like a dud.. like a 10 min sword fight... If they did that they could have still out the gimp on the throne and send jon beyond the wall and so on and ppl would be less... Hostile
That would be a poor excuse. As other have said above, if he takes the time to watch some of the videos about the ending, 90% is about the execution and not the choices.
I think he opted to rewrite most of winds, so that the book series ending will be a little different than what he originally planned. Even though he said he'd never do that, I think the backlash to the show ending got to him. So now he opted to go back and redo some of the groundwork and foreshadowing, etc. I think that's what's taking so long. And having to redo that much already completed work is boring for him. He's already said thats why he doesn't really write outlines, he said after you outline a chapter or whatever, then you've already told that part of the story. So actually writing it after that feels like you're doing it a second time and that is boring and just work, it isn't enjoyable anymore. Which I get, that can be true. I've tried writing as an architect and as a gardener, and the gardener route is more fun. But it also can depend on your personality and style. Well all that and he's got a bit burned out on the main story, and he's doing other stuff until he can enjoy writing ASOIAF again.
Honestly, George has just become the South Park parody of himself at this point; always urging us that pizzas he hasn’t ordered yet are on their way any minute now. 🤣 If you haven’t accepted that this series is never getting finished, then boy do I have a manse in Valyria to sell you lmao.
If George just wants to worldbuild rather than finish the story, he could at least give us some answers about the main mysteries of the series (the others, origin of the valyrians and their magic, etc.). One of the biggest disappointments in the show was how they handled the white walkers, giving zero insight into their true motivations (other than a throwaway comment about them wanting revenge on the children of the forest, relegated to the after episode commentary rather than the show itself). They didn't even use Bran's time travel powers to give us info on the original long night. Possibly to save it for the prequel, which is now canceled. If he could at least deliver this, then we have a lot more material for fan written endings.
The question isn't whether or not GRRM owes his fans. (He absolutely does.) The question is whether or not he's a man of his word. The answer will determine his legacy.
GRRM “owes” us a completion of the story because he sold us his books as a series, if he had written the books as stand alone stories that happened to be linked he would owe nothing, but it is an implicit agreement that we allow each story to be incomplete with the expectation of an eventual ending.
As an example. You could interpret the ending of Star Wars (aka A New Hope) as a total victory. The pomp and circumstance of the medal scene did not indicate a rebellion on the run after its base's location was discovered. Yes, it was unlikely that the Empire was gone, but it was an ending to that particular story at least. Had there been no more movies, it would have been OK The Empire Strikes Back, however, ended with a cliffhanger and questions that needed answering. People would have a right to be annoyed if there was no follow up.
@@thomasffrench3639 can’t be blamed for dying unless he did it himself, I don’t know anything about that author or his manga, but if he didn’t give any real effort for the last decade to produce his promised work, I would say it is similar to what GRRM is doing to let down his fans/customers and breaking an implicit promise. ASOIF fans won’t be mad that GRRM dies without finishing his work, it will be that he absolutely made no effort to finish his work.
13:03 Preston hits the nail on the head? GRRM will be remembered as the guy who had such great potential and squandered it on the promise of fame and fortune instead of finishing the work he already put so much time and effort into and creating a truly worthy magnum opus... sad
It's like Peter Jackson stopped at The Two Towers right before the battle of Helm's Deep, then started working & released the Hobbit trilogy and then announced that Rings of Power & A Gollum video game are coming while the fans are still complaining (surprisingly!) that The Return of the King is nowhere in sight.
Well Peter Jackson wasn't 70 years old, had all the completed source material to adapt and 1000s of people helping him with his project. Kind of a dumb comparison don't you think?
@@eduard476 Well it's kinda hard to prioritize something like this when you're just 1 (old) person who also has other things he wants to work on. And in the end, why should he prioritize ASOIAF just because his fans want it when there are other things he wants to focus on too?
@@mustarastas88 Why would Peter Jackson film Return of the King and potentially win 11 oscars if he has other things he wants to work on? Frodo has just arrived with the ring outside Mordor, that's good enough. Who needs an ending?
Robert Jordan was dictating notes on the ending of his story while dying in the hospital. Brandon Sanderson said he had over a thousand pages of notes guiding him. The first two books Sanderson wrote really felt like Robert Jordan books, by the third (final) book it read a lot more like Sanderson.
@@jamesnygma4597 no not at all, Robert Jordan even on his death bed was dedicated to finishing the world he created, even if at times it felt like he was writing 3 books that couldve been easily condensed into one. While GRRM suffers from the opposite, he's focusing on everything BUT the main story, and won't even be upfront to the fans about how disinterested he is in finishing it.
Here’s a few stories that could be limited series: 1. Reynes of Castamere 2. The Adventures of Howland Reed (ASOIAF’s Tom Bombadil at this point) 3. Queen of Love and Beauty-A Story of Lyanna (and Rhaegar?)-their love story, or could be just the tourney (and finding out the knight of the laughing tree) or a tie in with the Howland Reed show like Mando and Boba 4.Young Jamie, Cersi at King’s Landing 5. Young Barristan 6. A series about famous Kingsguard 7. Young Ned and Robert 8. Young Littlefinger 9. Literally any House could have their own limited series or multiple and it could be interesting. Not that they play the game of thrones, but there’s plenty of intrigue-ie Blackwoods and Brackens
Don't worry guys, George is just waiting for Game of Thrones Season 8 to finish and then he's going to publish Winds of Winter! I can't wait for season 8, I really loved season 7!!!!!1
honestly nothing will convince me that GRRM wouldn't rather break his own hands than finish WINDS. i know he's sick of people asking him about WINDS but... it's been over 11 years. i think it's understandable for fans to be frustrated especially with him putting out OTHER material from the same world.
Of the Expanse guys: Ty Franck is one of his personal assistants, Daniel Abraham *isn't* one, but he's collaborated with him on Wildcards and such. They can both write fantastically, and they have experience writing together, and collaborating with George, *and* they've FINISHED a space epic that was 9 books long, with a good cadence.
9 books, similar amount of novellas, TV scripts + consulting on the show for its entire run, and now a new scifi novel series they're starting. All of these released after Dance and before Winds.
At this point they should just take over, make like a writers team of half a dozen people and finish the damn book. Especially if they split the writers it by character like they kinda did in expanse it would go pretty fast
He probably has a contract about the books he promised and would be sued by his publisher (and probably other companies, incl. HBO etc who are banking on his asoiaf fan base atm) .. if he outright SAID he won't finish the series even the hard core fans might actually walk away from the rest of his projects. He must know this.
The last update buried TWOW. If he is working on Blood&Fire and D&E to publish soon (because of televison adaptations), then it makes no sense for him to publish TWOW now (or soon). The stories are related and the revelations in one book series will affect the other series. A song of ice and fire is dead for the foreseeable future if not forever.
I'll give GRRM credit for getting me back into fantasy as an adult but unfortunately he's not a closer. If it wasn't for him I wouldn't have discovered some of the other great fantasy out there like Robin Hobb's Realm of the Elderlings (which is finished) and Brandon Sanderson's Cosmere. On the other hand I'm now apprehensive to picking up any unfinished multibook series unless the author is a writing machine like Sanderson.
The writer: “That Gabe Newell guy was really onto a great grift. I can just do nothing and absorb money hahaa!” The fans: “WRITE THE BOOK!” The publisher: “Write the book, or lawyers. You agreed to this.” The writer: “Aaaaah. Ok ok. I have errr. A coffee table book. Errr.”
That moment when you realize that the books will end the same way as the show. With us being told what the final ending is and there being no satisfying journey to it because george will be dead and his will probably states the ending so his executor isnt murdered.
I love you guys, I listened to all your content when the show was running, and it inspired me to look into the (more interesting IMHO) books so thank you 🙏
He never had a proper outline for the series, and describes his writing style as "gardening" i.e. he potters about and lets the story lead him where it will. He's a tinkerer, a noodler, not a craftsman with a vision. If you look back now on Feast and Dance the signs are all there that he was already bored with the main plot. Both books meander off on numerous side tangents and endless travelogues, exploring little nooks of the world and lore he just wanted to spend time on cos he thought it was cool. By the end of Dance he'd written himself into a corner and had no idea how to proceed the story in any coherent manner. So he just gave up and has spent all his time since on things he can happily noodle away on - A World of Ice and Fire, or Fire and Blood, or Dunk and Egg - where he can potter around fleshing out aspects of the world he is interested in this week, but which don't bear the burden of expectation of the main Song plot. We'll never see Winds or Spring in his lifetime - and I doubt there are actual notes of sufficient quality to let anyone else finish it either. It's a shame, but it is what it is.
It's funny how he keeps calling himself a "gardener." When you garden you have to prune and cut away extraneous plants all the time. Which he doesn't do.
The situation has become pathetic now. He’s a script, novella writer, he has overreach by trying to write such a big, epic saga. From the start, he has always complained about how difficult it is for him to write those books. He has shown productivity with the first three books because then he was not Bantam Books money cow, so they could fire him if he didn’t respect the deadlines. Now he can delay forever, play us for fools with his blog notes, give his publishers some lame world books to publish (a Who’s who, really?!) and work on things that are less painful and boring for him. Him being pissed as hell that the show concluded the story before the books, revealed a lot of plot twists to come and received such a backlash play a part in this as well. Between 2016 and now he has probably spent his time rewriting stuff, creating ripple effects and plot holes and having to rewrite other things, writing himself into a gigantic corner.
It’s wild to me that GRRM once requested to write Amber books for Roger Zelazny, who turned him down. Like he of ALL writers should realize the consequences of an unfinished legacy 😞
If he truly can't finish the series I hope he at least has a dead man's switch set up so that some kind of collection of his notes and intentions will be put into a little book so we can have closure even if it's not an actual novel. I am just so curious what has he been planning this whole time?
I remember reading somewhere that he's told his wife that when he dies, he wants her to burn all of his notes, outlines, and unfinished manuscripts. He wants it all to die with him.
@@TheNoNonsenseNinja what I was going to say, his kill switch is a match. He does not care about the fans at all, destroying his legacy for$ seems to be his motivation
I think at this point the only way we’re getting TWOW is if house of the dragon fails. If house fails then all the others will be canceled and I think then and only then do we see TWOW.
GRRM who looked up to people like Stan Lee his entire life is finally getting a Stan Lee position, A cinematic universe and he doesn't want to give that up.
Im just so mad that he actually had so many people the “fans” who are pushing him to do the work, yeah he doesn’t have children, but thats why we are kinda here? If he did finish the song of ice and fire i would be telling my kids about this amazing story, they would read it, and then they would tell their kids and so on.. but this is just frustrating. Tbh i picked up GOT book when i was in a dark place, and the whole fantasy world, his and Tolkin’s helped me tru a lot of bs in my life, for that i would always be grateful, but this now just feels like that bad brake-up ya have in high-school where your douche bf just blocks you and idk moves away and u never have real closure..
@DreamDay It's not a Breakup but more like a promise of a Marriage which will never come. Books helped me out too and I've read his Science Fiction stuff too but nothing really compares in terms of scope and attention to detail. Maybe he's just sick of Game of Thrones era Westeros and wants to explore other eras. Maybe he knows he's old and will die soon so he's trying his best to leave us with more Background and as much lore as possible instead of the finished story. I don't think he's stuck. I think he's just bored with it.
@@costinpatru5450 those are all fair points.. and im okay if he just came clean and said so “yo guys im tired, i wanna live rest of my life doing what i want to, not need to.. SO, imma leave some talented people to finish WOW and dream of spring”.. i think thats what we all have problem with.. but then again i dont know would his publisher be okay with that? Like i cant think of a single reason why they wouldn’t be right?
To be fair, going off about one person for five pages in the middle of a history book is very Herodotus. George was just imitating the same energy there.
They should just takes Georges' notes, and give it to Joe Abercrombie. We'd have Winds and Dream in two years, and a spin off trilogy in another three.
If he never finishes the books, I would consider him to be a scammer. He made tons of promises in the form of thousands of pages of setup, as well as claiming to be working on Winds, while clearly working on anything but Winds. He gets to live the high life because his fans support him, and they support him because of both explicit as well as implicit promises to deliver on all that setup. I support the people who pester and nag him with questions about Winds of Winter. I want him to avoid going to cons because he knows that people will not stop asking about Winds. I don't want him to enjoy the gains of his false promises.
Stop viewing, reading, buying any of his material until he makes good on what you care about. Do not fall for the "oh piece of candy" distractions and be a mindless consumer of everything ASOIAF. I have zero faith in him finishing at this point so why invest into that more than you already are with either your time or money.
@@Spartan1312 I was just about to write a comment similar to yours. I won't buy ANYTHING that GRRM is associated with until he finishes the Winds of Winter. At this point I'm so angry and petty that I hope all the shows he's working on get canceled and I hope that nobody buys his other books.
I'm sure he had every intention on finishing the whole saga at one point. My guess is that he's written himself into a corner trying to do something different than the dismal tv show ending. I wish he'd just say he can't finish it, and give his notes over to someone else at this point.
@@Darkpara1 This would be optimal, but I think it is a deeper issue of the fame, fortune and most of all attention getting to his head. He loved the book series right up until he got hooked on the drug that is Hollywood. After that he dumped the main series quick as fuck for the "upgrade" that is the HBO series that came with tons of $$$, fame, and most of all attention.
I happen to know a lot about this, because my grandmother was actually called Cooter. A cooter is a large river turtle. She used to eat them. When they retract their heads into their shells, their skin looks triangular and roughly similar to a vagina. That’s why they started calling vaginas cooters. But the animal name came first. So we can’t just take the word from the animal and give it to immature people.
He doesn’t owe us anything, but in turn we don’t owe him anything either, including giving a shit about his other projects. And what of his legacy? He’s an old man, and an author’s work is his immortality. His legacy will forever be damaged if he doesn’t finish his magnum opus. If he has a legacy at all that is. Maybe he’ll even be forgotten. If he doesn’t care, then so be it.
I've wondered if perhaps due to the negative reaction to the show's ending, and the fact that plot points of it shown could be ones he was already writing. Perhaps, makes him less interested in continuing, knowing that people don't like the outcomes? Daenerys as a psycho, Bran as King.... Good feeling these were ideas of his, but now people hate those, and he could be like 'well shit... Now what do I do?' 🤷🏻
Yes. I also don't think he ever imagined it would become such a cultural phenomenon. There are thousands of people who are invested in this story deeply and the way he wraps up the story will have serious philosophical and moral ramifications for those people. That's a lot of pressure to get the story exactly right.
No man, Season 8 was released almost 9 years after ADWD. He had 9 years to finish TWOW and he didn't. The negative reaction probably didn't affect him in that sense, I mean, he wrote a lot in 2020.
Its clear that he cares more about expanding the TV universe than finishing winds. Thats why he is writing more Fire and blood and dunk and egg: to give HBO more source Material. They dont need winds of Winter, they finished Main Story.
if he doesnt want to finish winds of winter he should just say that and give us what he has, i think its so stupid to leave us waiting for nothing for so long
Once the HBO series progressed beyond the novels, it left GRRM stuck between a rock and a hard place. I think that he is a “no-win” position. There will always be a segment of the fandom that will compare the novels to the series.
I used to say "George owes us nothing" just because I didnt like to see some people write or say mean things but yeah no at this point it's ridiculous. We expected George to spend his time working on TWOW and after it came out he'd then work on side projects before getting into ADOS. But no he's doing that stuff with TWOW. It really just comes to a certain point that George shouldn't be surprised if in 5 years when that book does come out, the launch isn't as big because more people moved on. And yeah, I just read other books like the two Avatar Kyoshi novels to forget about ASOIAF for months at a time
what would even be the point of reading winds at that point? Like, the story is still going to be unfinished and a dream of spring is a bloody fever dream at this point.
@@misterduch7904 not only that, TWoW would just be more treading water , like A Dance with Dragons. How long would it take just to get Daenerys back to Meereen from Vaes Dothrak? Unless George planned to kill her off there
I don't like the "The author owes you nothing" excuse. We bought the books. We spent money on the series. How much money did he get from fans who are unhappy, and is he going to give it back? Of course not. So given that we spent good money buying his books, and making him as popular as he is, our voice should count. When he gets lost in the brambles doing side content, someone has to remind him that the main story isn't finished. Dunk and Egg, Fire and Blood, and all that other stuff is partially or wholly dependent on the main story finishing.
@Chad Norris Literature Devil made an excellent point that an author, no matter how big and small, has to keep earning their audience's trust each and every time they produce a book. That if it wasn't because of the audience, he or she would be nothing. And that is correct. Martin made a series people loved to read. Sure, he borrowed a lot from Tad Williams(excellent writer, highly recommend MST. and other influences but he was successful. But he's taken it for granted. Worse, he's trying to avoid the problem of writing his book; rather than tackling it head on.
@@Avarn388 I haven't heard of Tad Williams, but I'll look him up. It's been a whole since I've been interested in reading books, and this series was pretty much the last big series I was following.
George owes you nothing, which is true. You owe George ... nothing. It's almost as if you have no relationship with each other. Which makes it all the easier to simply walk away. One does not simply walk into Mordor, but one can simply wander off.
Yeah, I've been on Georges side through all of this so far, but this doesn't seem like grest news. I mean he can still do what he wants with it. But anyone can do the worldbuilding for him, not anyone can finish the main story in a satisfsctory manner... We've seen that.
23:07 It's not just a good story. It's a good premise. The boy who WILL be (The Unlikely) king learning from the kind of big brother he _should've_ had. Something that never would've been allowed to happen if people understood that he was actually gonna be king one day. It's not exactly a new story, but it's a new angle on an old story. Giving the reader that kind of foreknowledge and then allowing us to be a fly on the wall among characters who don't have that foreknowledge.
Even Steven king finished the gunslinger series so that way his fans had a conclusion. He did it right after his accident because he didn’t wanna die before he could conclude his series. It would be nice if George RR Martin would give us the same consideration
A Song of Ice and Fire was building up to be one of the greatest stories of all time (in my personal opinion). It's sad that it seems like now the only ending the story is going to get is the pathetic version the HBO show plopped out. So instead of going down in history as the author of one of the greatest stories the species of man has ever produced (again in my personal opinion, up there with the likes of The Odyssey, The Lord of the Rings books, pre-Disney Star Wars movies, and shocking to myself as I literally just now realize it: Attack On Titan) now he's just going to be a forgotten footnote in the fantasy genre, just part of a larger cautionary tale of how a TV show by a major media producer can start with so much promise and end so spectacularly bad. A Song of Ice and Fire will never be completed in its true form, I'm so sad to say I actually now believe. Fire and Blood was a boring did-not-finish book and a waste of my money, the new TV shows he's scripted have failed to catch my subconscious interest. I've stopped following up on his artistic activities altogether. I think it's sad but clear to me that this is just another example of an artist selling his soul and losing everything true in the process. You hate to see it but the pile of examples is a huge one, and true artists have always been rare and are becoming rarer still in our time.
You're 100% right, the book fans made him as without them, there would have been ZERO interest in GOT, the book fans were the ones spreading the word about the show, and he would have jack shit if it weren't for the book fans (he was modestly successful before ASOIAF), he gets some attention (after letting D&D fuck up GoT too), now he wants to do everything himself because he knows he's mortal. He's going to die before Winds is released or finished, and he's going to be the dickhead that refuses to let someone release it. Let fucking Ty Franck and Daniel Abraham finish it, with his input, nobody would be like "oh it's not the *true* vision if he does it while he's still alive. (The guys who wrote The Expanse series, they can finish a fucking series phenomenally), and frankly, it'd be better than whatever George MIGHT write on the spare hour he gives once a month or whatever.
But here's the thing. As a business grows and gets higher paying clients, it's going to eventually prioritize them above the smaller ones it had at the beginning. It's not a 100% accurate analogy because a growing business will have increased expenses for things like added staff, larger offices, etc. and George is mostly just himself, but the logic is still the same. Whoever writes the biggest check wins.
@@carlrood4457 we’ve seen a lot of businesses function with that thinking and sometimes it works out sometimes not. Like comcast, before it became a conglomerate, lost so many people due to glitches and bad customer service they’d have literally been done if they weren’t a near monopoly in so many places. Or Disney Star Wars, they tried the model sort of like purchase Coca Cola, know everyone’s going to buy it, dilute each container 10% with camel piss and make a boatload of money. Eventually, people noticed. Stock price watching is fine but their horizons were a little short term. Now with Westeros, the book fans got everyone watching the show. Without the book fans, my prediction is the whole things collapses and what should’ve been several huge pay days or decades worth, will only be a few. Ultimately they’re going to lose money.
I understand what people are going for when they say an author doesn’t owe their audience anything, but usually when you start a story, there’s an expectation that, unless you’re dead or incapacitated, you actually finish it.
Grrm is literally dany being eaten by the undying while fantasizing about all those visions and projects and there's no Drogon in sight to burn them all and put him on the right path...
I truly hate GRRM at this point. I hope the new HBO series is so awful it kills all other shows they’re working on. I can’t understand how anyone could possibly continue to support him.
what i hear from this podcast is frustration from loyal, humble fans who have waited years for an update. Back then, people didn’t want to question George or argue for why he has not finished the books; however, years go by and we hear that George is working on seven to nine different side projects all at once. And we as fans are suppose to just sit on the sidelines and say “yay, you go George.” It’s mix messages all around. He talks about how he is tired and that he hasn’t been able to put in work on finishing the series, however he feels excited and ready about working on side projects that doesn’t involve The Winds Of Winter. Something that shocked me before was when i heard all the different lands that George RR Martin created. The amount of history and wonder that went into my mind had me convinced that in some way or another, they were all going to be important to the ending of Ice And Fire. However, over 50% of all the lands beyond slave’s bay was actually important to the story. Most of these world building lands and locations serve nothing to the story and will never be referenced ever again. I do believe George loves to world build and loves to create new stories because back then, none of his stories ever made it to the map, but he does have a responsibility to cut all of the bullshit distraction that he is willingly allowing himself to get distracted on and finish the series. It’s like if the creators of Avatar The Last Airbender decided that after season 2, they would be working on other stories about different avatars, and different characters from different timelines. Then years go by and fans ask, “when are they gonna finish season 3?” and their response is “We are working on season 3, no matter how much people tell us, but we are working on other stories that fans will love.” No. A story must be finished first before they are allowed to work on other projects. But I believe George is taking ever advantage to relive a time where he would have liked for all of his books to have become bangers, and were adapted into live action or video games.
After listening to your comments, I do think the Valaryan and Dorne and other history shows are an attempt to keep the franchise alive and to inject some diversity to the show, given that the franchise has largely focused on a white cast and (as Preston has noted before) they want to attract new audiences to HBO and this franchise. Honestly doubt it will be that successful, but open to be proven wrong.
Another epic hero is Sophia Tolstoy, who copied and edited War & Peace "seven times from beginning to end at home at night by candlelight after the children and servants had gone to bed, using an inkwell pen and sometimes requiring a magnifying glass to read her husband's notes". And also gave birth to 13 children and put up with Tolstoy.
as a test on the Ten Thousand Ships idea, i asked my little brother who's seen every episode of the show as it came out and never touched the books, what he thinks of a show about the origins of Dorne.
his first question was to remind him which bit was Dorne again.
Hahahahahaha
Really, the choices for shows are so moronic.
The First Long Night wasn’t a bad idea, if done right.
Besides that, Robert’s Rebellion and Aegon’s Conquest are the only areas people actually might care about. Dance of the Dragons too I guess.
Anything else is catering to a very small and select group of passionate fans, and most of that core GOT audience will be confused and skip it over. And that’s not even mentioning that most of these shows like Corlys Velayron and Yi Ti just sound boring on their own terms, never mind as ASOIAF spin offs.
The most positive thing I heard about dorne in the show was..."oh the place with the women with great boobs?"
Everything else was valid bad positions
@@Longshanks1690 I don't agree. There's plenty of people wanting dance of dragons or blackfyre rebellion
@@Longshanks1690 back when got was first coming out I looked up alot of the lore. The things I want most are the pennykings war (after tywin cleaning house) and the dance dragons. I want to see how the dragons fought and Targaryens fought.
The beauty of a dream of spring is that we're all dreaming of it.
i laughed way too hard at this
It's just a pity the Starks updated their words to (The Winds of) Winter's (not) Coming.
We're dreaming of spring, while grrm has trapped wind!
Nah, I'm over it.
Nay, I don't give a shit long time ago.
"I've decided to put Return of the King on the back burner because I'm really into producing a Silmarillion TV mini-series." - Something Tolkien would never say
More like I've decided to put Return of the King on hold because I wanted to work on more The Hobbit books and follow Bilbo some more😂😂.
This is a bad analogy. Tolkien did not consider Lord of the Rings to be the be all end all of his world by any means. He absolutely cared more about the Silmarillion and the greater vehicle
@@thesalanian the difference is Tolkien finished his series. So it's fine to fuck around elsewhere
Tolkien wanted to publish the silmarillion right after The Hobbit, but they rejected it and told him he needed to publish a hobbit sequel. Then he wrote lotr, pretty much just so his publisher would let him do silmarillion. He never finished and his son finished and published the silmarillion
You're talking about two different writers. What a pointless comment !
Looks like the biggest Tolkien trope George broke was finishing the actual story. Bold and innovative I say! Expectations thoroughly subverted.
We will get Winds... when the sun rises in the west and sets in the east, when the seas go dry and mountains blow in the wind like leaves... we'll get it.
I think the reason why the Robert Jordan comparison doesn't hold any weight is due to the fact that there isn't anything to suggest Jordan would not have finished his book series had he lived. He was diagnosed with a rare heart condition and died 18 months later at the age of 58, still relatively young. He obviously wanted to finish his magnum opus himself, but when faced with his own mortality he put things in place for his wife to choose a successor. And before his diagnosis he was still putting out a book every 2 years or so, and that was his slower pace compared to one book a year in the early 90's. George hasn't released an ASOIAF book in going on 11 years now with no real excuses left to make.
I agree with this comment 100%. No comparison at all.
And that's why I am up to Lord of Chaos in the series.
I think the comparison has a small amount of weight, mainly bc Jordan kept on extending the series. A lot of people when experiencing the “slug” books 7-10 people were saying he was dragging it out, bc he doesn’t know how to end it (something people are saying why grrm is waiting so long, bc he just doesn’t know how to finish it). Everyone, myself included, was waiting for this last chapter or maybe even last paragraph that he had already written. But then he would say this book isn’t the ending. Even Brandon Sanderson himself had this complaint. This is like a 5% kinda pain compared to what grrm is doing to us tho. And RJ was never this condescending to the people that have been loyal to him.
@@mitchbeenhakker7922 But, RJ wasn't actively seeking side projects, interviews, various cons, etc. that distracted him from his work.
@@Yavin4 RJ did actually start a side project. New spring, the Moiraine prequel book, was going to be the first in a series of books that would explore side characters in the WOT world. Im too young to have been a fan back then so I'm not sure what exactly stopped him from doing this, but he changed his mind and focused on the main series instead.
The fact that he doesn't owe us anything is a deeply unhelpful thing to bring up. When you have a friend who flakes out on you too many times and doesn't do anything you want to do with them, you don't sue them, but you do stop inviting them to things. You move on and find more compatible friends. You go your separate ways and forget about each other. And I think that's the correct reaction to GRRM at this point.
I kinda get what you mean, I mean why are we hanging on to GRRM, It's not like Winds is ever coming out? Right?
@@alinaCatwatcher It'll be out two years after he dies, finished by someone else. And that will be true no matter whether he lives another 20 years or dies tomorrow.
@@billvolk4236 Preston mentioned that as well, but said he doesn't have a replacement writer or whatever they are called? Do you think perhaps he has given his story outline to someone who understands his writing style enough to complete this series properly?
@@alinaCatwatcher He does not want anyone to ever take over for him, but I bet his estate will have other ideas.
@@billvolk4236 It really comes down to his estate and his contract with the publisher. He doesn't have children, so who inherits after his wife? Does he have siblings? Nieces & Nephews? How close are they?
Robert Jordan personally made some plans to finish Wheel of Time when he got sick. He left behind notes to make sure the series would finish in the way he wanted. And he was writing a book every 2 - 3 years so if he hadn't gotten sick, he would have been able to finish Wheel of Time.
It still was a shit ending.
@@greenknightable give the poor man a break he can only write so much from the grave.
Not only is he not going to be remembered as one of the greats he is going to be a joke, a by word for procrastination, teachers will warn students to finish their work and not pull a George Martin.
"Pull a what?"
"Exactly."
What's worse? Not being remembered or being remembered as failure?
Trapped wind will become a term for not being able to finish a story!
@@stupidhandles he's going to make the Starks liars...."winter is coming" ? I wouldn't get your hopes up
@@stupidhandles 20 years from now there will be support groups for disaffected fans who wasted decades on a series that was never finished and the groups will be titled "Still dreaming of Spring"
Miura didn’t give many interviews, but when he did, he never had the sneering attitude towards the fans that George does. He was having trouble finishing Berserk, and was doing everything he could in his life to finish it. Because of that, the two aren’t really comparable
Also, as others have pointed out, the arcs of Berserk (epecially Golden Age) are kind of enclosed.
Berserk ending on Elfheim with Casca's memories restored isn't perfect, but I'd say the story is in a much better place and more statisfying than ASOIAF.
Didn't he work on Gigante instead
Corlys Valerion is like Disney making a show about the cantina band in Star wars as they tour the Mos Eisley gig circuit.
Fun Fact: There is an Expanded Universe series from Legends that is based around the cantina band and they have infinitely more interesting stories than any of the Skywalkers lol
Plus there's contradictory casting. Valyrians looked nothing like Summer Islanders. The forced diversity breaks immersion from the universe.
@@KateHikes1933 I haven’t read about his appearance in the books are you sure that it wasn’t a summer islander mother? I mean wouldn’t be the first character to have a mother from there and Valaryian was a big world traveler. Idk I figure you’d be able to find out or already know quicker then me lol
@@strategicrager1891 No, house Velaryon are described as appearing just like Targaryens. They're still of Valerian blood.
@@KateHikes1933 but like… not all the starks* have red hair like the tullys but a single woman turned that into a possibly more common thing for the starks in the future. What stops Corlys dad from marrying a summer islander? I mean Oberyn does exactly that we have a summer islander descendent on Westerosie mainland why would a house living on an island not be even more likely to pull a wife from across the sea.
The whole "George doesn't owe us anything" is a joke because George promised he would do it. Not that we forced him to do it. If he just did a dance of dragons and didn't say anything after that then i would say he didn't need to do another book but George hanged himself with that promise. Not us.
@tyler thomas I agree. I say I do something I do it.
I mean that's literally the reason the red wedding happens with broken promises
"George promised he would do it"
And he will but don't get upset because he's not doing it to your timeframe
@@jameshughes7946 The entitlement is real.
you absolutely can and should get upset because georgie PROMISED if he doesn't want people to get upset then just stfu but nooooo he has to promise
When did he promise anything? The stuff he said about being imprisoned in new zealand is obviously nothing close to a serious commitment.
If George wrote a page a day since ADWD then TWOW would have come out 5 years ago.
its been close to 4,000 days
Nothing is motivating him
Just saying...
Since the release of ADWD he wrote about 12 to 14 words a day on average.
That's literally 2 minutes of work each day for most writers. 4 minutes if those words really matter on quality > quantity.
@@WritingGeekNL A very sobering comment on the situation. No idea it was THIS bad.
Oh hes motivated all right, just not for the kind of paper we want him to be motivated for.
After Twin died, it felt like the characters were roaming around with nothing to do. He lost his heart in Feast for Crows. That and Dragons were awful books. We need to just let it go.
Most people forget George is and always has been a short story writer with as many plot threads he has hanging around and they all have to tie in somehow it's almost impossible for him to figure out since he is so out of his element
This is the first time I'm actually pissed and actually truly feel we're not getting Winds. I've been with ASOIAF since 2001. That's over 20 years...
This is exactly why I dont believe the theory that hes lost interest in the story. If a fan whos been invested for over 20 years is still very interested then how the fuck is the CREATOR of that series not interested? Hes become a greedy piece of shit, thats his problem.
Absolutely. It feels like we lost the real story to that disaster of a tv show.
To put things in perspective: I was pregnant while reading Dance. She’s nearly 10.
I really appreciate the occasional switching between good cop and bad cop with Carmine and Preston. Carmine was flowing with bad cop energy and I appreciate it a lot. Great job as always gentleman. 🤣👍🏿👏🏿💯🇺🇸
Not only does GRRM not have advocates like Robert Jordan did, GRRM has also flatly stated that he will not allow anyone else to finish his works. Now maybe that will change if he knows he's about to die within months and has years of writing left, but based on his own words you can't count on it.
Also, it's worth noting that Jordan died relatively young and simply ran out of time due to his diagnosis. GRRM is doing this by choice, knowing he's 73 years old and morbidly obese.
Someone will finish it. Someone will inherit his estate and probably they won't fell tied to his wishes and want the money.
First time ever I've seen anyone in the Fandom acknowledge his morbid obesity lol
What George and HBO don’t seem to get is that WoW is really the only thing that can win people back. The world-building is great and all but we got invested in those characters and their stories, not what happened to the Targaryens a thousand years ago. Unless we get an ending to the main series that actually satisfies people, no one is gonna give two shits about a fuckin animated Yi Ti series 🤦🏻
I’m not even reading Winds until the final book is at the publishers nor do I have any interest in his prequel series . I bought the DVDs for the first 5 seasons but I never bothered to even watch season 8 outside of TH-cam videos.
TV shows matter to me. I don't care about books and most of us are on this side, your comment makes no sense.
@@EGH10 the show are most likely not going to succeed the average view may watch house of the dragon and ducan &egg shows but doubt any series outside of westeros will succeed
@@jokeing7 Unless you're Brynden Rivers you don't know that, you're seriously underestimating the franchise and you're in for a surprise, only like a lot of people into the books, they're extremely annoying and I don't blame them, they're kind of right, but God , how bitter they have become thinking that the franchise is totally devastated and will never have any success, literally House Of The Dragon is the most anticipated show of this year according to IMDB, the number of likes in the teaser is overwhelmingly higher than the dislikes, a single tweet announcing the premiere date has almost 300,000 likes, if house of the dragon does well you will watch tons more shows and none will flop so stop being so annoying.
@@EGH10 you’re probably right that most GoT viewers don’t care about the books but I think a good portion of those people also hated the last season and don’t really care about seeing more stories in that world. I hope the new shows are great cause the original show is what got me and most people into the books in first place. But I think these will likely be kinda meh and so will the reception, and most of these shows will get cancelled in development. Just a hunch tho
Unlike Berserk which has a the 'Golden Age' (on its own one of the best mangas in history), which can be consumed as a standalone piece like Frank Herbert's Dune, ASOIAF has no such standalone section. Game of Thrones acts as too much of a set up for later events. People don't like to start incomplete works that will never be finished. A legacy ruined.
Frank wrote over an entire trilogy of books. And Dune isn't standalone imo, though it sets up less than usual.
The Hobbit or Lord of the Rings are standalone. (Remember, LOTR was entirely written and meant to be published as one book, the publisher split it up due to a high paper price)
@@WritingGeekNL It is standalone. I think I heard that he struggled a lot to publish it so in his mind it might have been a one and done deal, and it shows as the books speeds the fuck up in the latter half. There's practically no big plot lines that aren't finished.
Dune is standalone because the Messiah of Dune was cut and published as it's own book where it was supposed to be part of Dune. And it pretty much seta up Childern of Dune.
Berserk was never finished. The author died with the story incomplete. The publishers just gave it an ending for closure but left everything unresolved.
@Immortal Science of Hauntology Agreed. And there’s a good reason for that. While entertaining and interesting with some good ideas, the sequels really don’t live up to the first book. What made the first book so great to me was the combination of incredibly rich world building and the treatment of real world issues that remain relevant today. God Emperor of Dune, for instance, is a fan favorite, but much of it is just Herbert quoting famous people to justify begging the question (So why does the Golden Path save humanity? Because Leto is omniscient! Okay...). The first book is a classic that transcends the sci-fi/fantasy genre. The other books, not so much.
I wish GRRM could at least give an estimated percentage of where he is at in TWOW. 60%? 75%?. I remember when he said he would not write Fire and Blood Vol2 and D&E until Winds was finished but now says "Westeros has become bigger than THE WINDS OF WINTER, or even ASOIAF."
This is honestly what I want the most right now. Just come out and say "I have 1000 finished pages and 200 in progress, so yeah, hundreds of pages away". The only downside is that people would be breathing down his neck even harder when a year goes by and they know he wrote like 20 pages. But god damn.
he’s anywhere between 3% - 97% done
doesn’t matter he basically announced its never coming out
22%
It's time we all just acknowledged that the series isn't likely to finish. The only way it could is if he's writing multiple books simultaneously. I mean let's be honest, we essentially had 2 years where people (including George) were practically stuck at home so if he didn't get it done during that time then chances are he's not going to.
He cant give an estimated % on it because he isn't focused on it. That means what he has worked on in the past often gets changed and rewritten. What's currently done means nothing.
"George doesn't owe you anything!"
According to the Author-Reader Contract, he does, and any decent writer ought to be aware of this. GRRM is breaching an implicit agreement with his audience, and he has the gall to then openly complain when they get justifiably upset. He is 100% in the wrong and he's kidding himself if he thinks this won't severely sully his legacy if he doesn't finish ASOIAF.
Agreed-if a book is marketed as part of a series it is understood that the series will be finished at some point barring extreme circumstances.
plus he made a lot of moolah off his readers which propelled him into a lucrative HBO deal
Nah dude. You only get a book if an author decides to write it. If he decides to no longer continue a story he started he can do that. Learn to live with it.
@@Regenmacher175 Do you think a person is wrong to be upset when a promise made to him is broken?
Would we care about Tolkien if he didn’t finish Lord of the Rings?
I’m excited for dunk and egg to get adapted but if it’s going to be a whole season for each novella, I have big doubts.
Surely they will be seasons of 5 chapters in the Marvel style, I would not worry much about that, I do not think they want to stretch those stories too much.
It could work as 6 X 30-40minute episodes, or even as 3-4part 1hour episode mini series, but stretching it out more isn't going to work.
It makes sense to have each novella work as a season, but they have to be short.
I also worry about an aging boy actor for egg being an issue, it would work better as an animated series Imo
well they could be small seasons like last GoT season.
Dunk and Egg would be neat
I have no doubt that the creation of a tv show means there will be no more dunk and egg 😁
I disagree with the “George owes you nothing argument”. When he set out to write Ice and Fire and told everyone it would be 7 books. The fans from ‘92 deserve the series to be finished. It doesn’t matter though. He will never finish so you’re better on moving on. Lots of other great fantasy writers out there.
I've started reading The Shadow of What was Lost. Wanna try that?
For Robert Jordan it helps that 1. He work until he physically couldn't any more so no blame can be put on him for not finishing his work 2. His wife was literally just his editor so she would of course be very involved and have the expertise to carry the work on and 3. He was succeeded by an author who is himself on a fast track to putting himself on the mount Rushmore of authors
I'm so glad I found Sanderson, after reading way of king I could give a crap about anything George does.
@@ArcofBlades Never thought I’d say it but I’m way more invested in stormlight than ASOIAF at this point.
For sure. And it doesn't use "subverting expectations" as a crutch
"He's not going to be remembered as one of the Greats."
Indeed. Maybe he'll actually finish before dying, though I severely doubt it. But by writing this "unfinished tale", he will secure his place as one of the "couldabeens"
I can’t bear the thought that we might never get winds
Geroge RR Martin is NOT an author.
He's a fiction historian because he can not control a plot and he is
more interested in the fictional world he has created with his nihulistic point of view than the actual story we all miss.
He had 8 years to finish his story while the TV show was running. And if you can not finish your own book in 8 years, you never will.
@@cartooningfanart if you have lost faith in him than why are you here?
@@Bitter765 If you read his books how do you not know the difference between then and than?.
There, you asked a stupid question and got one in return.
@@DVFHAFYT I have dyslexia so sometimes I make mistakes in spelling but why is it a stupid question to ask if someone has lost faith in grrm I know he’s taking a long time with winds but I still believe he can do it
I find it comforting
The most believable theory I've heard is that the show ended mostly, if a poorer version, of how he is planning to end the series. Because of that George probably gave up on finishing after seeing the fan reaction.
Yeah that's what I always thought. He seemed to lose total interest after the final season of the tv show was aired.
Yeah and that’s what’s so sad. George might think people hated the actual ending but I think it was mostly just the execution. If he builds up to the ending like he was probably planning, I think most people would enjoy it. But it’s sort of tragic that the fumbled cliff-notes version we got in the show kinda spoiled it.
Yea horrible ending... It didnt have to be a good ending... Just not that one.. that one was just... Not rewarding at all... I feel they could have saved face a bit if there was an epic battle with night king... Instead it just went out like a dud.. like a 10 min sword fight... If they did that they could have still out the gimp on the throne and send jon beyond the wall and so on and ppl would be less... Hostile
That would be a poor excuse. As other have said above, if he takes the time to watch some of the videos about the ending, 90% is about the execution and not the choices.
I think he opted to rewrite most of winds, so that the book series ending will be a little different than what he originally planned.
Even though he said he'd never do that, I think the backlash to the show ending got to him. So now he opted to go back and redo some of the groundwork and foreshadowing, etc. I think that's what's taking so long. And having to redo that much already completed work is boring for him.
He's already said thats why he doesn't really write outlines, he said after you outline a chapter or whatever, then you've already told that part of the story. So actually writing it after that feels like you're doing it a second time and that is boring and just work, it isn't enjoyable anymore.
Which I get, that can be true. I've tried writing as an architect and as a gardener, and the gardener route is more fun. But it also can depend on your personality and style.
Well all that and he's got a bit burned out on the main story, and he's doing other stuff until he can enjoy writing ASOIAF again.
George is Viserys, just building his model of Old Valyria while the world around him keeps moving
2 years later, this is all still relevant.
I honestly don’t think he knows how to end the story
The legacy point sounds so true to me, like this George will just be one of the celebrities forgotten in a generation or something.
💯💯💯✅. Soooo true
"80 year old man who weighs 3000 lbs."
Lololol, Carmine is a savage.
This is the reason I won't read the books. No chance in hell he finishes them
Honestly, George has just become the South Park parody of himself at this point; always urging us that pizzas he hasn’t ordered yet are on their way any minute now. 🤣
If you haven’t accepted that this series is never getting finished, then boy do I have a manse in Valyria to sell you lmao.
Preston is past series finishing and just was at "write the one book"
I have a beach front property in Qarth for sale !
How much?
If George just wants to worldbuild rather than finish the story, he could at least give us some answers about the main mysteries of the series (the others, origin of the valyrians and their magic, etc.). One of the biggest disappointments in the show was how they handled the white walkers, giving zero insight into their true motivations (other than a throwaway comment about them wanting revenge on the children of the forest, relegated to the after episode commentary rather than the show itself). They didn't even use Bran's time travel powers to give us info on the original long night. Possibly to save it for the prequel, which is now canceled.
If he could at least deliver this, then we have a lot more material for fan written endings.
The question isn't whether or not GRRM owes his fans. (He absolutely does.)
The question is whether or not he's a man of his word. The answer will determine his legacy.
🤪🤪🤪
GRRM “owes” us a completion of the story because he sold us his books as a series, if he had written the books as stand alone stories that happened to be linked he would owe nothing, but it is an implicit agreement that we allow each story to be incomplete with the expectation of an eventual ending.
As an example. You could interpret the ending of Star Wars (aka A New Hope) as a total victory. The pomp and circumstance of the medal scene did not indicate a rebellion on the run after its base's location was discovered. Yes, it was unlikely that the Empire was gone, but it was an ending to that particular story at least. Had there been no more movies, it would have been OK
The Empire Strikes Back, however, ended with a cliffhanger and questions that needed answering. People would have a right to be annoyed if there was no follow up.
So does Miura I guess. It’s so selfish that he died before Berserk finished.
@@thomasffrench3639 can’t be blamed for dying unless he did it himself, I don’t know anything about that author or his manga, but if he didn’t give any real effort for the last decade to produce his promised work, I would say it is similar to what GRRM is doing to let down his fans/customers and breaking an implicit promise.
ASOIF fans won’t be mad that GRRM dies without finishing his work, it will be that he absolutely made no effort to finish his work.
@@thomasffrench3639 man I KNOW I didn't just hear you talking shit on my boy MIURA
@@bear5945 I’m just saying that people shouldn’t be judging authors for taking their time.
13:03 Preston hits the nail on the head? GRRM will be remembered as the guy who had such great potential and squandered it on the promise of fame and fortune instead of finishing the work he already put so much time and effort into and creating a truly worthy magnum opus... sad
You’ll get Winds eventually… when George joins Hodor in the great beyond, his estate will release it.
It's like Peter Jackson stopped at The Two Towers right before the battle of Helm's Deep, then started working & released the Hobbit trilogy and then announced that Rings of Power & A Gollum video game are coming while the fans are still complaining (surprisingly!) that The Return of the King is nowhere in sight.
Well Peter Jackson wasn't 70 years old, had all the completed source material to adapt and 1000s of people helping him with his project. Kind of a dumb comparison don't you think?
that's a really stupid comparison
The comparison was not about age or adaptation of source material or number of people helping. It's just about task prioritization.
@@eduard476 Well it's kinda hard to prioritize something like this when you're just 1 (old) person who also has other things he wants to work on.
And in the end, why should he prioritize ASOIAF just because his fans want it when there are other things he wants to focus on too?
@@mustarastas88 Why would Peter Jackson film Return of the King and potentially win 11 oscars if he has other things he wants to work on?
Frodo has just arrived with the ring outside Mordor, that's good enough. Who needs an ending?
Robert Jordan was dictating notes on the ending of his story while dying in the hospital. Brandon Sanderson said he had over a thousand pages of notes guiding him.
The first two books Sanderson wrote really felt like Robert Jordan books, by the third (final) book it read a lot more like Sanderson.
is it a bad thing?
@@jamesnygma4597 no not at all, Robert Jordan even on his death bed was dedicated to finishing the world he created, even if at times it felt like he was writing 3 books that couldve been easily condensed into one. While GRRM suffers from the opposite, he's focusing on everything BUT the main story, and won't even be upfront to the fans about how disinterested he is in finishing it.
@@jamesnygma4597 oh definitely
Here’s a few stories that could be limited series:
1. Reynes of Castamere
2. The Adventures of Howland Reed (ASOIAF’s Tom Bombadil at this point)
3. Queen of Love and Beauty-A Story of Lyanna (and Rhaegar?)-their love story, or could be just the tourney (and finding out the knight of the laughing tree) or a tie in with the Howland Reed show like Mando and Boba
4.Young Jamie, Cersi at King’s Landing
5. Young Barristan
6. A series about famous Kingsguard
7. Young Ned and Robert
8. Young Littlefinger
9. Literally any House could have their own limited series or multiple and it could be interesting. Not that they play the game of thrones, but there’s plenty of intrigue-ie Blackwoods and Brackens
I could see an anthology series where every episode is about a different house. Get on it HBO! lol
We are going to know more about Yi Ti then the ending of Ice and Fire. How did it come to this
I would argue that CS Lewis belongs on list of top fantasy writers who will be remembered, if only for Chronicles of Narnia
Don't worry guys, George is just waiting for Game of Thrones Season 8 to finish and then he's going to publish Winds of Winter! I can't wait for season 8, I really loved season 7!!!!!1
honestly nothing will convince me that GRRM wouldn't rather break his own hands than finish WINDS. i know he's sick of people asking him about WINDS but... it's been over 11 years. i think it's understandable for fans to be frustrated especially with him putting out OTHER material from the same world.
I told my friends 10 years ago George wouldn't ever finish asoiaf....10 years ago xD
I remember arguing whether he'd finish it before the show. I assumed he'd finish a book before I was thirty
@@e22ddie46 heh...assume again!
Of the Expanse guys: Ty Franck is one of his personal assistants, Daniel Abraham *isn't* one, but he's collaborated with him on Wildcards and such. They can both write fantastically, and they have experience writing together, and collaborating with George, *and* they've FINISHED a space epic that was 9 books long, with a good cadence.
9 books, similar amount of novellas, TV scripts + consulting on the show for its entire run, and now a new scifi novel series they're starting.
All of these released after Dance and before Winds.
At this point they should just take over, make like a writers team of half a dozen people and finish the damn book. Especially if they split the writers it by character like they kinda did in expanse it would go pretty fast
If GRRM dies before finishing the series, I'd start a GoFundMe to get Preston to finish the books, for real!
I just wish he'd say he's having trouble finishing the story/he's bored of writing it and passing it off to someone else atp.
He probably has a contract about the books he promised and would be sued by his publisher (and probably other companies, incl. HBO etc who are banking on his asoiaf fan base atm) .. if he outright SAID he won't finish the series even the hard core fans might actually walk away from the rest of his projects. He must know this.
Were finally in this stage where book purists turn on George. I love it!
The last update buried TWOW. If he is working on Blood&Fire and D&E to publish soon (because of televison adaptations), then it makes no sense for him to publish TWOW now (or soon). The stories are related and the revelations in one book series will affect the other series. A song of ice and fire is dead for the foreseeable future if not forever.
I'll give GRRM credit for getting me back into fantasy as an adult but unfortunately he's not a closer. If it wasn't for him I wouldn't have discovered some of the other great fantasy out there like Robin Hobb's Realm of the Elderlings (which is finished) and Brandon Sanderson's Cosmere. On the other hand I'm now apprehensive to picking up any unfinished multibook series unless the author is a writing machine like Sanderson.
Same here. GRRM reignited my interest in fantasy but I've moved on to those exact same authors lol.
Literally same.
The writer:
“That Gabe Newell guy was really onto a great grift. I can just do nothing and absorb money hahaa!”
The fans:
“WRITE THE BOOK!”
The publisher:
“Write the book, or lawyers. You agreed to this.”
The writer:
“Aaaaah. Ok ok. I have errr. A coffee table book. Errr.”
That moment when you realize that the books will end the same way as the show. With us being told what the final ending is and there being no satisfying journey to it because george will be dead and his will probably states the ending so his executor isnt murdered.
I love you guys, I listened to all your content when the show was running, and it inspired me to look into the (more interesting IMHO) books so thank you 🙏
He never had a proper outline for the series, and describes his writing style as "gardening" i.e. he potters about and lets the story lead him where it will. He's a tinkerer, a noodler, not a craftsman with a vision.
If you look back now on Feast and Dance the signs are all there that he was already bored with the main plot. Both books meander off on numerous side tangents and endless travelogues, exploring little nooks of the world and lore he just wanted to spend time on cos he thought it was cool. By the end of Dance he'd written himself into a corner and had no idea how to proceed the story in any coherent manner.
So he just gave up and has spent all his time since on things he can happily noodle away on - A World of Ice and Fire, or Fire and Blood, or Dunk and Egg - where he can potter around fleshing out aspects of the world he is interested in this week, but which don't bear the burden of expectation of the main Song plot. We'll never see Winds or Spring in his lifetime - and I doubt there are actual notes of sufficient quality to let anyone else finish it either.
It's a shame, but it is what it is.
It's funny how he keeps calling himself a "gardener." When you garden you have to prune and cut away extraneous plants all the time. Which he doesn't do.
All those things you mention are assumptions and not facts.
@@procinctu1 Bet you $1,000,000 he never writes another novel.
This is the king of all comments.
This is exactly right. His story has become too cumbersome. I think he's struggling with how to tie all the plot lines together coherently.
The situation has become pathetic now. He’s a script, novella writer, he has overreach by trying to write such a big, epic saga. From the start, he has always complained about how difficult it is for him to write those books. He has shown productivity with the first three books because then he was not Bantam Books money cow, so they could fire him if he didn’t respect the deadlines. Now he can delay forever, play us for fools with his blog notes, give his publishers some lame world books to publish (a Who’s who, really?!) and work on things that are less painful and boring for him. Him being pissed as hell that the show concluded the story before the books, revealed a lot of plot twists to come and received such a backlash play a part in this as well. Between 2016 and now he has probably spent his time rewriting stuff, creating ripple effects and plot holes and having to rewrite other things, writing himself into a gigantic corner.
"They're something else alright" had me reeling haha
It’s wild to me that GRRM once requested to write Amber books for Roger Zelazny, who turned him down. Like he of ALL writers should realize the consequences of an unfinished legacy 😞
"Let's talk about George R. R. Martin."
Everyone: "Oh god..."
If he truly can't finish the series I hope he at least has a dead man's switch set up so that some kind of collection of his notes and intentions will be put into a little book so we can have closure even if it's not an actual novel. I am just so curious what has he been planning this whole time?
I remember reading somewhere that he's told his wife that when he dies, he wants her to burn all of his notes, outlines, and unfinished manuscripts. He wants it all to die with him.
@@TheNoNonsenseNinja what I was going to say, his kill switch is a match.
He does not care about the fans at all, destroying his legacy for$ seems to be his motivation
That's absolutely heartbreaking to hear!
@@billusher2265 Harlan Ellison said that, but I don't know if George did.
@@TheNoNonsenseNinja Virgil wanted the same thing for the Aeneid but here we are
To quote a true intellectual:
*ahem*
“Less is not none, BUT WINDS IS NOT DONE”
-glidus
I think at this point the only way we’re getting TWOW is if house of the dragon fails. If house fails then all the others will be canceled and I think then and only then do we see TWOW.
GRRM who looked up to people like Stan Lee his entire life is finally getting a Stan Lee position, A cinematic universe and he doesn't want to give that up.
Im just so mad that he actually had so many people the “fans” who are pushing him to do the work, yeah he doesn’t have children, but thats why we are kinda here? If he did finish the song of ice and fire i would be telling my kids about this amazing story, they would read it, and then they would tell their kids and so on.. but this is just frustrating. Tbh i picked up GOT book when i was in a dark place, and the whole fantasy world, his and Tolkin’s helped me tru a lot of bs in my life, for that i would always be grateful, but this now just feels like that bad brake-up ya have in high-school where your douche bf just blocks you and idk moves away and u never have real closure..
Girl are you okay? 🥺 you really just went in about this book lol
But yah this wait is killing me too. 😩
@@MarttyMarty im sorry man i just hate when people start something and don’t finish it i guess 🤦🏼♀️
@DreamDay It's not a Breakup but more like a promise of a Marriage which will never come.
Books helped me out too and I've read his Science Fiction stuff too but nothing really compares in terms of scope and attention to detail.
Maybe he's just sick of Game of Thrones era Westeros and wants to explore other eras. Maybe he knows he's old and will die soon so he's trying his best to leave us with more Background and as much lore as possible instead of the finished story. I don't think he's stuck. I think he's just bored with it.
@@costinpatru5450 those are all fair points.. and im okay if he just came clean and said so “yo guys im tired, i wanna live rest of my life doing what i want to, not need to.. SO, imma leave some talented people to finish WOW and dream of spring”.. i think thats what we all have problem with.. but then again i dont know would his publisher be okay with that? Like i cant think of a single reason why they wouldn’t be right?
To be fair, going off about one person for five pages in the middle of a history book is very Herodotus. George was just imitating the same energy there.
Oh sweeeeet Summerchild, fear is for the Long Wait the Night that never ends. It’s been ten long years will Dawn ever come?
They should just takes Georges' notes, and give it to Joe Abercrombie. We'd have Winds and Dream in two years, and a spin off trilogy in another three.
If he never finishes the books, I would consider him to be a scammer. He made tons of promises in the form of thousands of pages of setup, as well as claiming to be working on Winds, while clearly working on anything but Winds. He gets to live the high life because his fans support him, and they support him because of both explicit as well as implicit promises to deliver on all that setup. I support the people who pester and nag him with questions about Winds of Winter. I want him to avoid going to cons because he knows that people will not stop asking about Winds. I don't want him to enjoy the gains of his false promises.
Stop viewing, reading, buying any of his material until he makes good on what you care about. Do not fall for the "oh piece of candy" distractions and be a mindless consumer of everything ASOIAF. I have zero faith in him finishing at this point so why invest into that more than you already are with either your time or money.
@@Spartan1312 I was just about to write a comment similar to yours. I won't buy ANYTHING that GRRM is associated with until he finishes the Winds of Winter. At this point I'm so angry and petty that I hope all the shows he's working on get canceled and I hope that nobody buys his other books.
I'm sure he had every intention on finishing the whole saga at one point. My guess is that he's written himself into a corner trying to do something different than the dismal tv show ending.
I wish he'd just say he can't finish it, and give his notes over to someone else at this point.
@@Darkpara1 dudes pretty petty and has it setup so if he dies before he is done the series nobody is allowed to pick it up and finish it
@@Darkpara1 This would be optimal, but I think it is a deeper issue of the fame, fortune and most of all attention getting to his head. He loved the book series right up until he got hooked on the drug that is Hollywood. After that he dumped the main series quick as fuck for the "upgrade" that is the HBO series that came with tons of $$$, fame, and most of all attention.
I happen to know a lot about this, because my grandmother was actually called Cooter. A cooter is a large river turtle. She used to eat them. When they retract their heads into their shells, their skin looks triangular and roughly similar to a vagina. That’s why they started calling vaginas cooters. But the animal name came first. So we can’t just take the word from the animal and give it to immature people.
He doesn’t owe us anything, but in turn we don’t owe him anything either, including giving a shit about his other projects. And what of his legacy? He’s an old man, and an author’s work is his immortality. His legacy will forever be damaged if he doesn’t finish his magnum opus. If he has a legacy at all that is. Maybe he’ll even be forgotten. If he doesn’t care, then so be it.
Frank Herbert didn’t finish Dune (died of cancer) but is still remembered as one of the greats
I've wondered if perhaps due to the negative reaction to the show's ending, and the fact that plot points of it shown could be ones he was already writing. Perhaps, makes him less interested in continuing, knowing that people don't like the outcomes?
Daenerys as a psycho,
Bran as King....
Good feeling these were ideas of his, but now people hate those, and he could be like
'well shit... Now what do I do?' 🤷🏻
I feel like people wouldn't hate it as much if there were a proper build up to the ending, instead of it being rushed and coming out of nowhere almost
I keep telling people they got all the major plot points from goerge so wen they all hated it they probably fuked up his head about the book
Yes. I also don't think he ever imagined it would become such a cultural phenomenon. There are thousands of people who are invested in this story deeply and the way he wraps up the story will have serious philosophical and moral ramifications for those people. That's a lot of pressure to get the story exactly right.
No man, Season 8 was released almost 9 years after ADWD. He had 9 years to finish TWOW and he didn't. The negative reaction probably didn't affect him in that sense, I mean, he wrote a lot in 2020.
@@pakimonsas I get you, but I was coming at it more from he's starting to doubt it more
It is so sad that he is not interested in finishing the story. It feels disrespectful even.
*We'll all have 100+ years before WoW releases..*
Its clear that he cares more about expanding the TV universe than finishing winds. Thats why he is writing more Fire and blood and dunk and egg: to give HBO more source Material. They dont need winds of Winter, they finished Main Story.
Yep perfect observation
True and we don't know what deal he had with them when he sold them the rights. Maybe he has to.
if he doesnt want to finish winds of winter he should just say that and give us what he has, i think its so stupid to leave us waiting for nothing for so long
Have we moved on from the fourth stage of grief to acceptance on never having this series finish? I think we’ll get Winds but no chance for ADoS.
Once the HBO series progressed beyond the novels, it left GRRM stuck between a rock and a hard place.
I think that he is a “no-win” position. There will always be a segment of the fandom that will compare the novels to the series.
I used to say "George owes us nothing" just because I didnt like to see some people write or say mean things but yeah no at this point it's ridiculous. We expected George to spend his time working on TWOW and after it came out he'd then work on side projects before getting into ADOS. But no he's doing that stuff with TWOW.
It really just comes to a certain point that George shouldn't be surprised if in 5 years when that book does come out, the launch isn't as big because more people moved on. And yeah, I just read other books like the two Avatar Kyoshi novels to forget about ASOIAF for months at a time
No,.it was always obvious GRRM was never going to finish TWoW. You and GRRM's other beta orbiters were enabling him
what would even be the point of reading winds at that point?
Like, the story is still going to be unfinished and a dream of spring is a bloody fever dream at this point.
@@maxmercer1931 lol people who throw around the word beta typically are betas themselves
@@misterduch7904 not only that, TWoW would just be more treading water , like A Dance with Dragons. How long would it take just to get Daenerys back to Meereen from Vaes Dothrak? Unless George planned to kill her off there
Oh, and the appropriate epithet for Cxcks like History of Westeros and In Deep Geek is "George Cxcks"
I don't like the "The author owes you nothing" excuse. We bought the books. We spent money on the series. How much money did he get from fans who are unhappy, and is he going to give it back? Of course not. So given that we spent good money buying his books, and making him as popular as he is, our voice should count. When he gets lost in the brambles doing side content, someone has to remind him that the main story isn't finished. Dunk and Egg, Fire and Blood, and all that other stuff is partially or wholly dependent on the main story finishing.
@Chad Norris Literature Devil made an excellent point that an author, no matter how big and small, has to keep earning their audience's trust each and every time they produce a book. That if it wasn't because of the audience, he or she would be nothing. And that is correct. Martin made a series people loved to read. Sure, he borrowed a lot from Tad Williams(excellent writer, highly recommend MST. and other influences but he was successful. But he's taken it for granted. Worse, he's trying to avoid the problem of writing his book; rather than tackling it head on.
@@Avarn388 I haven't heard of Tad Williams, but I'll look him up. It's been a whole since I've been interested in reading books, and this series was pretty much the last big series I was following.
George owes you nothing, which is true. You owe George ... nothing. It's almost as if you have no relationship with each other. Which makes it all the easier to simply walk away. One does not simply walk into Mordor, but one can simply wander off.
One day, George will realize that he's salted his own fields.
This shit depresses the fuck out of me but it beats being depressed by geopolitics
Yeah, I've been on Georges side through all of this so far, but this doesn't seem like grest news. I mean he can still do what he wants with it. But anyone can do the worldbuilding for him, not anyone can finish the main story in a satisfsctory manner... We've seen that.
Its the unspoken contract between writter and reader to finish the story you began, qnd george keeps breaking that contract.
Holy shit, there actually is an Elmo Tully
This popped up in my feed - When's it from? 1 year ago 😂😭
23:07 It's not just a good story. It's a good premise. The boy who WILL be (The Unlikely) king learning from the kind of big brother he _should've_ had. Something that never would've been allowed to happen if people understood that he was actually gonna be king one day. It's not exactly a new story, but it's a new angle on an old story. Giving the reader that kind of foreknowledge and then allowing us to be a fly on the wall among characters who don't have that foreknowledge.
Even Steven king finished the gunslinger series so that way his fans had a conclusion. He did it right after his accident because he didn’t wanna die before he could conclude his series. It would be nice if George RR Martin would give us the same consideration
A Song of Ice and Fire was building up to be one of the greatest stories of all time (in my personal opinion). It's sad that it seems like now the only ending the story is going to get is the pathetic version the HBO show plopped out. So instead of going down in history as the author of one of the greatest stories the species of man has ever produced (again in my personal opinion, up there with the likes of The Odyssey, The Lord of the Rings books, pre-Disney Star Wars movies, and shocking to myself as I literally just now realize it: Attack On Titan) now he's just going to be a forgotten footnote in the fantasy genre, just part of a larger cautionary tale of how a TV show by a major media producer can start with so much promise and end so spectacularly bad. A Song of Ice and Fire will never be completed in its true form, I'm so sad to say I actually now believe. Fire and Blood was a boring did-not-finish book and a waste of my money, the new TV shows he's scripted have failed to catch my subconscious interest. I've stopped following up on his artistic activities altogether. I think it's sad but clear to me that this is just another example of an artist selling his soul and losing everything true in the process. You hate to see it but the pile of examples is a huge one, and true artists have always been rare and are becoming rarer still in our time.
His actual old fans are used to him not finishing strories
Thank you for this. GRRM was due for a good dragging. I honestly care more about Preston's thoughts that the actual result.
Just based on the massive shift fantasy had both books and tv wise I think GRRM will be remembered.
You're 100% right, the book fans made him as without them, there would have been ZERO interest in GOT, the book fans were the ones spreading the word about the show, and he would have jack shit if it weren't for the book fans (he was modestly successful before ASOIAF), he gets some attention (after letting D&D fuck up GoT too), now he wants to do everything himself because he knows he's mortal.
He's going to die before Winds is released or finished, and he's going to be the dickhead that refuses to let someone release it. Let fucking Ty Franck and Daniel Abraham finish it, with his input, nobody would be like "oh it's not the *true* vision if he does it while he's still alive. (The guys who wrote The Expanse series, they can finish a fucking series phenomenally), and frankly, it'd be better than whatever George MIGHT write on the spare hour he gives once a month or whatever.
Wait till we see the Star Wars effect happen on this franchise 😁
But here's the thing. As a business grows and gets higher paying clients, it's going to eventually prioritize them above the smaller ones it had at the beginning. It's not a 100% accurate analogy because a growing business will have increased expenses for things like added staff, larger offices, etc. and George is mostly just himself, but the logic is still the same. Whoever writes the biggest check wins.
@@carlrood4457 we’ve seen a lot of businesses function with that thinking and sometimes it works out sometimes not. Like comcast, before it became a conglomerate, lost so many people due to glitches and bad customer service they’d have literally been done if they weren’t a near monopoly in so many places. Or Disney Star Wars, they tried the model sort of like purchase Coca Cola, know everyone’s going to buy it, dilute each container 10% with camel piss and make a boatload of money. Eventually, people noticed. Stock price watching is fine but their horizons were a little short term. Now with Westeros, the book fans got everyone watching the show. Without the book fans, my prediction is the whole things collapses and what should’ve been several huge pay days or decades worth, will only be a few. Ultimately they’re going to lose money.
@xid lol kind of! We haven’t had the declining viewers thing yet though. Everyone hated season 8 but everyone was watching.
i’ve heard a publishing rumor that the writer for the expanse actually wrote quite a bit of asoiaf
I understand what people are going for when they say an author doesn’t owe their audience anything, but usually when you start a story, there’s an expectation that, unless you’re dead or incapacitated, you actually finish it.
Grrm is literally dany being eaten by the undying while fantasizing about all those visions and projects and there's no Drogon in sight to burn them all and put him on the right path...
I truly hate GRRM at this point. I hope the new HBO series is so awful it kills all other shows they’re working on. I can’t understand how anyone could possibly continue to support him.
Brandon Sanderson wrote 5 extra books over the last couple of years while GRRM has done shit.
and they're all going to be great
Brandon Sanderson is a shit writer.
what i hear from this podcast is frustration from loyal, humble fans who have waited years for an update. Back then, people didn’t want to question George or argue for why he has not finished the books; however, years go by and we hear that George is working on seven to nine different side projects all at once. And we as fans are suppose to just sit on the sidelines and say
“yay, you go George.”
It’s mix messages all around. He talks about how he is tired and that he hasn’t been able to put in work on finishing the series, however he feels excited and ready about working on side projects that doesn’t involve The Winds Of Winter.
Something that shocked me before was when i heard all the different lands that George RR Martin created. The amount of history and wonder that went into my mind had me convinced that in some way or another, they were all going to be important to the ending of Ice And Fire. However, over 50% of all the lands beyond slave’s bay was actually important to the story. Most of these world building lands and locations serve nothing to the story and will never be referenced ever again. I do believe George loves to world build and loves to create new stories because back then, none of his stories ever made it to the map, but he does have a responsibility to cut all of the bullshit distraction that he is willingly allowing himself to get distracted on and finish the series.
It’s like if the creators of Avatar The Last Airbender decided that after season 2, they would be working on other stories about different avatars, and different characters from different timelines. Then years go by and fans ask,
“when are they gonna finish season 3?”
and their response is
“We are working on season 3, no matter how much people tell us, but we are working on other stories that fans will love.”
No. A story must be finished first before they are allowed to work on other projects. But I believe George is taking ever advantage to relive a time where he would have liked for all of his books to have become bangers, and were adapted into live action or video games.
After listening to your comments, I do think the Valaryan and Dorne and other history shows are an attempt to keep the franchise alive and to inject some diversity to the show, given that the franchise has largely focused on a white cast and (as Preston has noted before) they want to attract new audiences to HBO and this franchise. Honestly doubt it will be that successful, but open to be proven wrong.
Another epic hero is Sophia Tolstoy, who copied and edited War & Peace "seven times from beginning to end at home at night by candlelight after the children and servants had gone to bed, using an inkwell pen and sometimes requiring a magnifying glass to read her husband's notes". And also gave birth to 13 children and put up with Tolstoy.