Are Dance and Feast George's Procrastination?
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 29 ส.ค. 2024
- Carmine and I discuss whether George has been procrastinating with the story.
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Game of Thrones is an American fantasy drama television series created for HBO by David Benioff and D. B. Weiss. Based on the fantasy novel series, A Song of Ice and Fire by George R.R. Martin. A Game of Thrones is one of the most successful television series to ever made and continues to captivate audiences all over the world. The series is set on the fictional continents of Westeros and Essos, and interweaves several plot lines with a large ensemble cast. The first narrative arc follows a civil war among several noble houses for the Iron Throne of the Seven Kingdoms; the second covers the attempts to reclaim the throne by the exiled last scion of the realm's deposed ruling dynasty; the third chronicles the rising threat of the impending winter and the legendary creatures and fierce peoples of the North.
#asongoficeandfire
#gameofthrones
I started reading this series when I was in middle school.
I have gray hairs in my beard and a Mortgage, still no conclusion.
check out a rage of thrones video, it was made 11 years ago
As intended 😁
grats on the house
You must be young bro help me 😭
I'm 22, no mortgage but I have greys in my beard already. I think it's a symptom of waiting for this shit to get finished
Bran is the metronome of the story. You can tell how far the narrative is moving based on how many Bran chapters a book has. I think the rest of my argument makes itself.
Very true
"Has the best story" 😅
@@Cole205 "I don't want anything anymore...jk yea sure I'll be king lol."
The only time Bran's chapters had something important was during Clash tho.
@@AlexKwiatekand during dance right?
prestons right. someone had to remind me the other day that a lot of jon's chapters in dance was him dealing with supply issues at the wall when i could've sworn he had done way more, in terms of plot, than accounting for food and dealing with people's needs.
Year 2000 GRRM witnesses time-traveling fans crash into his backyard. Bleeding, they beseech him, _"Please... stick with the five-year gap..."_
Offended by their criticism, GRRM doubles down on removing the five-year gap. The attempt to avert disaster ends up guaranteeing it, much like the prophecies of A Song of Ice and Fire, and in the end we are all Cersi.
it took him writing 2 books of procrastination .... before he realized he could just not write at all while procrastinating dam XD
If ASOIAF were completed, Feast and Dance would have stood as an incredible, subversive expansion of the story, which boldly forsook the expectations of the reader by introducing new protagonists and conflicts, and downplaying the existing ones.
Since they won’t be, they stand as a huge mistake that completely crippled ASOIAF, and will serve as a cautionary tale for writers to exercise discipline when writing a series of novels. They will be THE example of unnecessary story bloat, and will be remembered with contempt
I'm not sure about it being THE example given the very infamous 4 books from *The Slog* in The Wheel of Time, which are worse than this.
@@VinnieMF the wheel of time was finished. ASOIAF will never be
@@yaketysaks I feel like dying and having to have your series finished by someone else because you wrote slow books should count :)
Regardless it's still remembered as bloat that had the author occupied for years with when he could've instead finished the series, then he passed away and someone else has to finish it.
@@owbuabsolutely
Dance doesn't even have a ending, George made it so big that the two big battles needed to went to the next book
Song of Ice and Fire should be taught at writing classes as a reason WHY NOT to be a gardener type of writer.
@@naverich4603I wonder what the legacy of ASoIaF will be when it inevitably ends unfinished. Sure, the show did some damage but that damage was mostly to the same people introduced to it through the show when the books themselves fade away into non conclusiveness that will probably taint the older books irrevocably.
@@naverich4603 At this point George's garden is full of 3 foot tall weeds and the descendants of a tomato plant from 10 years ago
@@naverich4603part of the job a gardener is to prune overgrown areas to promote growth. As much as I enjoyed the new characters introduced in Feast, the narrative has become too overwhelming and George clearly can’t manage it anymore. Getting rid of the time skip is the worst creative choice George ever made and now the story is too bloated for him to ever finish.
@@Stoneador i'm not sure I even liked the new characters that much. Faegon is introduced way too late in the story and completely out of nowhere. Euron is so over the top, he might as well be from a different franchise. And I completely don't care at all about the sand snakes/Alleras, Doran or Marwyn. The story isn't about them and it's why the plot's moving at a snail's pace. Seriously, what was George thinking when he introduced so much new content?? The less said about Brienne's pointless POV chapters - the better.
> Dany needs to learn how to ride a dragon
I think Tyrion's plot function is to draw a dragon saddle for Dany.
My favorite Preston comment about this was a couple years ago now. "Imagine the level of procrastination we're talking about here. Imagine the pressure on this man. If I was asked to turn in a report in a month at my job, imagine if I took a year to do it. I'd be fired!" Lmfao
We'll see how long it takes Preston to finish his fan fiction.
As an academic, I write papers on physics, math, theoretical computer science. Once I announced something big at a conference, I thought I could finish the paper that year, but I kept focusing on other projects instead. Eventually that paper became years overdue, I would say the guilt and pressure builds up to a maximum, but as the years went on I eventually didn't care as much. Like GRRM I had bursts of working on it and imagining "I could finish in a few months..." followed by periods of not touching it. I never did finish it, now I'm retired and doing other things.
@@easilytrackableinternethum3018 you just jinxed it.
@@easilytrackableinternethum3018 Even if George finishes tomorrow, to be considered faster, all Preston has to do is finish in less than 13 years. That's not a hard task. Now will it be like as if GRRM wrote it? No, and I prefer to wait for GRRM. But let's not pretend like Preston will take 13 years, in addition to having a kid and a regular job like the rest of us.
@@easilytrackableinternethum3018 Preston has a day job , a family , and is doing this with many others all things George doesn't have holding him up
GRRM is an argument in himself against Gardener writing style.
No, GRRM is an argument in himself against being fat, rich, and lazy
Series is still amazing tho. So there's pros and cons
Nah it can still be an amazing writing style but at some point you need to stop planting more freaking seeds and finish pruning and harvesting all your original plants
"against"? oh, summerchild.....
On the contrary, GRRM will be studied for decades as the greatest success ever - of how to get absurdly rich _by ~being~ a gardener._
Univer$ity courses will be made specifically to study the GRRM phenomena, if there aren't any already.
@@shaft9000 So true, he is the ultimate grifter. How to get people so invested in something they give you tons of money and yet you never finish? He's like the ultimate capitalist. Business courses will be taught about him. The forever cliffhanger. It's like he defies physics.
Feast and Dance are basically the five year gap, while setting up Dorne and Euron.
Only that all those books happens in a few months
@@fabvz5436they were clearly meant to serve the same purpose as the 5 year gap.. getting the characters from Storm to Winds.
How George is _"gardening" that five-year gap_ = 12 foot high weeds, no gardener seen in over a decade
Yes, and he only did a couple of months of the five years, so he still has 4 plus years of story time to get to the point where the 5 year gap would start. He will never finish the series if he hasn't even finished writing the gap yet.
@@mackherren1373 Get the characters from Storm to Winds? So at the end of the five year gap, Dany is supposed to be missing, still not in Westeros, Jon is supposed to be dead and Aegon is supposed to be just starting to invade? I don't think so. I think he isn't even halfway through the gap, so we have at least 3 books to go. The series will never be completed.
Somehow, Jon Snow has returned.
the more i think about it george could’ve made the five year gap work if he just told the dornish story through recollections because all of the main characters need to go through a long period of growth before they can do any of the things that they need to do in the story
Cersei in KL wouldnt work with the gap
@@MarzipanCat. It also wouldn't work for Jon and the Others. The gap would be good for Bran, Sansa, Arya, Daenerys and Sam though.
@@MarzipanCat.my guess is that the story could have been changed to have Kevan rule for longer and get killed by the end of the five year gap, it would have also made Tomen and Marcela more grown and interesting characters, Jon and the Others is harder but it could have worked, gathering strength and what not, the book could show in how dire of a situation the Nights Watch is, the Others seemingly can’t really go trough the Wall, so they will likely need to break it or have someone else break it, which they could somehow influence since they seem to have a level of intelligence.
@@AnaPaula-rn9et great ideas! Idk why Martin scratched the idea tbh. My guess is that it just didnt fit his detailed writing style so that's why he ended up saying it didn't work.
@@MarzipanCat. I mean it’s not easy, he’d be sacrificing a few things or moving things between books, Stannis for example would either need to die in battle or such in that time skip or need to kill the Boltons, which neither is particularly good for the story, it’s sacrifices for the story that could be made for the overall narrative but I would call them disappointing at best, like there are work arounds but he would always need to sacrifice some interesting scenes, characters and overall development of the story, like the Dorne storyline would be much smaller or non existent and mostly told trough flashbacks or recollections and so would many things, Martin needed to plan better in that regard.
It’s another George who might have gone a bit too far in a few places.
Underrated comment
They're also both partial to their vittles
It's like poetry, it rhymes.
Great reference! Reminds me of Plinkett Reviews star wars lol
Maybe
Feast is my favourite of the main series, but I'm a sucker for world building and will fully admit that absolutely nothing happens in that book except Cersei gets fat
There'll be no sequels and I've made my peace with that. There's enough fan content to calm my asoiaf withdrawals
Can you site me some of this fan content please?
@@Vedgrunner The GoT mod for CK3.
It's in the hands of the readers to create their own logical conclusions. It'll be deeply interesting in thirty years to meet another ASOIAF fan with a completely different but also convinced and compelling outcome. it'll be like asking your favourite book, what do you think happens in the end and why? i mean you could literally have that in person irl at a bar if you ask about the show and its ending
I'm not acting like the novels I've written are the next Ice and Fire or anything, and God knows I don't have as many obligations as the guy who created a media empire out of desperation to pay the rent, but I still cannot get over how he just refuses to wrap it up or bring in help. I've gone through periods of writer's block or hating what I've written and not wanting to touch it... but I've still finished it.
I don't have hardcore fans. Hell, I really don't have any fans. My family hasn't even read my books. I don't have a publisher who should be riding my ass to stop doing passion projects and finish my main series. I've spent more money than I'll probably ever make just trying to market. I don't have an agent or celebrities giving me a shining endorsement to their legions of fans.
But at least I actually write.
What is George's excuse after 13 years?
Manband I’ve been seeing your comments under Preston’s videos for so many years. Maybe even 10 years. Thank you for never changing your profile picture so I always recognize you.
What’s your book about?
I wrote 4000 words today. George probably did the same amount in the last 6 months 😂
@@Cremling_1996 In the words of TeamFourStar, makin' a loooooooot of assumptions here.
@@randomcommenter100 Tell you the truth, that's why I've never changed it lol. Had it since high school and it's not going away anytime soon.
It's kind of like a mashup of the tropes/tone of shows like Degrassi or the original Heartbreak High or the actually good parts of Euphoria. It's a YA high school story about depression and abuse and trying to find happiness. Lots of LGBT characters. Gonna be five books long and some expanded material because I'm publishing the book to the in-universe musical the characters put on later in the series lol.
It's called "MacBethany" if anyone is interested.
That's what procrastination does to you. You go 5 months without writing anything, and think "once I get back on track I can do 4k words a day" so it seems like you can finish in 18 months. But you get back on track for a week then procrastinate/get distracted for another few months.
It's viscous because it completely disguises the fact that you need help with the project.
world building is easy and intuitive, storytelling is tedious, meticulous and way harder. i get it. fortunately nobody expects from me to finally finish some major opus.
more than once i have seen experienced writers give that sort of advice to newbs: dont get caught up in world building, it feels like you are making progress but you dont, nobody cares about your geospacial almanach of curios world-wonders if the characters the reader actually cares about are going nowhere
@@dasaggropop1244 Young writers should be taught to not be gardeners at their writing classes.
My hope is he has a timeline so at least we know the fate of Planetos and its characters.
storytelling is not tedious,
but the business of publishing and celebrity and conventions and media deals ~is~
Well said well said
I think what Dany learned in Meereen was that she hated trying to rule compassionately. Every time she went against her instinct to rule like a dragon, merciless and cruel, it made her miserable.
Yea she's finding out that it's pointless and never going to work. You must have much more than compassion to rule because human nature is a beastly thing. Too much compassion is seen as a weakness and people will keep walking all over her and the city until ppl give up on her providing security and those same ppl she was compassionate to turn on her and force her out for a stronger leader
Did it make her miserable or did it blow up in her face? I think she would still prefer to rule compassionately, but it’s impossible with the dire political situation she faces.
@@indiciaobscure A bit of both. She hates to compromise and much like her brother believes it's her birthright to rule. The show softened her up a lot.
There's definitely a reason (now obvious) why this was so laboured in the books and skimmed over in the shows, and the final season of got really suffered as a result
@@milorr99 I can 100% see book Dany do what show Dany did if her pride or Queenhood was threatened by a (Cut) Blackfyre.
I hat the show so much.
It's very true, not much happens in Dance. Bran I is kinda hilariously slow considering he only got 3 chapters
It’s crazy to think 2 massive and really good books could be considered procrastination.
Crazy but true
Both can be true at the same time
Those two books could have been something great but George hasn't given us anything after.
Introducing new plots and characters without expanding on others in the main plot 4/5 books in is nuts.
Then, he leaves the series on a cliffhanger for more than 10 years.
Eh, they are solid books but also meandering, incongruent with the rest of the series and (literally) unfinished.
As 1 book it could've been really good, on the level of the previous 3, but the sequel to aSoS became what 2.2, 2.25 or 2.3 books - depending on how much of a portion of tWoW the stuff from aDwD takes - and you can feel the narrative slipping away.
“Really good” lol literally the 2 worst books in the series
I think one easy way to look at the story is cutting it up into pre-Daenaerys/War of the Five kings, Daenaerys's invasion/Second Dance of the Dragons and then fighting the others. We're still at step one. Now, obviously the first step is the longest because you need to do all the story's set-up, but it's worth considering that the story still hasn't progressed into what is essentially the second act.
Yeah that's how I feel like two books are not gonna be enough. If you consider how much needs to happen for the story to be concluded SATISFYINGLY and how much of the story he told in five fucking books...there is just no way he will finish it in two. He will never finish it...and if someone comes along and does it will be like a 9 book series or something.
@@naverich4603 Yeah. Winds of Winter probably ends with Dany setting sail or maybe landing in Westeros, then you really should have a book, maybe even one and a half books on the second dance which then flows into one last book for fighting the Long Night or whatever the final boss will be.
Maybe the cut will be different.
Much like in the show, I don't think we will have a lot of a 2nd Conquest, I think Danny is going to start with it but have to turn her attention North fairly quickly, given how South the Others are by the ending of the previous books. That is, Conquest and Others might happen at the same time.
Reminds me of David Simon who's said that one day he wants to put down the "crack pipe" of writing for television and get back to writing serious non fiction like the Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets and The Corner, which launched his career, but can't seem to stop working on TV projects. George would clearly rather be working on Wild Cards: Detroit Shuffle or some new history of Baelor the Blessed than do the hard work of wrapping things up.
I mean Dany is learning to rule to eventually deal with the others
1. She learnt how to distinguish between good and bad advice Jorah,Daario,Ben Plumm are constantly giving her good to extremely bad advice and Dany has to which ideas she should listen to and which to ignore (which is going to be important if someone like Tyrion tries to convince her to blow up Kingslanding)
2. She learnt how to deal with a pandemic(which might be important if the’s a grey scale epidemic)
The’s probably more but especially that would be relevant for an invasion with the others but I’m too lazy to reread her chapters
Militant pacifist GRRM can't have a story where violence and war solve problems. They have to create more problems. That's what Feast and Dance are about. So, yeah, the characters seem stuck because war in ASOIAF is a quagmire. It's Vietnam in the early 70's. That is the story. That is the plot. D&D knew that wouldn't work on TV but that's the story GRRM is telling.
Maybe more accurate to say its the story he was trying to tell some years ago.
THANK YOU. Preston is so wrong about a lot of this. Jon NEEDED to do what he did in Dance. He needs to learn empathy, the value of peace and how to go about the complexities of ending a conflict. The Others will not be defeated militarily, Jon will need to go beyond Armageddon and make peace.
@@duckling3615I agree. When Preston said ‘the story is a bunch of rumbles and fights’ I completely switched off, I think it’s such a reductive way to look at the story. The best bits of the story are, in my opinion, the deep character explorations which are at their absolute best in the last two books with Brienne, Cersei, Jaime, Theon, Dany etc.
@@someangel-shape6797 I zoned out when he said Jon needed to go South. The entire point of his story is that the South is irrelevant. There is a real threat North of the Wall. Ramsay, Cersei and everything else are side issues. This is why he is killed when he decides that he needs to go South.
The problem is that George has branched his story out in so many directions, and in so many perspectives that he overcomplicated his path to complete the story in his given timeline. And he won’t complete the story. We have most likely read the last ASoIaF book. If that isn’t forcing yourself into a corner, I don’t know what is. He isn’t saying the books are trash, but they add a lot and progress little. I highly doubt George intended for this outcome, I think he had great aspirations for his creation and then was pulled in a million directions and given millions of dollars. Now it’s all over.
I can’t express this but I think it’s weird that I’m real life so much time has passed but in universe only 3 years have passed since the start. The enormous Feast Dance duo only covers a matter of months I universe.
I realized 1/4 of the way through Feast that George was just spinning his wheels and had no clue where to go from there narratively.
I think the talk of procrastination is because the pace slows down massively. We have so much buildup but no payoff, in fact, we get even MORE buildup with Young Griff and Jon and Stoneheart.
At the end of the vid: GRRM has to write Tyrion meeting Dany from Tyrion’s PoV. That is the conclusion of his goal. We should be in his head as he tries to convince Dany.
You're right. From Danys perspective would be annoying because she wouldn't believe Tyrion was on her side and would be thinking of burning him the whole time.
the barristan perspective sounds like a brilliant idea to me
We have yet to see a POV chapter of a different character interacting with Dany (only people recalling convo with Dany), we may get an interesting revelation of what kind of person Dany is when finally seeing her through the eyes of someone else...
@@umanuu Wow, that’s a great observation and a really good point.
@@KomodoDojo To add to that, Dany is the only monarch in the books that we get a POV
All other Kings/Queens are seen through the eyes of other people - (save for Cersei but she doesn't really count as she's a Dowager Queen)
The whole Quentyn Martell story felt like massive wheel-spinning to me. Oh, there was another secret marriage plot? He let the dragons out! Aaaaaand he’s dead.
This long procrastination is why i cant see him finishing the later D&E stories because he'll run into the same problems where he will be forced to reveal hanging plot reveals.
I think trying to take them all the way to Summerhall is going to be a problem. Even Egg becoming king has problems. It will get them far too tied to the main politics of the continent. They began as light side stories taking place within the greater world of Westeros. A buddy story where they get wrapped up in some of the side stuff while the greater stories happen nearby.
Same reason we won't even get Fire and Blood part II, there is a bunch of mysteries he will have to reveal and I just don't think he has any idea how to actually pull it altogether at the level of detail of F&B I.
TWOW is right around the corner, trust me, my cousins hairdressers agent's neighbour told me he'd handing it over to his editor any day now
And this is why JRRT didn't care about Aragorn's tax code.
To be fair, Tolkien wasn't much better when it comes to finishing and publishing his work... In fact, it's kinda obvious that he enjoyed world-building much more than writing the "core story" just like the Martin.
you say that as if George cared about the taxes in Westeros
I don't see the relation. Georgie also doesn't go into much economics in these books and the Aragon's tax code bit is broadly about good intentions not leading necessarily to good actions and, more specifically, that being good doesn't entail necessarily a good rule.
He conveyed that well in the first 3 books and that's certainly not the reason why these 2 didn't hit the mark.
@@toncek9981 What? Tolkien did finish his work. So he is MUCH MUCH MUCH better when it comes to finishing and publishing his work. How was the comment upvoted. Lord of the Rings is complete. ASOIAF is not. How is complete not much better than incomplete?
@@kennyhudson9201 Tolkien finished Hobbit (relatively short fairytale for children) and Lord of the Rings (one long or three "normal-lenght" novels, depending on who you ask). He did Hobbit somewhat fast, but LotR took him 17 years, which is quite a lot considering it's "only" about as long as the ASOIAF first two books page-wise. Then he started LotR sequel, which he abandoned for good. He never finished Silmarilion, his magnum opus, which was eventually published by his son Christopher, who edited it and put it together from his father's notes (sometimes deciding which version of the story is the definitive one as Tolkien often wrote several versions of the events). Other stories from the Legendarium were put together and published in the same way...
You can say that Tolkien did finish his core novel, fair enough, but the vast majority of his work is unfinished world-building... In fact, while Martin failed to finish his core novel series, he actually outpublished Tolkien already.
Show Ser Kevan is no longer with us.
The actor died?!
@@gerardjagroo Yes, Ian Gelder passed on May 6.
@@VinnieMF Dang! Sorry to hear of it
RIP :(
not only does George have important scenes that would be difficult enough to write well for any writer, he also has the added expectation of doing them well in an unconventional or unexpected manner.
It is important that she knows how to rule to create the expectation on readers that she will win the game of thrones. You guys are ignoring that George wrote not thinking about the TV show
They're plot lite for sure, but this video is ignoring the massive character arcs the main characters go through. For example Dany's arc in ADWD is her choosing violence over conciliation.
Didn't she already choose violence when she ill got the Unsullied? There wasn't really much character arcing, just wheel spinning until he can get certain characters into place.
@@kennyhudson9201 No, because of course her sympathy is for innocents, not slave masters like those who own the Unsullied.
She stays in Meereen specifically to learn how to be a queen, and spends the entire book finding compromises to bring peace to the city. It's only when Drogon appears in the pit that she has enough of conciliation and chooses violence. Killing the slave masters isn't remotely the same.
If you hired someone to remodel your bathroom. And, they came in and did an amazing job but stopped half way through and refused to finish. It wouldn't matter how well of a job they had done on the first half because your bathroom would still be a building site.
So you suggest them taking on extra staff to help them finish the job. They say no, they'll get to it but they have a lot of other jobs on at the moment.
You question their age and health. They flip you the bird. And ok you realise you were in the wrong for asking that.
10 years go by. They say they're still going to get to it but just these other jobs keep coming along.
You ask in the event of their death if they'll allow someone else to finish remodelling your bathroom. They say no they could never allow someone else to finish their work on your bathroom.
I think in that situation you'd call that contractor a conman with possible psychopathic tendencies 😂
And then you go online to say hey I think it kinda sucks that the contractor didn’t finish the job and I feel/wish he would and get inundated with 1000s of replies from that contractors simps attacking you and saying the contractor doesn’t owe you anything and he’s finished some bathrooms in the past and you were lucky to get anything done and bathroom building is hard and how many bathrooms have you finished and he’s busy he making other people’s bathrooms or helping other people make bathrooms and he’s rich now so why should he bother???!
(I think I am far far more annoyed with his simps than I am Martin - I can easily see how a person could end up on Martin’s position by accident- I can’t understand the willingness to defend him unconditionally and uncritically)
Dude deleted his comment so I'm going to leave my reply anyway
@rainbowcrash6990 It's a joke, lighten up.
Put it this way, if I were in GRRM's position I would definetly feel like I owed people something. I would be feeling tremendous guilt. There's obviously a difference in morality, which I am passing judgement on. I cannot relate to the absolute entitlement he expresses. I would have the maturity to pass the job on to someone who could finish. To not do so just seems incredibly small and petty.
Then there's also this quote from 1981
"If I were really cynical...I wouldn't write what I'm writing now, these novels. I would start some sort of medieval sword-and-sorcery thing and say it's a trilogy...and then keep writing it for the rest of my life"
@@wephilips6651 In some ways I still am a defender. I can understand writers block or procrastinating. I can empathise with those things. I'm an optimist. One of the last people to admit that it's over. But even now I still think there's a tiny chance we get winds. What I can't understand is his notion of absolute ownership. If you can't finish what you started at least pass it on to someone you trust to get the job done. For me not doing so is the really unforgivable thing. Even after death he wants to retain absolute control. I think it's literally in his will so his estate can't give the rights away later. I don't really understand his need to milk it for more money. When is it enough? When you already have more than you could ever spend When you have no children and you're leaving your money to a wolf sanctuary. That's what I can't relate too.
@@edmann1820 I can empathize with you, as I too am a defender and optimist. What's been said this whole video, I can't empathize with. As to me, I see it intricately connected and essential. I also think that they're too biased to what D&D did to connect the dots, hastily, rushed, while missing a bunch of characters. That said, I'm not sure someone could finish it either. George' unique view of the world and the branches/hedges he's meant to trim, can't be done by someone else. So in that way, even if I too feel upset, annoyed or question the morality, I can also see a "I don't want people to try to finish and ruin my work" thing too.
@@kuricosmos Yeah I thought this video was revisionist. Changing your opinion of something radically with the benefit of hindsight. So they're wrong in the sense that the books aren't bad, they're amazing. On the other hand they have a point. If the books were more concise and focused on moving the story on faster he might have finished the series. Which is valid. They just wouldn't have had this opinion 5 years ago. I think it does pose the question does an unfinished story detract from the overall quality? In some ways I think yes.
He did take on help over covid I believe. I think young writers were helping him for a time. Organizing things. He should be training up an apprentice. Overseeing and delegating and editing what they're doing. As he did with his wild cards world that he created. That would be my suggestion. I wouldn't want to see Brandon Sanderson or Joe Abercrombie just take over. That would be terrible.
I enjoyed Feast and Dance but the pacing is so so so much slower.
I’m rereading the Hedge Knight right now and the pace is great. It really feels like each paragraph is succinct and hits the points it needs to for the story to move along.
Where as, what can be done in 3 paragraphs in the Hedge Knight (a set up for a simple small scene, the conflict of the scene and the resolution), takes an entire huge chapter in Feast or Dance.
Like within the first 3-4 pages of Hedge Knight, we meet Dunc, learn he’s a squire and his knight died, he buried and mourns then reminisced. Travels a couple days travel, stopping at an inn where a dragon dream and the foreshadowing of the end of the book is set up, and he picks up Egg and the pay off for the egg reveal is set up. And then he travels for a day to get to the tourney.
That was a few pages in Hedge knight and might’ve taken 30-40 pages in Feast or Dance. I mean we basically got 2 Tyrion Chapters (can’t remember if these were sample Wow chapters) of ONE conversation in a tent discussing war plans.
I think GRRM feels a very strong need to justify his writing and wrinkle out any plot holes.
Call me a sweet summer child, but I actually think all the new plotlines introduced will serve a purpose by the end.
I think Aegon will serve a purpose in providing a blockade to Daenerys so that she won't easily come in and win, and Dorne will side with Aegon because of the news about Quentyn. That's why D&D struggled so much in season 7 and 8 with not having Dan stomp Cersei, because they didn't have Aegon to be a strong opposing force.
I think Sam will bring the Horn of Winter to the Citadel where Euron's blood sacrifice will repair it, then Euron will claim it, destroy Oldtown with the Horn of Winter and then go destroy the wall with it. I suspec the Horn of Winter causes earthquakes locally, so when blown in Oldtown it will bring down the Hightower and crumble the city, but when blown at the wall it will break that down too. Sam will probably save some valuable books or info before that happens though.
i disagree that it's procrastination. i think sometime between 2000 and 2004, GRRM got so excited about building the world that the story itself almost bores him now.
I doubt that Tyrions main narrative purpose in Dance is to meet Daenarys, I dont think the Tyrion-Daenarys thing will even be that important. George does this alot: he tickles the reader with the anticipation of a thing that wont ever happen. See Brienne searching for Sansa and Arya, when her real purpose was to find Stoneheart and be in an impossible dilema to destroy her sense of honour.
14:19 totally agree. It’s procrastination… this whole procrastination started from book 3 but it got so much worse for books 4 and 5…
Preston just explained why the show wasn’t actually that bad of an adaption and I’m not sure how I feel about it 😂
The more i listen to Preston, the more sympathy i've got for DnD.
@@anonymous-hz2un why?
@@TheTonyEntertainment for many different reasons. GRRM created this incredibly complex world with several intertwined plot lines and then just left it all hanging it the air. Not to mention that Feast and Dance were just fillers - they present multiple new characters and plot lines but dont solve anything and the whole story's moving at snail's pace. No wonder that Faegon was completely left out. 5 books in and we still know next to nothing about the White Walkers, their origin, motivation or grand strategy. Etc, etc.
I partly blame this to his writing style of growing a garden and the five year gap that he originally intended. I think deep down he does want to write the hard parts, but its connecting the dots
I mean danny learning to be a leader is very important at least from her pov
But like, _of course_ 'nothing' substancial happens in Feast and Dance.
*Elephant in the room aside*
Those two (technically one) book(s) are still dealing the fallout of the War of the Five Kings.
We have barely started Dany's plot.
Let alone the Far North plot.
Hence why the elephant.
We are 4-5 books in, and we’re still in _Act 1_
There is simply not enough time [For George]
Seems like Martin loves a good Shaggy dog story
I agree. Feast and Dance have some of the best individual chapters. But the pacing of the 3 first books are so good. Its like one big chapter with a begining and ending for all characters and events.
Preston's point at the end is my copium for the Winds delay. If I were George I'd be pulling my hair out trying to figure out the specifics of those huge character meetings
George has said he doesn't like planning out his story, he gets bored when he knows how his story will end. My guess is he knows how he wants it to end and is bored with it. So to try and be optimistic about going to his ending he's writing what he does like. That's why we got Fire and Blood. That's why he likes writing Dunk and Egg. And that's why he doesn't like finishing his story.
Elden Ring is proof that George's talent is indeed world building.
I mean, Feast is for my money the thematically richest book and my personal favourite even if very little directly happens in it, while Dance still feels pretty consequential to me (Jon literally fucking dies, for one). I think storm of swords had a pretty hefty buildup in AGOT and ACOK that enabled all those explosive dramatic events, and it took Feast to really feel out all the consequences for that. Dance feels like the setup for Winds, it gives us the setup that will make all the big battles and explosive events there feel appropriately impactful and consequential. I can see arguments for why these books are procrastinating the main plot, but honestly having seen what a rushed version of the plot looks like with GoT I’m kinda fine with that. I think too many people overfixate on how the story ends and just want George to get there as soon as possible, but I think that loses sight of what makes the story worth reading, and would much prefer GRRM leave the story unfinished but polished than rush his way to what would only be an unsatisfying conclusion
George has a bit of a problem with not killing his darlings. Feast and Dance are amazingly written books but I still have a hard time enjoying them because so much happens that simply does not matter.
Hey he had to write all those extra Daenerys and John chapter, how else would he tell you about there tax policy, it's vary important that you know ther tax policy
These books and this story have been a big part of my life and while sad that we will probably get no ending i m still happy what we have exists. It's an amazing story no matter what happens and has inspired a new style of writing and realism in fantasy and I'll always love George for it. This is my favorite book series and most likely always will be
Just remember, SoS took two whole seasons to adapt its main plot points, while the combined material for FfC and DwD only took up one
Book 3 needed two seasons to adapt. Books 4 and 5 needed at least 3 to properly adapt. Combining them into one season was not good.
George really should’ve just done an “All tomorrows” style series if he was more interested in world building than a story.
If winds was 10% bigger than dance, I think I worked out that George would need to have written (post edits) 100 words a day
Considering he allegedly dropped a few dance chapters so he already has those, twow could be 25% larger and still only needing 100 words a day
Yes I know it’s not the same or the highest quality but we’ve all churned out a 2000 word assignment in a night when our back is against the wall
Hell that comment was nearly 70 words
One of my biggest indicators that Feast is a giant procrastination fest is Jaimies investigation of his own crime. We get pages multiple chapters from both Cersi and Jaimies perspectives about Jaimies sham investigation of the crime of Tyrions escape, which he knows he is the cause of. Every time i re read Feast and get to that point i just scream about why George dedicated time to this
And everyone calls it the thier favorite book /eye roll
@degotas nobody but the pretentious blokes call Feast their favourite.
I think "slow writers" have a thing for meditative writing. It's not about getting to the ending. They write for the sake of enjoying the present word, sentence, paragraph you're currently on and just living in the vibe of the prose, rather than finding the path of least resistance to the end. I found this with Name of the Wind a lot, prose is beautiful, but tbh not much happens for the first book and a half, it's mostly there to just sit and enjoy the writing itself. Maybe the same can be said about Martin. He just wants to extend the world and have it go on forever. The fact that he writes gardener style supports this too, as they are kind of discovering stuf as the reader is. So I just take it as it is now. Enjoy the page you're on without worrying where it's going to end up.
I agree completely. His house is literally named after a song talking about everyone tries t give all their gold to get an ending but an artist cannot be bought or sold
So many of the supporting characters died in Storm that he needed to expand the roster of character and build out their backstory’s otherwise the rest of the story would feel rather empty. I remember my first read of Feast being upset that it was all about new characters I didn’t care about, but after a while, they get woven into the main part of the story. The series is unique because there are so many things happening, you have no way of knowing what will really happen next. If Danny just plows right across Essos, crosses the sea, and burns king’s landing to the ground, the story is over and would ultimately feel unsatisfying, or at the least, like every other fantasy book.
The new characters grew on you because they had 20 years to do so. That's how long ago Feast was published. It's not because they are that good.
That's why Feast and Dance should have been left as a five year gap, then he could have written some sort of "Adventures of Brienne" as a prequel novella after having finished the actual series.
A great thing that happened to ASOIAF - to the main series - was the release of Fire & Blood & that of Dunk & Egg novellas. So many stories have been told, so much worldbuilding has been made that George can skip a lot of "I need to tell this backstory" moments & he can retell stories we already knoww, but differently, to show that people are either lieing or changing facts to establish their narrative.
Those Cersei chapters were gold dawg! I could read an entire book of her psychopathy, lol. Dont poo-poo on that magic. I think GRRM took mushrooms, drank a bunch of wine, and said, "how phucked up could a crazy lady think?"
Cersei, Brienne, Jaime chapters, I liked a lot of Feast. Dance to me was the bigger let down.
What I want is Cersei chapters from AGOT, ACOK and ASOS.
Who hasn't realized that virtually nothing happens in these two books? Hasn't this been a major complaint for well over a decade now? This was the Dance with Dragons of TH-cam videos.
Agreed 😮
Yeah, having come from the show and not really thinking about the timeline of when Dance came out, I expected a much bigger breakaway from the plot of the show. I kept thinking/hoping the next Tyrion or Daenerys chapter would be them meeting, but other things kept coming up. Hope they meet before Dream
All those storys are foreshadowing. Also feast and dance are the best books. Plot shy character strong
I don't know, it feels wrong to say that Feast and Dance were the "easy route" for George. Considering how long he took to write them and all the known struggles he had. IIRC Tyrion's Storm storyline was mostly written during the writing of Clash. Whereas his Dance storyline was extremely difficult for George, as Tyrion became a much darker character. I think we have to conclude that the things that happened in Feast and Dance , as "filler" as they might seem, *are* what is important to the ending of ASOIAF. And considering it's Preston who has done all sorts of videos analyzing the importance of those storylines, I‘m frankly a bit surprised to hear this take from him!
Personally Dance is my favourite book. However I agree with basically everything you guys said
The reason I like the book is it makes the characters feel more real and complex, the slow burn is kind of nice. However that means everything that should happen happens slowly or not at all
George feels like me when I have to write a paper with a limited word count and hit the limit when I’m only 2/3 done. Then you have to try and pick and choose what to keep and what to throw away. Instead of throwing away, George just released as is and decide he’d finish the other 1/3 in the next one
It's like watching a month worth of soap opera, where each episode, almost nothing happens to anyone
At an interview GRRM said he "knew he was doomed [to keep writing a long series] after he drew a map". That statement kind of supports the idea that he always cared more about worldbuilding than finishing the story---world first, story later.
So....do we like the story or do we not? I personally never want it to end, but I also catnt wait for the end, but I want it to be long and complicated. I like all the plots and plot twists and shit. That's just me, but it seems weird to like the books and talk shit about them at the same time.
Really I think in the case of people like PJ they’ve spent so much time re-reading and analyzing the series that they overlook why they liked it in the first place and whats new that pops out to them are the minor mistakes that seem like big flaws
You can like something and be critical of it. Clearly Preston is a major fan. The man has dedicated a channel to it. It's a fair assessment of the last two books. It doesn't make him not like the books. When you cover something for 10 years you start to see the all the good, and all the bad.
@@scoliosis9478 fair point. Well played lol. I listen to the audiobooks while I'm at work and shit, and just get lost in em. When they end I run out of shit to listen to
@@Bodharas I get that bro. It's cool.
Dany's experiences ruling Mereen are important for how she will approach conquering Westeros. She tried compromise in Mereen and it didn't work, so when she gets to Westeros we can expect a harsher, more merciless Dany.
"Dragons plant no trees"
It's the sixth book and Danny is nowhere close to even launching an invasion. People are getting a bit impatient.
@@anonymous-hz2un Dany won't start her invasion until A Dream of Spring, most likely. When she does she'll find her supposed nephew on the throne, and I don't mean Jon
@jessepbigjdp You mean Faegon?
For a Game of Thrones youtuber, Carmine seems oblivious to so much of the series. Like really obvious stuff lol
What am I allegedly oblivious to?
@@OfficialRedTeamReview clearly you're oblivious since you didn't remember every minute boring detail of brienne and davos' story that totally mattered like that time ned drowned near sisterton or mad king being imprisoned in duskendale you know the really important stuff that will totally come back up in the future
@@OfficialRedTeamReview yea I'm just a stranger on the internet ignore me fr
@@globesurfer122 That's what I thought
@@globesurfer122 all he did was misremember what happened in one chapter that happened in another and that all of a sudden means he didnt read anything? bro this fandom is wild with the stupidity lol
We shit on the show a lot, but at least the plot moved forward. For example they knew that Jon’s season 5 plot was boring so they added Hardhome sequence.
I've been saying since I finished Dance, a week after it released. GRRM has done nothing but meander and wheel spin since Storm.
I worked for almost 20 years in a job where I had to do a fair bit of creative writing, and I realised recently that I'm just all tapped ou. I'd much rather do something else in a different field right now. I have a feeling GRRM is in the same position, he just doesn't have the creative juices anymore. And that's perfectly fine. I think he should just hand it over to another writer (ghostwriter) to finish, with him supervising the story direction.
Carmine listened to the audiobook on X2 speed one time 14 years ago as background noise while building his blog empire… No I’m giving him too much credit. Everything he knows came from Reddit.
I injected them into my brain Matrix style via audio books from Temu
@howardbiel1958 i gave Preston a superchat about allar deem last year and we watched him google it on stream. he did it again the other night but carmine misremembering which chapter bran walks around in = never read the books is a wild
whats up with this fandom trying to gatekeep who's read and hasn't read it? i was in Glidus' comment section and someone was claiming glidus didnt read them either because he mispronounced a character's name wtf? lol
@@kizura8294 welcome to the fandom. i once got death threats because someone thought i confused aegon frey with another aegon. even though *they* made the mistake because they didnt listen to what i said, they still felt the need to threaten me? the fandom can stupid and, ironically, lacking reading/listening comprehension. OP's comment is evidence of that
If A Song of Ice and Fire ever were to be a movie then a Feast for Crows and a Dance with Dragons would've been a 30 second montage.
Preston can you say hi?
Hi
@@PrestonJacobstheSweetrobin Thanks 👍
@@PrestonJacobstheSweetrobin was that really necessary? lol. preston thanks for the content, in a world where g.r.r.m has 15 years left, do you believe we get twow/spring?
I see a lot of people complain about this. I can see why they would be annoyed by all of the sidetracking and the random backstories about minor locations and characters. But I truly love it, I could read George write about everything and nothing for days
The thing is, AFFC and ADWD aren't the only worldbuilding books that we have. We also have... AGOT itself. Think of Jon's chapters in AGOT. What happened in them? Well... nothing, really. Like literally. Nothing. It was just huge chunk of showing us who are the major actors in Night's Watch and Beyond the Wall. And we didn't even met Mance Rayder until ASOS. Or think about Dany - lots of worldbuilding about Dothraki, and aside from Viserys' and Drogo's deaths we'll only have birth of dragons - which supposedly weren't even in the original idea.
It's the same thing with Dance and Feast, only that this time he needs to introduce us to a much complicated state of things, hence 800 page intro turned into 1800 page.
I feel like we're complaining about world building because Winds and Spring aren't out. Now i definitely believe George could have cut a lot of stuff out. But Feasts particularly is an amazing book. We've already determined that to have SoS you need GoT and CoK. I'm gonna assume it's the same with Feast Dance and Winds.
I read first 4 books, then I graduated and moved states and somehow I wanted to read the fifth book from my collection instead of reading it online or borrow it from someone so I haven't gotten to reading it for yeeears. Then I finally took it back with me after visiting my parents for a holidays and when I started reading I was absolutely baffled...like...70% of the book IF NOT MORE felt like a filler. You literally have chapters where nothing important for the plot happens...nothing...you follow a certain POV for fucking half the book and the only important stuff that happens, happens after 100 pages of fillers...it's a very well written nothing. And with the way he wrote the fifth book (and party Feast for Crows), I am afraid two books are not gonna be enough to finish the story...
Before I die, I hope another author can come in and finish this incredible series.
I’m thinking it’s time we leave this story behind us. Let’s just hope hbo carries on making somewhat decent adaptions of stories already finished by George.
OMG this is Naruto 6 years of fillers all over again
6 years???
When you consider the fact that Winds will probably never come out and Dream is just a pipe dream, Jaime's final chapter in Dance is George's biggest F you to the readers
AGoT is a catalyst, Clash is a set up, Storm is the payoff. Feast and Dance are now the set up from all catalysts of the previous books and Winds and Dream are the pay off.
He's done the same thing with the new shows all coming out. He's not slowly writing, he stopped for years.. Like perhaps he's back again? But its likely that nothing has been written outside of the samples he showed years back. The amount he's written about the world and stories outside of the main one is NUTS.
I think saying “nothing happened in feast” is missing the point. Feast is about the ravage and emptiness war creates in societies and how people twist to deal with that. It’s not about fights. Feast has incredible character moments and one off monologues that cement the theme and give major insights into characters. Some people’s favorite moments were the red wedding, but one of my fav ASOIAF moment was septon Meribald’s speech on war.
Preston, please do a Leftovers video. Thanks.
That fact that Dance didn’t have the final battles shows that Feast and dance had too much filler. Is it well written enjoyable filler? Yeah, but at the end of the day it’s still filler.
By the way, you guys forgot to mention that Danny saved Tyrions life at the gladiator arena. This could lead up to either a victory or demise to Danny
You're missing the point. George said from the beginning he was basing ASOIAF on history. Was Aragon a good king & what was his tax policy?
In history, Henry V didn't spend his life training to fight the French. His rule was tedious. Day to day. A game of thrones.
You two forgot what makes the series wonderful. It's not a plot driven fantasy. It's an experiment on historical fiction in fantasy. Life is aimless and given meaning in retrospect. It's a story about legacy, stories, and history.
Indeed. Reducing ASOIAF to a list of mandatory plot points misses out on so much of what makes it unique and so immersive.
Thing is, I'm 99% sure that Preston and Carmine know this too, which, if true, makes it seem like all this is more about viewership/engagement than ingenuous conversation.
@@DildoDaggins69 I get what they're saying though. The pace of the first 3 books feels 10x faster than Dance and Feast. I like those books but they're definitely not continuing the plot that much, and the story is more about a story than the OP gives it credit for, given that George has a plot outline that he's trying to tell
That's not the point of the criticism either. Both can be true.
This is a book series, it has a narrative, it's not aimless and being based on history does not make it historical fiction. Most fantasy authors are picking a moment in our world to mirror in theirs, that does not make those, or this, "experiments on historical fiction in fantasy."
"What makes this series wonderful" varies from person to person and, given how the majority of people have lower regard for these two books, it's quite safe to say well phrased introspective character exploration with little plot progression - or character progression for that matter - isn't what most people seem to enjoy about this series.
"It's not a plot driven fantasy". Correct. The first 3 books were well balanced between plot, characters, world building and themes, they weren't plot driven and yet:
• There's a lot of inner conflict for characters, who have self contained arcs and progress naturally, as one would have in a narrative,
• There are interesting plots that go on for appropriate amounts of time, with all their enticing twists and conclusions,
• There's also organically integrated world building and interesting themes always proeminent.
All of this made this story so gripping and popular... then we have these 2 books which derail that balance - and not because they aren't plot driven. They are mostly focused on characters, themes and world building.
As far as characters go, most of them don't get clear and satisfying conclusions even after two books.
• Jon's chapters overstretch themselves and end on a cliffhanger,
• Cersei's chapter's overstretch themselves and the ending is, bafflingly, in the next book,
• Daenerys' chapters overstretch themselves and end on what would be a mid book event in the previous books,
• Sam's chapters wonder around to end on the beginning of an actual story,
• Jaime has a somewhat satisfying end... only to then be untied with a cliffhanger in the following book - cut the fat from Jaime and Brienne and their whole LSH future meeting could've been delivered to us two decades ago.
Other characters get similar treatments. Cliffhangers, half told stories, unnecessarily told stories (for the main series), and a lot of meandering all throughout.
We do get interesting deepening of the psyche on some characters, but nothing that couldn't be, and hasn't been, done with the efficiency of the previous books, given how tight storytelling and character exploration are not mutually exclusive. We do read a lot of inner conflict chewing, some of the best in the series with great dialogue and beautiful descriptions to elevate it, but the plot to push these characters in self conflict to interesting twists and turns, and conclusions, is mostly not present. A lot of seeds and little harvest.
Having these sold as strong character and theme books is frustrating because, though surely character focused, these books are unfocused and don't deliver complete, strong character arcs supported by themes and funnelled by plots. Somehow the other 3 books in the series, that didn't make characters the biggest focus, had more intentional, conclusive and potent character work, which is staggering.
I think the book/novel structure is GRRM's biggest threshold to getting his work out there. He should have been writing and posting disparate POV chapters online in one long 30 year e-book or something. this story is just too big for any casually digestable format like books (and yes im aware most zoomers find books indigestible)
Feast and Dance : “A Quick One While He Is Away”
Feast is my favorite book in the series
When the story ends the wouldbuilding will effectively end.
No reason to end the story.
He has more incentive to start stories that never finish and let them percolate