LogFAQs > #943956080

Krazy_Kirby posted...

if martin hadn't been such a lazy fatass he could have finished the books loooong ago, then they wouldn't have had to create seasons based on outlines and their own ideas.

Why would he? He HATES the series, mainly because he kind of hates the fanbase that grew up around them. And the fact that they basically eclipse the entire rest of his career, including all the things he's actually much more proud of.

He's long since reached the point where he only really publishes a new book when he needs the money. And the success of the series and the merch and the TV show means he'll probably never need to publish another book in the series again. He's got so much fuck you money right now he has no reason to ever put out the next book, let alone the one after that.

He also has standing orders that when he dies, all of his notes get burned and no one else tries to finish the books using his notes (ie, how The Wheel of Time books got finished). So he's mostly just enjoying the money and opportunities the success of the series has given him, and he's waiting to die so he can spite the asshole fans one last time.



Zeus posted...

If that was his intended ending, it's pretty lousy.

Ehh, if you were reading LotR, and you were about halfway through The Two Towers, and then I was like "Yeah, it all ends with Sam and Frodo making it to Mount Doom and then Gollum bites his finger off and accidentally drops the Ring", that would seem like a pretty bullshit ending, too.

Now think about a universe where Tolkien had died before finishing writing the books, and all someone had was Fellowship, the first couple chapters of Two Towers, and the last chapter of Return of the King. And then an Internet fanfic writer took it on themselves to write the rest of the trilogy. It probably wouldn't come across as a legendary and ridiculously influential epic.

Same with Star Wars. Imagine if Empire stops at the moment they get to Bespin, and then the scriptwriters from The Asylum or Troma had to write everything after that part leading up to the scene where Vader turns and tosses Palpy.

HOW you get to an ending matters nearly as much as the ending itself. A well-written build with Dany slowly crumbling over time and better-written motivation and dialogue on the part of characters like Jon and Tyrion would have made even the same ending much better than it was. Basically, you have to EARN your ending - and the GoT crew really didn't.

Most of the last season was them breaking all of their characters to try and ram all their square pegs into round holes to get to an ending they'd completely failed to work towards. THAT'S what makes it so bad. Not simply "Oh, okay, Dany's dead and Jon's fucking off", but the fact that so much of what led up to that point was also incredibly stupid.

Even aside from the fact that the books have more plot points that could potentially pay off (which were cut out of the TV show entirely - Aegon VI/Griff is pretty significant, for one thing), presumably Martin (who was a damned good writer for decades even before he wrote the first ASoIaF book) would actually do a much better job of setting up the pieces for the ending he'd intended.

And to be fair, that's even assuming they DID use the ending he told them. I don't remember him ever doing an interview or anything afterward where he was like "Yep, that was my ending." It's hard to know what they might have changed (presumably for the worse).

Not that any of this really matters, though, because he's never going to finish the books. So the GoT ending essentially IS the book ending, because it's the only ending we're ever going to get short of fanfiction.
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