Also, we can thank Gurrm, and to a high degree HBO as well, for the cultural explosion of incest porn/smut.
Yes, that particular degeneracy has always existed, but it escaped containment in the early 2010s when the television series became popular. I don't ever recall it being so casually present before then as it is now
Agreed. His niche perversion has popped up in far too many books and movies. I stopped reading a number of otherwise decent epic fantasy books upon discovering the authors inexplicably following in Martin's gross footsteps.
Yes, the amount of pornographic material in GRRM is frankly quite obscene. It probably kicked down the door to smutty romantasy. Now there are just no filters.
I want you to be wrong about people getting their rocks off to yellow cartoon children (brother and sister no less), but here we are. This is the world we live in.
The world we live in has people getting off to "the legend of the overfiend", which substitutes tentacles for penises, because the creator was annoyed with censorship.
But the whole "Lisa simpson's voice actress was appalled" puts a different spin on the former Simpsons' writers on Arrested Development.
Gurrm can finish his series or not, I stopped caring almost two decades ago.
The first book, a Game of Thrones, was 4/5ths of an excellent book. The problem then, which only ever got worse, is that the "muh motha ah dragoons" side plot, and it is a side plot, was completely, utterly, and shamelessly without purpose or weight.
You could cut every single word of her chapters out of the first book and it wouldn't change the rest of the story. Sure, Ned gets mad at the King for like an afternoon because he wants to have her offed, but then Ned and the King kiss and make up anyway. Gurrm had to manufacture an argument, that was soon resolved, to even have the appearance of her story mattering to the overall plot. If Ned and the King arguing for an afternoon was important enough to happen, it could have just as easily been for one of a hundred other reasons.
Dane-Air-Ees (not wasting my time looking up the spelling) was pointless. As the series went on, she became more pointless, with Gurrm having to continuously send characters from the main plot over to her plot in an attempt to make her relevant.
And then, her whole purpose, a pending invasion, was fulfilled by a completely different character out of left field using about as many words to establish as Gurrm likes to use for his average feast/f---ing scenes.
And the books only ever got worse after the first one. There are many reasons more than Dane-Air-Ees, like how he killed his own narrative momentum by offing load-bearing elements (plot important characters). But for the sake of brevity, a word Gurrm could never hope to understand, I'll move along.
The series was awful, author-indulgent, meandering, dragging, over-written, pornographic, food and fashion obsessed slop entirely up its own theory-crafted, self-prophesizing butthole by the time it reached book 4.
I should have stopped then, but I gave book 5 a chance. It took two months to finish and is the worst book I have ever read cover to cover.
I wouldn't even buy book 6, if it ever releases, to line a birdcage.
I've said pretty much the same thing. The first book set the scene for a very intriguing world. Then I think Martin followed the quote he said too far, "The difference between me and Tolkien is I would have killed Gandalf."
He followed that line of thinking to absurdity and killed every good interesting character possible. At the end of the 3rd book there were no characters left. He killed all the good people so there were only aholes.
My brother warned me not to read the 4th and I didn't bother.
I have not seen the TV series because the books weren't that great but my guess is that's also why he has writer's block. He wrote himself into a corner because he has so few options. Everyone hates all the characters and the only ending he could think of, which is the TV ending, everyone hated.
Unfortunately that level of worked up is just a Tuesday for me. I don't seem to be able to shut it off. I'd blame the internet, but I've always been this way.
I read all of your comments in this thread. Have you considered starting a substack just writing polemics? I’d read it. I love a good rant and you’re full of them.
He's so right. GRRM is a old, morbidly obese, idiot. Saying he hasn't picked anyone to finish his books is just saying "the series won't ever be finished," and no reader likes to consider investing time into a world for it to just end.
Between him and Patrick Rothfuss, my buying patterns have certainly changed. I don't want to invest years into waiting, so I look for series that are either long running already or complete.
Kindle Unlimited has plenty of series and some are even good. Paul J. Bennet is good for a quick, uncomplicated read (though a bit of girl bossy in there). Matt Barron has a great Christian tinged series called The Rage of Lions. Marc Alan Edelheit is one of my favorites with his Striger's world. Similar to Throne of Bones.
There are so many more across all genres. But for the mainstream? Forget about it. None of these guys would likely have been picked up by an agent/publisher in a million years; the stakes are too high for their liking.
I have a question: Why should fantasy writers write large series of books? What about stand alone books? What ever happened to the trilogy? Do they really have to be 10 books and more? A talented writer doesn't have to say too much. Just to be concise. How did they do it in the past? Robet E. Howard, Clark Aston Smith et al. These days every epic fantasy lasts at least 10 books and it's almost a carbon copy of the Game of Thrones. Why?
Brust's Jhereg series has about 17 books in it (I think he's still writing them). They're small and standalone, and after the first few, you know roughly what you're going to get.
This has been the way of publishing for decades, going on two centuries now.
Arthur Conan Doyle had to kill off Sherlock Holmes so people would stop asking for new stories. Agatha Christie wrote how many Poirot books? And how many Conan stories did Howard write?
The chief difference of course is that they were mostly or entirely standalone. You couldn't count on readers to have every book and in order. But the repeated going to the same story well is long established.
Side note: Correia should maybe lay off the twinkie insults toward GRRM? Neither guy is really doing so well in the "having a discernable neck" department...
There's simply no way the series could be finished at this point-- even if WINTER was released tomorrow, at the pace Martin writes, (or not) he literally won't live long enough to complete SPRING...
Timely and sensible comments by all. Martin is a post-modern hack who plagiarized his most compelling plot points from medieval English history, then ran out of narrative road.
Comparing him to Tolkien is like comparing Lincoln to Barry Hussein Soetoro.
Anyway, for those interested in epic fantasy from less familiar cultures, we're writing stories and novellas based in the world of ancient Iran and its 'Book of Kings' (Shahnameh).
While interesting and certainly a contributing factor, it is a minor one.
The truly great authors, Tolkien and Jordan, lived life. World Wars. Iceman Rigney in Vietnam.
Guys like sanderson and martin-their most difficult battle is a denying a second bowl of icecream. I’m not convinced sanderson even writes his own stuff anymore. I think he has an outline and uses staff writes to do the bulk content. Then he half-ass compiles it. His stuff the last decade or so reads like shit.
So - take an entire generation of ‘authors’ that are soft, haven’t lived, and are total fucking social dunces AND then add the extreme feminization and DEI claptrap of publishers. All books must have a gay that is a protagonist and definitely NOT a child molester, ALL women are at least as good at fighting as the greatest male warrior in the series, etc.
Fantasy is dead because the stories, writing, and characters are shit.
I wish I could remember when and where I saw it but I do remember seeing him post a throwaway comment that included a snippet describing a fake romantasy novel he'd write. I'll take a quick look at his X account and post a link if I find it - but he's a pretty prolific poster and I am not positive whether I saw it on X, or being quoted someplace (maybe even here) when he was speaking in public.
To be fair to GRRM, I can't think of a single great novel written by a 70+ year old, anyone come up with a title? I think people would be more forgiving if he could just accept a modicum of personal responsibility for his actions instead of playing the victim card. Not to mention his whole gardening technique resulted in a hopeless muddle that made the series impossible to resolve due to endless subplots. It's not a sustainable method. (kind of like another very famous fantasy writer who never finished his series).
I like GRRM work, his short story, “The Ice Dragon”, is particularly good. However, he did screw over a generation and it will probably take another generation to heal. For anyone looking for a fantastic fantasy series that’s been complete for decades, then look no further than Lloyd Alexander’s The Chronicles of Prydain:
The Prydain Chronicles are quite good overall. Can recommend.
George MacDonald has stuff that may be amazing or a little strange. I liked The Princess and Curdie (though there was a strange tacked-on postscript). He was a good writer though. YMMV...
He didn't just write himself into any old corner, that never would have been good enough for Gurrm
He wrote himself into some Lovecraftian, non-Euclidean, Witch House corner. A normal man would have gone insane long ago trying to make sense of the geometry while the Hounds of Tindalos feasted on his soul.
Gurrm however, likes it there. He pulled up a recliner, put on a TV with NFL redzone, and ordered thirty years worth of pizza, wings, and cheap wine coolers. Every night he falls asleep under a quilt stuffed with $100 bills, and every morning he wakes from his slumber covered in pizza crusts and chicken bones to gleefully read the previous day's forum posts of desperately waiting fans.
Well, yeah, he killed off or neutralized all of the characters that mattered, because God forbid anyone should write a satisfactory story resolution. So in Book 5, he introduced some loser-ass nobodies to try to keep the train going.
It didn't work. He has a handful of characters no one cares about, and twenty-seven plots that are going nowhere quick.
even if you do care about Brienne and Jamie and all that, 27 plots are crazy. This isn't "I need a flowchart to explain The Nature of Time" -- "Oh, let me draw another flowchart to supplement the first flowchart...."
... This is "none of these arcs can have narrative resolution before The End of the Series." Arya is particularly a problem -- her placement demands more investment, perhaps a book of her own. She can't be done by "switching back to her" occasionally. You want to understand the Free Cities through her lens. It doesn't need to be a long book, 200 pages, say -- but Martin doesn't HAVE 200 Arya pages.
It's gotten utterly out of hand, but I think there's an additional factor: Martin doesn't believe in narrative resolution. At least not for this story.
Larry Correia is hilarious, and creative, in some of his writing. Hard to fault his argument here, as well.
It cannot be overstated how much the woke and LGBTQP+ movements both queered and chilled literary innovation in scifi/fantasy. It's not an accident Correia does not fit into this category.
No that's a good thing. Is it really too much to expect that an author knows how their story is going to end, and have a detailed outline from start to finish?
Yes! It is! You don't start with good characters and let them grow that way. You get really horrible "on the rails" books. Surely you've had a railroading gamemaster before?
Also, we can thank Gurrm, and to a high degree HBO as well, for the cultural explosion of incest porn/smut.
Yes, that particular degeneracy has always existed, but it escaped containment in the early 2010s when the television series became popular. I don't ever recall it being so casually present before then as it is now
Agreed. His niche perversion has popped up in far too many books and movies. I stopped reading a number of otherwise decent epic fantasy books upon discovering the authors inexplicably following in Martin's gross footsteps.
Yes, the amount of pornographic material in GRRM is frankly quite obscene. It probably kicked down the door to smutty romantasy. Now there are just no filters.
No, it was probably the Simpsons what uncorked that little genie. And no, I don't know why "The Simpsons."
I want you to be wrong about people getting their rocks off to yellow cartoon children (brother and sister no less), but here we are. This is the world we live in.
The world we live in has people getting off to "the legend of the overfiend", which substitutes tentacles for penises, because the creator was annoyed with censorship.
But the whole "Lisa simpson's voice actress was appalled" puts a different spin on the former Simpsons' writers on Arrested Development.
Gurrm can finish his series or not, I stopped caring almost two decades ago.
The first book, a Game of Thrones, was 4/5ths of an excellent book. The problem then, which only ever got worse, is that the "muh motha ah dragoons" side plot, and it is a side plot, was completely, utterly, and shamelessly without purpose or weight.
You could cut every single word of her chapters out of the first book and it wouldn't change the rest of the story. Sure, Ned gets mad at the King for like an afternoon because he wants to have her offed, but then Ned and the King kiss and make up anyway. Gurrm had to manufacture an argument, that was soon resolved, to even have the appearance of her story mattering to the overall plot. If Ned and the King arguing for an afternoon was important enough to happen, it could have just as easily been for one of a hundred other reasons.
Dane-Air-Ees (not wasting my time looking up the spelling) was pointless. As the series went on, she became more pointless, with Gurrm having to continuously send characters from the main plot over to her plot in an attempt to make her relevant.
And then, her whole purpose, a pending invasion, was fulfilled by a completely different character out of left field using about as many words to establish as Gurrm likes to use for his average feast/f---ing scenes.
And the books only ever got worse after the first one. There are many reasons more than Dane-Air-Ees, like how he killed his own narrative momentum by offing load-bearing elements (plot important characters). But for the sake of brevity, a word Gurrm could never hope to understand, I'll move along.
The series was awful, author-indulgent, meandering, dragging, over-written, pornographic, food and fashion obsessed slop entirely up its own theory-crafted, self-prophesizing butthole by the time it reached book 4.
I should have stopped then, but I gave book 5 a chance. It took two months to finish and is the worst book I have ever read cover to cover.
I wouldn't even buy book 6, if it ever releases, to line a birdcage.
I've said pretty much the same thing. The first book set the scene for a very intriguing world. Then I think Martin followed the quote he said too far, "The difference between me and Tolkien is I would have killed Gandalf."
He followed that line of thinking to absurdity and killed every good interesting character possible. At the end of the 3rd book there were no characters left. He killed all the good people so there were only aholes.
My brother warned me not to read the 4th and I didn't bother.
I have not seen the TV series because the books weren't that great but my guess is that's also why he has writer's block. He wrote himself into a corner because he has so few options. Everyone hates all the characters and the only ending he could think of, which is the TV ending, everyone hated.
Tolkien did kill Gandalf. God, it's like Martin didn't realize that Gandalf rose from the dead, with an entire new powerset (and personality!).
I have no dog in this fight, but I will forever endeavor to find something to be as passionate about as you are here. Fantastic work.
Thanks for the compliment friend.
Unfortunately that level of worked up is just a Tuesday for me. I don't seem to be able to shut it off. I'd blame the internet, but I've always been this way.
I read all of your comments in this thread. Have you considered starting a substack just writing polemics? I’d read it. I love a good rant and you’re full of them.
He's so right. GRRM is a old, morbidly obese, idiot. Saying he hasn't picked anyone to finish his books is just saying "the series won't ever be finished," and no reader likes to consider investing time into a world for it to just end.
Between him and Patrick Rothfuss, my buying patterns have certainly changed. I don't want to invest years into waiting, so I look for series that are either long running already or complete.
Kindle Unlimited has plenty of series and some are even good. Paul J. Bennet is good for a quick, uncomplicated read (though a bit of girl bossy in there). Matt Barron has a great Christian tinged series called The Rage of Lions. Marc Alan Edelheit is one of my favorites with his Striger's world. Similar to Throne of Bones.
There are so many more across all genres. But for the mainstream? Forget about it. None of these guys would likely have been picked up by an agent/publisher in a million years; the stakes are too high for their liking.
I have a question: Why should fantasy writers write large series of books? What about stand alone books? What ever happened to the trilogy? Do they really have to be 10 books and more? A talented writer doesn't have to say too much. Just to be concise. How did they do it in the past? Robet E. Howard, Clark Aston Smith et al. These days every epic fantasy lasts at least 10 books and it's almost a carbon copy of the Game of Thrones. Why?
Because authors have learned that if they write a fourth book in the same series, it will sell 10x to 100x better than the first book in a new series.
Blame the market and its book-buying preferences, not the authors or the publishers.
Then outline your damn story to the end, subplots and all.
You can't do that, not if you want to have real characters doing as they please.
Brust's Jhereg series has about 17 books in it (I think he's still writing them). They're small and standalone, and after the first few, you know roughly what you're going to get.
This has been the way of publishing for decades, going on two centuries now.
Arthur Conan Doyle had to kill off Sherlock Holmes so people would stop asking for new stories. Agatha Christie wrote how many Poirot books? And how many Conan stories did Howard write?
The chief difference of course is that they were mostly or entirely standalone. You couldn't count on readers to have every book and in order. But the repeated going to the same story well is long established.
Side note: Correia should maybe lay off the twinkie insults toward GRRM? Neither guy is really doing so well in the "having a discernable neck" department...
The difference is that Correia can write with a twinkie in his mouth but GRRM cannot.
Then how the hell did GURRM ever write anything at all??
There's simply no way the series could be finished at this point-- even if WINTER was released tomorrow, at the pace Martin writes, (or not) he literally won't live long enough to complete SPRING...
George U.R. Fartin is a fat, old clown.
I don't want to like something this juvenile, but I can't help it.
Never change, DemsAreTrash.
I enjoy being an immature goofball. Someone has to do it!
I'm starting to feel like my role around here is "long-winded rage monster."
We all have our part to play! 🤣
Timely and sensible comments by all. Martin is a post-modern hack who plagiarized his most compelling plot points from medieval English history, then ran out of narrative road.
Comparing him to Tolkien is like comparing Lincoln to Barry Hussein Soetoro.
Anyway, for those interested in epic fantasy from less familiar cultures, we're writing stories and novellas based in the world of ancient Iran and its 'Book of Kings' (Shahnameh).
Check them out here:
https://simorghsroost.substack.com/archive
While interesting and certainly a contributing factor, it is a minor one.
The truly great authors, Tolkien and Jordan, lived life. World Wars. Iceman Rigney in Vietnam.
Guys like sanderson and martin-their most difficult battle is a denying a second bowl of icecream. I’m not convinced sanderson even writes his own stuff anymore. I think he has an outline and uses staff writes to do the bulk content. Then he half-ass compiles it. His stuff the last decade or so reads like shit.
So - take an entire generation of ‘authors’ that are soft, haven’t lived, and are total fucking social dunces AND then add the extreme feminization and DEI claptrap of publishers. All books must have a gay that is a protagonist and definitely NOT a child molester, ALL women are at least as good at fighting as the greatest male warrior in the series, etc.
Fantasy is dead because the stories, writing, and characters are shit.
I assume Correia's post about trying out "Romantasy*" writing was a joke then.
* as if such trash deserves the name of romance
I think it was a joke but seriously - even though I loathe romantasy - if Correia wrote it, I'd buy it in a heartbeat.
Could I ask for an elaboration? (I'm imagining the results would be so wacky as to be funny but I'd like to know your reasoning ;)
I wish I could remember when and where I saw it but I do remember seeing him post a throwaway comment that included a snippet describing a fake romantasy novel he'd write. I'll take a quick look at his X account and post a link if I find it - but he's a pretty prolific poster and I am not positive whether I saw it on X, or being quoted someplace (maybe even here) when he was speaking in public.
OK this isn't what I was looking for but the last paragraph of his original comment is pretty funny: https://x.com/monsterhunter45/status/2068530980869321048?s=20
FOUND IT: https://x.com/monsterhunter45/status/2052400721929347134?s=20
Oh, and it looks like where I first saw LC and Romantasy was here on this very site: https://www.fandompulse.com/p/author-larry-correia-bizarrely-defends
I especially would like to read A Moat of Sorrow and Burritos.
To be fair to GRRM, I can't think of a single great novel written by a 70+ year old, anyone come up with a title? I think people would be more forgiving if he could just accept a modicum of personal responsibility for his actions instead of playing the victim card. Not to mention his whole gardening technique resulted in a hopeless muddle that made the series impossible to resolve due to endless subplots. It's not a sustainable method. (kind of like another very famous fantasy writer who never finished his series).
He should just pay Brandon Sanderson to finish the thing.
Haha pretty much
I like GRRM work, his short story, “The Ice Dragon”, is particularly good. However, he did screw over a generation and it will probably take another generation to heal. For anyone looking for a fantastic fantasy series that’s been complete for decades, then look no further than Lloyd Alexander’s The Chronicles of Prydain:
https://www.amazon.com/Chronicles-Prydain-Lloyd-Alexander/dp/1250000939
Prydain was one of my favorite series back in elementary school.
The Prydain Chronicles are quite good overall. Can recommend.
George MacDonald has stuff that may be amazing or a little strange. I liked The Princess and Curdie (though there was a strange tacked-on postscript). He was a good writer though. YMMV...
Some years someone wrote a piece arguing that GRRM’s problem with the series was that he’d written himself into a corner.
He didn't just write himself into any old corner, that never would have been good enough for Gurrm
He wrote himself into some Lovecraftian, non-Euclidean, Witch House corner. A normal man would have gone insane long ago trying to make sense of the geometry while the Hounds of Tindalos feasted on his soul.
Gurrm however, likes it there. He pulled up a recliner, put on a TV with NFL redzone, and ordered thirty years worth of pizza, wings, and cheap wine coolers. Every night he falls asleep under a quilt stuffed with $100 bills, and every morning he wakes from his slumber covered in pizza crusts and chicken bones to gleefully read the previous day's forum posts of desperately waiting fans.
Now I'm picturing GRRM as the guy from Weird Al's "Inactive"! Hah!
Well, yeah, he killed off or neutralized all of the characters that mattered, because God forbid anyone should write a satisfactory story resolution. So in Book 5, he introduced some loser-ass nobodies to try to keep the train going.
It didn't work. He has a handful of characters no one cares about, and twenty-seven plots that are going nowhere quick.
even if you do care about Brienne and Jamie and all that, 27 plots are crazy. This isn't "I need a flowchart to explain The Nature of Time" -- "Oh, let me draw another flowchart to supplement the first flowchart...."
... This is "none of these arcs can have narrative resolution before The End of the Series." Arya is particularly a problem -- her placement demands more investment, perhaps a book of her own. She can't be done by "switching back to her" occasionally. You want to understand the Free Cities through her lens. It doesn't need to be a long book, 200 pages, say -- but Martin doesn't HAVE 200 Arya pages.
It's gotten utterly out of hand, but I think there's an additional factor: Martin doesn't believe in narrative resolution. At least not for this story.
I believe he gave Ned narrative resolution. Tywin too. The resolution is final.
Larry Correia is hilarious, and creative, in some of his writing. Hard to fault his argument here, as well.
It cannot be overstated how much the woke and LGBTQP+ movements both queered and chilled literary innovation in scifi/fantasy. It's not an accident Correia does not fit into this category.
No that's a good thing. Is it really too much to expect that an author knows how their story is going to end, and have a detailed outline from start to finish?
Yes! It is! You don't start with good characters and let them grow that way. You get really horrible "on the rails" books. Surely you've had a railroading gamemaster before?