fandomsecrets | [ SECRET POST #4463 ]

Wow. So if you somehow manage to come back from a horrible (but heroic) death, you can only come back changed for the *worse*?

Fuck that.

Not necessarily, Beric isn't evil.

I have no idea who that is; i read three or four of the GOT books and got so frustrated with them i gave up.
I haven't watched any of the show.

I think his comment is pretty ridiculous, though, and if that's his big objection to Gandalf, he maybe should re-read/re-watch, because Gandalf *was* changed, just not some 180 difference.

That's a pretty bad faith read, and isn't even in keeping with what Martin's done in his own work. Of the three so-far resurrected characters (who aren't mindless husks enslaved to horrible ice zombies) in the books, only one of them has definitively changed for the worse, and that's the woman who saw her son and many of her friends betrayed and murdered before being brutally murdered herself, and snapped from the trauma even before she died. The other two are decent and committed to doing what they consider the right thing - they've paid for their resurrections with a loss of some of what makes them human, but that's human in the sense of "being a still-living member of the species animated by biology and not terrifying eldritch magic", not the ability to be moral and compassionate.

He's saying resurrection should cost and be hard and not have the character bounce immediately to who they were before, or who they were before but better. Which, valid.

I don't remember the books i read and haven't seen the show, so i'll take you at your word.

I think he's confused in his statement, because Gandalf *was* changed. Also, his death, while unpleasant, wasn't the horror-show of the GOT deaths, and he had a very different 'afterlife' experience.

Also, Gandalf isn't actually human, so there are going to be some differences.

My cold read of that quote is that he's being kind of arrogant about writing and his writing in general (though that could be from the perspective of someone who wasn't all that impressed by his books, so....).

If you read the full interview, he says he's a huge fan of Tolkien and considers him the father of modern fantasy, there are just things he'd do differently.

http://time.com/4791258/game-of-thrones-george-r-r-martin-interview/

You can be a fan and still be a jerk about some things, and considering how little his books grabbed me, i'd say his 'different' wouldn't be 'good'.

Given the timeframe in which Martin states he read the books, Gandalf wouldn't have been revealed to be Middle Earth's variant of an angel yet, because the constructed mythology of Middle Earth hadn't been released for public consumption. The reasonable assumption then - and, to be perfectly frank, the reasonable assumption now for anyone who doesn't want to dive into the errata - is that maybe he's one of the high men like Aragorn, but still fundamentally human. Which makes his resurrection seem incredibly cheap and easy.

I just find his quote rather tone-deaf and a bit arrogant, considering that he's not a kid anymore, and everything about Gandalf, etc., is now out there for public consumption.
*shrug*

I agree with the the others up above here who also don't think he knows what he's talking about.

Finding how a popular writer chose to execute something narratively unsatisfying, choosing to execute it differently in your own work, and talking about one of the reasons you made those choices is neither arrogant nor tone deaf. And it's not like he can travel back in time and tell his younger self "no, see, Gandalf was really an angel and that's why your formative experience of his death and resurrection is wrong".

Yes, fine, you're a GRRM stan, awesome. I disagree with you, and frankly, I'm done. Please go argue with someone else.

TBH I do think the most obvious way to construe the novel is to assume that Gandalf is something other than human. Not an angel, specifically, but definitely special and set apart in some way more than Aragorn is. I think the death and resurrection is itself the strongest piece of evidence for that.

But I also agree that Tolkien didn't do a good enough job emphasizing the distinction between the two versions of the character. Which is strange because that's actually the kind of thing he's usually quite good at.

It's certainly a valid read, but it's not the only one to take strictly from the trilogy - Gandalf is other, but he's less other than Tom Bombadil, or the elves, or the ents, and "sorcerers are a little unearthly" is a common thread that predates Tolkien by centuries.

I think a large part of the lack of distinction between the two versions of the character is down to the fact that Gandalf is never really a core character the way the other members of the Fellowship are. He's always a little out of focus, and by the time he's resurrected there are more important things going on and more central character arcs in full swing. Focusing on his resurrection and any associated transformation would take away from the important stories, so it's left ringing a little hollow.

It's certainly a valid read, but it's not the only one to take strictly from the trilogy - Gandalf is other, but he's less other than Tom Bombadil, or the elves, or the ents, and "sorcerers are a little unearthly" is a common thread that predates Tolkien by centuries.

It's definitely a great point - really, much of the trilogy is indeterminate and unexplained in that way, when you approach it on its own terms and not with the benefit of the massive apparatus of lore that's developed subsequently. And that's honestly one of the things that I've always liked about it tbh, and one of the reasons I've never really vibed with the legendarium stuff.

I do think that he is other-than in a different way than the elves or the ents are - the elves and the ents are clearly different types of creatures, whereas Gandalf is sort of... in between categories. Bombadil is the best comparison, but obviously Bombadil is much more other and outside the bounds of the world than Gandalf is. Or Saruman is, or Radagast. But you're certainly right that "unearthly wizard" is a general trope there.

I really wish there was some way to go back and read fan writing from the period before the Silmarillion was released and get a handle on how people interpreted this stuff back then.

I really wish there was some way to go back and read fan writing from the period before the Silmarillion was released and get a handle on how people interpreted this stuff back then.

Well, you can always ask us!

they've paid for their resurrections with a loss of some of what makes them human

What if the character wasn't human, and what they come back as is closer to what they were before they took on their more human seeming? Because that's the case with Gandalf.

That's paracanon. Which is arguably relevant to current interpretations, but would not have been remotely relevant when Martin was reading the books as a young lad, because no one had raided Tolkien's desk for notes to sell for pocket change yet.

I think the fact that Gandalf is apparently a old, but physically mentally strong and robust, man in the Hobbit, and is still exactly the same in terms of fitness and condition when Frodo leaves the Shire, roughly 77 years later, might have been a hint that he's not human, and that's before you consider the other hints in canon that a) Gandalf has been around for a very, very long time, and b) that everyone seems to think of wizards as a special category of being.

Aragorn also ages more slowly than we would consider normal for a present day baseline human tho

Yeah, but not on anything like the same scale.

[ SECRET POST #4463 ]

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