fandomsecrets | [ SECRET POST #6457 ]

[ SECRET POST #6457 ]

⌈ Secret Post #6457 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

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[Dashing Youth]

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[Blacksad]

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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 02 pages, 32 secrets from Secret Submission Post #923.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

07. https://i.imgur.com/pCEbYud.jpeg

What about GRRM's understanding of the Middle Ages do you find shaky? I was curious because you seem to think there's a legit misunderstanding and not, say, a lot of poetic license taken with history?

Most of the stuff I’ve seen that calls out poor history is specifically aimed at the TV show, not the books, e.g. https://acoup.blog/category/new-acquisitions/medieval-of-thrones/

DA There is a lot of poetic license taken, but mostly he's just interested in the wars and the lords, without much understanding of agriculture, economic factors, and gender roles outside the nobles. So it's not so much outright wrong as shaky because it's very shallow.

Yes, this. And he has a tendency to muddle in attitudes from much more recent time periods, like Victorian ideas of racism, along withe renaissance and post-renaissance/early modern ideas of historicity (ie, how the maesters write the 'history' in fire and blood), and roll it all in together as ~the past~ and calls it a medieval-esque world. Also he has big gaps in terms of material culture - not paying attention to the difference between paper and parchment which is a HUGE difference if you have any even amateur interest in medieval scholarship, for example.

I'm not even a GRRM hater, I enjoy his work and I don't think he's obligated to be interested in those things, but he gets a lot of credit for """basing things on history""" and on it being the medieval period in particular, when it's really a much sloppier setting than that.

Re: Question for OP...

(Anonymous) - 2024-09-10 10:08 (UTC) - Expand

Religion, too! He writes this fantasy Catholicism that the vast majority of a continent believes in, and yet there isn't a single man who's devout enough to keep his hands off unwilling women because he's afraid rape will send him to hell? (No, Baelor the Religious Fanatic doesn't count.) There are no sects of Seven-worship? Really, it's all homogeneous? BS.

The lack of a mentioned court (not legal) system even in pretext of a "history" makes the dance of the dragons make no sense, and creates a wildly misogynistic reading of rhaenyra and alicent that is much shittier than real life histories would be/have been to similar real life people.

Worst. author. ever

That's a big of a stretch.

Especially since Stephenie Meyer and JK Rowling exist.

Nah. Not even close, I'd say.

Did I miss something? When did George look down on other fantasy authors and consider his stuff superior?

Right? He was praising the hell out of "Outlander" and wondering why that show's season 2/3 didn't get many awards nominations/recognition.
He seems to be someone who is very supportive of other creators.

Same. I've only seen him praise other authors/settings and explain different writing styles while pointing out how they're all valid. Unless there's something OP has seen I haven't he's never come off as a my-way-is-the-only-way type. He has his niche he likes to write in but that in of itself doesn't mean someone thinks others are inferior, people tend to write what they enjoy and that's fine even if it's a genre I don't care for much.

I'm not going to say there aren't legitimate criticisms of GRRM, but I suspect this secret is a salty response to George's recent blog post pointing out House of the Dragon's showrunners' fumbling of the story.

The show's stans go absolutely nuts when people point out its flaws and elementary school-level story-telling to the point they dog-pile anyone who complains about HoTD. They insult and gaslight over any perceived insult of the HoTD. George agreeing with those dissenters has given them ammunition to use against the show's die-hard fans, and they do not like it. Not one bit.

Thus, you get this secret griping about GRRM "looking down" on other writers.

DA That actually makes a lot of sense.

I assumed it was a salty response to the hugos but I guess that was a while back

I mean I've never read his books or gone to his fandoms but even I've seen his posts spread across fandom dissing Tolkien openly. If you think yourself superior to Tolkien, chances are you think yourself superior to other authors too.

Right, didn't he famously say that hobbits don't fuck?

(no subject)

(Anonymous) - 2024-09-10 00:45 (UTC) - Expand

(no subject)

(Anonymous) - 2024-09-10 03:47 (UTC) - Expand

Tolkien isn't some god that should never be criticized.

(no subject)

(Anonymous) - 2024-09-10 03:47 (UTC) - Expand

Eh. Did he actually say or imply he was better than Tolkien, or did he just have some criticisms about how some things in his stories were handled?

I realized later on that his criticism is a bad faith one. Whatmatters is the focus of a story. Tolkien himself inspired himself by legend and mythology, as well as his experiences in WWI... on top of ironically having more faith in humanity than GRRM. If his legends say he was a good king, then a guy really was a good king because he was empathetic and wise, period. Sometimes overly elaborating hurts a story.

GRRM's own focuses on pragmatic, cynical history, with a large dash of misanthropy as someone that never fought (understandably so, mind). His stories focuses on the darker aspects of the medieval era, more often than not caused by the nature of power itself, which is why in those cases focuses on economics would matter as part of the larger whole.

That said, I hate what GRRM did to the fantasy genre in making people think medieval era was some grimdark shit with no morals or ethics code, alongside the grimdark = realism = good store false dichotomy he perpetuated.

I think this is just a misreading of what he actually said.

I stopped being able to take GRRM at all seriously after I read his post complaining that Tolkien didn't talk enough about Aragorn's tax policy. Buddy... it's not Aragorn's story

(Also, given who Aragorn was raised by and the fact that he spent most of his adult life being a guardian to common people, presumably said tax policy would be both fair and sensible.)