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mygif

Well, considering I thought Broah would push Kahal into the path of Alric’s sword I have to say they’re doing rather well.

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mygif

C’mon, Joro! Justify my love for you!

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Candlejack said on May 20th, 2013 at 1:20 pm

Aim for the bling, fellas! Nobody puts a necklace on his undead slave because it’s stylish!

(Note that if I’m actually right about that, I’ll be amazed.)

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mygif

Imagine if it were a total party wipe?

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@Dennard-

Game of Thrones style, you mean? Like, everyone dies here except for Joro, who has to escape and bring the information to Wulf, who becomes the new main character?

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mygif

@Murc,

Game of Thrones shows pretty well that while a “total party wipe” is realistic, it is a poor story-telling device. If you do it, you lose the main characters, and the plot breaks into multiple subplots. Game of Thrones is bad writing: too many POV characters, too many geographically separate locations, too many equally important plots.

A good story has a structure with introduction, building of suspense, climax and ending, which has been the same for the last few millenia. That structure breaks up if you change main characters in the middle of the story. Instead, if you do a total party wipe, you end the story with it.

Anyhow, it looks like this story is in a bad need of a deus ex machina.

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mygif

Yes, because if there’s one thing we can all agree on, it’s that Game of Thrones is a suspense-free narrative failure.

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mygif

Game of Thrones is a narrative failure for one reason: Martin is giving us a great world, with numerous good plots, each worth its own book, but the whole undertaking will fail. Martin has let his characters run wild, and there is no way to bring the story, as a whole, to a conclusion. Each novel is longer than the previous one and the character plot lines are not converging together but diverging more and more.

Any conclusion that is, in any sense, true to the characters and does not involve killing at least half of them off, is now impossible. There is no ending to the story arch. It’s a bridge to nowhere. Martin will likely die before finishing the series, just like Robert Jordan.

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@Lurker

Wow. Just… wow.

My only response is that I reject your rather simplistic notion that any story that breaks into multiple sub-plots and kills main characters midstream is automatically a narrative failure.

You must just absolutely loathe the Silmarillion.

also, this:

Game of Thrones is a narrative failure for one reason: Martin is giving us a great world, with numerous good plots, each worth its own book, but the whole undertaking will fail.

Is simply incoherent. You’re saying A Song of Ice and Fire (of which Game of Thrones is the first book) is a failure because… it will fail. That’s a hell of self-proving argument.

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highlyverbal said on May 22nd, 2013 at 2:39 am

@Lurker: “…Martin is giving us a great world, with numerous good plots, each worth its own book…”

Damn you and your numerous compelling subplots, Martin! You really know how to ruin things.

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Mitchell Hundred said on May 22nd, 2013 at 9:42 am

Martin will likely die before finishing the series, just like Robert Jordan.

If that happens (and it is a possibility), his publisher will hire someone to finish it. He has said that he doesn’t want this, but he will recant if it looks like he won’t finish the series. Or his publisher will say that he did: it’ll be the same thing. There’s too much money in these books to leave the story unfinished.

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mygif

Or his publisher will say that he did: it’ll be the same thing.

Ahahahaha no.

His estate would sue the shit out of them, and they’d win to.

Brandon Sanderson didn’t get to finish out WoT because Tor decided. He got to it because Jordan and his estate decided.

Martin owns his own rights. He has a very, very good agent.

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highlyverbal said on May 22nd, 2013 at 1:06 pm

@Mitchell Hundred: “There’s too much money in these books to leave the story unfinished.”

I can’t believe you would post this on a comics blog. The comics industry is littered with “dead” properties, where the rights are tied up in funky ways, between creators & publishers, between publishers & toy companies, etc.

The amount of money available isn’t really motivating anyone.

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Mitchell Hundred said on May 22nd, 2013 at 2:58 pm

I’m assuming that if they do lie, his estate will be in on it. I can be downright cynical sometimes.

And I’m not nearly nerdy enough to be that familiar with comics properties and the rights thereof.

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