OK, i take back everything i thought. Where the books left off, i coulda sworn i read that Princess Shireen Baratheon was smuggled to Bravos by Davos Seaworth. And i said hmmm, there’s three dragons and now there’s three teen Westerosi princesses in Essos: Shireen, Daenarys, and Arya Stark. A person can only ride one dragon, and a dragon can only have one rider. Looked obvious at the time, that the final battle against the Others was going to be Grrrrl Power, houses Baratheon, Targaryen and Stark united and female and swooping in on dragons to burn the army of the dead to a crisp while Bran Stark mindfucks the Night King.
That might be how it plays out in books, but that book will never be written. No, George Martin is not going to finish the books. He’s too old and his writing pace is glacially fast, and frankly, he’s just lost interest in writing books now that he’s a celebrity author. Lucky George, that’s just what he always wanted. But he is no longer the author of A Song Of Ice And Fire. Benioff and Weiss are now the authors of the series.
The pathetic part of the story is that George Martin has said that he wishes his notes destroyed when he dies so that no one can finish the books afterwards. What a chump. What a sorry ploy for posthumous respect. He must know that history will jot him as one of the laziest writers of ever, and is trying to rewrite the narrative by overshadowing it via concocted mystery. What a chump. Whatever d00d, you no longer drive that car. Benioff and Weiss know what’s best for the story, even if they don’t, so all the writing Martin has done so far will end up being a historical footnote to a great TV series and, starting in 2020, a really nice franchise of annual movies.
Bye bye George Martin, you lazed yourself back into obscurity, chump.
Now, as for the story as it now stands, at the end of season #6, what a rush! The Baratheons are all gone. Robert killed by Cersei, Renly killed by Stannis, Shireen killed by Stannis, Joffrey killed by Olenna and Littlefinger, Myrcella killed by the Dornish, Tommen killed by Cersei.
The Tyrells are all gone, all killed by Cersei. The Tullys are all gone, the top Freys are gone, and Cersei also managed to kill off the entire aristocracy of King’s Landing. How will Cersei manage to rule seven kingdoms, when the southern two are suckling on Daenarys, both factions of Ironborn are competing to be the one to overthrow the capital, and The North has a new King? The Queen, the King, the High Sparrow, that’s all dead.
Odd, because the books seemed to be leading the story into a religious war between the Seven and the Lord Of Light. Now, there’s only Lannister, Stark, and Targaryen. The only one with a King instead of a Queen is Stark… makes one wonder. Littlefinger is betting on Sansa over Jon Snow, but Sansa is about done being a pawn.
Soon in season 7, either Littlefinger or Jon Snow will have to go. It’s either the Stark family bond, or the wily survival ability of Baelish. Sansa is the key here, whomever she decides to trust will prevail. Baelish offers national queenship, Jon offers second fiddle in the North. But Jon’s power is concrete, and Littlefinger’s hold over the Vale depends on manipulating Robin, who has an adolescent boner for Sansa. If she dumps Petyr, she has to flirt with Robin. If she dumps Jon Snow, she has to put up with the slimy caresses of Petyr Baelish. Hmmm, how hard has Sansa become?
One thing we know is that Arya Stark is hard. A tightly wound little nut, now trained as a world class assassin who never lost her list, attached as it was to her name. Disappointed that she didn’t notch Walder Frey with Needle, and still wondering how she cooked up his eldests in what must be a busy 24-hour kitchen serving a major castle? Hollywood magic, that must be. Speaking of which, our first view of Oldtown is ridiculous.
How stupid would you have to be, to build a city there? There are unfortified bluffs overlooking the city! Just roll up catapults on the bluffs, and you control the city. Sure, the TV series production has talented graphic designers, and it all looks much pretty when they CGI in some bluffs overlooking the city. But graphic designers have not got a whit of sense among them, the whole lot of them. In season #1 there was an exterior shot of Winterfell that made me laugh out loud. The castle was flanked by two higher hills. What kind of clueless military jackass would site his castle lower than the surrounding hills? Truthfully, as drawn by the CGI idiots, Winterfell should be renamed Drunken Vagina Castle.
In any case, at last things are underway, in the manner that George Martin constantly fails to provide. I’m sure that eight pages of Dany setting sail from Mereen with setting and dialogue would be better than 28 seconds of grandeur video, but… meh, we’ll take what’s there, as long as those eight pages are unlikely to ever be written.
A few more clues came up about the next season, which is said to be only 7 episodes instead of the normal 10, and the final 8th season which will be only 6 episodes. The short seasons tell us that Benioff and Weiss have decided on a story arc which does not depend on George Martin at all, so we may infer that the producers of the TV series have sensed an inherent flaw in Martin’s reliability as a contributor. Based on his record with editors, who can fault Benioff and Weiss for ditching him?
The only reason this sordid vignette matters, is the possible chilling effect it might have on new writers who are offered a deal to make their work into video. Benioff and Weiss have now thoroughly usurped George Martin’s authorship, and any possible but unlikely additions to the story by George Martin (from any possible but unlikely further books) are going to reviewed in the lens of Benioff & Weiss. I predict the reviews for any future George Martin book would be unflattering, with phrases like “derivatives wearing thin” and “lost vision”. Pity.
A novelist’s schedule is not like a producer’s schedule. Thus the current example of George Martin’s total loss of control, of his own story, can only serve as a frightening warning to any author who has not yet written everything he or she has to say. It’s like a caveat against any new writer starting anything on a sweeping scale. If you do your diligence and come up with something good, Los Angeles will come sniffing after it before it’s baked, and ruin it. Martin got caught up in celebrity, and it ruined his writing. What author would go down that path, after seeing what it did to George Martin?
Pity. But the TV show will be good for a couple years, then the movies will probably start, and they should be good too. The books? Pfffth, if he can’t be bothered to write them, then why should a girl bother to read them?