The best fantasy is written in the language of dreams. It is alive as dreams are alive...

Eh, older cultures made more of an effort to beautify their day to day surroundings. The 20th century brought in a very strict brutalist/utilitarian/'modernist' architectural style that hasn't really been shaken off, combined with a desire for cheap and fast assembly, we actually have stopped investing in our buildings, both in design and in practical, longer lasting materials.

>inb4 V7

Strongly disagree. If you only have silver and scarlet, it eventually will look like plywood and plastic to you.

A'ight, I'll turn in my one-page novel Winds of Winter for publication tomorrow.

>Eh, older cultures made more of an effort to beautify their day to day surroundings.
Correct. I still weep for the architecture destroyed in WW2. Post-WW2 architecture is only functional and aesthetically atrocious.

>They can keep their heaven. When I die, I’d sooner go to Middle Earth.

He’ll reincarnate as a cockroach due to the bad karma he got from writting his fetishes into his hsitty books.

And then proceeds to prattle on about heraldry, food and literal shit for an unnessessary number of pages.

GRRM is right here, but his own writing suggests that he doesn't actually understand it himself or else isn't competent enough to realize it.

>Fantasy is silver and scarlet, indigo and azure, obsidian veined with gold and lapis lazuli.

Properly taxed, of course.

This/thread.

"Reading fantasy is like dreaming. Dreaming is awesome. Reality is boring."

I prefer bleak settings.

There's plenty of beautiful architecture in America if you know how to look. For a while I had a hobby of going around Texas looking at all of the county courthouses. There's a lot of unique designs and they're all beautiful because of the abundance of various types of rock.

And this statement can be related to the OP, since it's part of why I disagree with it. The best fantasy has themes that can relate to humanity as we are now, rather than just providing escapism (though that is part of it). Real life may be bleak in a lot of respects, but there's still a lot of beauty and happiness if you know where to look. It's a common theme in writing to present a world that is very intentionally not vivid or beautiful, so that the glimpses of beauty that are seen are that much brighter.

I guess it makes sense Martin doesn't get that because he forgot to include the "beautiful" part in his writing.

>all this text just to essentially say fucking nothing

>When I die, I’d sooner go to Middle Earth.

But what's their tax policy?

>Fantasy tastes of habaneros and honey, cinnamon and cloves, rare red meat and wines as sweet as summer.
I thought it tasted of stale elven bread, fish and hare meat. And occasionally taters.

>Fantasy tastes of habaneros and honey, cinnamon and cloves, rare red meat and wines as sweet as summer. Reality is beans and tofu, and ashes at the end

Someone got put on a diet.

America has some great natural reserves in turn. American forests are more "foresty" than anything in Europe. Eastern European mountains look drab in comparison to the Rockies. And not to mention the prairies.

Only your squirrels are shit, a proper squirrel is red and has ear tufts.

natural beauty kind of loses its luster when you realize procedurally generated content is worth like a fifth the price of something lovingly designed on the open market, and the wilds smack of proceduralism.

And what did they do to the bay orcs?

ITT GRRM gets roasted hard for being the fucking numbskull he is

Cripes, even his friendship with Neil Gaiman reeks of Gaiman having nothing but pity for him, and attempting to gain in some other material form from his friendship. Kind of like in Rainman.

>Fantasy tastes of habaneros and honey, cinnamon and cloves, rare red meat and wines as sweet as summer. Reality is beans and tofu, and ashes at the end.
>We read fantasy to find the colors again, I think.
>t. fat bastard who ruined his palate on a fat-and-salt diet to the point of weighing 200kg

You know what tastes like rare red meat and wine, faggot? Rare red meat and wine! Normal people who don't have a gluttony disorder don't need to find shit like that in books.

Fantasy is about enjoying things that are blatantly illegal for reasons of public safety, like stabbing four hundred guys because you want to steal the jewels and white girl they ran off with, not about imagining a world where you can eat a steak without it tasting like paper.

>have you ever been so fat that you read books and saw food

short story

This pasta is so stale Disney wants to make a Star Wars movie out of it

Black squirrels > gay Euro squirrels

i cant be one to hate this smug sack of shits mug

Imagine being this much of Ameriaboo in fucking 21st century.

It's so old, Disney is drafting new copyright extension laws and another eleventy million dollars of "campaign funds" to get some signatures on them.

Nothing beats the roast Stephen fucking King made out of him during a live interview of those two. And it's a post-car accident King we are talking about, so a pale shadow of his old output in the first place.

o fuk i need to know moar

There is something that scares me. In 20 years, he's going to be long dead, his series probably left unfinished and there is a chance he will be elevated to some sort of deity by next generation of readers and Veeky Forums users, with anyone saying otherwise being labelled as hipsters and contrarians.
Shit's scary.

...

He's too similar to Robert Jordan to end up like that, and that hack died before finishing his Wheel of Time series.

Few remember who he is or anything he did anymore.

They were sitting together in the studio and were asked about how they work on their books. So GRRM did his lip-smacking stutter about looking for inspiration, thinking about possibilities, looking for some more inspiration and in the end getting about a page or two per month, if the inspiration comes. To which King replied that he writes X pages (can't recall if it was 4 or 5) daily, because he spend first week of writing on plot structure and then simply write along it, with changes happening oganically and/or when he has finished chapters/book. After which he pretty much called GRRM out on being a lazy fat sack of lard that is a disgrace to popular literature for lack of even basic resolve to write, but still having so much time to keep attending conventions, interviews and basically not writing anything at all half year straight, despite being in the middle of a book.
Short, but epic smack-down, you can easily find if if you put in google their names.

Before his car accident, King was well known for writing 15 pages a day and finishing books within a month.

A song of ice and fire, gentlemen.

There are sights, sounds, and experiences in the real world that still take my breath away. You could live anywhere, even Middle Earth, and be jaded with your surroundings. GRRM should stop and smell the roses.

When he was still alive, it was too a genuine concern he might end up elevated into meme-tier and gain untouchable status, so... yeah.

I remember that interview, at least the pertinent information.

King sits down for three or four hours a day to write, with the goal of writing five or six pages. It's not a titanic effort to do something like that, particularly when you don't have a full-time job to handle, but it's certainly a much better effort than "lol, no inspired today, hombre, guess i'll just scoot along to something else to waste my remaining days of life on."

Well that sort of work ethic is meaningful. Being able to grind stuff out and not lose interest/heart when things become less fun. Like Notch and Minecraft. Just petered out as soon as he had the money. Half started a bunch of projects then just started whining on twitter about how much being rich sucks. GRRM reminds me a lot of Notch.

Get your intersectional propaganda out of here.
Pictured: perfection.

>Implying he can smell anything else than pizza leftovers from his messy beard
>Implying his sweat doesn't cover the rest
>Implying his glasses aren't -8 dioptre, making him essentially blind without them
There is a reason he lives in a fantasy land in his head. And that reason is he himself.

All I'm saying is that America is great, but only as long as you stay away from the Americans.

He's too rotund and old to enjoy anything. Maybe once they make those chairs like Baron Harkonnen has he'll realize how cool real life is.

Well, when you are a writer as your job, it's fucking expected you sit and write. Saying you are writer and then being pretty much neet hitting retirement age makes you just sad.

>Fat
>Messy beard
>Socially awkward
>One hit wonder
>Shit-tier headwear
The only difference is age and amount of money each has.

Notch actually petered out much sooner than that. Back in the proto-/agdg/ days, he was a depressed and whiny loser that was ripping off Zachtronic's Infiniminer and barely handing the constructive criticism he was getting.

And I don't mean people were shitting on him. I mean that he'd disappear for a week when someone asked him when he was going to try making his enemy mob AI more advanced than "Locate player, move towards player, do damage if mob cube intersects player cube."

It was done at a glacial pace and based on the work of someone better God rest Tolkien's soul, making your comparison to Notch more apt than you probably realize.

That's something I tell every "artist" complaining about an art block.
Professionals don't have art blocks, they have schedules.
I'm in no way a professional, but I haven't had an "art block" probably since 2012 or so. I actually can't remember not being able to draw or paint, aside from severe wrist pain at the beginning of the year that hasn't quite healed still. And even then I merely put on a splint and kept going.

Unless you are living in post-Soviet mining town (but those are usually in the middle of breath-taking wilderness, so go fucking figure), each and every place is great.
Some doesn't even require staying the fuck away from locals.

...

What a shame.

Americans are much like Europeans. Far more agreeable in person.

If I had to enumerate the number of Euro dipshits that wanted to pick a fight with me over nothing just because the internet is between us and "lol Americans are dumb, I should assume this person is stupid" is a funny idea to them, I'd be typing until 2019.

I never really understood the concept of block, especially when writing fiction that you already planned ahead in your head. The hell blocks you, if you already know how the plot is going to unravel? And if you are writing random idiot plot, then you can stop already, instead of whinning about "art block".

I shit out roughtly 10 pages a day in a work week and twice as much over weekends of PBF-like text via Vallheru. I have no option for block, because there is a player on the other side waiting for my turn. And there are few of them, since it's always more fun to co-write few texts than just having one. Not to mention higher chance of finding a competent co-writer that is eager about writing a page or two each turn, rather than a sentence or two.

I just came here to say that his novels are shit

Oh look, it's American not getting a single clue why everyone hates him and his country.
Imagine being this fucking naive.

>pic unrelated
Don't mind me, just trying to start another gender debate in a completely unrelated thread for no apparent reason!
Who pays you to shitpost here? For real, who?
Because I'm sick of giving away my talents for free.

I'm curious, what's your life like? Do you have a job? How stressed do you feel in general? Would you say you ever have anxiety? Do you like your parents?

Like, honestly curious. I think it's good that you have a passion for something constructive and creative and it's easy for you to just do what you enjoy. I think honestly a lot of people who experience block are just people who don't derive happiness from working, but instead wish they could just have the finished product, and this sort of mindset evolves from poor mental health or feeling like you don't have the time or resources to become as good as you wish you could be.

Being an asshole isn't a talent.

And if it was, you'd be given a script, like all the other Tumblrites.

He's a hack following the same formula as edgy animes.
>introduce decent character in a sea of shitheads
>readers naturally gravitate towards said character
>imperil said character to keep readers in suspense
>introduce new non shithead character to imperil
>kill off old character for muh drama
>repeat

Jealousy, obviously.

If this were some other board, I'd take that as a good natured joke. But I think you're the one who's naïve, bitter and uncivil.

I have a regular job as a pharmacist, I'm writing that column more out of habit than anything else (it was my part-time job during university times).

And if you are asking about writing Vallheru stuff - hobby, I guess? I know I'm no writer, but at least I can get something written and co-written in the process, so there is something that even pretends to be a quality control and I can't run wild with the text.
For me, block is always a stand-in excuse for "I don't feel like writing today, because I have no habit of writing, so now I'm fucking scared of the pace we are working with, but I'm too scared and insecure to admit it".
Roughtly 7 out of 10 cases of people saying "I've got a writing block" are like that. 15 years of experience with this shit talking.

Ironically, I never were too much into writing things, but once my high-school TTRPG group cease to exist, I had a hard time finding new group (the joys of small town) and found Vallheru as replacement.

If you get a feeling of superiority from being two-faced you really need to reevaluate your life.

It's less that formula and more that he's too busy subverting your expectations because he's oh-so-clever and wants to keep the audience guessing.

>Have decent character
>Next in line for the throne is dead
>Decent character might have to fight off everyone to get to the throne and be a good king
>LOL, NOPE, HIS HEAD'S GETTING CUT OFF
>Now the blond prick is on the throne
>Characters might have to deal with asshole child king
>Alliances might be formed to deal with him
>LOL, NOPE, POISONED THE KID
>Looks like a wedding is about to happen among the most morally-acceptable of the characters
>They even seem to have friends in their current hosts
>LOL, NOPE, RED WEDDING

And so on. Except now he's written himself into a corner and is stuck with zombies versus dragons, from what I understand.

I literally can't think of a single thing I could be jealous over. No, wait. I've got one! .22 ammo is like SUPER cheap in States.

Not that guy but he's right. Fantasy is cheap, poorly written schlock for the most part. There aren't any fantasy authors that can write outside the genre because the standards are too high, which says something about the quality of the product we're consuming.
I think LotR is the only example that elevated above the genre and that is, in part, because it existed before the derivative tropes and trappings that post-Tolkien authors see has hard limits that define their writing.
A real author writes the story they want to tell, they don't say "Well, I'm writing this so I must set it in X during a time period of Y and feature A, B, and C as characters and must follow an overarching storyline of L,M, or O." Many of them follow familiar structure but they aren't inherently beholden to it and are free to take risks and deviate where they see fit.

>and is stuck with zombies versus dragons

It's called "A Song of Ice and Fire". Zombies versus dragons was the plan from day 1.

I never get writer's block, I just have motivation issues because of the 'tism.

Discipline is a big part of it though, I agree, I'm just saying that my brain doesn't fucking help me a lot of the time due to motivation/concentration issues.

Less "stuck in a corner" and more "finally funneling down to what it was supposed to be about"

This whole fucking thing could have been done in 3-4 books and it could have been tight, interesting and we'll paced. But, as seen in the OP, the man takes 3 paragraphs to express a sentence.

Not for long if trends continue, unfortunately.

Summer zombies versus winter zombies, actually. Including dragons on both sides..

Preface that with 'modern fantasy' and you would be correct.

I don't understand why, his books are very generic chosen one fair. Even the things that are some what interesting, like the magic, are undercut by the lack of compelling characters. Tugs braid

Changing conversation to discuss the agenda I want (or someone else wants) to shove down people's throats is, however, a talent you have none of.
>you'd be given a script
People like you can be replaced with bots. Start with random gender-role bitching, accuse your detractors of being Tumblr-users. The only marketable skill you have is filling out captchas.

>written himself into a corner and is stuck with zombies versus dragons
Ironically that was the goal from the very start.
He wrote all this crap, created dozens upon dozens of ultimately meaningless plotlines and characters solely to have a "Dragons vs Zombies" story.
If you ever wanted to know the epitome of schlock-writing hack, I can't imagine anyone toppling that.

It's still cheaper to order ammo in States, get it shipped, pay tarrif and tax for this and get it to the range than buy locally.

Classic fantasy wasn't different in any regard, user. Howard and Burroughs were literally writing penny dreadfuls, being paid by word. The fact they've created so much "original" and classic stuff comes predominately from the fact they were pioneers, but reading one of their stories is equal with reading 80% of their output, that's how much they were rehashing the same cliches, plot-devices and tropes, not to mention characters that were barely different from the previous one.
Said all of that, they were at least up-front admitting they are doing this for money, with Burroughs considering all his literal output as pure crap that exists solely to help him pay the bills. They were both eager to point out they are doing this for quick buck and so was most of their contemporaries.

In fact, I personally thing it has a lot to do with post-Tolkien fantasy, where everyone tried to pretend to not write schlock to pay bills, solely because Tolkien had MUCH higher quality of his writing, but then again, only on setting level, since the stories themselves were extremely basic (hence the other brand of fantasy literature autism, where modern writiers desperately trying to invent complex and fuck-huge world, but since being amateurs, they can't match Tolkien's exercises in linguistics)

>since the stories themselves were extremely basic (hence the other brand of fantasy literature autism, where modern writiers desperately trying to invent complex and fuck-huge world, but since being amateurs, they can't match Tolkien's exercises in linguistics)
Not the guy you're responding to, but wut? You might disagree with some of Tolkien's storytelling choices, but the narratives are extremely complex. How many authors do you know that can and will interlace no less than 4 moving parties of protagonists, who are narrated in a non-chronological order, all the while setting up allusions and references between the two on what are chronological levels, like Denethor's final madness being heavily implied when he looks into the Palantir and sees Frodo captured, something you can only prove by flipping ahead an entire book and tracking dates.

>Tolkien
>narratives are extremely complex.
user, a lot can be said about Tolkien, but plot complexity is for sure not one of them.

Plot and narrative are not the same thing.

First off, I mentioned narrative complexity, as did , which is distinct from plot complexity. Secondly, the plot is also far more complex than you seem to be giving it credit for, starting with the unreliability of the multiple narrators, and moving on to the multiple protagonists of what are really a multitude of sub-plots running throughout the narrative, but each of which has to be narrated by a hobbit.

And I mean, what baseline are you even comparing its plots to? It's enormously more complex, plot wise, than say, any given Shakespearean play, or even some very well regarded novels or poems like the Iliad, The Brothers Karasmasov, Sentimental Education, etc.

I am 57186057, you fucking dolt. And I didn't said a thing about narrative complexity - you did. I only said
>the stories themselves were extremely basic
And you jumped to retarded conclusion.
LotR can be literally summed up as "bunch of guys walk through the world to get rid of a magic ring". No matter how you narrate it, it's still extremely basic story.
If you plan to jump into stupid, unbacked conclusions, at least don't try to twist my own words and statements.

> And I didn't said a thing about narrative complexity - you did. I only said the stories themselves were extremely basic
Then you do not write clearly, because "the story" is larger and distinct from "the plot", and is more associated with narrative. To take an example, the "plot" of Hamlet, namely his revenge plot against Claudius, has relatively little to do with the story/narrative, namely about Hamlet's internal struggles, his relationship with his family, and his attempts to get himself motivated. Still, I apologize for putting words in your mouth.

>LotR can be literally summed up as "bunch of guys walk through the world to get rid of a magic ring"
No, it cannot. If it was, you would eliminate roughly 40% of the work as superfluous, including everything to do with Rohan, Fangorn, Aragorn's bringing the army of the dead out of Dunharrow, all the allusions between Rohan and Gondor, everything post destruction of the Ring especailly the scouring of the Shire, most of the first two chapters of the Fellowship of the Ring dealing with Frodo's domestic life, or the entire framing tale of how you're reading a translation (or several translations of translations) of the Red Book of Westmarch.

LotR can somewhat reductionistly be summed up as "The story of the Hobbits and how they shook the world", and while the war of the ring is the biggest sub-story in that, it isn't even the main story. And it's not a simple one.

> No matter how you narrate it, it's still extremely basic story.
What the fuck are you comparing it too? If I want to be sufficiently reductionist, I can do the same thing to any story

>Iliad: Achilles gets into a bitchfight with Agammemnon until his bitchiness costs him personally.
>Hamlet: Lazy fucker decides to get revenge for his dad's death.
>Brothers Karamazov: Son kills father over love triangle, and the fallout from that.
>Ulysses: Leopold Bloom's experiences on June 16th, 1904.
>Moby Dick: Obsessive guy hunts a whale to his eventual destruction
>Sentimental Education: Loser hangs out during the 1848 Parisian revolution but doesn't really do anything.
>The Radetzky March: Third generation of minor nobility fucks around for years making nothing of his life
>Anna Karenina: A love affair between title character and count Vronsky and how it goes wrong.
>Middlemarch: How the 1832 reform act impacts the lives of small town 19th century British people.
>The canterbury tales: A bunch of guys go on pilgrimage together and tell each other stories to pass the time.

Lord of the Rings is more complicated than any of them. How exactly is it "simple" and what are you using to make this measurement?

>Lord of the Rings is more complicated than any of them
Not him and before I was eager to support you, but now you are just retarded Tolkienaboo

Then please, prove how I am wrong. And confine yourself solely to issues of plot, as is so insistent of.

Plot complexity is hardly the end-all of literature. It's rarely even a good thing. Most of the successful works of literature throughout history feature extremely simple plots with complicated characters and narration devices.

That interview was glorious. GRRRRRRRRR was choking on his words for the rest of it

How's the socialist welfare state, homie?

>Prove how I'm wrong
>Lmao, LotR is more complicated than entire list of literary classics, because I'm blind fanboy
I think my job is done here.

No, seriously, how is Lord of the Rings's plot any more simple than any of the above mentioned? Or any other classic you care to name? And why is plot complexity something to be sought after in the first place?

Not him, and I personally found the LotR books be rather dry and dull, but...
>My personal attacks will totally cover my total lack of an argument!

>My votes actually matter, with multitude of parties to pick depending on personal preferences
>Never afraid if my insurance will cover for the treatment, becuase it always does
>Finished university for an equivalent of 2k bucks
>Got employment grant to gain on-job experience without facing employment issues
>Good pay grade is secured by law
>Not afraid that some nutjob is going to shoot me
>Having full access to government proceedings
>Lobbying is considered a high-level corruption and actively prosecuted
Pretty swell, user. Considering that in the US I would have none of that, but instead (theoretically) save on taxes about 1500 bucks... yeah, thanks, I'll pass.

>>My votes actually matter, with multitude of parties to pick depending on personal preferences
[Laughing_Merkel.png]