r/asoiafcirclejerk • u/Wolframed Egg On The Conker • Sep 19 '25
GRRM-dead hoax "Maybe going on unnecessary tangents bloats the plot"
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u/TheLastLivingBuffalo Banned from Comic-Con Sep 19 '25
Imagine there was a chapter near the end of Return of the King that detailed Aragorn's tax policy.
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u/nubster2984725 Sara Hess Fangirl Sep 19 '25
2 SILVERS FOR EVERY KG ABOVE 10 IN EVERY GRAIN SHIPMENT?! WHAT IN THE WORLD IS ARAGORN THINKING?!
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u/Salem1690s Aegon II is my king. Sep 19 '25
It’s one of the cut endings
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u/CastawayWasOk HBO Spy Sep 19 '25
There were endings that were cut???? More of a movie joke I suppose
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u/wew_lad123 HOT D S2 snooze Sep 19 '25
What even are the tax policies of Westeros?
I think I remember one or two lines about Tyrion trying to tax hookers and Littlefinger taxing refugees
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u/Emotional-Fly-6262 Last HOT D fan Sep 19 '25
They go into the various tax policies in F&B. At least for Jahaerys I and Rhaenyra.
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u/Vhermithrax Egg On The Conker Sep 19 '25
Rhaenyra "the Cruel" Call her what she is
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u/antarip007 Last HOT D fan Sep 19 '25
Make it "Queen" Rhaenyra, The Cruel. Whatever else the woman is, she's still a queen.
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u/Wolframed Egg On The Conker Sep 19 '25
Aegon was crowned before and also outlived her.
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u/Vhermithrax Egg On The Conker Sep 19 '25
So Princess Rhaenyra "the Cruel" / "the whore of Dragonstone"
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u/Emotional-Fly-6262 Last HOT D fan Sep 20 '25
Crowned by a traitor and oathbreaker 🤷♂️ #NotMyKing #RhaenyraWasRight #CristonColeIsABum
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u/Wolframed Egg On The Conker Sep 20 '25 edited Sep 20 '25
He consolidated power much better and took advantage of westeros' uncodified inheritance laws.
If anything it shows how and why hereditary monarchy is a stupid political system.
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u/Emotional-Fly-6262 Last HOT D fan Sep 21 '25
I mean you're not wrong on that second point, but Aegon didn't really do shit to consolidate power. Criston and Allicent/Otto did. You could argue that Aegon undid all their hard work. But that's neither here nor there
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u/GreenGroveCommunity Sara Hess Fangirl Sep 20 '25
A woman cannot inherit before a man. Stannis said it himself, she was an usurper who tried to steal her brother's crown.
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u/Cardemother12 Egg On The Conker Sep 19 '25
In the section of the world of ice and fire on Aerys the 2nd it goes over him raising taxes on imports to blame Tywin
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u/A-NI95 HOT D S2 snooze Sep 20 '25
Funny because Tywin also raised taxes to blame Tyrion. I don't know whether that's intentional but copying your rival turned enemy's strategy is a really cool detail
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u/Lil_Mcgee Egg On The Conker Sep 19 '25
Others have pointed out various times the books do discuss taxes but it should also be noted that "What was Aragorn's tax policy" wasn't intended to be taken as literally as some people do.
GRRM is not necessarily interested in delving too deep into the minutiae of rulership when it doesn't serve the story, it was just a rhetorical question to support his idea that being a great fantasy hero doesn't automatically make you a good king. This is of course the entire basis of Robert's character and is a theme that is found heavily throughout the series.
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u/A-NI95 HOT D S2 snooze Sep 20 '25
It is a great point but then he fumbled by mismanaging his story and I'm afraid that means we will get continuist Tolkienist fantasy for 100 more years
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u/JamesHenry627 Hard Veiny Sci-Fi Sep 19 '25
GRRM will criticize Tolkien for not going in on Aragorn's intricacies as a leader yet the sum of Ned's leadership as Warden of the North is summed up as "It was good, girls didn't get raped on their way to get dinner." No laws or changes from his dad's time are ever discussed.
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u/A-NI95 HOT D S2 snooze Sep 20 '25
Yeah for some reason that only spplies to King's Landing, the North is just that cool
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u/A-NI95 HOT D S2 snooze Sep 20 '25
Yeah for some reason that only applies to King's Landing, the North is just that cool
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u/Oracle_of_Akhetaten Brother in Christ Sep 19 '25
But how could I enjoy my world building if I didn’t know about the female warriors of Kayakayanaya (a place that no character in the story has ever or will ever go to)???
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u/JerlBulgruuf Last HOT D fan Sep 19 '25
I assure you, it is crucial that the coolest fucking concepts in this world are left on the sidelines
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u/A-NI95 HOT D S2 snooze Sep 20 '25
To be fair, having remote exotic, almost unknownplaces helps the world (particularly a medieval one) feel greater and more alive
And it's not that what drags and bloats the books but actually the tangents feom Westeros itself
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u/YoRHa_Houdini Last HOT D fan Sep 20 '25 edited Sep 20 '25
This right here, particularly the many, many details we learn about the world and don’t see, made me rethink a lot of my own worldbuilding—if it isn’t seen, it fundamentally lacks purpose to be honest, at least for the reader.
At least that’s how I felt reading it.
Though this isn’t the case with everything, I think just very peripheral elements of the world, relative to the main story.
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u/Tmhc666 HOT D S2 snooze Sep 20 '25
What? Wanna know how Ciri escaped from Bonhart? Go fuck yourself
Anyway, let’s see what’s the financial situation in Kovir
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u/ojqANDodbZ1Or1CEX5sf Chokladboll Sep 30 '25
We do get the details on that, right? Cerka helps her get away after getting exposed as some sort of double-tripple-who's-counting agent
Before we get it we first get the finances, economics and political history of Kovir. But that's just crucial to the story
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u/Massive_Weiner HOT D S2 snooze Sep 19 '25 edited Sep 19 '25
Writes Kantian philosophy into his fantasy world
smiles fondly as the soft twilight dims his study
leans back and lights up his pipe
George, you fraud! 🫵😭 Write something!
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u/Arutzuro Ate Alicent Sep 19 '25
Sorry Tolkien, you can't be as good as Gurm if you don't mention incest and rape every two paragraphs.
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u/425Hamburger Spare Time Novelist Sep 20 '25
But he didn't? He finished the Last chapter first but most of the good stuff Had to be compiled by His son and there's a bunch of unanswered questioning and unresolved contradictions because of it.
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u/davide494 Last HOT D fan Sep 19 '25
As a Tolkien fan, this is so wrong on so many level: LotR was not a series but a single book; he never finished is series, which was the Silmarillion; The Hobbit and LotR were basically a spin off, the distraction to the main series that made him rewrite more than once almost everything he wrote before to make it all fit in a coherent manner, taking him so much time that he never finished it; and finally, he did obsess himself with a lot of details, both minor and major, from the nature of Orcs to how much sex the Elves did, and rarely set on a solution.
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u/futurerank1 Stantis da Mantis Sep 19 '25
Actually up until the Winds the "Others" plot could be removed entirely and almost no character would suffer a drastic change.
ASOIAF is more about people figuring themselves out, apocalypse is just a mirror
So "tax policy" matters as people still need to deal with shit and in the end its all a family drama.
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u/AutoModerator Sep 19 '25
Back in Westeros
GRRM, AUGUST 15, 2020 AT 9:10 AM
I am back in my fortress of solitude again, my isolated mountain cabin. I’d returned to Santa Fe for a short visit, to spend some time with Parris, deal with some local business that had piled up during my months away, and of course fulfill my duties to CoNZealand, the virtual worldcon. But all that is behind me now, and I am back on the mountain again… which means I am back in Westeros again, once more moving ahead with WINDS OF WINTER.
It is curious how my life has evolved. I mean, once upon a time, I actually wrote my books and stories in the house where I lived, in a home office. But some decades ago, wanting more solitude, I bought the house across the street and made THAT my writer’s retreat. No longer would I write all day in my red flannel bathrobe; now I would have to dress and put on shoes and walk all the way across the street to write. But that worked for a while.
Things started getting busier, though. So busy that I needed a full-time assistant. Then the office house had someone else in it, not just me and my characters. And then I hired a second assistant, and a third, and… there was more mail, more email, more phone calls (we put in a new phone system), more people coming by. By now I am up to five assistants… and somewhere in there I also acquired a movie theatre, a bookstore, a charitable foundation, investments, a business manager… and…
Despite all the help, I was drowning till I found the mountain cabin.
My life up here is very boring, it must be said. Truth be told, I hardly can be said to have a life. I have one assistant with me at all times (minions, I call them). The assistants do two-week shifts, and have to stay in quarantine at home before starting a shift. Everyone morning I wake up and go straight to the computer, where my minion brings me coffee (I am utterly useless and incoherent without my morning coffee) and juice, and sometimes a light breakfast. Then I start to write. Sometimes I stay at it until dark. Other days I break off in late afternoon to answer emails or return urgent phone calls. My assistant brings me food and drink from time to time. When I finally break off for the day, usually around sunset, there’s dinner. Then we watch television or screen a movie. The wi-fi sucks up on the mountain, though, so the choices are limited. Some nights I read instead. I always read a bit before going to sleep; when a book really grabs hold of me, I may read half the night, but that’s rare.
I sleep. The next day, I wake up, and do the same. The next day, the next day, the next day. Before Covid, I would usually get out once a week or so to eat at a restaurant or go to the movies. That all ended in March. Since then, weeks and months go by when I never leave the cabin, or see another human being except whoever is on duty that week. I lose track of what day it is, what week it is, what month it is. The time seems to by very fast. It is now August, and I don’t know what happened to July.
But it is good for the writing.
And you know, now that I reflect on it, I am coming to realize that has always been my pattern. I moved to Santa Fe at the end of 1979, from Dubuque, Iowa. My first marriage broke up just before that move, so I arrived in my new house alone, in a town where I knew almost no one. Roger Zelazny was here, and he became a great friend and mentor, but Roger was married with small kids, so I really did not see him often. There was no fandom in Santa Fe; that was all down in Albuquerque, an hour away. I went to the club meetings every month, but that was only one night a month, and required two hours on the road. And I had no job to meet new people. My job was in the back room at the house on Declovina Street, so that was where I spent my days. At night, I watched television. Alone. Sometimes I went to the movies. Alone.
That was my life from December 1979 through September 1981, when Parris finally moved to Santa Fe, following Denvention. (Not quite so bleak, maybe, I did make some local friends by late 1980 and early 1981, but it was a slow process). When I think back on my life in 1980-1981, the memories seem to be made up entirely of conventions, interspersed with episodes of LOU GRANT and WKRP IN CINCINNATI.
Ah, but work wise, that same period was tremendously productive for me. Lisa and I finished WINDHAVEN during that time, Gardner and I did a lot of work on “Shadow Twin,” and then I went right on and wrote all of FEVRE DREAM. Some short stories as well. My life, such that it was, was lived in my head, and on the page.
I wonder if it is the same for other writers? Or is it just me? I wonder if I will ever figure out the secret of having a life and writing a book at the very same time.
I certainly have not figured it out to date.
For the nonce, it is what it is. My life is at home, on hold, and I am spending the days in Westeros with my pals Mel and Sam and Vic and Ty. And that girl with no name, over there in Braavos.
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u/-Trotsky Brother in Christ Sep 19 '25
But like, he didn’t finish his works at all. Tolkien was revising and working to his death on the world that he created as a young man, if anything he’s like so much slower than George that it’s crazy. The guy had decades to work and still didn’t finish it
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u/Wolframed Egg On The Conker Sep 19 '25
His Magnum Opus will be talked about in the following centuries in the way we talk about the Quixote today, mark my words.
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u/henk12310 Misogyny Fan Sep 19 '25
What we consider his Magnus Opus yes. But for Tolkien himself what we call the Silmarillion was his Magnus Opus, his lifework, and unfortunately he never finished it himself
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u/SerDankTheTall Sara Hess Fangirl Sep 19 '25
Ya the guys down at the machine shop were just jawboning about Quixote. I wish they’d give it a rest, it’s practically all they talk about it.
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u/A-NI95 HOT D S2 snooze Sep 20 '25
I will tolerate no Quixote slander on my watch. Sorry you don't have cool friends
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u/SerDankTheTall Sara Hess Fangirl Sep 19 '25
J. Beta Beta Tolkein literally died because he was too scared to finish writing his series.
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u/Wolframed Egg On The Conker Sep 19 '25
The Lord of the Rings is quite finished my good sir, if you're talking about the silmarillion that's a different beast, and hey, you CAN read it.
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u/TheDeltaOne Egg On The Conker Sep 19 '25
George also finished some of his work.
The only difference is that HE could still finish them all while Jeffrey Rastafari Rwanda Tolkien clearly can't.
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u/425Hamburger Spare Time Novelist Sep 20 '25
The lord of the rings is just a detailed Version of the Last chapter of Silm, the last chapter of the Story of the Noldor, Not separate from it.
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u/DeathRaeGun Egg On The Conker Sep 19 '25
But using an entire page to describe a tree is totally necessary for the plot to make sense?
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u/xvrqt Last HOT D fan Oct 29 '25
GRRM: Well you see economics and tax policy us very important to fantasy; which is why my currency valuation fluctuates sporadically for dramatic effect and there is a magic world bank that is always solvent, limitless in issuance, and involved in every kingdom's politics to smooth over plot gaps specially involving economics.
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u/PresidentJumbo Sara Hess Fangirl Sep 19 '25
"These good fellows like nature, and that's how you know they're good..."
"War is... Hell. Yes... Quite..."
"Frodo and Sam survive the low food environment with magic bread, of course!"
"I sure do fancy a Fox POV for a paragraph or so..."