grrm
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They know that Tolkien could never write anything half as memorable as this:
>“Ser? My lady?” said Podrick. “Is a broken man an outlaw?”
>“More or less,” Brienne answered.
>Septon Meribald disagreed. “More less than more. There are many sorts of outlaws, just as there are many sorts of birds. A sandpiper and a sea eagle both have wings, but they are not the same. The singers love to sing of good men forced to go outside the law to fight some wicked lord, but most outlaws are more like this ravening Hound than they are the lightning lord. They are evil men, driven by greed, soured by malice, despising the gods and caring only for themselves. Broken men are more deserving of our pity, though they may be just as dangerous. Almost all are common-born, simple folk who had never been more than a mile from the house where they were born until the day some lord came round to take them off to war. Poorly shod and poorly clad, they march away beneath his banners, ofttimes with no better arms than a sickle or a sharpened hoe, or a maul they made themselves by lashing a stone to a stick with strips of hide. Brothers march with brothers, sons with fathers, friends with friends. They’ve heard the songs and stories, so they go off with eager hearts, dreaming of the wonders they will see, of the wealth and glory they will win. War seems a fine adventure, the greatest most of them will ever know.
>“Then they get a taste of battle.
>“For some, that one taste is enough to break them. Others go on for years, until they lose count of all the battles they have fought in, but even a man who has survived a hundred fights can break in his hundred-and-first. Brothers watch their brothers die, fathers lose their sons, friends see their friends trying to hold their entrails in after they’ve been gutted by an axe.
>“They see the lord who led them there cut down, and some other lord shouts that they are his now. They take a wound, and when that’s still half-healed they take another. There is never enough to eat, their shoes fall to pieces from the marching, their clothes are torn and rotting, and half of them are shitting in their breeches from drinking bad water.
>“If they want new boots or a warmer cloak or maybe a rusted iron halfhelm, they need to take them from a corpse, and before long they are stealing from the living too, from the smallfolk whose lands they’re fighting in, men very like the men they used to be. They slaughter their sheep and steal their chickens, and from there it’s just a short step to carrying off their daughters too. And one day they look around and realize all their friends and kin are gone, that they are fighting beside strangers beneath a banner that they hardly recognize. They don’t know where they are or how to get back home and the lord they’re fighting for does not know their names, yet here he comes, shouting for them to form up, to make a line with their spears and scythes and sharpened hoes, to stand their ground. And the knights come down on them, faceless men clad all in steel, and the iron thunder of their charge seems to fill the world…
>“And the man breaks.
>“He turns and runs, or crawls off afterward over the corpses of the slain, or steals away in the black of night, and he finds someplace to hide. All thought of home is gone by then, and kings and lords and gods mean less to him than a haunch of spoiled meat that will let him live another day, or a skin of bad wine that might drown his fear for a few hours. The broken man lives from day to day, from meal to meal, more beast than man. Lady Brienne is not wrong. In times like these, the traveler must beware of broken men, and fear them…but he should pity them as well.”
>When Meribald was finished a profound silence fell upon their little band. Brienne could hear the wind rustling through a clump of pussywillows, and farther off the faint cry of a loon. She could hear Dog panting softly as he loped along beside the septon and his donkey, tongue lolling from his mouth. The quiet stretched and stretched, until finally she said, “How old were you when they marched you off to war?”
>“Why, no older than your boy,” Meribald replied. “Too young for such, in truth, but my brothers were all going, and I would not be left behind. Willam said I could be his squire, though Will was no knight, only a potboy armed with a kitchen knife he’d stolen from the inn. He died upon the Stepstones, and never struck a blow. It was fever did for him, and for my brother Robin. Owen died from a mace that split his head apart, and his friend Jon Pox was hanged for rape.”
>“The War of the Ninepenny Kings?” asked Hyle Hunt.
>“So they called it, though I never saw a king, nor earned a penny. It was a war, though. That it was.”
>>24459732 (OP)I ain't reading all that my guy
>>24459732 (OP)Fat cunt who never set foot on a battlefield writes long-winded masturbatory melodrama. I cringed when I saw Redditors dribbling over this part, hated reading the drawn out wankery myself, and I hate it still years on now I'm seeing it again
>>24459832George is a Marine Corps infantry veteran from Nam.
>>24459832george is a viet cong veteran
>>24459853Nah he isn't, but I bet his fat ass wishes he was one. Now that the danger has passed.
I can't read, I am literally illiterate, can someone explain what this woman is saying ?
>>24459732 (OP)The fat fuck has literally no idea how feudal warfare worked. An untrained, barely-armed peasant is worse than useless on the battlefield. And if you drag the peasantry off to fight wars for years on end, the harvests won't take place and the populace will starve.
>>24459863>going to fight improverished rice farmers for Israel, getting humiliated by them and returning home with an arm less and PTSD to bootsounds like he made a good decision
>>24459732 (OP)>>24459733Very well written. Thank you for reminding me why I shit on George in /grrm/ general for not finishing his work.
>>24459893It's why I hate his work, along with other fantasy authors who know nothing about feudal systems (or any systems) beyond pop-culture renditions. They don't understand the human body (a dwarf killing people with relative ease and doing acrobatics), they don't grasp biological characteristics (a big woman isn't stronger than a small man), they have a hard time conceptualising anything truly alien while fleshing out adjacent-humans that aren't interesting. They incorporate shitty 'I just learned' moments into their books (ser, nuncle) instead of focusing on giving the world depth. Their characters go off on self-insert tangents about all too familiar topics.
Plus, GRRM is fat.
>>24459732 (OP)>>24459733The most milquetoast and labored "you don't know what war's really like" speech one could possibly write. Literally a collection of every cliché you could possibly stuff inside one. Fitting for a fat man who probably thinks he must try everything in a hotel buffet to get his money's worth. They should have broken that silence that "stretched and stretched" with singing Lennon's Imagine.
>>24460312spitroasted the porcine faggot
>>24461229Post some great prose from Tolkien, I'll wait.
Pro-tip: you can't because Tolkien prose reads like a fantasy Ikea brochure
>>24461280Why would I? Your taste in prose is non-existent if you thought this was well-written. More importantly, it would imply that there is a competition at all between the greasy fat hack who can't finish his series and the guy who originated the genre in its modern form, and wrote in just the right way to convey a legend being told instead of this 14yr-old's idea of muh gritty realism.
>>24459732 (OP)>even a man who has survived a hundred fights can break in his hundred-and-first.Modern nonsense. Stuff happens for no reason. You can never tell maaan. Actually not what would happen. War wasn't some PTSD thing. Roman soldiers would fight for years and come back and fight more.
>>24459733>to make a line with their spears and scythes and sharpened hoeSo after all these battles they haven't pick up any weapons?
And what did he imagine war was like? Year after year after year with zero respite? Just constant war everywhere forever?
>>24459893>>24460312>>24461229What these anons said. It's reddit trying to be le edgy
> is a broken man an outlaw
HAHAHA
My brother in Christ, this is actual garbage. Tolkien was no Shakespeare but he was a god compared to this fat Jack.
The more she drank the more she shat until she was shitting brown water.
>>24461878An unwitting metaphor for the progress of the series.
>>24459732 (OP)>>24459733Never read these books before, I though this was all pretty good, thanks.
>>24459732 (OP)>>24459733Read it all and I already forgot it
>>24459732 (OP)Pre-modern warfare was 65% marching, 34% waiting, and 1% fighting.
>My favorite soap opera writer is actually a literary genius.
>>24460312>(a dwarf killing people with relative ease and doing acrobatics)Seeing him slap Joffrey was baffling to me. He can't reach the top of his own head, so how is he supposed to slap someone who stands head and shoulders above him?
>reddit actually thinks gurmslop is less sloppy than sanderslop
I still don't understand why this fat faggot has an eternal general on this board when there's thousands of other authors who are either (a) good at writing, or (b) actually write new books to talk about.
>fat boomer draft dodger: "War is... le bad and le awful. Humans are the worst!"
>greatest generation duty caller: "It is my duty to serve in this war. But I believe there is good in all people. Even my german enemies."
>>24463710GRRM wrote good short stories and standalone novels before he became famous for his overrated doorstopper fantasy series. Sanderson never wrote anything worth reading.
>>24459732 (OP)What makes me seethe is that the fat man can't finish this series I have invested hours into
I need to know what will happen with my guy Victarion
>>24459732 (OP)no i just seethe at him because he wont get off his fat ass and finish his books
im not going to start reading them until the entire series is finished, because otherwise he's just going to drop dead and blueball everyone
>>24461601>Disgusting black creatures! Get out of my sight!What did Sam mean by this?
>>24461601"And Faramir and Éowyn stood forth and set hand in hand; and all there drank to them and were glad. 'Thus,' said Éomer, 'is the friendship of the Mark and of Gondor bound with a new bond, and the more do I rejoice.' 'No niggard are you, Éomer,' said Aragorn, 'to give thus to Gondor the fairest thing in your realm!'"
>>24464958>>24465572O! What are you seeking,
And where are you making?
The faggots are reeking,
The bannocks are baking!
>>24459732 (OP)Tolktards took the bait. What's really funny is that Tolkien would probably have liked this. He hated war.
Remember when George’s had an autistic baby tantrum the other day and lost any credibility and respect he still had? I don’t think I’ve ever cringed that hard
It's going to be so funny when he eats himself to death and the entire conversation is people complaining he didn't finish the books and people getting mad at them for saying it.
>>24466705Those stories were good but not great. "Nightflyers" meh.
>>24459732 (OP)The passage is fine but it comes out of nowhere and Martin ruins it a little with the congratulatory "profound silence" bit.
>>24468057>congratulatory*Self-congratulatory, i mean.
>>24459732 (OP)Get mogged, you fat pseud.
>Gollum looked at them. A strange expression passed over his lean hungry face. The gleam faded from his eyes and they went dim and grey, old and tired. A spasm of pain seemed to twist him, and he turned away, peering back up towards the pass, shaking his head, as if engaged in some interior debate. Then he came back, and slowly putting out a trembling hand, very cautiously he touched Frodo’s knee - but almost the touch was a caress..>For a fleeting moment, could one of the sleepers have seen him, they would have thought that they beheld an old weary hobbit, shrunken by the years that had carried him far beyond his time, beyond friends and kin, and the fields and streams of youth, an old starved pitiable thing.>>24461280Fuck you.
>>24460312>they don't grasp biological characteristics (a big woman isn't stronger than a small man)Brienne is a freak of nature tbf.
>>24468095love this narrative that USA has been dunked on by 3rd-worlders repeatedly, when it's just a game of chicken where 3rdies refused to surrender and the USA refused to siege and genocide the entire population
>>24460312>>24468080Its heavily implied somewhere down the genetic road Dunk cucked a Tarth noble and thus Brienne is her granndaughter or something similar
Dunk lineage is probably mixed with the old giant blood, hence his impressive stature and superhuman-lite strenght. So in this specific case i can understand a woman with giant blood being able to be on par with normal men in a fight (no way book Brienne would had beaten The Hound tho)
>>24463657how was this scene handled in the show? more than just camera angle?
>>24468105The US was genocidal in Vietnam, short of launching nukes (which Nixon wanted to do in a fit of rage and had to be talked out of it) there was nothing more you could do to kill even more innocent rice farmers and little girls
>>24468112A combination of camera angles, Joffrey's actor bending down, and possibly a stunt dwarf
