George R.R. Martin wants to write a critique of ‘House of the Dragon,’ which I’m sure will go over well
Somebody remind him: Winter is Coming!
It’s been close to a month since House of the Dragon season 2 ended. The discussions and discourse are done and dusted—or so we thought, because none other than George R.R. Martin has expressed interest in writing a blog post about his grievances with the show. Sigh!
As you might be aware, George R.R. Martin frequently writes a blog, called “Not a Blog,” wherein you can read much about what he has been up to and his opinions on things, as well as updates on his writing of the next book in A Song of Ice and Fire series, The Winds of Winter. And his recent blog post indicates that he is not entirely happy with House of the Dragon, the series based on his book Fire & Blood about the Targaryen civil war set 172 years before the birth of Daenerys Targaryen.
For some context, the author was talking about celebrating Fiesta in Santa Fe, New Mexico, as well as a recent trip he took to London and Amsterdam for work and leisure that helped him feel better because he had been having a “pretty wretched year [as well], one full of stress, anger, conflict, and defeat.” The writer continued that he had a lot of emails to catch up on, but he looked forward to writing blog posts about his adventures on the trip. Furthermore, there were some blog posts that he did not look forward to writing, and those were about “everything that’s gone wrong with HOUSE OF THE DRAGON.” He said that he wouldn’t be doing it right away, but he’d get to it.
Oh, okay, alright then! How do we feel about this? On the one hand, of course, he has every right, just like any of us do, and perhaps even more because it is his life’s work being turned into a show, to talk about what the show did wrong. On the other hand, GRRM has been credited as creator and executive producer on the series, and while I understand that he might not always get in all of his creative input despite being the author, it feels as if he’s trying too hard to distance himself from the series’ mistakes. The season’s out. It’s been reviewed, dissected weekly, and talked about for over two months now. If anything, his opinions will only give more fodder to the show’s harshest critics.
But that’s still fine, except there’s an even bigger point of contention about GRRM’s need to spend time writing this blog post: He’s also just going to be giving more fodder to critics of how long he’s taking to write the remaining books in the ASOIAF series. As news about the blog post GRRM was planning to write began spreading on social media, many ASOIAF, Game of Thrones, and House of the Dragon fans rolled their eyes and started joking about the same thing: Why won’t GRRM just get to writing Winds of Winter instead of all these side quests?
At a recent talk for the Oxford Writers’ House, George R.R. Martin did say that he also wished that The Winds of Winter was already finished, and he talked about certain changes that he wished he could make to his writing style that would perhaps make it easier.
When he talks about writing like that, you can’t help but feel sympathy for the author, especially if you are a writer yourself and know how hard the whole process can be. Especially with the kind of pressure he is under. There are many book fans who think GRRM’s books will give them a satisfactory ending that Game of Thrones season 8 wasn’t able to provide. And if you think about it, if Bran Stark is indeed the endgame in A Dream of Spring, you can imagine how GRRM must be feeling about it after seeing how vehemently people rejected that ending on screen! That’s a different kind of pressure altogether!
Either way, neither side is wrong in their actions. We could say that George R.R. Martin doesn’t owe us anything. But then, we could also argue that once a creator creates something and puts it out in the world, they build an expectation. Their work no longer belongs only to them; in some ways, it belongs to the fans too. And fans are getting restless.
So, sir, can we please not spend time on what has already come to pass and focus on the future? Winter is coming.
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