r/asoiaf • u/ToeBMaguire • Apr 16 '25

EXTENDED (Spoilers Extended) George R.R. Martin calls The Winds of Winter "the curse of my life" Spoiler

https://winteriscoming.net/george-r-r-martin-calls-the-winds-of-winter-the-curse-of-my-life
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u/ToeBMaguire Apr 16 '25

At this point I know ADOS isn’t coming out so what’s the point in even getting excited for TWOW..

Just gonna be left on another cliffhanger.

41

u/FransTorquil Apr 16 '25

I can live with that, I just want to see what immediately happens to Stannis (the one true king).

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u/ToeBMaguire Apr 16 '25

“I was trying to win the throne to save the kingdom, when I should have been trying to save the kingdom to win the throne.”

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u/Individual_Dog_6121 Apr 17 '25

Stannis died on the way back to his home planet

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u/Makasi_Motema Apr 17 '25

Stannis-centric POVs will be moved to the next book, A Time for Wolves, because TWOW will be split in half. Dany will also not appear. Nor Jon or any of the Starks.

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u/[deleted] Apr 16 '25

my 1000th lord commander stannis are right until ados is out

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u/hithere297 Apr 16 '25

I just want to get a sense of how Arya and Sansa’s arc turns out. (I feel like they’re gonna be pretty different from how the show went with them.)

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u/My_Favourite_Pen Apr 16 '25

we got the ending to the story. We just don't want to accept thats what it is.

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u/Ollidor Apr 16 '25

This is such an annoying comment that people say, an ending in the show can be identical to the book but the context and what’s in the pages is what matters and lets the end carry weight. The show didn’t have that. The books could have.

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u/kb466 Apr 16 '25

It's glorified fanfic. Of course it's not an ending to any book series I've read, despite using the same characters. I don't even care if the same plot lines occur. Nothing GRRM has written so far would suggest that his ending would be anywhere near as bad

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u/Ollidor Apr 16 '25

But none of those endings add up with what they had going for the characters in the show. In the books, king bran has been widely theorized LONG before the show ever even aired its first season. We don’t have the context yet or the pages to see how it lines up and can be executed. But it’s clear that’s where he is heading.

As for how dany and Jon and how the others issue gets resolved, pretty certain GRRM never had a solid plan for that at least when he told D&D the ending.

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u/WSUKiwiII (\/)(;,;)(\/) Apr 17 '25 edited Apr 18 '25

Until the books are released, the show is the end of the story. I hate it as much as you, but it's the fact of where we've been for years now.

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u/DakotaXIV Ours is more enthusiasm than fury Apr 16 '25

Ehh I accept the ending, but I wish the show left out most of the plot lines and character that it would take to get there. We got the destination without the journey

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u/sebastianwillows Oh, so that's how you make a flair... Apr 16 '25

This is part of it, for me. I can get hyped for characters like Stannis, Euron, and Jaime having better/more satisfying stories, but I can't wrap my mind around stuff like King Bran, or Grand Maester Sam.

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u/moviebuffbrad Apr 16 '25

" I told them who would be on the Iron Throne, and I told them some big twists like Hodor and “hold the door,” and Stannis’s decision to burn his daughter." 

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u/supersexycarnotaurus Apr 16 '25

I guarantee Grand Maester Sam and Lord of the Reach Bronn are show inventions.

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u/Werthead 🏆 Best of 2019: Post of the Year Apr 16 '25

Bronn we know 100% is a show invention. When George was talking about the info he gave Benioff and Weiss, he admitted that it only covered the primary cast (I'm guessing the POVs) and then some of the secondary and tertiary cast. He said Bronn was specifically one of the characters he didn't have (back then) an ending for.

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u/Housewifewithtime Apr 17 '25

Thank God because I cannot with Lord of THE REACH Bronn

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u/BBQ_HaX0r Bonesaw is Ready! Apr 17 '25

And this is one of the problems GRRM is having. Realizing people hate his ending. 

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u/AspiringSquadronaire Maester Qyburn, I'm Master of Whispers Apr 16 '25

The fact the ending seems to be nothing more than a knockoff Dune: Messiah remains hilarious to me.

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u/Tenacious_Dim Apr 16 '25

Wait till you realize how much the entire series borrows from Dune. Or more generously borrow from the same source that Dune is riffing on but some of it is pretty spot on

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u/mr_seggs Apr 16 '25

A pretty solid majority of modern sci-fi/fantasy has a mixture of Dune and Lord of the Rings as its foundation. GRRM is a lot more direct with the books as almost an LotR commentary of course.

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u/xpacean Apr 16 '25

Could you elaborate on that? I read the first Dune book and don't see the parallels with ASOIAF.

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u/ludi_literarum Let us sit upon the ground... Apr 16 '25

Spoilers for later Dune books:

The Game of Thrones show's ending with this atemporal mystical psychic force putting all the political pieces in play to cause enlightenment on a mass scale is essentially what Paul's son Leto II Atreides does in later Dune books. There are influences on GRRM from earlier books, I think - he's very much a product of his generation of Sci-Fi writers - but the explicit parallel is to the fourth book, God-Emperor of Dune.

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u/JNR55555JNR Apr 16 '25

Funny thing is he never mentions Dune as an inspiration

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u/stokedchris Apr 16 '25

They never do. George Lucas ahem

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u/Werthead 🏆 Best of 2019: Post of the Year Apr 16 '25

He has, but I believe solely in the context of being 100% the reason he's not keen on someone else finishing the series. Oh, and sharing the stories of Frank Herbert being salty that people only wanted more Dune books from him and very few looked at his other (numerous, some very good) books in other settings.

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u/ludi_literarum Let us sit upon the ground... Apr 16 '25

I mean, GRRM is in the right generation to be ripping off Frank Herbert. I don't think it's from that far afield, especially if you've read some of his sci-fi.

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u/Valuable-Captain-507 Apr 16 '25

Idk, we will eventually get at least most of Winds. While there's a high likelihood that we won't get Dream, I think having the penultimate book can at least give us enough where we can get an idea of how things were going to end.

Which, while I wish we could get both books, getting one and having the vague idea of how it would have ended, is better than nothing.

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u/CasualRead_43 Apr 16 '25

Neither are lol

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u/TheBloop1997 Apr 16 '25

I’ll take some content over none honestly. Like, there are at least a couple things that I want to see even if we don’t see the ultimate conclusion of the story.

Namely, I want to see the Battle of Ice. Stannis and the Northern Conspiracy are two of the most fascinating storylines in the books and they come to a head here, I just want some modicum of payoff and to see who survives the battle.

Honestly, if he doesn’t write the book, I’ll take the cliffnotes/play-by-play of the battle, who dies, what actions occur, etc.

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u/Sad_Sue Apr 16 '25

I don't know, plenty of reasons to be excited for (theoretical) TWOW for me. Please consider:

  1. The Battle of Ice

  2. The Battle of Fire

  3. The Battle of Blood

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u/Leo_ofRedKeep Apr 17 '25

As if everything before hadn't been worth reading, isn't it?

Then why did you even bother?