A better writer could have used the creative criticism to write Winds of Winter and a Dream of Spring better than he had planned.
Also, it’s this guy:
“Life is very full of sex, or should be. As much as I admire Tolkien - and I do, he was a giant of fantasy and a giant of literature, and I think he wrote a great book that will be read for many years - you do have to wonder where all those Hobbits came from, since you can’t imagine Hobbits having sex, can you? Well, sex is an important part of who we are. It drives us, it motivates us, it makes us do sometimes very noble things and it makes us do sometimes incredibly stupid things. Leave it out, and you’ve got an incomplete world.”
so maybe asking for better writing is a bit too tall an order.
I do think sex is a valid driving force of writing though. It doesn’t need to be called sex though nor does it need particularly long scenes or anything, lust and love is all over good writing. Insecurities and crashouts and total mental breakdowns from relationships are the primary driving force of years or decades of some people’s lives.
Yes, but does the fact that he can’t personally imagine hobbit sex constitute a world-building hole? It seems like a hollow criticism coming from someone with two entire novel-sized holes in his writing. I think you’re absolutely right that sex is a completely valid driving force, but the absence of it in a story with plenty of other completely valid character motivations doesn’t mean a world is incomplete. Tolkien didn’t need to write about sex, because that aspect of the world is assumed like so many other things. Physics aren’t explained, even if it might be different. Dental hygiene isn’t explained. Currency is referenced, but exchange rates aren’t. The value of gold is implied, but it doesn’t seem to have a reference for its relative worth. None of the story suffers from it.
It just seems like a nitpicky thing for GRRM to talk about for any reason other than to justify why he includes so much sex in his writing that doesn’t always have a narrative reason to be there, other than the fact that he was probably horny while he was writing, and on top of that, the way he phrased it is really weird.
Depends on how grounded in a dirty reality you want your fantasy writing too really. Tolkien’s writing a pretty clean fantasy world whereas GRRM writes a pretty dirty reality of mud blood and filth. What are the orcs doing to women in villages they capture in Tolkien’s world? What are human soldiers doing on a war march for months on end? Probably not abstaining from the local brothels but they also don’t exist in Tolkien’s world when they obviously would. Tolkien was never writing for that kind of grounded realism because it would’ve limited the audience of his books. He probably could write that though.
GRRM’s world is more medieval and human. Tolkien’s world is more fantasy than medieval. Just different styles really, almost different genres. Black Sails is similar in the sense that it is grounded and human whereas Pirates of the Caribbean is fantasy. GRRM’s work belongs alongside Black Sails more than the fantasy.
I mean the hobbits are twee little br*tish townsfolk. Even if you could imagine them having sex you would immediately want to burn it out of your mind before they start summoning all the repulsive br*tish slang for sex organs and whatnot too and you start to lose your lunch.
A better writer could have used the creative criticism to write Winds of Winter and a Dream of Spring better than he had planned.
Also, it’s this guy:
so maybe asking for better writing is a bit too tall an order.
I do think sex is a valid driving force of writing though. It doesn’t need to be called sex though nor does it need particularly long scenes or anything, lust and love is all over good writing. Insecurities and crashouts and total mental breakdowns from relationships are the primary driving force of years or decades of some people’s lives.
Yes, but does the fact that he can’t personally imagine hobbit sex constitute a world-building hole? It seems like a hollow criticism coming from someone with two entire novel-sized holes in his writing. I think you’re absolutely right that sex is a completely valid driving force, but the absence of it in a story with plenty of other completely valid character motivations doesn’t mean a world is incomplete. Tolkien didn’t need to write about sex, because that aspect of the world is assumed like so many other things. Physics aren’t explained, even if it might be different. Dental hygiene isn’t explained. Currency is referenced, but exchange rates aren’t. The value of gold is implied, but it doesn’t seem to have a reference for its relative worth. None of the story suffers from it.
It just seems like a nitpicky thing for GRRM to talk about for any reason other than to justify why he includes so much sex in his writing that doesn’t always have a narrative reason to be there, other than the fact that he was probably horny while he was writing, and on top of that, the way he phrased it is really weird.
Depends on how grounded in a dirty reality you want your fantasy writing too really. Tolkien’s writing a pretty clean fantasy world whereas GRRM writes a pretty dirty reality of mud blood and filth. What are the orcs doing to women in villages they capture in Tolkien’s world? What are human soldiers doing on a war march for months on end? Probably not abstaining from the local brothels but they also don’t exist in Tolkien’s world when they obviously would. Tolkien was never writing for that kind of grounded realism because it would’ve limited the audience of his books. He probably could write that though.
GRRM’s world is more medieval and human. Tolkien’s world is more fantasy than medieval. Just different styles really, almost different genres. Black Sails is similar in the sense that it is grounded and human whereas Pirates of the Caribbean is fantasy. GRRM’s work belongs alongside Black Sails more than the fantasy.
That makes a lot of sense.
lmao this guy doesn’t even imagine hobbit sex
Samwise had like thirteen kids. Hobbits fucked.
Don’t know what he’s talking about, the hobbits take a bath together in LOTR: the book.
this reminded me of the gross-ass
SV
removed fantasy sex scene where it wasn’t revealed to the reader she was fine with it for awhile
that he wrote. that disconfited me enough to remember it after all this time
It’s absolutely wild that his go-to unsexy Tolkien people are hobbits rather than elves
I mean the hobbits are twee little br*tish townsfolk. Even if you could imagine them having sex you would immediately want to burn it out of your mind before they start summoning all the repulsive br*tish slang for sex organs and whatnot too and you start to lose your lunch.