Shikinokami wrote...
I might add another chapter to dear Elliot's story.
I thought it ended already! I am now running through the stories I am familiar with, though they aren't much. I need to come up with a lousy 'fanfic' myself.
That said, I think I will devote this page to complaining about the Game of Thrones. Care to join me?
http://vk.com/doc-50747477_169577512?hash=add9da39798259c34c&dl=a66d6ae1a02f78d02e
The Game of Thrones takes place in a continent that looks a blown-up island of Great Britain (no pun intended). Hadrian's Wall, the wall that (roughly) separated England from Scotland came to mind when I saw the map showing the northern parts of the continent separated from the rest of civilization by a structure known as The Wall. I wonder how a Scot would feel though seeing the much of the land north of the Wall as uncharted territory (inhabited by
Wild Men Wildlings)
So allow me to begin by quoting the story at length.
Page 1:
We should start back,” Gared urged as the woods began to grow dark around them. “The wildlings are dead.”
“Do the dead frighten you?” Ser Waymar Royce asked with just the hint of a smile.
Gared did not rise to the bait. He was an old man, past fifty, and he had seen the lordlings come and go. “Dead is dead,” he said. “We have no business with the dead.”
“Are they dead?” Royce asked softly. “What proof have we?”
“Will saw them,” Gared said. “If he says they are dead, that’s proof enough for me.”
While it is too early to judge whether this prologue would be informative or not, I had the eerie feeling that instead of it being a proper prologue which introduces the setting of the universe through a story, it is merely a prequel. To make matters worse, already there are alien terms thrown into the story that are not introduced properly. They are namely, "Wildling" and "lordling".
The last time I checked a dictionary, a wildling is what people from bygone days call a
wild plant. One might think that Gared and Ser Waymar Royce are gardeners struggling against an infestation of killer weeds. I would like to ask why George Martin is reluctant to settle for Wild Men, Barbarians, Nomads, First Nations, Aborigines, Scotchman or some other English word that implies that Gared and company are dealing with people not accustomed to and alien to civilisation?
To give credit to Martin, I do have an idea what a lordling is. They are the scions of some lord, or so I thought. What disturbs me more about 'lordling' is the sentence that contains it, namely, "He (Gared) was an old man, past fifty, and he had seen the lordlings come and go."
I know some acquaintances who are of the opinion that this piques their interest. They would want to know what was Gared's line of work which saw lordlings 'come and go'. However, in my case, that sentence elicited feelings of confusion since I have no idea what is happening! Come to and go away from what exactly? Is he an excursion teacher of sorts leading lordlings into the wild to pluck wildlings? Surely he can't be a veteran of some patrol lead by inexperienced young nobles who get themselves turned into ice zombies by the end of the watch?
In a fantasy world where the rules are not congruous or at least similar to that of the real world, it is very necessary to explain terms and settings. While Martin has a repository of wonderful ideas swimming in his head and would have no problem understanding the paragraphs he wrote, surely he knows that this reader (and most readers for that matter) can't read his mind. Could he kindly explain what a Wildling is and what Gared is doing?
But wait, it gets even more confusing from here!