/lit/ - Literature

>>21047148
Literally who

Yes, I like his take on fantasy politics and character depth too. But he has no clue about economy, and wrote some the worst sex descriptions ever put to paper.

>>21047171
As a regular sex haver I find his sex scenes to be adequate

>>21047148
Yes, I like his take on fantasy politics and character depth too. But he has no clue about economy, and wrote some the worst sex descriptions ever put to paper.

>>21047148
>Hate the man
I don't.
I wish I did.
I love his books, I want to read winds but he won't write it, and that hurts my feelings.

>>21047148
He only gets hate cause he doesnt write fast enough and the show was a very popular travesty

>magic is... le bad!

>>21047148
what magic?

>>21047585
magnets and dragons

bump

>>21047148
He doesn't write fantasy, he writes alternative history

Yes, I like his take on fantasy politics and character depth too. But he has no clue about economy, and wrote some the worst sex descriptions ever put to paper.

>>21047148
Is there even magic in his books?
Like there are dragons and yeah I guess some kind of zombies and that red woman who does some kind of magic I guess but I can't remember what she does exactly.

>>21047148
People hate him?

>>21049174
Yes?
there's at least two disciplines of prophecy, the qarthian sorcerers, and the red god's follows who can also change their appearance with glamours and the red god can resurrect people from fatal wounds.
Blood magic like what Qyburn does, whatever the fuck that is exactly, can at least create zombies.
Dragonglass candles let you see things across vast distances of space.
The faceless men also seem to use glamours.
Dragons and the Others are magical creatures.
Quaithe can seemingly either teleport or project her form and voice across distances.
Then there's the shadow children. Melisandre has someone killed while getting creampied by Stannis and then births shadows of him that seek out and kill his enemies.

>>21049236
sounds dumb

>>21049236
>Melisandre has someone killed while getting creampied by Stannis and then births shadows of him that seek out and kill his enemies.
Was this written by an horny and edgy 15 years old boy?

>>21049702
there's a horny and edgy 15 year old boy in all of us

>>21047460
based

>>21047171
>he worst sex descriptions ever put to paper.
source?

>>21049702
Historical attempts at magic were gross and gritty as fuck, you ignorant prude.

>>21049717
i was i was inside an horny 15 years old boy, if you catch my drift.

>>21050680
seek mental help

Did Jon Snow die and get resurrected in the books too or was that just the show being retarded? If that was in the books then it's pretty inexcusable.

>>21049236
>Quaithe can seemingly either teleport or project her form and voice across distances.

That was a glass candle.

>>21050861
In the books he's just been stabbed, it's unknown whether he dies or not

>>21047148
Yeah I always liked how mystical the magic was in the story, almost like a myth.

>>21050680
yeah yeah yeah i got that wink wink

>>21047585
The literal fucking dragons part doesn't ring a bell?

>>21047148
I think he does what he does well (barely talks about it, just kind of a thing that's in the background), but it's not necessarily much better than other authors, just less tropey. Shit like dragons/wights are just part of the world too.

>>21047171
Sam the awkward retard has a retarded sex scene
>NOOOOOO ITS TERRIBLE HE CANT WRITE SEX ALL SEX HAS TO TURN ME ONNNNNNNNN

Eat shit coomer

>>21052659
So you were filtered?

>>21047171
i thought his sex scenes are perfectly serviceable for the contexts in which they take ppace
t. incel

>>21047148
But if I don't have some pseudo-science Le Systeme de Maique™ planned out to autistic levels of specificity, how can I feel superior getting lost in my daydreams within The Setting®?
Fantasy since the 1980's is so fucking trash.

>>21047148
>largely eliminates magic
>handles it better than most authors!
kys

>>21054274
>largely eliminates magic
You can just admit you never read it.

>>21054288
Read all five. Would still probably read the sixth but it will never see the presses so pointless.

>>21047585
It's restrained. Some people can practice magic but the toll it takes on them to do even simple things seems to be rather great. Some people are cursed. Some blessed. Some lucky.
He just doesn't pass out magic like it's free candy.

>>21054288
wrong

>>21054366
This. At best you're born a warg or something.

>>21049702
In purely mental terms, yes.

>>21049702
That’s how magic works.

Curious about how much input he had on Elden Ring's attribute system because it's the only RPG i've played where INT, FTH and ARC explain a huge amount of how the world itself functions. Even D&D fails at that, particularly with it's Bard musical magic bullshit

>>21055783
DnD is very mechanics first worldbuilding second. They needed a jack-of-all-trades class that was 1/3rd rogue 1/3rd fighter and 1/3rd mage so they envisioned one then slapped the wandering minstrel aesthetics on top of it without much thought.

>>21055799
Bards make zero sense from a mythological and anthropological perspective. I wish more fantasy rpg designers took this sort of thing more into account. Sonic Underground levels of cringe when a guitar strum has the same power as a Wizard literally charging a target with electricity.

>>21055783
What the fuck does ARC mean other than the 'super special stat'?

>>21055920
potential

>>21055814
yeah well its fun, so stay mad incel

>>21047159
This. I could never take seriously someone with that face.

>>21048099
This

>>21049236
One of my favourites that never gets brought up is when Stannis breaks the Wildling seige of the wall. Varamyr Six-Skins is inhabiting his hawk high above the battlefield, which is suddenly and inexplicably set aflame. This seems to have fully severed his psychic connection with all of his animals, as the rest immediately go feral and one even mauls him IIRC.
This isn't something that could just be explained by tricks and exotic powders.

>>21050861
There are a couple of ways he can be revived in the next book that aren't retarded. The problem with how the show handled it is mainly that there was no problems with Jon's persona post-resurrection - he was literally just the same character in every way.

>>21057005
Melisandre was pretty badass in that particular moment. She really heralded Stannis saving the wall.

>>21047148
I have never before heard that said of GRRM
magic is hardly even there you could take it out and little would change about the story

what is his magic anyways, that someone can do something crazy every now and then with no rhyme or rule to it? anyone could write that

>>21047148
His magic doesn't even have a system tied to it. I guess since dragons are presumably the source of magic then it makes sense but then you got red priestesses shooting black things out of their womb despite being followers of a supposed god of light, qairth sorcs never using magic and being jobbers, eye patchan igniting his sword, etc.


Magic in ASOIAF is a hodgepodge of random shit he never explains in detail.

>>21055932
Then why does it affect bleeding?

>>21057156
potential would also imply instinct, so knowing to go for the jugular is a part of that born ability

>>21057152
That is why his magic is better than most in modern fantasy. Magic shouldn't be as exact as a science with its own system.

Does anyone have the pasta about GRRM, the pizzas, Tyrion's tax policy, and dragon AIDS? need a sensible chuckle today

>>21047585
There's a big fucking wall of ice for some reason.

>>21057152
>I guess since dragons are presumably the source of magic

See, that's the thing, we can only guess that, but we don't know if they come and go with magic, or bring it. Maybe it's both. At best magic is a surface level "science", in the sense that you can repeat rituals, but it doesn't always work, not for everyone, and you probably wonder if some of the ritualistic steps are truly necessary, since it may be more of a signaling matter than a systemic matter. Like throwing a tiger a piece of meat. Genetic luck of the draw (skinchanging, dreaming, dragon-bonding, etc) appears to be the 'safest' and most reliable magic in the series (if we ignore their darker origins), but everything points to magic (in-general) being capricious, aware, and demanding--it seemingly entertains blood sacrifice, grim prices, and other horrible acts, even the 'benevolent' old gods. In that sense, the Maesters are in their right to decry it, even hate it. It is dishonest learning(hocus pocus) with actual results. R'hllor doesn't need to be real for people to see visions in the flames (ignorance may just be the greatest magic of all). To a natural philosopher (proto-scientist) like a maester, if something exists, it is natural, and thus not truly supernatural--so objectively there is *something* entertaining this gap in understandability, this enforced hocus pocus. Numerous magics overlap in both capability and seeming. Maybe their world-setting is an eldritch mystery play of sorts, run by alien powers. Myths and legends continents apart suspiciously play out rather similarly, individuals and events and all. There are parallels half a world apart. Strange.

But, at the end of the day, you're not supposed to know the behind-the-scenes. Martin does not like honest explanations. It is global sleight of hand by the powers that be. It is closer to horror. There is no safe way. We don't know why. We're not supposed to know why. That's the point. Magic is not good. The Valyrians proved that to the world.

>It was announced that Aerea had died of a fever, which was only partially true. Ser Lucamore said that the princess's fever was so hot that he could feel it through his armor. She had blood in her eyes and her body had "something inside her, something moving", the knight said, until the king forbade him from speaking of the princess. Benifer left no account of Aerea's death, but according to an account in Barth's private papers, Aerea's fever was one unlike anything he had seen before. The septon described her as burning, with a red skin and having barely an ounce of flesh upon her bones, appearing gaunt and starved.

>Barth reported that "swellings" moved underneath the princess's skin, possibly searching for a way to escape and causing a great pain. He wrote "I pray that I shall soon forget some of the things she whispered", and that she often begged for death. It seemed to Barth as if Aerea was cooking from within. Her flesh grew darker until it resembled pork cracklings; smoke came from her mouth, nose, and her nether regions. Aerea's eyes cooked within her skull until they burst. When the princess was lowered into the tub of ice, "slimy, unspeakable things" making horrible sounds emerged from under her skin—one as long as his arm—but the "creatures of heat and fire" died from the cold of the ice.

>The origins of the creatures that lived inside Aerea are unknown. Barth speculated that Balerion, not Aerea, had chosen their destination; as likely the only living creature in the world that had known Valyria before it was destroyed in the Doom, Balerion had returned home, where accursed creatures as those found inside Aerea now lived.

>The things…Mother have mercy, I do not know how to speak of them…they were…worms with faces…snakes with hands…twisting, slimy, unspeakable things that seemed to writhe and pulse and squirm as they came bursting from her flesh. Some were no bigger than my little finger, but one at least was as long as my arm…oh, Warrior protect me, the sounds they made…

>It has been three days since the princess perished, and I have not slept. I do not know that I shall ever sleep again. The Mother is merciful, I have always believed, and the Father Above judges each man justly... but there was no mercy and no justice in what befell our poor princess. How could the gods be so blind or so uncaring as to permit such horror? Or is it possible that there are other deities in this universe, monstrous evil gods such as the priests of Red R'hllor preach against, against whose malice the kings of men and the gods of men are naught but flies? I do not know. I do not want to know. If this makes me a faithless septon, so be it.

>>21059096
The night is dark and full of terrors.

>>21059096
I loved this part. This is magic and fantasy done right. A vast world about which the reader doesn't know much about and is free to imagine.

>>21054366
yeah this style of magic is generic as fuck and has been done better by over 9000 sword and sorcery authors before him

>>21058574
>Magic shouldn't be as exact as a science with its own system.
Because ?

>>21047159
Gabe Newell

>>21059966
Ask yourself why we don't refer to the internet as magic. Or just 21st century engineering.

>>21059096
What the fuck was Valyria doing before the doom?

>>21060258
>What the fuck was Valyria doing before the doom?
Mating human slaves with dragons, wyrms and gods know what else..

He's a retarded fat draft doger who wrote retarded draft dodger power fantasy and I can't believe you're all retarded.

>>21060007
that question makes no sense
just read any old occult book or grimoire, they describe the mechanism by which they believed magic and the universe at large worked and many got pretty systematic on that
the idea of magic needing to be this mysterious mysterious nebulous thing is a modern one
at the end of the day "magic" is just a word for the aspects of the nature of a fictional setting that differ from out own and are fantastical, and in practice, they can be anything the author wants it to be

>>21060942
>the idea of magic needing to be this mysterious mysterious nebulous thing is a modern one

It has been around since the mystery cults of antiquity to the literal definition of the occult within the last few centuries. It's secret science(s). Natural philosophers like the hermetics equated knowledge of the universe with personal illumination. Understanding is mysterious. The modern sorcerer is just the mad scientist pushing the limits of ethics in the name of precious information.

>>21050861
Everyone believes it'll happen. The fun part of whether or not it'll be like the show where it's like he just gets an extra life or if ends up a demented zombie freak being puppetted by outside entities ala Stoneheart or wargs into his wolf. One of the prologues kind of establishes how high level wargs can continue to exist as psychic ghost things which is probably linked to the Bran/Bloodraven storyline. Lots of fun possibilities that GRRM will take with him to the grave.

Don't make me post it again

>>21062112
He wrote more than you ever will.

>>21062547
Ate more, too.

>>21055783
>it's the only RPG i've played where INT, FTH and ARC explain a huge amount of how the world itself functions
QRD for those of us who aren’t into video gaymes?

>>21062768
the 3 magic stats are sort of used to explain the growth of life within the setting. It's a very heliocentric universe where things inevitably gain aposable thumbs etc the more they stay in contact with influential powers. The entire setting seems to take place inside a giant storm, with each of the magic stats representing the different stages of lightning occurence.
>Arcane
The baseline fundamental matter of the universe, constantly allegorised with blood, it adheers to the idea of things naturally growing into existence, particularly so because it's an authored world. Not only does it represent inherent luck through increased item discovery rates, but also enhances status effects under the context that your poison is more potent, kind of like how snakes have varying deadliness of venom.
>Intelligence
Intelligence inevitably forms and crystallises from the matter in the setting, It signifies the beginnings of cognitive thought, and most shamanic practices in the game rely on INT, much in the same way the first shamans didn't think of their craft as worship, but practice. Much of the magic that uses INT in the game is about mass vs. trajectory
>Faith
Belief in concepts, particularly higher power. None of the spells in the game reliant on Faith are concise in what they do, but are more about summoning the presence of something else that performs the task for you.

There is no dark/shadow/evil elements, evil/death is appropriately equated with the absence of any elemental force.

timeline wise, theres subtle implications that things evolved as such: ARC > INT > FTH
Arcane creates life, Intelligence forms from said life, and Faith was the creation of hierarchy

>>21062805
forgot my pic, if any fans want to see references to these concepts inside the game, I'll happily post them

>>21062808
I have Demons Souls on the ps5, haven't played it much lately but it's pretty good

>>21062805
I think you may be putting far, far too much more thought into this than the developers ever did, anon.

Intelligence and faith are interchangeable in this games/series--not just Elden Ring, which is more or less a compiled magnum opus of various shared influences & themes from the earlier releases. You have sorceries that denote faith, and miracles that denote intellect. In the same vein as GoT, you don't actually need to be faithful to see visions in the flame--it's just one approach. Similar to how some Incantations necessitate intelligence while some Sorceries necessitate faith. Or a mixture of both. It implies that the stats may not matter all that much. The setting is closer to a computer simulation, in that the physics reacts quite intimately with its understanders--notice how simply crushing Glintstone (or any other rockish material) has it produce a projectile projected toward a target of choice, implying that the conscious mind/direction is in-tune with the surrounding material world (physics), unlike our own in the real. Almost like it's alive, or conditioned too-conveniently. The powers-that-be like the Greater Will are strongly implicated to be infrastructurally cosmic in-affairs. It is likely a godlike (relevant), alien business of sorts. The game world is likely just one of its many distant projects it has invested in, and it is FURTHER implied it doesn't actually look at the world all that much, beyond its agents. It's why the cryptic Fingers take so long (or maybe their perceptions are just stretched), and the cryptic-ness of past Elden Lords.

Arcane also means hiddenness. (Not that the word 'Incantation' is any better when you literally hear Rennala voice an incantation at the start of her fight).

All magic may actually be intelligent, distantly, in some way, even Sorcery. If gods/aliens are stars, then Glintstone may merely be the stuff of splintered gods (shattered star stuffs), and the too-deep understanding of the origins of Glintstone (the primeval current) may be the piecing back together of a broken god/alien force, resulting in rather unfortunate silicon/crystallization effects--as supposedly Glintstone Sorcery involves the crystallization of the heart over time, and that bodies may be swapped by the swapping of said hearts/souls, like Sellen's and the ancient astrologers. Primeval current sorcerers like Lusat and Azur (Sellen's mentor) are more or less non-aware silicon constructs at this point, and even the Crystallians are said to only have a 'faint cognition' in them. The graven tradition of sorcery (Sellen's school of thought) pursuing the primeval current is also, quite literally, bunching up sorcerers and rolling them into singular mass constructs. Some people think Raya Lucaria is already compromised by the graven, and they turned on Sellen in the end...

>>21060258
YOU JUST KNOW

>>21063648
The reasonings behind the FTH sorceries and INT incants are more sensible than you think
>golden order incantation
are all spacial concepts that relate to human experience

>dragon incantation
they require arcane because to summon the presence of the dragon, you need anima as well as a conception of it's form in your mind

>death sorceries
controlling the dead needs a staff, not a seal because you're the FTH component in this situation. You may be controlling the dead but you need to think of who you're resurrecting for it to work.

>blood thorn sorceries
performing torture is an objective practice, but requires the faith that torture actually works on people

>lava sorceries
these are all endorsed by Rykard, and lava is the driving force behind most mineral creation. Wanting to make gold is selfish in intent, but objective in practice

>>21063648
also you're not wrong that the setting is digital
>fire wall around a virus (scarlet rot)
>erdtree = ERD tree (entity related diagram tree)
>jellyfish change from blue to red
>blurring of horn, fire and tree concepts, similiar to how the root of a program is called the kernel

>>21047148
??? literally who

>>21063648
doesn't what you say confirm my hierarchy?
arcane - nothingness creates form
intellect - form creates senses
faith - senses create concepts

>>21063734
>>21063781
In that sense, I guess so. I may have missed your comparison on my first read.

>>21062805
thats an interesting point of view
i always saw intelligence as simply knowing how glintstone works mechanically (that they move and flow) and engineering it to move in a way you want, similar to sorceries in dark souls
faith would be channeling the powers of erdtree worship, the crucible faith, dragon cult, giants flame, frenzy flame, beastman clergies, they are reliant of gods and forces within the setting, the lands between
arcane then channels the powers of gods cast out or residing "outside" the world like the blood force or dragon communion

i liked elden ring for including lots of alchemical symbolism and often making it literal like gold being associated with the sun and silver with the moon like the albinaurics (homunculus made with silver blood by the academy)

sadly every fan get their information from "Lore youtubers" which are bottom of the barrel misinterpretation, that take mistranslations and speculations about game models to their logical ridiculous conclusions

>>21063889
You have no idea how far my frustrations go with those channels. It might not be fair though because about 5 years ago I jumped down the Frazer/Eliade hole so a lot of what was expressed in the game was pretty fluent for me.

It is also worth considering that the setting is also scifi
>Gold is thought to have been produced in supernova nucleosynthesis, and from the collision of neutron stars, and to have been present in the dust from which the Solar System formed.

>Gold was synthesized from mercury by neutron bombardment in 1941, but the isotopes of gold produced were all radioactive. In 1924, a German scientist, Adolf Miethe, accomplished the same feat.

>In 1980, Glenn Seaborg transmuted several thousand atoms of bismuth into gold at the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory. His experimental technique was able to remove protons and neutrons from the bismuth atoms. Seaborg's technique was far too expensive to enable the routine manufacture of gold but his work is the closest yet to emulating an aspect of the mythical Philosopher's Stone.

my schizotheory is that the Elden Ring is one big nuclear reactor and/or particle accelerator

>>21063968
>my schizotheory is that the Elden Ring is one big nuclear reactor and/or particle accelerator
You're weird.

Post your favorite quotes
>Davos: What does Stannis offer you?Vengeance. Vengeance for my sons and yours, for your husbands and your fathers and your brothers. Vengeance for your murdered lord, your murdered king, your butchered princes. Vengeance!
>Wylla: Yes. piped a girl's voice, thin and high.
>It belonged to the half-grown child with the blond eyebrows and the long green braid
>They killed Lord Eddard and Lady Catelyn and King Robb. He was our king! He was brave and good and the Freys murdered him. If Lord Stannis will avenge him, we should join Lord Stannis.[4]

>>21059096
Valyrian sorcery, not even once.

>>21059972
>half life 2
>handling magic appropriately

pick 1 and only one

>>21057020
Melisandre did the same shit that Thoros did to keep reviving Beric Dondarrion and Caitlyn Stark

>>21061998
>a demented zombie freak being puppetted by outside entities ala Stoneheart
Stoneheart is being puppeteered. Thoros revived her after she had been dead for a while, so she suffered significantly more brain damage than Beric and Jon before they were revived. She's also deranged and pissed from that one wedding.

>>21065869
isn't*

>>21065869
Jon hasn't been revived in the novels, it's yet to be determined if he will be or what's going on there

>>21065878
I doubt it will change, since it's already established the red priests/esses can resurrect a person. Jon will still retain unhealing wounds, like Beric.

>>21065878
>Jon hasn't been revived in the novels,
He doesn't die in the novels, it ends with him being stabbed.

>>21065929
Yeah I know.

Do you guys remember there's supposedly 3 things Gurm told the tv show, and one of them was Hodor's name and another one was who sits on the throne at the end, so there's one more thing they may have gotten right but there's a whole bunch of shit they probably got really wrong

>>21054288
So many characters (Marwyn, Qaithe, Qorin Half-Hand, Melisandre) talk about how magic is coming back to the world. Dragons have been reborn, the others are not just ice zombies but sentient Ice-beings that can laugh and they are marching on the wall, krakens have been reported, and the fucking GLASS CANDLES ARE BURNING ANON. The last magic died with the last dragons, it's all been illusions and trickery since then. Valyria has killed everyone who visits, but Euron has come and gone, probably with the help of the Three eyed crow, not raven.

>>21061814
secret or occult and mysterious nebulous are different concepts, all those occult practices rely on a very systematic understanding of the world and how it works, not in the type of mysterious shit you are trying to push as the gold standard for magic

>>21061814
>the mystery cults
those centered around the passage of secret knowledge about how some aspect of the world worked, the word 'mystery' is not used in the same sense you are trying to push here, of unknown(able) and capricious

>>21047148
I saw him in the early 2010s in a Bubba Gump's restaurant in Monterey California. He had ordered a large amount of food and drinks and once he was finished he awkwardly waited for the check. A young woman no older than 30 appeared to be his date and he was clearly not in the mood to sign autographs for the few people that came up to him

>>21066477
>secret or occult and mysterious nebulous are different concepts
The occult literally means hidden. Of-bloody-course it is associated with the obscure and the esoteric. It is secret information.

You missed the bloody point, you dolt. Beliefs and systems can, and sometimes are, highly esoteric fields. This goes for physics as well.

>>21066490
Those were secretive systems and rites. You don't even understand the whole air of the occult.