Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Umbran" data-source="post: 1473341" data-attributes="member: 177">The quest to stop an evil power is scattered throughout mythology.  And Jules Verne was writing travelog stories a long time before Tolkien published (Journey to the Center of the Earth in 1864, Around the World in 80 Days in 1873).  Yes.  But oddly enough, the third person limited narrative and character thoughts in italics are standard modes not just in fantasy, but in fiction in general.  You see it in westerns, mysteries, and romance novels.  You see it bloody everywhere!  Given that, how can you say that Martin got it specifically from Williams, and not from say, his English teacher, or from reading gods only knows how many books on his own?The King's Hand I'll give you, even though I should think most kings have trusted aids and advisors.  The rest - several kindoms under a high king, and the war breaking out after the king's death is Arthurian.  Winter and famine and the threat from the north are derived from European historical facts, and low magic is typical for European mythology as well.  The mysterious fey are, of course, found all over European legend.  All in all, you've got three authors drawing from a similar pool of elements.  Yes, they may be modelling one upon the other (and there's some evidence that they are doing so).  But you might well expect them to choose similar elements anyway.  We can see it as an observation about the authors, but I don't see it as particularly valuable criticism.  Any author who is influenced by European myth might make similar choices, so it's hardly a big deal.No, you didn't say that, you said, in fact, that Martin "pillaged wholesale" from Williams.  Those were your words in your first post.  So which do you prefer - characterizing Martin as a petty theif, or a barbarian horde (from the North, obviously) ?  <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /></blockquote>

Verification