I just love how dedicated Martin is to character development, and he rarely ever lets the narrative intrude on this.
I mean, he likes keeping his readers guessing, and he likes to keep the veil of mystery, but at the same time, he is not sticking stubbornly to the unwritten rule of modern fiction that the audience should always be at least one step behind the characters in order to sustain the mystery.
This is one of the annoying things that breaks the immersion for me in other works. If the audience knows a piece of information, you could bet your arse that so too will the characters(every single one of them). Somehow it's deemed unthinkable that the characters would lag behind in this regard, as if to say "This is not how the game is played, characters reveal information to the readers, they must always know more."
Martin is not afraid to make a character completely oblivious to certain things, even though we already know a lot about them. Point in case is this mystery of John Snow's parenthood, and when Ned Dayne talks about his mother with Arya, and it's an itch that needs scratching, and you wish so bad that Arya would be more inquisitive about it, hoping that maybe you'll learn just a little bit more, but she's just like "Oh shut up kid, you don't know what you're on about", and that's the end of it. She doesn't even know the little that we do, but then why should she? No new information gets revealed, rather an old piece of information is fed to a character that doesn't know anything about it and she just flat out dismisses it. The plot is not developed, but the character is.
It's one of the best things about the books I think, that the characters are not slaves to the narrative, they are not just temporary mediums for the necessary exposition, but pursue their own ends instead, and the author makes a tremendous effort to get inside their heads. I think he thinks if he does a good job of that, that itself will tell a story in a much more spontaneous way, than if he had them jumping out of character at every turn just because 'we know something' or the story needs an m. night shyamalan twist.
I think if he stays true to that, I wont ever be disappointed by a development, just because some people on the internet saw it coming like Christmas.
I mean, he likes keeping his readers guessing, and he likes to keep the veil of mystery, but at the same time, he is not sticking stubbornly to the unwritten rule of modern fiction that the audience should always be at least one step behind the characters in order to sustain the mystery.
This is one of the annoying things that breaks the immersion for me in other works. If the audience knows a piece of information, you could bet your arse that so too will the characters(every single one of them). Somehow it's deemed unthinkable that the characters would lag behind in this regard, as if to say "This is not how the game is played, characters reveal information to the readers, they must always know more."
Martin is not afraid to make a character completely oblivious to certain things, even though we already know a lot about them. Point in case is this mystery of John Snow's parenthood, and when Ned Dayne talks about his mother with Arya, and it's an itch that needs scratching, and you wish so bad that Arya would be more inquisitive about it, hoping that maybe you'll learn just a little bit more, but she's just like "Oh shut up kid, you don't know what you're on about", and that's the end of it. She doesn't even know the little that we do, but then why should she? No new information gets revealed, rather an old piece of information is fed to a character that doesn't know anything about it and she just flat out dismisses it. The plot is not developed, but the character is.
It's one of the best things about the books I think, that the characters are not slaves to the narrative, they are not just temporary mediums for the necessary exposition, but pursue their own ends instead, and the author makes a tremendous effort to get inside their heads. I think he thinks if he does a good job of that, that itself will tell a story in a much more spontaneous way, than if he had them jumping out of character at every turn just because 'we know something' or the story needs an m. night shyamalan twist.
I think if he stays true to that, I wont ever be disappointed by a development, just because some people on the internet saw it coming like Christmas.
Then they'll find out that BRAN, ARYA, AND TYRION ALL DIE HORRIBLE DEATHS.