ClassicAl

Art is the highest form of hope - Gerhard Richter

[House of the Dragon @HouseofDragon]

What Episode 2 quote is on repeat in your head?

[gianmarco @GianmarcoSoresi]

I’m sure they share some choice vocabulary

[Cymorg @CyMorgComics]

THE GOVERNMENT IS NOT A BUSINESS

ITS PURPOSE IS NOT TO MAKE MONEY

[𐌁𐌉Ᏽ 𐌕𐌉𐌌𐌉 @OrevaZSN]

Food trucks need to go back to being cheaper than dine in restaurants. Paying restaurant prices to eat on a sidewalk was never part of the deal.

[Global UPDATES @GlobalUpdates24]

BREAKING –

US becomes the first country in the world to host a team at the FIFA World Cup and bоmb that team's country on the same day

[🇦🇫 @M1L4GR03]

"Wow i just saw a beautiful woman. Let me tweet that i am a nazi pedophile"

[679 Enthusiast @marionumber4]

MAGA when actual sharia law

[Aaron Rupar @atrupar]

Massie: "I think it's ironic that we control the House, Senate, Supreme Court, and the White House, and we're yelling 'election fraud'? I mean, we won all the damn elections."

[Rod @rodimusprime]

This is what the bad guys wear…

[Netflix @netflix]

how it feels to watch a harlan coben production

[Aidan Simardone @AidanSimardone]

Canadians voted Liberal to avoid getting Harper 2.0 and in return got Harper 2.0

[Culture Crave 🍿 @CultureCrave]

PlayStation is deleting over 500 purchased movies from its customers' accounts 🎞️

• Includes films like 'Terminator 2', 'Rambo', 'Apocalypse Now', 'Hot Fuzz', and 'Moonlight'

• Comes after a licensing deal ended

[Morgan Cameron Ross @Morgan_C_Ross]

Pierre’s father has been married to a man since he was 12 years old. Odd that he doesn’t support what he was raised with.

[Alvaro Berro @alvarofberro]

🚨 #ULTIMAHORA preocupación por el estado de salud mental de Edward Norton. Se le ha visto desorientado hablando solo durante el USA-Turquía en el estadio de los Ángeles.

[TC @totalcristiano]

The timing of this advert kills me everytime 😭

[💟Ole IS Right, Esq. @Ole_is_right]

“We make two deeply homophobic regimes play on Pride night, in one of the gayest cities in America.”

[Jake Landau (He/Him) 🇨🇦🇵🇸🇻🇪🇺🇦 @JakeLandauTO]

oh shit do you Yankees not like it when someone threatens to annex your country against your will?

[𝐍𝐢𝐜𝐡𝐨𝐥𝐚𝐬 𝐖𝐨𝐥𝐟 @TheNicholasWolf]

This is actually a serious issue for fantasy writers as well. A few years back I was pitching a seven book dark fantasy series to agents, and the most common question they asked was “is the series finished?” Despite having THREE BOOKS finished, every agent passed on it because “these days publishers aren’t likely to take chances on a long series that isn’t mostly completed.”

Though no one ever explicitly said why, the implied blame for this newfound hesitancy rested on George R.R. Martin’s shoulders.

[Larry Correia @monsterhunter45]

I’ve been telling people this for years.
GRRM pissed off millions of customers but he don’t give a shit. He got his bag. But his legacy is being such an epic bum ass bum that he crippled an entire genre, ruined consumer sentiment, and killed off an entire generation of epic fantasy authors.

Romantasy and LitRPG grew as a direct result of filling the smoking crater George left in the industry. New writers could no longer get deals to write epic fantasy unless the entire series was in the bag, and nobody can afford to gamble that much time to write that many books they may never sell.

Publishers no longer took chances on new series because customers had got burned by lazy shirkers like George and Pat. Agents wouldn’t represent new epic fantasy unless the whole thing was done. It hurt Indy because dudes had to convince customers that they weren’t bums too. Except when book one makes $50 total, because customers said Im not starting a new series until it’s done! they sure as shit ain’t writing book two. So it’s a self fulfilling prophesy of suck.

In the comments Dunning-Krugerands are saying this isn’t true. Look at guys like Brandon Sanderson. Wrong. Guys like him, or me, who already had established names, reputations, and fan bases were fine. We had enough customers who trusted us we could still do new things and people would come along to make it economically viable.

For example, the only reason my epic fantasy series got picked up is because I was already successful and could guarantee a viable level of sales off my existing fans. Newbs don’t have that. And over the ten years it took for me to write the six books to finish it, the entire time I heard from potential customers, nope, not gonna start a new series that might not finish because of George.

I am fine during this because I’m still gonna make a couple hundred grand off each of those just off my existing fans. Newbs make two bucks an hour, say to hell with being a writer I’m going back to my day job, and you all missed out on the next great author and his absolutely brilliant series, because you were too mad at billionaire George shoving twinkies in his mouth instead of writing.

Nope. Guys like me and Brandon are fine. George’s profound laziness screwed over the new guys. Customers and the industry quit taking chances on new guys. We will never know how many excellent fantasy series we missed out on, robbed by George’s laziness burning so many customers.

Some writers gave up, but others moved into different genres. Which is good. But it sure does suck if epic fantasy is your jam. LitRPG is close but different enough it blew up during this time frame because that’s where the talented went.

Being such a pretentious, bloviating bum that you damage an entire industry and strangle a generation of aspiring artists is quite the legacy.

Kal (who is a good writer btw, check out his books) asks what can we do about this? For me personally I’m just gonna continue mocking George’s work ethic in the hopes more normies realize what an outlier he is, and how they should expand their horizons to read other authors who aren’t stuck up, know it all, dickheads.

And before anybody starts barking at me that I’m such a hypocrite because I’ve not finished all my series, sorry I’ve only finished three of eight so far, and have only written THIRTY books since George’s last one, the next MHI comes out in December, and the last two books are next year, and I’m not planning on retiring anytime soon (if ever).