nobodysuspectsthebutterfly:

His point was that “but you said GRRM already showed in the first book that he wasn’t going to pull any punches, he wasn’t afraid of trope subversion — how do you know he isn’t going to completely subvert tropes and have everybody die and the bad guys win? You say it’s subverting tropes to have an innocent pretty princess who believes in stories learn that they’re all false, and then become a powerful cunning queen — wouldn’t it be even more subversive to have her die?”  And my only answer to that was “…but that wouldn’t be right, and he’d never sell another book” and he just laughed at me.  He is just so mean, I swear.

I believe my exact words at this point were more like “He won’t have to sell another book, the series will be over and he’ll already have your money.”

I expect George R. R. Martin’s career is headed down a similar path to J. K. Rowling’s—he’ll finish his twenty-year magnum opus, make a billion dollars, and then settle into semi-retirement.  This is not someone who is terrified that people will stop buying his books, any more than Rowling was worried that people would rage about the fate of Snape or the names of Harry Potter’s kids. 

I still think that sacrificing culminative plot just to be cruel to readers is something no author would do, not even GRRM.  (Because that just wouldn’t be right, stories just don’t work that way.)

I agree that this ought to be true (although the pro wrestling industry has shown me otherwise).  But this logic has not held up so far for ASOIAF fandom, has it?  So it’s really absurd to think that GRRM is going to spend the whole series screwing with you and suddenly be predictable for the last fifty pages.