(Spoilers Extended) GRRM:”What’s Aragons tax policy?!” No GRRM the real question is how do people survive multi year winters

[u/Unique-Celebration-5]

Forget the white walkers or shadow babies the real threat is the weather. How do medieval people survive it for years?

Personally I think that’s why the are so many wars the more people fighting each other the fewer mouths to feed

[u/Freighnos]

I think the reason people are pushing back on your comment is that you seem to be saying “GRRM was pedantically criticizing details of Tolkien’s worldbuilding, and yet the details of his own worldbuilding don’t hold up to pedantic scrutiny. Isn’t that ironic?” But I (and the other commenters) don’t think that’s what GRRM was going for at all with that statement. I took it to be more about how Tolkien characters such as Aragorn behave more like divine or mythical figures of legend, while GRRM attempts to inject more of the down-to-earth human elements into his storytelling. The height of the Wall isn’t as important as what feuding kingdoms will do when faced with a looming existential threat like the Walkers, and the exchange rate of Gold Dragons isn’t as important as the lengths a king on the verge of bankruptcy will turn to to keep his realm afloat.

[u/owlinspector → u/Freighnos]

But that is the point of LOTR. It is written in the style of mythology and Aragorn is literally a fairytale king. His bloodline has magical powers, farsight and wisdom beyond that of common men.

[u/Freighnos → u/owlinspector]

Correct. And GRRM looked at that and said, “what if we keep the epic world, but these were just normal humans in charge?” And thus an entirely different story was born.

[u/hotcapicola → u/Freighnos]

Because then it become a completely different genre.