This is discussion archived from a time before the current discussion method was installed.
Working Title: Dear Negative Reader: From YKTTW
Autochton: On the time A Dance With Dragons has been in writing: It was started simultaneously with A Feast For Crows, hence it has been nine years coming.
This trope is specific to the creator going off on a rant against people who have criticisms against them. Primarily, it deals with authors who do so unfairly - Hamilton was highly passive-aggressive toward fans who wanted a return to her initial Anita Blake style, for example. For authors who address fan criticism in a fair and even-handed way, there is Word of God, or even Take That, Critics!.
Mr Wednesday: I'm not sure it's quite right to say Dance has been nine years underway...remember originally Feast and Dance were just one book, and no-one would claim that at about 700 pages Feast is only half a book, so Dance as a separate book has only been in the works for four years.
Also, I don't think either of the other two tropes you mentioned fit. I don't see why this page has to always refer to childish, Hamilton-esque behaviour by creators, it seems a bit arbitrary to say in the description "this is always a bad trope" when the only distinction is how the creator goes about it.
Autochton: That's the scary part - AFFC is only half the story of what was originally going in there, by Martin's own admission. There's stuff going into ADWD that was originally slated to be part of AFFC, but since it grew out of hand in size, it was split into two volumes - Martin put in an afterword to AFFC explaining this. So it would be entirely fair to call it half a book, even at the size it's at.
Your points wrt. the nature of the trope are well taken. The line between 'reasonable' and 'unreasonable' is a thin one, and creators don't seem loath to cross it. It would be a tough distinction to make, and a highly subjective one.
