Morning Sickness
So it's Saturday, about 7am. I'm up early, watching reruns of "Malcolm in the Middle" while my stomach recovers from a Friday night diet of Southern Comfort, late-night nachos, and Motrin. I'm browsing the Internet, reading and responding to blog comments, checking the NAB for anything that could remotely resemble a point, generally doing my thing. And then, I found something new. And it made me angry.
Shocking, when you think about it. After all, I've managed to keep my blood pressure low through calendar sales, through miniatures and replica swords, through Jack Vance and football and the rape of a devoted public with water-damaged RPG books. But now...well, I think George's ego has once again exponentially exceeded his waistline.
What's that, you ask? What could it be? Well, see for yourself by following these helpful steps:
1. Check out the PDF programming guide for the upcoming ValleyCon.
2. Spend a few moments in slack-jawed astonishment at the sadness of our world.
3. Once finished, check out page 25, a collection of quotes from our favorite burbling sludgepile.
Where to begin?
"Tolkien made the wrong choice when he brought Gandalf back." Okay, just fuck you on that one, George. To malign the best-regarded fantasy writer of all time, especially around my house (note: I live in the Internet!), is akin to visiting a maternity ward and kicking around some babies. And not ugly babies, either. Gandalf comes back and does some serious orc-fucking at Helm's Deep, helps defend Minas Tirith, and leads an assault on the Black Gate; meanwhile, you bring Catelyn back so she can stare at people like a retarded monkey and hang a useless, blatantly expository character from the neck. For the most part, your entire catalog of "literature" is a series of wrong choices.
"Ten years from now, no one is going to care how quickly the books came out. The only thing that will matter, the only thing anyone will remember, is how good they were." For one, I think you already shot yourself in the foot on that plan, because I'm pretty sure AFFC isn't going to age like a fine wine. That shit only gets worse with time. And are we to assume that the books will be done in the next ten years? Because I'm betting on the fact that in ten years, you're six feet under and Eric Van Lustbader has to finish the series.
"I've been killing characters my entire career...playing for keeps." Okay, now this shit, I am honestly tired of hearing. George and his bootlickers have been touting the "killing characters" line for over a decade, and frankly, I think it's primarily bullshit. Here's the list of major characters that George has killed:
- Ned Stark
- Robb Stark
- Tywin Lannister
- Robert Baratheon
- Joffrey Baratheon
There you go. Five people, two of whom died in like the first half of the first book. After that, you're getting into minor characters (Renly, the Red Viper) and exceptionally minor characters -- Syrio Forel, Ygritte, Donal Noye. The guy has probably killed off about twenty five characters in the whole series, most of whom were minor or otherwise unimportant people. So let's be honest: the only real shocker that George pulled off was killing off Ned so early in the books. Ned was a moron who couldn't keep his mouth shut, and it was going to happen sooner or later. Other than that, were you really that surprised when Joffrey or Tywin or Robb got knocked off? Did you really expect that they were going to make it through? Either way, you've got six, maybe seven significant characters at the most that have been killed off over the course of four books that combined are like four thousand pages long and have literally over a thousand named characters in them. And out of those six or seven characters, I would argue that only the five guys named above were ones who mattered, and not a single one of their deaths was nearly as awesome, significant, or moving as when Boromir died defending the hobbits at Parth Galen. You want to talk about good choices? That shit was tight.
George may have an occasional curveball in these books, but let's be honest: for the most part, he telegraphs his moves worse than Greedo. People need to give up this myth about the supposed brutality of George towards his characters. He's basically killed five real people in these books, and for every character he kills there are twenty others that he never should have created in the first place, and that's way more brutal on his readers than anything else. I mean, Arys Oakheart? The Sand Snakes? Give me a fucking break. You want to get these books back on track, burn Dorne to the fucking ground before it spawns another retarded plotline, team up Arya and Syrio to fuck up the Lannisters, send Dany's pouty ass back into the sex trade, and have Jon Snow stop being such a pussy. In fact, I hope that's the climax of the entire fucking series: Jon Snow learns not to be a pussy. It will be like one big episode of Degrassi.
And I don't want to even talk about the "architect versus gardener" bullshit. I'm going to get some Dunkin' Donuts.
Shocking, when you think about it. After all, I've managed to keep my blood pressure low through calendar sales, through miniatures and replica swords, through Jack Vance and football and the rape of a devoted public with water-damaged RPG books. But now...well, I think George's ego has once again exponentially exceeded his waistline.
What's that, you ask? What could it be? Well, see for yourself by following these helpful steps:
1. Check out the PDF programming guide for the upcoming ValleyCon.
2. Spend a few moments in slack-jawed astonishment at the sadness of our world.
3. Once finished, check out page 25, a collection of quotes from our favorite burbling sludgepile.
Where to begin?
"Tolkien made the wrong choice when he brought Gandalf back." Okay, just fuck you on that one, George. To malign the best-regarded fantasy writer of all time, especially around my house (note: I live in the Internet!), is akin to visiting a maternity ward and kicking around some babies. And not ugly babies, either. Gandalf comes back and does some serious orc-fucking at Helm's Deep, helps defend Minas Tirith, and leads an assault on the Black Gate; meanwhile, you bring Catelyn back so she can stare at people like a retarded monkey and hang a useless, blatantly expository character from the neck. For the most part, your entire catalog of "literature" is a series of wrong choices.
"Ten years from now, no one is going to care how quickly the books came out. The only thing that will matter, the only thing anyone will remember, is how good they were." For one, I think you already shot yourself in the foot on that plan, because I'm pretty sure AFFC isn't going to age like a fine wine. That shit only gets worse with time. And are we to assume that the books will be done in the next ten years? Because I'm betting on the fact that in ten years, you're six feet under and Eric Van Lustbader has to finish the series.
"I've been killing characters my entire career...playing for keeps." Okay, now this shit, I am honestly tired of hearing. George and his bootlickers have been touting the "killing characters" line for over a decade, and frankly, I think it's primarily bullshit. Here's the list of major characters that George has killed:
- Ned Stark
- Robb Stark
- Tywin Lannister
- Robert Baratheon
- Joffrey Baratheon
There you go. Five people, two of whom died in like the first half of the first book. After that, you're getting into minor characters (Renly, the Red Viper) and exceptionally minor characters -- Syrio Forel, Ygritte, Donal Noye. The guy has probably killed off about twenty five characters in the whole series, most of whom were minor or otherwise unimportant people. So let's be honest: the only real shocker that George pulled off was killing off Ned so early in the books. Ned was a moron who couldn't keep his mouth shut, and it was going to happen sooner or later. Other than that, were you really that surprised when Joffrey or Tywin or Robb got knocked off? Did you really expect that they were going to make it through? Either way, you've got six, maybe seven significant characters at the most that have been killed off over the course of four books that combined are like four thousand pages long and have literally over a thousand named characters in them. And out of those six or seven characters, I would argue that only the five guys named above were ones who mattered, and not a single one of their deaths was nearly as awesome, significant, or moving as when Boromir died defending the hobbits at Parth Galen. You want to talk about good choices? That shit was tight.
George may have an occasional curveball in these books, but let's be honest: for the most part, he telegraphs his moves worse than Greedo. People need to give up this myth about the supposed brutality of George towards his characters. He's basically killed five real people in these books, and for every character he kills there are twenty others that he never should have created in the first place, and that's way more brutal on his readers than anything else. I mean, Arys Oakheart? The Sand Snakes? Give me a fucking break. You want to get these books back on track, burn Dorne to the fucking ground before it spawns another retarded plotline, team up Arya and Syrio to fuck up the Lannisters, send Dany's pouty ass back into the sex trade, and have Jon Snow stop being such a pussy. In fact, I hope that's the climax of the entire fucking series: Jon Snow learns not to be a pussy. It will be like one big episode of Degrassi.
And I don't want to even talk about the "architect versus gardener" bullshit. I'm going to get some Dunkin' Donuts.