..and away we go

[grrrm]

Okay - so Ray has thrown in his two cents about the HBO production of GOT.  I'll throw in my buck seventy-five.  First, I kind of liked it overall, but I still had issues.  Not my normal issues, like bad impulse control, a tendency toward violence, general sociopathic behavior, etc.  But issues, you know….

First off, I watch the first episode

Comments

[kishiriadgr]

The book is going to be shit, you know it.

[prankster36]

And thus, the narrative begins to shift.

WHY WON'T MARTIN RELEASE THE LONG FORM BIRTH CERTIFICATE?!? I MEAN THE HIGH SCHOOL ACADEMIC RECORDS?!?

[kishiriadgr]

I myself am not shifting narrative at all. I am refusing to watch the HBO show and I will not be buying "Dance" when it comes out. George has shown how much disdain he has for his readers and I'm not giving him a dime of my money.

[serscot]

Okay. Hope that works out well for you.

[kishiriadgr]

Saves me money.

[prankster36]

That...really wasn't my point. My point is that the people who have been flatly stating that the book would NEVER EVER be finished and that Martin was deliberately screwing with everyone and just stealing their money have been proven wrong, so now the emphasis is being shifted to "THE NEXT BOOK IS GOING TO SUCK HARDCORE", a narrative that will be stuck to even if the next book is so good it cures cancer. See: the reaction around here to the objectively quite excellent HBO series. People have committed to hating Martin, for whatever reason is handy. Take away one reason to do so, and they'll find another.

I was frustrated by the delay in the next book too, but when you lose perspective you just look like an ass.

[vytresna]

Yes. Thank you.

Personally, I'm girding myself for disappointment, but that's in the sense that he's George R.R. Freaking Martin and there's nothing he loves more than crushing a masochistic reader's soul the moment it conceives of hope.

Really, I would probably love the book if Dany got a handle on the whole ruling thing and completely foiled Euron, somebody discovered a good-aligned religion that actually does something useful, Sansa arranged for all the lords of the East to catch Littlefinger macking on his bastard daughter, Jon outmaneuvered Melisandre, and blah blah unicorns. It would especially be fun to see the "MASS-MURDERING RAPISTS ALWAYS WIN IN REAL LIFE" folks' heads explode.

But as it is... yeah, I've pretty much got Battered Reader Syndrome and I don't know why I keep going back. Send help.

[duffypratt]

There may be some people who said he would never finish this book, but that's not what most have said. Rather, some of us think that Martin will never finish the series (the book called A Song of Ice and Fire). That's a bet I'd still gladly take. Martin, even more than Jordan, has caused me to refrain from starting any series of books, with installments that do not stand on their own, until the series is finished.

As for the HBO series, likewise I will wait until it is either done or abandoned. I've done that with a number of series now, and I think it works much better. The series almost invariably tend to lose focus at some point. And its much easier to deal with the almost inevitable disappointment if you are watching them over a very short period. If I had watched Lost over the full span of its seasons, I might have had Pesci call one of his friends to take care of the writers at the end. Since I watched all but the last season on DVD in a couple of weeks, the bullshit of the last season itself was a bit easier to bear.