God, how much longer are we going to have to wait for GRRM to finish the next book in this series? It is giving me heartburn.
It's interesting reading your take on the characters- I agree with most of it, though I do like Jon Snow rather a lot (I just like his mettle. He never says die, he has ironclad honor, and despite all of that, he still has a squishy spot for love.) and I'd have no problem shagging Eddard Stark*. And the character I love that no one else does? Cersei. She's so deliciously evil- I'd hate to think of the lack of intrigue if she wasn't around. :)
*SPOILER : In a non-necrophilia kind of way, of course...
My personal belief is that ASOIAF is never going to be finished. Martin started it fourteen or fifteen years ago, and frankly, I think he's tired of it.
Look at what's gone on with A Dance With Dragons. A Feast For Crows came out in 2005 when I was still hospitalized. Martin said in the afterword that he was about a third through with ADWD--that would have been a third of the way through about six months before publication, around the time that the manuscript was submitted. ADWD was supposed to come out the following spring.
Spring 2006 came. No DragonsThen the book was supposed to come out in October 2006
( ... )
Thank you so much for writing that bit about your perspective on Uhura. I've always been sort of vaguely aware of what the character meant to viewers at the time, but I've never seen it described quite like this before.
Jon bores me too. Also, his name is too close to the English physician John Snow who figured out that cholera epidemic centered around a well pump handle. The crossover is just too nonsensical for me
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I had a lot of sympathy for Catelyn early on - how much would it suck if your husband obviously had some huge secret affair (well, as far as you know - who knows in these books), and his bastard son is always around to remind you that he doesn't trust you enough to even tell you what really happened? But that was then.
Oh, yeah. I had huge sympathy for Catelyn for a long time. I even had sympathy for her when she was resurrected and hanging one of the Freys who helped betray her and her son. But she lost me when she wouldn't listen to Brienne of Tarth and hanged, or tried to hang, both Brienne and Tyrion's former squire, the shy, stuttering Podrick Payne. I understand that she was hopelessly damaged in mind and body at that point and was in no shape to listen...but I still don't feel the sympathy for her that I once did.
In my head, there's some magic handwavium device that allows Sam Tarly and Neville Longbottom to trade stories of being the chubby kid who couldn't fight at first.I have this mental image of them meeting at some pub
( ... )
I had hopes for zombie!Catelyn finally having some power to fight back, but yeah, it's hard to feel sympathy at this point. Though I'm sure that one word Brienne managed to choke out was "Arya," so there is a slim possibility that she'll get cut down just in time if DwD ever comes out. But probably she'll just die and Catelyn will now be tormented about acting too soon and losing out on possible info.
I figure any book that starts with a) the hero having a guy executed in front of his kids and b) heavy symbolism of the dead wolf with orphaned cubs is less likely than others to let anyone off the hook. It looked like one of those bait-and-switch deals, actually, where you think you know who the main character of the series will be, but actually he's just a setup for the real main cast.
You know, if Neville really does live above the Leaky Cauldron (I don't take JKR's interviews as gospel, but this one could be a fun idea), then he has a magic pub at hand already!
As for T'Pring...okay, I think this is a generational issue.
See, when I was watching Star Trek for the first time, women becoming property of their husbands was a pretty fair description of the way marriage worked. This was an era in which a married woman couldn't get a loan without her husband's permission. My independent and divorced mother needed her father to co-sign the mortgage on our house, because he was the only male relative she had. A joint bank account could exist--but if a woman wanted to clear out the account, the bank would notify the husband, on the grounds that since he was the man, it was really his money and he was just sharing it with his wife. If a man wanted to clear out the joint bank account, however, well, the bank wouldn't notify his wife, because it was his money and therefore his right to take it all out and spend if he wanted. It was a time in which women were routinely described in terms of marital status in every newspaper story, including obituaries. Every description of a woman began with "Miss" or
( ... )
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It's interesting reading your take on the characters- I agree with most of it, though I do like Jon Snow rather a lot (I just like his mettle. He never says die, he has ironclad honor, and despite all of that, he still has a squishy spot for love.) and I'd have no problem shagging Eddard Stark*. And the character I love that no one else does? Cersei. She's so deliciously evil- I'd hate to think of the lack of intrigue if she wasn't around. :)
*SPOILER : In a non-necrophilia kind of way, of course...
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Look at what's gone on with A Dance With Dragons. A Feast For Crows came out in 2005 when I was still hospitalized. Martin said in the afterword that he was about a third through with ADWD--that would have been a third of the way through about six months before publication, around the time that the manuscript was submitted. ADWD was supposed to come out the following spring.
Spring 2006 came. No DragonsThen the book was supposed to come out in October 2006 ( ... )
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Oh, yeah. I had huge sympathy for Catelyn for a long time. I even had sympathy for her when she was resurrected and hanging one of the Freys who helped betray her and her son. But she lost me when she wouldn't listen to Brienne of Tarth and hanged, or tried to hang, both Brienne and Tyrion's former squire, the shy, stuttering Podrick Payne. I understand that she was hopelessly damaged in mind and body at that point and was in no shape to listen...but I still don't feel the sympathy for her that I once did.
In my head, there's some magic handwavium device that allows Sam Tarly and Neville Longbottom to trade stories of being the chubby kid who couldn't fight at first.I have this mental image of them meeting at some pub ( ... )
Reply
I figure any book that starts with a) the hero having a guy executed in front of his kids and b) heavy symbolism of the dead wolf with orphaned cubs is less likely than others to let anyone off the hook. It looked like one of those bait-and-switch deals, actually, where you think you know who the main character of the series will be, but actually he's just a setup for the real main cast.
You know, if Neville really does live above the Leaky Cauldron (I don't take JKR's interviews as gospel, but this one could be a fun idea), then he has a magic pub at hand already!
Reply
See, when I was watching Star Trek for the first time, women becoming property of their husbands was a pretty fair description of the way marriage worked. This was an era in which a married woman couldn't get a loan without her husband's permission. My independent and divorced mother needed her father to co-sign the mortgage on our house, because he was the only male relative she had. A joint bank account could exist--but if a woman wanted to clear out the account, the bank would notify the husband, on the grounds that since he was the man, it was really his money and he was just sharing it with his wife. If a man wanted to clear out the joint bank account, however, well, the bank wouldn't notify his wife, because it was his money and therefore his right to take it all out and spend if he wanted. It was a time in which women were routinely described in terms of marital status in every newspaper story, including obituaries. Every description of a woman began with "Miss" or ( ... )
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