Offseason comics in full swing baby

Occasionally, GRRM (Writer of the Game of Thrones books, nerdy santa claus) posts a few words on his personal journal/blog about whatever he’s up to or thinking about. Every once in a while he will post about football and the nerds who are still waiting on the Winds of Winter will get extremely mad about it. I love it every time. He’s a NY football fan, so he likes both the Giants and Jets (something that both fanbases might consider sacrilegious but whatever). He’ll pop in to mention he’s excited about the Giants draft class or something and nerds will yell at him on Twitter to finish the damn books.

I have to imagine those same people yelling at him are probably one of the reasons he hasn’t yet. Besides the emotional deflation of having the show pass him, the show ended very poorly, and the daunting complexity of figuring out how to actually tie his story together in the first place from a world that got too big too fast, it probably doesn’t help to have legions of fans being mad at him every time he does anything else. Honestly, while I’d like to read how the story ends from the man himself and not from those dumbos who ran the show into the dirt, I kinda don’t blame him for not doing it.

On a much smaller scale, I know what it is like just from doing this comic to have people hounding you to do a thing, knowing I should probably do that thing, and subsequently losing all desire to do that thing. It is one of the reasons why none of the running gags last too long here. After a point, the people just want that, but they get harder and harder to do, and doing other things always feels more fun. I like that George is just doing what he actually wants right now. He’s making the House of the Dragon prequel series (which is pretty good if you are on the fence), he’s writing lots of side stories and such in the world of ice and fire, he did…something on Elden Ring, we have no idea what he actually contributed. It definitely felt like the confusingly similar royalty demigod names were on him.

I sorta hope he just keeps doing that. He’s in his 70’s. He’s successful and has earned the time to do what makes him happy instead of caving to fan demand for books that lots of people will probably dissect and call him a hack for anyway. The curse of the expectations. Do what makes you happy George. I watched Stephen King panic write the end of the Dark Tower saga after he had a brush with death and the results there were mixed at best. If the inspiration isn’t coming, then do the stuff that is inspired. You don’t owe me or anyone else the rest of the story.