Sandy Clegg

Hence the mental health check! How are you holding up these days, glorious leader?

Me too, when all's said and done. GRRM is trying to achieve what so few have done before, so you have to give him incredible props just for the attempt. Also, I was very happy to see that the project on reddit to send him a signed thank you book was received by him recently.

Sounds like just another day in 2025 politics tbh.

Well, GRRM has said that he wishes he'd not made certain characters quite so young, I think, but it's too late to change all that now. Making the characters sexually active/get married so young .... he seemingly did so for historical verisimilitude. But we now live in a world that is a lot more mindful of such inappropriate depictions than when he began the books. It is what it is. In any case, GRRM generally comes down on the side of the angels with regard to these depictions. He never shies away from the ugliness of this stuff, but he also has to define the norms of his world - and they are not our norms. Capital punishment exists in ASOIAF, and many of us in this world would find that equally disturbing, but it barely gets a complaint. There's always Sam and Gilly to root for, though! Those crazy kids ...

As others have mentioned, In Deep Geek from the U.K. is a very humble yet insightful ASOIAF commentator. Lots of miscellaneous ideas and theories which come from people in his chat, which he does his best to answer:

Those posts are always good, it just feels like such a mammoth undertaking! You're doing the lord's work

I've often thought about these parallels, and maybe I should stop being lazy and write them up. But the one thing I would point out is that the Kingsguard are not the King. But they do have a Lord Commander (Jon's current position at the Wall), so .... might this rather be analogous to a role that Jon might play, if he were to somehow become entwined with the Others?

Yes, they have a place in the community for sure. Many people just don't like the written format these days. But is it too much to ask for the YouTubers to not abandon the old forums entirely? I guess if it's not a SuperChat then it's not worth engaging, that's the feeling I get these days.

I have mixed feelings. As long as they are respectful towards GRRM I can overlook a lot of the wilder blabbing. In Deep Geek is always respectful and mindful of not straying into YouTuber stereotypes. Preston Jacobs is an odd mix of insightful analysis coupled with inexplicably tedious nitpicking. LmL has been ploughing his unique furrow for a while now is always positive and enjoyable. I often have them on in the background while I'm playing a game - I never know when a random comment will spark a theory of my own, etc. I do agree that the text forum should be the default central hub of the community, and it's sad that the YouTubers are so keen to monetise their content that they have completely eschewed any presence on these forums. That feels a little bit gatekeeper-ish to me.

I think we can all relate to those moments of being dead set certain on a particular theory only to look back at ourselves years later and shake our heads. Although I don't think anyone can top the few days when I once became convinced that all the characters in the book were actually dogs (in our world) taking part in the same shared delusion that they were fantasy characters ... SMH (at myself - a lot!).

It does feel as though ACOK came so quickly after AGOT that GRRM had a lot of the second book in mind while writing the first, so it absolutely makes sense to treat them as being much more interconnected than, say, ADWD, where he had started to diverge from the original plan somewhat. Same goes for ASOS maybe. The first three books probably existed 'in GRRM's brain' in some more solid form than subsequent books, even though he is a gardener.

Possibly related? HG Wells specifically ordered the symbol of a sphinx on the cover of the first edition of his "The Time Machine".

We are living in the biggest case of 'waiting for the other shoe to drop' that there's ever been, so it's hard for many of us. I devoted a few good years to theorising and am now taking somewhat of a break, so I pop in here less frequently. But those few years of researching the books were time well spent I think. There's definitely a sense of having 'got it out of my system', plus it makes you feels more connected to the ASOIAF theory community which is one of the most interesting I've ever come across (as bonkers as it can be at times).

Ironclad headcanon and tinfoil headwear are surely two metallic cranial devices we should be wary of adopting. Although without them this forum would be a lot more empty!

Aloha one and all Thought it might be nice to check in on everyone with regard to their ASOIAF theorising. Also maybe a quick mental health check for those fellow obsessives out there Do you believe the same things you did 5, 10, 15 years ago? What have you changed your mind about the most? What do you focus on in your re-reads? Are you resigned to TWOW never coming out, or still hopeful? Are the YouTubers getting too big for their boots?