Hello teh interwebz,
Unlikely as it is that anyone is going to read this, here I am. I felt the call and I answered; because what the internet really needs is another anonymous blogger, right? Exactly.
This will hopefully be a place where I can order my thoughts on random matters, most likely with reviews and musings on fiction of various stripes (primarily SF and fantasy, but other genres might occasionally get a look in), perhaps upon games of either the board- or computer- variety, and maybe even, if ever I raise my head above the parapet, about matters that actually impact on the real world. Not terribly likely, but anything's possible. After all, who would have thought that a perennial late-adopter like me would ever overcome apathy enough to actually dip his toe into the blogosphere?
Wow. Could I sound any more pretentious? I'll try and tone that down at any rate, but we'll see how I fare...
I intend to begin blogging properly with a series of posts responding to the new season of the popular HBO series, Game of Thrones; I would be lying if I said I wasn't heavily invested in the programme, the series of novels by George R. R. Martin that preceded them, and many of the various media manifestations that have spawned from them over the last decade or so.
By any stretch of the imagination, the series is not high literature, and over the last few years as my awareness of such matters has grown, some problematic elements have become more obvious and a little troubling1; more prosaically, recent instalments in the novel series have shown a tendency towards padding and the slowing of narrative drive to practically a crawl. However, for me (and apparently a growing number of readers and - now - viewers) there's something undeniably addictive about the world Martin has created and shaped; some of the primary draws (at least from my own perspective) being the labyrinthine plotting, colourful characters, and the sense that is fostered that almost every one of them are ultimately disposable for the sake of the plot.
With the advent of the TV series and its success I also find myself in the odd situation where something that I have liked for close to a decade has exploded into the popular consciousness in a way I have not previously experienced, and which leaves me equal parts bemused, chuffed, and, irrationally, sometimes a bit proprietorial (the 'I liked it before it was popular; how dare you play with my toys?' reaction).
In conclusion then, this series probably takes up a disproportionate amount of my attention (and this is without even counting the mental processing power used in my current involvement with a play-by-forum version of the boardgame from Fantasy Flight Games), and I find myself irresistibly drawn to exploring the TV series, both as an entity in an of itself, and as a reflection on the whys and wherefores of the adaptation process. My next post will concentrate on the first episode of Season 2, 'The North Remembers', and will appear (hopefully) soon. I'm a little bit behind at this point (episode 3 debuts this evening in the States), but hopefully I will catch up in the next week or so. If any of this floats your boat, please come back and (in the words of the Lannisters) 'Hear me Roar'. Or, as is more likely, Witness me Wittering. Either way, welcome to my humble abode: pull up a pew.
1 For an excellent and acerbic analysis of many of these elements, I doubt you can find better than Sady Doyle's at Tiger Beatdown - I don't agree with everything there, but she is spot on for a lot of it.↩
