Hippoi Athanatoi

I was back in the saddle again yesterday after the usual lesson break over the summer. I can definitely feel that today; we were just two students in the lesson, so we got quite the workout. But it was great to be back on a horse, especially since I got to ride Barka. She did start off rather opinionated—even for her!—and tried to ignore my leg aids as she just curled herself up behind the bit. Our instructor told me that she has been turning increasingly “mare-ish” of late; meaning, she needs a carefully balanced dose of determination and politeness from the rider.

Fortunately, I like horses with opinions and after a while we came to some passable agreements; she’d start moving forward on her own, I’d stop bothering her quite so much with my aids. Of course, there was still the matter of keeping all her body parts under control and making sure she was actually straight through the whole body. And once she’d stopped pulling back behind the bit, I had to readjust a bit mentally and remember to keep my reins quite short to give her proper support on her left side.

Her walk is definitely the hardest gait to work with as she does have a tendency to lose momentum and not really move through her whole body. The trot is quite good, I think, and yesterday the canter worked really well too. The transitions can be so-so, but the work we did yesterday—which included a lot of transitions as well as some lateral work—helped Barka stay together and get more explosive.

A little too explosive at times, mind you, but I am getting used to the occasional bit of bucking being thrown in. I hope the riding school is able to keep her—she has issues with dust allergies—because she really suits me quite nicely, both in terms of her body type and her personality.

Looking back at this blog, I realise that I switched from posting here to posting to Observations partway into last season of Game of Thrones. I probably had a good reason for it at the time. For this season, I haven’t had time to post anything so far, but there are several reasons for why I do want to write a bit about the Red Wedding, in the books and on the screen. And, since it will be talking more about the books, I guess I am putting it here.

Until a couple of weeks ago, I had not actually read the Red Wedding chapter in A Storm of Swords.  In fact, I had not read most of the latter half of A Storm of Swords. When the book was first published, Elio and I started reading it together, passing it back and forth between us. I read ahead on Daenerys’s storyline, given that it was separate from anything else, and that led to Elio reading ahead of me in all the other storylines. As a result, he got to the Red Wedding a bit ahead of me. He didn’t precisely tell me what happened but I was sitting in the same room as he read the chapter and his reactions were…intense. No thrown books (we do not throw books around here ;P), but plenty of gasps.

It rattled me, a lot. I scare really easily and I have a wonderfully vivid imagination for horrible things. So, when I got the book back from Elio, that feeling that something is terribly wrong that the chapters before the actual wedding build up just got to be too much for me. I knew that a horrible car crash was coming up and I knew that if I got to that point, I wouldn’t be able to look away. And I really, really didn’t want those images in my head; there’s a reason why I don’t generally read or watch horror. It didn’t matter that the character’s being killed weren’t any favourites of mine; I probably mourned Grey Wind the most since Robb was something of non-entity for me and unlike Elio I wasn’t a big Catelyn fan, though my recent re-reads have given me a better understanding of her even if I still don’t really like her as a person.

Why didn’t I just skip that chapter and kept reading the rest of the book? At first, I figured I would be able to get back reading soon enough. I did finish all the Daenerys chapters and, I think, the Jaime chapters. But then there was the other big event of A Storm of Swords—the duel, that is. We had already been spoiled before we started reading about how the duel would end. Elio got to that one ahead of me as well—I think he pretty much finished the whole book in one day, staying up until early in the morning—and I got enough of an impression from him to know that I did not want to read that chapter either. In fact, that one made me a lot angrier than the Red Wedding, because GRRM managed to hype Oberyn in just the right way before the book came out that I was sure I had a new favourite character coming on stage. In fact, once he was introduced, he turned out to be even more interesting than we had thought he would be.

And then GRRM killed him. We knew it was coming, but that didn’t help. In fact, overall that upset me more than the Red Wedding (which didn’t really make me sad or angry, just sick to the stomach with the horror of it) because it actually removed a character that I wanted to read more about, a character that I had an emotional (and, alright, hormonal ;P) attachment to. One reason that I was so relieved that GRRM skipped the planned 5-year-gap after A Storm of Swords was that I was really sad that the gap meant that we would not get any immediate reactions to Oberyn’s death. It made it feel more pointless, somehow. That is probably also why “The Captain of the Guards” is my favourite chapter of A Feast for Crows, closely followed by the other Dornish chapters.

So, the Red Wedding stopped me in my tracks as I was reading, but there was more in the second half of the book that I didn’t want to get too involved with. Now I am past the halfway mark, I am in the middle of the next wedding, but I will probably save the rest of the book for closer to the next season, to have it all fresh in my mind. I am not sure if I am hoping that they do a good or a bad job with casting and writing Oberyn; I might not want to get attached to the character on the show, all considered, so perhaps it is better if they botch it. After all, and that’s a long and roundabout way of connecting back to the Red Wedding episode, watching the Red Wedding on TV was actually a lot easier than reading it because they didn’t manage to adapt it as well as they could have. If they had created the same tension on the show that GRRM did in the book, I might have found it hard to sit through the whole episode. But they didn’t, and I watched it without any stronger reaction at all.

This, my completely different reactions to the book and the show—and bear in mind that I was coming to that chapter fully spoiled, so that isn’t where the difference lies— is why I think that it was such a mistake to go for a shock instead of creating that sick feeling in your stomach throughout the whole episode; the true horror of the Red Wedding is as much about the atmosphere as it is about what actually happens. GRRM shifts from fantasy to horror without telling you and starts creating the sort of dread that a horror story would create, the sort of dread that makes you wish for a release, even though you know that the release will be bloody. Here, you start wishing for that release, without realising that you are in for a true horror story ending. That is masterful storytelling and that is damned effective.

Of course, if it had that effective on the show—because, admittedly, the episode has clearly been very effective for a lot of people as it is—it might have broken the Internet.

Mission accomplished, with minimal effort. Now if our plans for Blood of Dragons 2.0 would be coming along just as smoothly, I’d be feeling even better. Just what I need since work has been kicking our butts with vigour since before Christmas.

Now, back to The World of Ice and Fire. Which may include some 2.0 musings on the side; I am so looking forward to working in all the new history, even if it will mean a lot of restructuring too.

It appears we have acquired a particularly dedicated troll on WORA, a bold hero determined to continue his epic struggle to inform the world of the horrors of Blood of Dragons. And the horrors of Firan, too. Somehow he has managed to lodge two sticks up his ass at the same time, a pretty impressive feat I must concede. Apparently he has a habit of randomly dragging BoD into all sorts of topics, just to demonstrate how very unhappy we’ve made him. I was pointed to some choice quotes and one of the most recent was the most amusing, since it referenced a discussion on the Public channel that I witnessed around a week ago. That means that our troll—who signed up to WORA in 2011 and has been bitching about us with some regularity since then—is still on the game. Masochist, much?

Some of my favourite claims follow:

Yesterday’s lesson was…exciting, courtesy of the temperature (-10). Most of the horses were on their toes and that definitely included Barka. I do get a bit nervous when a horse is tense and it feels like you’re sitting on top of the horse instead of sitting into it. That usually leads to me tensing up and then the horse tenses more and, well, bad feedback loop ensues. Add cold weather to that and you’re piling tension on top of tension. That said, it was Barka and so far my experience with her is that she doesn’t do anything too stupid. She has a pretty sensitive mouth and she certainly doesn’t seem inclined to do too much more than a bit of a bounce before she settles again. Fortunately, that turned out to be largely correct. We had a few incidents, including when cantering over a single rail on the ground apparently called for what felt like a rather substantial buck, but nothing that was a close call.

As for actual work, it was a bit spotty. A lot of my energy went into keeping Barka’s mind on the work and off, well, everything else. Some very nice trot from her again and more struggling with the canter transitions. Apparently she is also a bit too clever (and a mare, at that); they did a similar exercise yesterday and she picked up some bad habits from a single slip-up by that rider who at one point failed to keep her from joining the horses waiting in the middle instead of continuing down the length of the arena. As a result, she slammed the brakes on me a few times and refused to continue. Given how frisky she was, I had put my whip aside, which of course she took full advantage of. Mares.

Still, when we finished off with some trot at the end, she finally started lowering her form and breathing out audibly. You could just feel the tension melting away. That just took 60 minutes of work. I am hoping that if I jump her next week, she has done some more lessons earlier in the day. Though I am thinking not, she’s probably a bit too much for the lower groups to handle in winter.

Time to give this another go, without putting any demands on myself to do it every week. But I do miss doing my lesson recaps and for a good while, at least, they did seem to help me improve as well.

Yesterday was the first lesson of the new semester for me (I missed the first week) and I ended up on the lovely Barka. I had a feeling the cold and the snow would make her frisky and that turned out to be the correct assumption. Fortunately, frisky for her goes more up than forward (not up as in on her hind legs or anything, but she gets rather high-stepping and bouncy) so I feel quite confident in handling her anyway. I was a bit bothered by how much she was tossing her head around, however. It was more than when I last rode her, and though the instructor said its common when she’s frisky, I did ask if perhaps her mouth should be looked at since she had been reluctant to take the bit when I bridled her. That was definitely new behaviour, so I wouldn’t be surprised if she’s got some tooth issue. That said, the head shaking did stop once I got her to think about working and she spent some of that excess energy on more fruitful endeavours.

Other than that, she’s a very positive horse. She’s definitely got her own opinions—hello, mare—but she can certainly be persuaded to give work a good try. The exercises we worked on also suited her quite well; we focused on shortening and lengthening while keeping a steady rhythm and it gave her a lot to think about. The end result was an absolutely divine trot. The walk is still tricky to get good extension in and we only did a little cantering so I didn’t get very far with that. Her right canter is not great to start with and my transitions to canter remain a bit of a weakness (I move too much, especially if the horse goes against the aids like she did), so I am hoping for a bit more time next lesson to work on that. Once you actually get her cantering forward properly, she has a nice, round canter.

I am really hoping to get the opportunity for some private lessons on her during this semester; so far we seem to suit each other quite well.

A Memory of Light, the last Wheel of Time book, is out. It feels really, really strange, and—unfortunately—not in a good way. There’s nothing wrong with endings being bitter sweet, but in this case, I feel a lack of closure.

Before A Song of Ice and Fire took over mine and Elio’s life, the Wheel of Time had a huge place in it. In fact, we would not have met without it. I didn’t actually pick up the series right away when the first book came out in 1990, but I believe I bought the paperback for myself for Christmas 1992 (I know it coincided with the publication of the first book in Swedish, since I actually ended up getting that as a present at the same time) and I was completely hooked right away. When I got on the Internet in 1995, it did not take long for me to find my way to a WoT MUSH called Tales of Ta’veren. From that MUSH, I discovered Elendor, a Tolkien MUSH, and there I met Elio. I got him to start reading WoT in order to join me on Tales. For a number of years, we poured over every word written by RJ, trying to figure out what various prophecies meant, piecing together esoteric details of the One Power and discussing just who was the best Blademaster around. I even wrote a letter with questions to RJ and received a response.

Yes, our interest did soften a bit as the story meandered, but my love for the world stayed strong. In part because we continued to roleplay in it, but the premise of the Wheel of Time is also completely irresistible to me. Myths, legends, time being circular and everything eventually coming back, it was all rather tailor-made for my interests and it was such a thrill every time I caught a reference or had one pointed out to me. That, more than anything else, is at the core of my love for the series. But I do have a weakness for structured magic systems as well and the One Power fascinated me.

Then RJ died. I remember finding out late one night or early one morning and waking up Elio to tell him. It felt very sad and very strange, but I don’t think the real impact actually hit me until the first collaboration with Sanderson came out. I just couldn’t read it. I didn’t know what came from RJ and what came from Sanderson and I simply could not stand constantly feeling “is this the real version?”. So, I have not read any of the books since RJ died. I’ve even had a hard time reading spoilers, because it just constantly brings back what’s been lost.

I do think I will want to read the epilogue of A Memory of Light, since RJ always said he’d had that one written or at least planned out for years. But the rest? I don’t know. Maybe I will try, since RJ did want to see the series completed. But still, I would have preferred to just have his notes published, similar to how Tolkien’s unfinished materials were treated. No matter how big a fan Sanderson is and no matter how much he may have tried to write what RJ would have wanted, he isn’t RJ. He’s not the Creator and his version of the story will always be a certain amount of guess work.

I don’t want his guesses, I just want the “truth”, and today I am feeling really sad that reality cruelly got in the way of the story and kept RJ from finishing his work the way he intended to. There’s closure to the story, as I do imagine it ended much like RJ intended it to end, but on a purely personal level there’s no real closure to my experience of reading the books. Even so, I am very grateful that I did, because my life would look completely different today if it wasn’t for the Wheel of Time.

Something else that struck me when thinking about this was that since 1992, I’ve been engrossed in epic fantasy. Now the Wheel of Time is over and eventually A Song of Ice and Fire will be over. I am not sure there will be anything to take their place; given the complications that both RJ and GRRM have run into, I am not sure epic of this particular scale will be attempted by anyone else. And if it is, I might not be as lucky in it being so very much to my tastes. There’s more to life than reading fantasy, of course, but it will leave a big hole behind.

In December my 10+ years old computer was put out to pasture after a very long and impressive run. Elio and I had been planning new computers for ourselves for a year or two, but just not found the right time (or the right build) before then. Now I am finally using a system that doesn’t require me to switch to my laptop on the side to be able to run Second Life or do any graphics work. In fact, it can do quite a bit more as well, since Elio did want a setup that could be used for gaming. For my own part, I wasn’t expecting any beyond Second Life, seeing as the last games I played were The Longest Journey and Dreamfall. Good-old adventure games have always been my only real interest and those are rather far and few between these days. MMOs have never really been on my radar at all. Except, of course, I had read a few things about The Secret World given the connection to TLJ and Dreamfall. And then it just happened to go buy-to-play very shortly after our new computers had arrived…

Cut to a few weeks later and both Elio and I are running around with Rank 10 Templars, slaughtering assorted creatures all over the world and making steady progress with the very exciting main storyline.

Now, it wasn’t entirely smooth sailing to start with. As I noted, I’ve never played an MMO. I’ve barely played any vaguely action-oriented games at all, actually. In fact, I can only think of one, good old Betrayal at Krondor. Given this, the combat element of The Secret World turned out to be a pretty considerable obstacle at first. In fact, it still isn’t easy for me, as I don’t do well under pressure and I’ve found myself pretty sucky at firing at things and moving at the same time. However, playing as a pair has definitely made all the difference, and for the solo instances, I can always call in actual physical help from Elio. I am actually finding most of the combat pretty fun now, whereas at first I saw it as something I had to get through to get to the story. And the story does remain the highlight for me, the thing that keeps my interest firmly hooked and makes me a lot less likely to hit the “what’s the point of all the levelling up?” stage that I hit after about a month of playing MUDs back in 1995. I can’t compare with other MMOs or RPGs since I haven’t played any, but looking at something like TLJ and Dreamfall I think the story is every bit as good. Its epic, its engaging and its smart. If you know myths and legends, you will uncover additional layers to the story, and that sort of intertextual puzzle is always extremely rewarding for me. I was so thrilled when I figured out who the main antagonist during the first story mission actually is that it made me giddy for several days just thinking about it. I was even more thrilled when, during the final confrontation with said antagonist, the game stayed smart and didn’t spell it out for you.

In terms of other aspects of the game, I have no basis for comparison at all, but I am finding the skill and ability system quite interesting. The flexibility can be daunting at first, but then it feels like a lot of fun and not as artificial as having pre-set classes. The combat, fortunately, isn’t too complex, but the variety of weapons and abilities still seems to offer room for quite a few different play styles. For my own part, I like the “hang at the back and lob magic at the enemy from a safe-ish distance” style; it gives more room to deal with my adrenaline. Graphically, I think the world looks pretty awesome, especially Egypt and Transylvania; you get to kill monsters in some stunning vistas there. Coming from Second Life, I do wish I could customize my avatar a lot more—I wouldn’t mind a bit more meat on my virtual bones and hair that brushes the shoulders is NOT long hair on a woman or a man—but obviously some aspects of SLs flexibility are completely impossible in an MMO in order to keep it loading fast enough. Still, I do miss being able to make my avatar look exactly like I want her to. As a result,  I feel I relate less to my avatar than I do to my SL avatar or my purely text-based MUSH characters.

The naming system also stumped me a bit; I love being able to choose both a first name and a last name for your avatar, but then you also have to pick a unique nickname and that one doesn’t allow spaces. I would much rather have seen avatars identified by their first name and last name—you have so many more combinations available that don’t require weird spellings or numbers then—with the option of also adding a unique nickname. I knew right away what first name and last name to use, but I am not a nickname person, so that one had me scrambling. In the end, I just made my avatar “Saga Lind” with the nickname of “SagaLind” and I am not really happy about it. I may actually consider paying to change the nickname if I can come up with something better, though unfortunately you’re stuck with your first name and last name (even though they don’t seem to be used internally to reference your avatar), so I won’t be able to make a full switch if I find another combination of names that I like better with a certain nickname. That’s a bit of nit-picking, but I know I am not the only one who is picky about names.

On the whole, though, we’re having a lot of fun. A bit too much, in fact, but that comes with the territory. These things are made to be addictive.

(As a final aside, this post might have been better suited to Virtually. However, MU*sings was never intended for anything but MUSHing and Otherworldly is all about Second Life. I may have to consider expanding the scope of Otherworldly or, more likely, adding another blog if indeed this particular addiction turns out to be long-term.)

There have been questions raised now and then how it is that we can run a roleplaying game set in Westeros when we strongly condemn fanfiction set in Westeros. The latest iteration of this question coming up made me decide to write something more in-depth about the matter. It may have something to do with procrastination from other work, but hey, that’s always a good reason, right?

First of all, let us establish what we mean by roleplaying in this case. We are talking specifically about on-line, text-based roleplaying in real-time using a MUSH or MUX server and we are talking about the logs of such roleplay sessions. We are not talking about table-top roleplaying or forum roleplaying.

A touch immodest, perhaps, but when you get profiled by Vulture for your fandom involvement, I suppose a post is in order. Overall, it is pretty accurate too, which one shouldn’t take for granted when being interviewed and quoted.

Picture, btw, taken with our lovely new Canon T4i. It is kind of addictive to have a good camera.

So far, the new semester has gone well. It was off to a really good start on lovely Barka (alas, she’s now resting, having strained herself coming off the summer grazing with a bit much extra weight), and then I had some great dressage lesson on Nelson and Blacky and a very good round of jumping on Nelson. He’s really become very co-operative and fun to ride.

Which brings me to my last lesson, on Mynta the Fjordhorse. She is very much a Fjordhorse and a mare, which means she isn’t terribly interested in co-operating with anyone. In particular, she tends to try and avoid any and all work by just steaming on like a little locomotive. With a short, square neck, she ends up putting a lot of strain on my arms if I end up in a tug-of-war with her. And, of course, a tug-of-war with a horse is a pretty pointless activity.

When I’ve ridden her in the past, for various instructors, I’ve had different suggestions. Some want her packaged together, to get her to accept that she can’t just go at her own speed. Some have suggested lots of circling and over-bending to try and get through to her incredibly stiff right side and her somewhat less stiff left side.

None of this has really worked well for me so far. She clearly gets stressed if you ask too much, which isn’t strange given that physically speaking, she must choke herself a bit if she brings her head in. So, trying to pack her together isn’t going to work, except possibly at a walk, where she does wait and listen a bit more.

But there’s also the just plain stubborn side of her to consider. She is a Fjordhorse and she is a mare. That’s a combination that leads to a pretty darn independent horse. So far, I am not getting through to her with either polite requests or firm demands, so the lessons do end up being rather more confrontational than I like. I don’t mind a stubborn pony that cleverly tries to get out of work in all sorts of ways, that’s just stimulating, but “run-run-run” gets tedious.

I took most of the summer off from even glancing at the various blogs on the site, but since the new semester at the riding school started this week it might be time to get back to some posting. Especially since this week’s lesson was a big deal, to follow up on the big deal that ended last semester.

You see, on the whole last semester was a bit of a wash. We had a new instructor lined up and I do like her, but she was absent for quite a few lessons due to illness (she has young children) and we ended up with substitutes of varying quality. As a result, there really wasn’t much cohesive training or any particular progress. In fact, I was quite close to deciding that I would quit and look at some other stable (as two of my friends ultimately ended up doing).

But then we came to the last lesson before the summer break. We were going to jump in the paddock and I was a bit nervous about riding Digression; he jumps fine indoors but gets just a bit frisky and he’s large enough (aka not a pony or close to it) that it makes me a little jittery. Then one of the other riders didn’t show up and Barka, one of the new horses, ended up without a rider.

Barka is a Polish import, eight years old, and I had been eyeing her since she arrived since she’s probably just an inch or two from being a pony and with that sort of nice, square build that I like. We think there’s some Spanish blood in her, she’s got a nice back-end, a curly mane and a pretty high-stepping action.

So, despite never having ridden her, I asked if I could jump her in the paddock instead of Digression. I got the okay and I was determined to make this work.

It did work. Superbly, in fact. She was a little fidgety, but not tense. I could feel I was sitting into her rather than on top of her. She also turned out to be incredibly sensitive and a very honest jumper; we wobbled a bit coming into some jumps and she went over them anyway. She clearly hasn’t jumped much before since the first time she jumped at the stables, she jumped about twice as high as she had to. It wasn’t as extreme this time, but she’s clearly still learning. I was in heaven, pretty much.

Fast forward to this Tuesday, when I showed up for the first lesson this semester. I had been assigned Mynta, the very stubborn Fjordhorse, but once again Barka ended up without a rider. I asked again, could I change? Yes, I could. Then, the other news; we were going to be riding on a nearby field. Not out on a trek, but still, we’d have to trek along the road to get there. My nerves set in again, but I didn’t want to miss the chance to ride Barka again.

So, I decided to give it a go. She was very calm riding to the field, but once there she suddenly found a lot of energy and people with cameras and people running past on the road became reasons to jump this way and that.

But I didn’t give up. In fact, I had a thoroughly enjoyable lesson, not a sick-to-the-stomach-with-nerves lesson. Some of it was the fact that the grass was quite tall and seemed soft—I figured a fall wouldn’t be that bad—but I also felt that she really listened to me. Yes, she’d jump away from this and yes, she’d canter instead of trot, but she has a wonderful mouth and she really listens when you ask her to come back. I felt as if I could handle her.

I don’t think I want to trek out on her just yet, but other than that, I feel absolutely great about how much I’ve dared to do on her already. Sadly, she’s very unlike Murphy in one way; she’s a very popular horse at the stables. I still miss my grumpy and misunderstood Irish boy very much, but even if Barka doesn’t need any extra help to be happy at the stables, she’s quite irresistible.

From GRRM’s latest blog post:

“THE WORLD OF ICE AND FIRE. The concordance. Elio and Linda are my partners on this one, a compendium of the history and legends of the world of Westeros. A coffee table book, lots of gorgeous art from such talents as Ted Nasmith, Justin Sweet, and others. Making good progress on this one of late, lots of great historical stuff that I think my readers will enjoy. Never before revealed details of Aegon’s Conquest, the War With the Faith, The Dance of the Dragons, the Paramours of Aegon the Unworthy, etc.”

That’s one of the things that have been keeping us crazy busy from time to time over the last few years. Somehow it seems like every new draft and every new revision has ended up coming right in the middle of other things. I think it will feel a little odd once it is done, because it has been a bit of a constant companion for quite some time now. Actually, I know it will feel odd; I tend to get this weird feeling of being slightly lost whenever I finish some large project. Instead of being able to enjoy my new freedom to do whatever I want to do, I have a habit of sitting around thinking “now what” for much longer than I should. I guess it is just how the rest/recovery period works for me but it is always quite frustrating.

I am, in fact, having one of those periods right now. The intense workload of the show coverage ended for Elio once the last episode aired, but then I had a few more episodes to translate so that kept me going. But now I’ve delivered the last one so I am definitely at the slightly lost stage. I do have plenty of projects I could tackle, but so far I haven’t been able to dig into any one of them. We do plan to do a lot of work on the website during July when we’re likely going to be off at our summer house for some three weeks, but I do need to use the roughly two weeks until we leave for something productive as well.

So, while I am in the middle of such indecision, it is nice to see a reminder of something that is progressing nicely. The pieces of new material from GRRM that we have seen so far have been amazing, so of course we’re eagerly awaiting more of that. Like GRRM said, I do think readers will enjoy this kind of material quite a bit. Certainly, we’ve seen a lot of reactions to the videos we’ve done discussing various background details, and that isn’t even new material like it will be in the book.

Of all the atrocious decisions taken in the adaptation of the second season—having Joffrey and not Cersei be the one to order the killing of the bastards, having Robb fall for a spunky and socially progressive chick from Volantis, cutting out virtually all of the poignant material between Jon and Qhorin, leaving out virtually all the dark character development from Arya’s arc, to name but a few—the utter travesty that is the show’s version of the House of the Undying takes the cake. In fact, it takes the whole dessert table.

I/we will be writing a longer piece on how poorly handled both Dany and Dany’s whole storyline have been in the second season, contrasting it with the very clear purpose of Qarth in the books, so right now I am just concentrating on the House of the Undying.

Instead of a single one of the visions that Dany actually sees, we get a vision of Khal Drogo. Talk about a cheap-ass publicity stunt to squeeze Jason Momoa back in. Now, it is true that perhaps some of the visions she sees would be too spoilery on TV as opposed to when read, but why not just compensate for that by toning down what is shown? Or going entirely to Dany hearing but not seeing things? I expect that there would be cuts and changes, in particular I expected some of the visuals to disappear. I did not expect them to just throw everything out.

We have, as of yet, not had a single mention of either the Song of Ice and Fire or the Prince that was Promised in the series. What more, not only did they cut out the visions, they cut the whole prophecy. So far, all we have gotten for Dany is an abbreviated version of Mirri Maz Duur’s prophecy.

So, they continue to cut out the past from the story and in addition to that they also cut out most of the prophecies. Both these are very significant elements of the story. Whatever the producers and writers might think, A Song of Ice and Fire isn’t just about battles and boobs.

The past still matters, it enriches and makes the present more poignant. We’ll likely never see Rhaegar now, not to mention Elia. What viewers will care about them? What viewers will care about Rhaegar and Lyanna when they ultimately have to become more important to the story? What viewers will care particularly about the Martells without any establishing of Elia?

The prophecies…well, who can deny their importance? As we see in A Dance with Dragons, even the most obscure ones do come true, just not in ways one might have expected. Magic isn’t just dragons and Others.

A Song of Ice and Fire is a multi-layered and multi-faceted story. That also means that people do read it for different reasons. Some may take in all aspects of the story with near equal enjoyment, others may favour some aspects and dislike others. The mysteries of the past and the prophecies fuel a large amount of the discussion on the forums. They are clearly important aspects for many, many fans. And the show has just ripped them out of the story almost wholesale.

Furious doesn’t come close to describing what I am today. Nor does disappointed.

I had said before the season started that for this season, the only thing I really hoped for was that they would get the House of the Undying right. If not, I would find it hard to continue watching. Since they didn’t even try to get it right, they just threw it in the trash, I have absolutely no interest in watching any more. Unfortunately, we have a lot tied up in the coverage of the show, so I’ll probably have to keep watching to some degree anyway. But I no longer look forward to new episodes because the story has been gutted of what matters the most to me and because I do not expect any of the scenes I truly care about to make it in, at least not without being butchered beyond recognition.

As far as I am concerned, it is no longer an adaptation of A Song of Ice and Fire, it is an mainly an original story in the A Song of Ice and Fire setting. And it isn’t particularly good.

(I had a longer article on this planned and mostly written, but it fell by the wayside due to my increasing annoyance with season 2. But maybe I’ll have to resurrect it given this latest development.)

When the issue of sexposition came up during the first season, I largely defended the show’s usage of sex, except for Littlefinger’s speech while Ros and Aremca were moaning away. It felt as if it could be a fairly reasonable representation of the level of sexual content in the books, if not its precise nature.

With season two, it became more and more obvious that it just doesn’t match up. The only explicit sex is non-romantic sex and it focuses almost exclusively on naked women. In the books, the sex can be messy, awkward, gritty and in other ways explicit even between couples and not just between customers and whores. The books also do not shy away from male nudity, far from it.

On the show, romance seems to put a stop to anything more “dirty” going on; just look at Renly and Loras, for example. Or Shae and Tyrion.

And now we have the Empire Magazine interview with Neil Marshall where he says he was encouraged to go with full-frontal nudity by one of the executive producers. Who also added that he represented the “perv” part of the audience…

I guess that sort of puts the nail in the coffin?

Just one more reason to be deeply disappointed with D & D’s handling of the material.