Meme! Plus some funny things from GRRM's Dreamsongs and asoiaf

[cloud_wolf]

So, my first meme (from misstopia)

 

A) List seven habits/quirks/facts about yourself.
B) Tag seven people to do the same.
C) Do not tag the person who tagged you or tag "whoever wants to do it."

 

1. I’ve always had the guilty feeling that the reason my brother turned out the way he was (weird, slightly bipolar, genius) was that I dropped him on his head when he was three weeks old during a trip to the Keukenhof. Thing is, my mother told me that this never actually happened. I have no idea where that memory came from.
2. I have a huge grease spot on my wall from the many times I bumped into it (I can be very hyperactive. And clumsy).
3. I don’t mind drinking undiluted sirup. I have a very sweet tooth. I tend to dip my fries into the nearest ice cream/milkshake. Yum. :D
4. I love the German language.
5. I have days when I can’t finish my sentences.
6. Until three years ago I couldn’t eat properly with fork and knife. We always eat with fork and spoon at home (the only proper way to eat rice!) but that changed after a party at my friend’s place (I kept shovelling my food on my knife and then in my mouth, LOL).
7. When I'm walking up a flight of stairs, I'm always afraid I'm going to keel over and smash my teeth on the stones. Which is why I went "DDDDD:" when I read what happened to Pia in asoiaf. 

 

Also, I’m halfway through GRRM’s Dreamsongs. OMG, love love love.

 

I didn’t like his early stories. This makes sense of course, he was just a n00b, but I’m glad I continued because he really really improves.
This guy just doesn’t do happy endings, does he? I’d prepare for the worst, folks, because your ASOIAF characters may suffer (even more). They may not die, but that really doesn’t mean they’re going to end up happily even after. (It’s always bittersweet. Or just plain sad. D:)
There’s this one story that just freaked me out. And Seven Times Never Kill Man is a story about religion. It features a crazy-ass religion focused on Bakkalon, the pale child with the sword. Mummy, he scares me! (This is when a person reads from their Bible):  “And the pale child heard, and came again, for the sound of battle is more pleasing to his ears than the sound of wails. And when He saw, He smiled. “Now you are my children again,” He said to the seed of Earth. “For you had turned against me to worship a god who calls himself a lamb, but did you not know that lambs go only to the slaughter? Yet now your eyes have cleared, and again you are the Wolves of God!””                                                                                                             That night I dreamed of a pair of Jehova Witnesses coming into my home and we had a creepy conversation about religion.
GRRM is truly a master of all trades. I usually don’t really like SF and Horror, but he does them so well. In his intermezzos he hammers home many times how it isn’t about genres, it’s about the human heart in conflict with itself (and this really shows in his stories).
Also, he’s hilarious. You have no idea how many times I laughed during his intermezzo’s. It’s cool that he doesn’t take himself too serious. And I thought it was so cute when he wrote about his first fantasy story when he was small (A castle with knights and kings and stuff. The only thing? They’re turtles! “My mighty monarchs had a disconcerting habit of escaping the castle and turning up dead beneath the refrigerator, the turtle equivalent of Mordor.”)
His story Sandkings is awesome. Like, really. It's a sort of SF version of Petshop of Horrors. With colourcoded alienbugs! (When it comes to colours, I'm pretty much like Renly.)
You can see some of the themes and motifs he reuses in ASOIAF. Off the top of my head we have:
• Robb and Lyanna, the telepathic lovers.
• The Seven (only it's the creepy evil version).
• Check this out! “ “Dark Gods of Kor-Yuban,” I called it, and yes, my version of Mordor sounds like a brand of coffee. My heroes were the usual pair of mismatched adventurers, the melancholy prince R’hllor of Raug and his boisterous swaggering companion Argilac the Arrogant. (…) In the sequal, my exile prince finds himself in the Dothrak Empire, where he joins (…) to fight (…) who slew his grandsire, King Barristan the Bold.” LOL!
• The name Jon. Many times.
• A white wolf with red eyes.
• Colour coded knights ( Jerais the Blue!)
• Houses! House Carin = so Stark. House Alynne = southron house.

Comments

[misstopia.livejournal.com]

#1 -- I've made up memories too, I think its the product of stories your parents tell about you when you're little plus some photos plus some random movie or story, etc. But I did them so young that when I was older I really almost believed they were true. When I got even older I started realizing they probably weren't, but it's still trippy.

#2 -- This happened to my sister, not from bumping her head out of hyperactivity but from sitting around leaning against the wall because she was lazy.

#7 -- I started having dreams where I would just totter off of staircases or street curbs a while ago, they've gone away for now but - yeah, totally freaky!


GRRM repeats a LOT of motifs!!! It's interesting to spot the influences, and how they pop up in ASOIAF. We get a lot of the melencholy romance, the gore and horror, the supernatural, and it seems religion is coming up more in the series now too. It's kind of like he has all these little set pieces that captured his imagination and now he's assembling them into one big series. He seems to have his favorite traits to focus on and mix and match into different characters. I know the characters in A Song For Lya always remind me of ASOIAF -- Lya physically sounds like Lyanna Stark, Robb is a mixture of Robert Baratheon and Littlefinger, Valcarenghi is a mixture of Littlefinger and Ned Stark, and Laurie reminds me a little of Catelyn Stark. Something of Valcarenghi's golden boy aura also went into Robb Stark, I think.

GRRM talking about himself as a youngster reminds me a lot of Bran voraciously taking in Old Nan's stories.

[cloud-wolf.livejournal.com]

Ah, yes, I remember you writing a long piece about your thoughts on A Song for Lya and Ned/Cat (I believe) but skimming over it because I didn't want to spoiler myself too much on the story. I think I'm going to read it properly now. (I do remember agreeing about what you said, when I read the story, about Valcarenghi and Laurie being a bit like Ned/Cat). And I think I can see that about Robb being a mixture of Bob B. and Littlefinger.

And yes! I agree about GRRM and Bran. I also thought that GRRM's interest in the stars (found in The Light of Distant Stars) and how he talked about it very interesting (and sweet). It got me thinking (Who in asoiaf shares this trait with him?) and the only one I can remember is Willas Tyrell, who likes to look at the stars and draw them. It actually got me pretty curious about him, because like somebody else once said, sometimes you can notice when an author is fond of a character (I think GRRM also likes Shiera Seastar, what with her being scholarly and able to speak seven languages(!) and her funny quirks and habits. And she hasn't even turned up in the story yet!)

And suddenly a thought about Jon popped up. Not one character in GRRM's mature stories (thought I haven't finished Dreamsongs, and with mature, I mean GRRM's maturity as a writer) is like Jon. You know, the Jon people most people dislike, the noble-bastard thing he's got going on. Most characters tend te be a bit more... it's not exactly imperfect I'm thinking of, more like approved-Stuish (I do like Jon, though). I'm confident about GRRM writing skills, so I'm now really curious about what he's going to do with Jon. It's going to be something, that's for sure.

[violaswamp.livejournal.com]

Robb and Lya, huh? The guy doesn't do originality with names, that's for sure.

V.v. interesting, thanks for linking me!

[cloud-wolf.livejournal.com]

Hehe, apparently not.

Thanks, reading back it makes me wince a bit, geez that was rambly >_>