Malazan Empire: Tsundoku - Viewing Profile - Malazan Empire

Same guy as before? Or a new guy?

5 1/2 years later. As in, after it all kicked off.

It's funny but also unsettling how this all became part of the background. The world let its collectively held breath out, blinked and said "Oh well" and moved on.

Did we learn anything? Well, not enough to change our behaviours much.
Still don't know for sure where it all began. Even though there's been a few minor kerfuffles about it, no smoking guns.

amphibian, on 31 May 2025 - 12:12 AM, said:

OK, best I could do at the time that I thought this audience would get ...



Feel free to have a crack.

Loretta "Hot Lips Houlihan" Swit died.

Man, she was great in M*A*S*H, a great show.

I checked out years ago. Probably after AFFC maybe the 3rd or 4th time he promised ADWD was just around the corner but no bueno.
It was then I realised he either didn't care about the series or the fans any more and lying was just his way of kicking the inevitable criticism down the road. If he just admitted after the first few swerves he was having real issues then it would have been a case of "Ah well, at least he's trying or being honest". But no. "Ooooh, I had this semi-awesome book going but deleted it all because it didn't set things up 150% the way I wanted". Bah, it's not your first rodeo mate, get back to basics. Have some fucking self-discipline. But you won't because you don't mean it.

It wasn't the delays I minded so much as the obvious absolute contempt he had for his audience. He would have finished it decades ago if he actually gave the slightest quantum of a fuck.
"GRRM doesn't owe you shit" all the other authors said (being completely self-serving setting up a precedent to over their own arses in the case of looming writer's block). Well actually - yes he fucking does. It's called a market good or service, a (social) contract and respect. He created - and fanned - the expectation after all.

Think of it this way: I promise you the sweetest night of sexytimes. The buildup is pretty darn good and ardour is rising. You have a bunch of pretty good orgasms fairly close together, getting better each time.
Then I ask to "take just a quick break", but "I'll be back soon and it will be the greatest shaboinking in the history of ever - believe me!" But no. The next one takes absolutely forever and the end result barely qualifies. And the one after that might as well not even have happened. Plus it's a week later. By this time you're already seeing other people and forgetting about that guy who promised much and initially had good game but in the end delivered little. When you do think of him occasionally it's with a mild irritation that bothers you for a moment if you let it, but quickly passes. And then his exes saying shit like "He didn't owe you anything." It's wasn't the under delivery, or completely missing payoff, it was the bullshit promises and being told somehow it was your fault and you were a bad person for having expectations. Or it was never the case to begin with.

I hope GRRM is at peace with it and has a good life sleeping on his metric shit-ton of money, but fuck his bullshit excuses and gaslighting.