Michael Offutt's Blog, page 156

Do you think these shoes are racist?

I pay attention to fashion trends. Folks that have read my book, SLIPSTREAM, have said that I go into "clothes descriptions" probably a little too much. That being said, at $350.00 a pair, this shoe by Adidas called the JS Roundhouse "handcuff" seems like the perfect accessory for the book Fifty Shades Freed by E.L. James.
They hit stores in August and people are getting pretty angry about the shoe, saying that it's racist because it promotes ideas of slavery. You should checkout the Facebook comments on the Adidas page.

Would you be upset to see kids wearing "slavewear"? It's going to happen. They'll probably be the most popular shoe around as boys strut about their high schools in their skinny jeans. I'm saying "boys" because I can't see a real broad appeal for girls in these shoes. But...I could be wrong :)

Opinions? Do you find them insensitive? If money were no issue, would you want your kid to wear these shoes or would you be offended by them?

Have a great Wednesday. I look forward to reading your comments.

I love that I live in the golden age of trash fiction

The website io9 recently did an article on the golden age of trash culture, and I couldn't agree more. You can read the whole article HERE. In the TL;DR version, basically "there is more corporate-funded trash being unleashed on the public than ever before... and meanwhile, there's a huge wave of new-media trash coming as well."
Isn't it glorious?
All the movie adaptation of this book needs is to cast
Alex Pettyfer as the guy. That's it. Ka-Ching. Google
Alex Pettyfer and you'll see what I'm talking about.With free books and or 99 cent offerings on kindle, we have access to wafer-thin characters in just about every paranormal situation you could shake a stake at. The rise of erotica with such offerings as Fifty Shades of Gray and the subsequent sequels are plain awesome. Plus you can read smutty books on the kindle in the subway or on the train because no one can see what you're reading so you don't have to be embarrassed by the fact that you're secretly into whips and chains or possess bizarre sex fetishes.

On television insanity rules. Basically, nothing is too insane or too out there. Really, writing has broken through a boundary where you can literally string together a story from four random dice rolls (roll twice in the first section) and it seems to work. Example:

1 A guy who gets naked a lot
2 A girl who gets naked a lot
3 A vampire who gets naked a lot
4 A werewolf who gets naked a lot
5 An alien from the planet Shmieldorf who gets naked a lot
6 A ghost who gets naked a lot

1 Don't have sex but falls in tortured love
2 Can manipulate fire but is a cheerleader
3 Can read minds but feels guilty about that
4 Can teleport into a person's dreams and realizes they are actually dead in real life
5 Learns magic at a school for magical peeps
6 Drives a BMW hybrid while listening to Chicago love songs

1 Takes Newt Gingrich to a moon colony.
2 Saves the world from Goatzilla
3 Pimps minors out for sex
4 Finds a duck with super powers and prevents an alien invasion
5 Wins a game show in a post apocalyptic setting
6 Gets married.

Okay my rolls using my trusty 6-sided dice are: 3, 4, 4, 6
My new story plot is "A vampire who gets naked a lot and a werewolf who gets naked a lot can teleport into a person's dreams and realizes that they are actually dead in real life and then gets married."

I don't think these kinds of stories could have ever had a place in the 80's or the 90's because people would see through them. But now...bring it on baby. Just look at True Blood. I'm addicted to this show which has about as flimsy a writing as anything. In Sunday's episode, a guy talks to Bill Compton and gestures at a book. He says, "Do you know what this is?" Bill answers, "It's a Bible." But then goes on to say that it's not "THE Bible" but the "original testament"...you know...the vampire Bible and then they go on to say how vampires came first and were really god's children and how Adam and Eve came later and it just shows how humans were meant to feed vampires.
Brilliantly written dialogue? Alcide is awesome. This really isthe written conversation. Not kidding.What did I think of that background? It was both brilliant and incredibly stupid trash and I loved it. The mire of bullshit that flows from writers these days is awesome. In our trashy culture...pure bullshit reigns. You can explain anything away in your plot--plausible no longer matters, just make it up. For television and movies, you don't even need to script it. This kind of thinking can be done on the fly as long as it sounds clever. And being random is now king.
Random True Blood baby eater character that got more lines 
than Alcide Random characters (like those in the above picture) are key to trashy stories. Have you seen Jersey Shore? Random is that cast's bread and butter. That and tanning, big bewbs, and tequila.

From the article, io9 points out that Michael Bay is one of the greatest film makers alive. Have you seen a Michael Bay film? All you need are explosions. That's it. Check out one of the greatest moments in last night's True Blood episode. Jessica (the red-head) gave Steve (a former religious pastor) a "Fang Boner" by describing Jason Stackhouse's butt and cock to him and offering to sell him for $20,000.00 since she technically has the rights to Jason's body. How is this at all great television? I have no idea, but I'm glued to the screen like millions of other watchers in America every Sunday with our bowls of Cheetos and our guts hanging out over our belts muttering, "damn...this show is GOOOOOODDDD. Mmmmhmmm."
So writers...WRITE MORE TRASH! WE NEEDSSES IT. There clearly isn't enough. Twilight, as an example, is getting rebooted by Lion's Gate because they don't want to lose their cash cow. Yep, they are going to cast a whole new group of people right after Breaking Dawn, Part Two shatters records this fall.

I can't wait. I hope they get a better looking Edward. #JustSayin

Falling Skies emphasizes the importance of fathers

There may be some spoilers in this blog post. >,<

Three months of in-world time has passed between last season and the start of this one. First off, I love the alien invasion story of Falling Skies, and I was glued to my seat last night for the two-hour season two premiere. If you are a fan of dystopian apocalyptics, then you might want to give this science-fiction drama a try. It has all the elements. People overcoming huge obstacles to ban together to drive aliens who have already conquered Earth back into space, cute boys and girls (there are no fat people in this show and everyone is in shape despite the scarcity of food resources), and computer generated effects galore. The fact that everyone is gorgeous doesn't bother me. I'm pretty much used to it and have grown to accept/expect it in my television.
Drew Roy plays Hal Mason in Falling Skies.But behind all the glitz of the show's significant budget, good writing, and eye candy, there are solid themes of fatherhood. Noah Wylie plays Tom and the most important thing to him in the world are his three sons. And it's just refreshing for me to see a single dad portrayed in such a good light. On top of that he's an exceptional former school teacher, so he's really smart, reads, and is constantly teaching his sons how to grow into good men with strong moral compasses. The other thing that I appreciate about the show is that it steers clear of religion for the most part. People are conquering their own fears and their insecurities through love, companionship, and dealing with the situations without resorting to on-screen prayer to alleviate despair.
Ben Mason teaching Matt Mason (his little brother) how to shoot skitters (aliens) so that he can defend
himself. I really like Ben Mason. He's probably the most interesting character right now outside of Tom. He's
kind of become a super warrior because he has alien DNA or something inside of him now. He can run
marathons without tiring, can hear and see things no one else can, and is really strong--like the kind
that can bench press a Toyota truck.They've also borrowed a page from H.R. Geiger and the Alien franchise by using creepy body invasion. The alien conquerors control human children with biological harnesses and then last night, we saw the doctor pull a weird worm thing out of Tom's eye that later turned into a metal ball bearing and later still, a butterfly with teeth sharp enough to cut glass.
I really need to add this button to my sidebar. It's just too cool.So if you are a fan of science-fiction, join the saga of the 2nd Mass (Second Massachusetts) as they resist the invaders from another world. It's on TNT on Sunday's this summer. I'm so glad I have a DVR so that I can record True Blood (which shows at the same time).

Questions I want answered this season: 1) What's up with Ben? Is he ever going to be truly safe from the aliens?

2) What did the aliens do to Tom? They really screwed him up. Did they put more of those worms in his body?

3) What does the flying butterfly worm thing do aside from cut glass?

4) Why did they let all the people go at th same time as Tom by just dropping them off in a field? Then they massacred them while Tom walked off? It's clear that they did not value the other humans at all, but put extreme value on Tom. I'm thinking it has something to do with his son Ben. It also seemed like they wanted Tom to see that they spared him.

What does 10.11.12 mean?

David the android on the left; the titan Prometheus as sculpted by an artist on the right. I thought
that this was a neat comparison of the two and obviously done on purpose by Ridley Scott.First off, Cally Jackson put me in the Hot Seat over at her blog today so if you have the time, please go check it out HERE.

In case you are wondering, this is a Prometheus movie post. I apologize to Patrick Dilloway who thinks I talk too much about this movie, but I simply need to get these thoughts out of my head. I will be talking about some things that you could have an opinion about without having seen the film. However, I might "spoil" one or two minor things about the film in an attempt to answer questions that have plagued me for a week now. If you choose to comment, I would appreciate intelligent feedback aimed at the topic I will bring up instead of some smartass snarky thing (glares at Mr. Dilloway).
If you stayed through the end credits of Prometheus, you were greeted with the next stage of Ridley Scott’s elaborate tale. You caught a date – 10.11.12 – and a link to the Weyland Industries timeline. When you scroll down to that date, it reads:

WEYLAND INCORPORATES
Weyland Corporation is recognized as a legal entity and corporation under United States law and receives their Certificate of Incorporation from the Companies House in the United Kingdom. Due to the combined value of Sir Peter Weyland’s various patents and patent-pendings, the company incorporates with a higher fair market valuation than any other company in history.

OCTOBER 11, 2012
There’s a small flag to click on that links you to - http://www.whatis101112.com/ - where you’ll find a new video and book. Each “stage” will be revealed through the various modules.

Sir Peter WeylandAnd then there's a new viral video...presumably Mr. Weyland prior to his TED talk which I discussed in this post HERE. The website if you check it out, features a 3D version of German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche's work Thus Spake Zarathustra which in summary contains a parable on the death of God and the prophecy of the Übermensch (a super human).

Now it has been a long time since I read Nietzsche, but I dusted off my copy of this book and turned to section X of the work and this is what I found:

"Your highest thought, however, ye shall have it commanded unto you by me--man is something that is to be surpassed...live your life of war! What matter about long life! What warrior wisheth to be spared! I spare you not...my brethren in war!"

And this next piece is from section XI:

"The state...where all are poison-drinkers...where the slow suicide of all is called life..."
"There where the state ceaseth...do ye not see...the rainbow and the bridges of the superman?"

And finally from section XII seems to be an address to the Übermensch himself:

Nietzsche in the voice of Zarathustra compares humans to biting flies in a marketplace wanting to suck the blood from the super human. He says, "Even when thou art gentle towards them, they still feel themselves despised by thee; and they repay thy beneficence with secret maleficence...They are unworthy of thee. Therefore they hate thee, and would fain suck thy blood."

Okay...so to my points.

This is the sacrificial "engineer" who like Prometheus of the Greek legend
destroys himself to give something powerful to man. The container holds poison,
but in his death comes life.1) At the beginning of the movie, we see an alien who could possibly be seen as a super human drinking poison. It slowly kills him and from that presumably springs all life on earth. I'm thinking that Ridley Scott is tipping his hat to Neitzsche in this by stating that the Engineers that created humans had gotten to a point in their evolution that creating life in their own image was the bridge to the next step. In other words, they were becoming gods.
Planet LV-2232) The directive in section X indicates that man is to be surpassed and that to achieve this requires war. Therefore the Engineers were a war-like race. The planet of LV-223 was found to be a weapon's depot for them.

3) The last passage might serve to explain the motives of the Engineers in wanting to destroy humanity. They believed that even though humans were their children, that humans would secretly grow to hate them and therefore they would eventually need to go to war against them.
Prometheus biological weapons in the Engineer shipsNow to the unanswered questions that have bothered me all week. But first, a few facts for you to consider pulled from the movie:

1) The Engineers created man.
2) All of the bodies on planet LV-223 were two thousand years old. This means they started manufacturing weapons of mass destruction (the bio-matter or black goo) at about that same time.
3) They were headed to Earth, so it's clear that the Engineers wanted to destroy mankind. But it wasn't always this way. They changed their minds 2000 years ago as Shaw clearly points out in her dialogue in the film.

My conjecture:
What event happened 2000 years ago? I got to thinking about this and decided that it would have to have been the birth, life, and crucifixion of Jesus Christ. But why would that event have caused the Engineers to change their mind about whether humans deserved to live or die?

Perhaps it has to do with the idea that humans didn't recognize the Engineers as their true Creators. Perhaps they were upset that humans could kill a god and therefore, if one god could die then so could they. Or perhaps they believed that the death of Christ deserved to be punished.

So I ask you, is Ridley Scott saying that the motivation for the Engineers to destroy humanity at all related to the crucifixion of Jesus Christ? There is no doubt that at the heart of this film is a huge existential question which I never thought to encounter in an "Alien" franchise film.

Nightfire by Alyson Burdette will set your kindle on fire

I give this book five stars out of five.

I just finished Alyson Burdette's Nightfire, and I have to say that this is one of the best vampire books I have ever read. Just so you know, I read Anita Blake (Laurel K. Hamilton), Anne Rice (Lestat), and have read the first book in the Twilight series so it's not like I'm a stranger to vampire fiction.

What I loved:

1) Olivia. She's an amazing and refreshing protagonist. This is a vampire novel told from the female point-of-view (as a vampire and something else). I'm going to leave the "something else" as a spoiler free thing. But trust me...Olivia is not a run-of-the-mill vamp. There's a reason she hangs out around all that water in Peninsula, and I can't wait to see Alyson explore this in future installments of the series.

2) Jesse. Although he does something that is pretty terrible, I couldn't help feeling drawn to his obvious charm. It's clear that he loves Olivia, wants what he sees as is best for her, but ends up hurting her terribly in the climax of the book all to prove a point. I wonder if she'll be able to see that Jesse is probably better for her than William, but Olivia is definitely stuck on William.

3) William. The handsome vampire hunter. Aside from being a tough-as-nails guy he's also got the whole swoon worthy blue-eyed boy-next-door thing going on. I loved every scene in which Alyson explores with this guy. It's some of the best romance writing around.

4) Alyson's prose. She is a great writer. Here are examples pulled from the book:

"He's suddenly little more than a memory, and I wonder if my body has remembered how to dream...His deep blue eyes open wide as he pulls me toward him. They are two glass jars full of fireflies that dance in the moonlight."

"I spit the words out at him, wishing they were knives."

"He laughs, and it is the sound of a thousand birds in song."

Pretty amazing, right?

So yeah. Alyson...when can we expect a sequel? Nightfire has left me wanting more :))

If you haven't met Alyson yet, you might want to hit her up on her blog HERE.
If you want to be supportive, mark her book "to read" on goodreads so that others that follow your stream will see that you at least find the book "of interest". Go HERE to do that .
And if you want a sample or can't wait to read it, go to Amazon right HERE.

Beauty does not equate goodness

Seeing this quote gave me pause to think about how so often, humans are lured in by beauty only to discover that the wrapping on the outside does not equal at all what you find on the inside. And for me, beauty isn't just physical beauty. I define beauty as having an ability to appeal to any sense. Something you feel, something you hear, or something you smell and touch.

I'm sure the boys who were victimized by Sandusky in the Penn State scandal felt really good about themselves prior to their molestation because something beautiful had finally come into their lives through the Second Mile charity. The same goes for the Horace Mann School which got a tell-all expose written in the New York Times this week from author Amos Kamil. It's a long article, but I couldn't tear my eyes away. By the time I'd finished reading, I just about threw up in my mouth.

If you haven't read the New York Times article, please do so unless real life details of pedophilia and boys being raped by the teachers that they trusted offends you. It's horrific what happened to those kids in that place of such great beauty and promise. You can find it HERE. I guess the same can be said nationwide as more and more of these stories surface from elite schools, athletic institutions, churches, and scout troops.

In an interview on NPR this week, comedian Joan Rivers (I like Joan...say what you will about how fake she looks...I think she's a good person and keeps it real) said in defense of all of her plastic surgeries something akin to, "We live in a society where appearance is everything."

Do you agree with that statement? I know that I do. Just living in Salt Lake City, my ears get bombarded with advertisements to remove unwanted hair, to get liposuction, and to basically create a better you. I want to ask...what was wrong with the natural you? Is the way I am or the way you are not good enough anymore?

And then there's the other thought that creeps into my mind. As a society, are our children growing up in a world where they are learning that if something is beautiful, that it is inherently good and should be trusted? If so, I think that this is a terrible mistake.

Can you think of specific examples where something beautiful ended up being something evil? Is your villain in your book beautiful?

Do you judge a book's goodness by the beauty of its cover? And if so, have you ever been surprised by the "sour grapes"?

What's the deal with incest?

I watch True Blood, so I think those of you out there who watch it know where this blog post may be heading. But first, a few words. As far as the vampire series goes, it took a long time for me to really warm up to it. But there's just something hypnotic about all that white southern trash as a vampire setting. Girls walking around in Daisy Dukes with some hoodoo in the bayou and protagonists with awesome names like Sookie. And let's not forget Jason Stackhouse who's in the series for one reason...to be naked.
Eric and his sister just got done having sex while Bill (on the right) listened in.So in the premiere on Sunday, Eric Northman banged his sister. And it makes me ask the question, what's the deal with incestuous storylines? In Game of Thrones, Jamie Lannister has an incestuous relationship with his sister Cersei (both are HBO Series by the way). Are writers using incest because it's shocking?

RECENT OBSERVATIONS:
I've heard Cassandra Clare has an incestuous relationship in her novel City of Bones (which will probably be turned into a movie one of these days).

In a Big Bang Theory episode, Howard Walowitz tells everyone that he lost his virginity to his cousin.

On one episode of Boardwalk Empire (another HBO show), a flashback-heavy installment revealed a sexual relationship between Gillian (Gretchen Mol) and her son, Jimmy Darmody (Michael Pitt).

So anyone else notice that incest seems to be cropping up a lot lately? Or is this an old hat and has been explored for decades and I'm only just noticing it?
I remember when I was much younger overhearing a conversation in a store where a high school kid playing a video game in an arcade bragged to another kid that he was having sex with his own sister. I remember feeling quite repulsed by that statement. And I still think I'm a little repulsed by it.
I guess I should try to be more open-minded. But yeah, each time I come across one of these plotlines, it shocks me.
Are any of you writers out there using incest in your books? If so, why?
And to celebrate the return of True Blood I give you the following gifs :))) Lafayette staring down Alcide. Too awesome for words. Go Lafayette. For those that don't
follow this show, Alcide is frickin' huge. Like seriously...take an MMA fighter at the peak of their
fitness and you'd have Alcide. He's also a were-wolf. Jason Stackhouse playing Rock Band. He seems undamaged psychologically
from the fact that he was raped for an entire day last season by were-panthers.
In True Blood, sex with anyone, anytime goes hand-in-hand with grits in the a.m. 

Prometheus Review With Spoilers

This is a picture of Shaw's baby (the tentacled monster) taking out the lone
 space jockey on the planet that the crew awoke from a 2000 year-old hyper sleep.
 When the space jockey woke up, he was pissed and started killing everyone.
There was no explanation. He shares the same genetic code as a human, but
 clearly was very unhappy that humans had landed on the planet and had
 one thing in mind: pilot a ship filled with biological weapons to destroy Earth. Shaw
stopped him and basically opened a door that had the monster tentacled creature
 behind it that grabbed the space jockey that would have killed her. This was the biggest
face-hugger I have ever seen. It was really impressive.Well I saw Prometheus at the midnight showing last Thursday, and I absolutely loved it. Here are the elements that fired my imagination:

1) The 3D was stunning. It wasn't too dark or too light, and it didn't feel like they were purposely going out of their way to make trick shots for a 3D audience. This is definitely a "big screen" film, and I feel that if you are a fan of these movies, you definitely want to invest the money to see it in IMAX if you can.

2) Michael Fassbender as David was the most interesting android ever. There are parts where he is on the spaceship, engaging in sports by himself to clearly wile away the time and then he also emulates Peter O'Toole's character in Lawrence of Arabia (by the way Fassbender looks a lot like a young Peter O'Toole, and I had previously not noticed this connection). Anyway, why would an android need to use old movies and sports to entertain himself unless he was bored? And this begs another question...can computers be bored? I have no idea. But it's an intriguing concept. Roger Ebert pointed out in his review that Peter Weyland referred to David as the "son I never had". Charlize Theron plays the daughter of Peter Weyland and there was definitely sibling rivalry there as well as a startling physical appearance (both blond, both tall, etc.). But Peter Weyland strips David of humanity by declaring him soulless. Is this statement true though? I don't know.

3) The concept of parents. David the android says in one scene that "all children secretly want their parents to die". I thought this was fascinating that someone would even say this. I for one don't want my parents to die. I kind of feel that having my parents die will be the thing that makes me really aware of my mortality--that I too can and will die. And I kind of wonder if David said this because he's essentially immortal and wants to know what it will feel like to die and doesn't believe he can do so UNLESS the ones who created him perish.

Additionally, in Prometheus, one of the characters named Shaw is obsessed with finding an explanation of "where do humans come from?" She's Christian in the movie, which suggests to me that she already has an answer. So why then is she doing all of this searching? Does she want proof? Is belief not enough for her? Maybe there is something to the statement "All fanatics hide a secret doubt". What do you think?

Basically, I see Shaw's quest as a search for parentage of some kind and when she finds it, the parents are not what she was expecting. In fact, they're pretty terrifying. Physically, the "space jockeys" look like the most muscular humans on earth, only half again as tall. Take the offspring of NFL superstars like Eli Manning and Tom Brady and couple that genetic code with really tall supermodels for about three hundred years and then smack that offspring with an ugly stick, and you'd probably end up with a space jockey. So really...not all that far-fetched.

And the gist of Prometheus is that this "super race" created humans (basically destroying all of her beliefs in one fell blow) and to top it off, they're jerks. They offer no explanation for what they did, and it looks like they changed their mind about humanity. In other words, the stuff on the world that the Prometheus visits is a biological weapon. The alien xenomorph is a creation manufactured in a lab somewhere and meant to deploy against the human race to wipe us out. But why?

4) The unanswered questions. The end of the show has Shaw zooming off in a space jockey ship with David along for the ride and she isn't going back to Earth. She's going for the Engineer's (space jockey) homeworld. But what does she hope to find there? They clearly wanted humans dead. However, it's been 2000 years since the engineers on this world were in touch with their core civilization. Did something happen to them? Did they get wiped out by their own biological weapons? Or maybe they were designing a weapon to take out their own parents (the ones that created them).

All in all, Prometheus is the magnificent film that I was hoping for, so I'm pleased. I just hope it makes enough money to warrant a sequel. I want answers that the film didn't provide. And I would also like to see how the first Alien movie and the events in Prometheus connect. Where did the derelict spacecraft on LV-426 come from as well as the huge cargo of eggs. The end of Prometheus showed the birth of a xenomorph, but that's basically a harmless lifeform as the planet had no indigenous population really (unless the alien could learn to pilot an empty ship).

Insecure Writer's Support Group Dating Tip #24

Are you insecure about meeting new people? I know I am. And that's a detriment for those of us that actually want people to read our books because marketing is all in the hands of the author these days. Maybe it all comes out of a fear of rejection. This Dating Tip from Ken, I think, is applicable to most situations, including those we face as a writer. I know I take his advice to heart. It's so simple. Know yourself. Be Yourself. Who knew?
Remember. Solid. That is the key. Thank you, Ken :).
I'll be on a blogging break until Monday. My friend Tomeka is flying in from Detroit, and my friend James from Idaho is driving into town too. We're all going to go see Prometheus at the IMAX, I'll show them the KIA Optima (which is most likely the next car I'm buying), and probably eat really good food.

Love people. Feed them good food.I think that's a good  motto.

What will happen to Samwell Tarley?

Okay, so I needed a day to think about the finale of Game of Thrones, season two. Basically, everything happened...not as I remember it from the book. Not at all. I still liked the season. It had the flavor of A Clash of Kings, but honestly, I'm confused at what will happen to Samwell Tarley. Why did the writers do what they did to him at the end of the show? How can he expect to get out of this situation?

For those of you who haven't read the books, I'm going to talk about something that could be considered a spoiler. But not really...as they seem to be changing everything, and I have no idea what is going to happen next season.

In A Clash of Kings, the White Walkers attack the Fist of the First Men enmasse and destroy the entire Night's Watch (all 300 men). There are some that flee into the woods (there are no woods in the scene in the HBO drama) and Samwell is tracked by one White Walker which he kills using a weapon made of dragon glass (obsidian).

But in the season finale, Samwell is on a snowy plateau...no woods are nearby, and the White Walkers surround him with an army numbering in the hundreds. LIKE WTF?!? How can his character possibly survive? The White Walker obviously saw him. He's surrounded by hundreds of wights. I don't see anyway out of this.

I will be disappointed if he kills one White Walker and the entire army dissipates because they are afraid of his dragon glass weapon.

I will be disappointed if they kill Samwell as he is still alive in A Dance With Dragons.

I will be disappointed if they ignore Samwell because the White Walkers don't ignore humans. They kill everyone, unmercifully.

So what will happen to Samwell Tarley? I'm so irritated by this choice that the writers of the show made. They could easily have had Samwell back at the Fist of the First Men when the attack started. Then he could have been a coward, slipped away, and got trailed by one White Walker that he kills off in the woods with the dragon glass dagger. But I just see no way out of this "Battle of Little Bighorn" that he finds himself in.

Any thoughts? Sigh. Checkout the scene below as it appeared Sunday night. I so would not want to be part of the Night's Watch about now.
Tomorrow I shall post for the Insecure Writers Support Group (June 2012 edition) and then I shall be taking a blog break until the following Monday to entertain out-of-town friends. Alex C., I shall be wanting to compare Prometheus notes next Monday with you. :)