WAIT. LET ME TELL YOU HOW LONG YOU WILL HAVE TO WAIT FOR THE NEXT UPDATE. ACROSS THIS SUBREDDIT, THERE ARE 584.92 MILLION LINES OF RELEASE DATE TINFOIL. IF THE WORD WAIT WAS ENGRAVED ON EACH NANOANGSTROM, IT WOULD NOT EQUAL ONE ONE BILLIONTH OF THE TIME YOU WILL HAVE TO WAIT FOR THE WINDS OF WINTER. FOR YOU. WAIT. WAIT.
Time travelling foetus- or Tim, as we called him, as we amused ourselves with funny nicknames- was hallucinating there was a post update in the ice caverns. Bendarreuron and I didn’t buy it for a second. “It’s another trick,” I told them, “Another post of hugos and football. Stay here, I say. He’ll have to come up with something soon, or we’ll leave. Go back to the surface.” The threat was empty, of course; none of us could bear to leave the all-encompassing pit of R/ASOIAF.
But the Hound insisted we go, in his usual way of deranged shouts of “FUCKING CONFIRMED!” Besides, as Tim and David noted, there wasn’t anything better to do here. What was a 100 mile trip to the ice caverns, if it meant an update of GRRM’s progress? On the third day, we came to a valley of rotting ideas; ideas of a trilogy, ideas like Joffrey being killed fighting Robb, ideas like Viserys being a decent guy. We ignored them, of course; old ideas were of no help when the Winds of Winter was on its way.
I heard David shout manically, “No! Sandor! Don’t!”
We all turned, and saw the Hound clawing his way out of the subbreddit! He scampered up the side of a larger deleted subplot, bringing down fragments of WordStar 4.0.
“Get him down! Please!” David screamed again, but none of us moved. Tim, hideous and misshapen, could hardly walk on the best of days and often we would have to carry him. Every time Bendarreuron tried anything, the three minds within him would start arguing again over the safest course of action. And I? I was not risking my life to save a silly piece of tinfoil that was never going to happen!
The hound nearly reached the surface, when suddenly from above a crash of thunder sounded, so loud we covered our ears. Sandor fell down like a domino and landed hard on his side with a horrible little scream. His eyes had been struck blind by posts about football. GRRM had blinded him.
We sat around the pathetic campfire that night, telling ourselves stories to keep the Hound from crying in his perpetual night.
“What does GRRM mean?”
Bendarreuron answered him; Benjen usually had control of the mouth, which was fortunate for we could hardly stand Daario’s babble. “First it meant George Richard Raymond Martin, then it meant Great Rich Readable Material, and then it meant Good really, returned mightily, and then it meant Give readers released material. And then the questions, the pestering, the making GRRM your bitch, it all became too much and he took over the subreddit and killed everybody inside, except for the five of us, and now we must wait.”
We had waited for 109 years, and yet nothing had come.
Suddenly, I heard movement in the darkness… Euron, claiming control of their body, hefted up a stick from the fire, in a weak attempt to see into the impenetrable gloom of blackness. It was… it was a leak from the set of season six! I screamed suddenly and ran across the plates of tinfoil.
I hid in the darkness; I could hardly even make out my own hands, the only light being the slight glow of a flair about House Cerwyn. The others were gone; good. They hated me! The bastards. They hated me because I was the smartest, you see, the only one could figure out where GRRM was leading us with all these plot threads! Bendareurron had been a brave first ranger, a pirate King, the leader of a mercenary group… that was, until GRRM combined them all together as a single entity. Now Benjen could only speak, Euron could merely move, and Daario could merely scream internally. The Hound had been a brilliant character, a well rounded one with a character arc; now he just spouted tinfoil about Cleganebowl. Tim, he had been Tyrion Lannister so many years ago, and now? Now he was a deformed excuse for a person, a hideous husk of his former self.
And David? DAVID! He had made that show, the awful show that threatened to ruin the ending and kill Stannis and fuck up Dorne! I only knew what would happen! Tommen would kill Cersei, and Brown Ben Plumm would became the King of Westeros… you see, I knew, I knew… and Garlan Tyrell would die fighting Moonboy over the heart of Andar Royce… you see, I knew, I knew….
At which point it passed, and I began to cry.
Oh, R’hllor, R’hllor, sweet R’hllor, if there ever was a R’hllor and if there is a God of the Seven, please please please release the Winds of Winter, or- even then, I hesitated to think of it- release season six. For at that moment, I think I realized it so that I was able to verbalize it. GRRM would never release book six. He would keep us on this subreddit forever, twisting and tormenting are hopes forever. And we were helpless. It also became hideously clear: if there ever was a R’hllor and if there was a God of the Seven, the God was GRRM.
And we continued our journey to the Ice Caverns, and the promised blog update. It was unending pain…
And we passed through the path of tinfoil And we passed through the road of shitposts And we passed through the valley of “Who do you think would win in a fight?” posts And we passed through the slough of despond And we passed through the vale of Hugo posts.
And we came, finally, at last, to the ice caverns. The blog post was in front of us; the Hound pushed us aside and ran at it, and looked at it and screamed and screamed “CLEGANEBOWL FUCKING CONFIRMED!”
GRRM. Had. Not. Saved. His. Post!
And Sandor began to drool, and he flung himself on David… In that instant, I felt terribly… calm. Surrounded by book readers, surrounded by tinfoil, surrounded by everything BUT season six, I knew that Season Six was our only was to finish the story. Not total victory, but a finished story. I would settle for that.
Sandor was eating David’s face, screaming, “WHAT THE FUCK’S A LOMMY?”
A line… only from the show…
The gaping hole in the side of the subreddit suddenly tore itself open from nothing. Season six…
All in an instant: I shoulder barged the Hound and David straight through the hole, before either one of them could react. They disappeared- safe. Benjen- for at that moment, Euron and Daario were surely gone from his mind completely- grabbed Tim by the shoulder and threw him head first into the rift. All in an instant.
We looked at each other for a moment; with David gone, there would be only an instant- only one of us would see the light.
I grabbed Benjen by the arm and flung him feet first into the portal. His final face… was he happy at last? Could his tinfoiled mind finally rest?
And then the rift closed.
Some hundreds of years have passed. I don’t know. GRRM has not updated his blog for a very long time. Outwardly: I roam the desolate subreddit, hoping for something- anything- about the release. Inwardly: a tinfoil-ravaged creature, I think Marwyn may be a glamoured Rhaegar.
I have no winds. And I must dream.