michaelhein

I was wondering why the ads haven't been playing up the "final Conjuring movie" aspect more, I imagine that would help lure a lot of people back in. I think this franchise is in a tricky spot because a lot of people want it to be cheesy, but if it tries to be cheesy, they won't like it.

I love the graphic novel adaptations of The Adventure Zone podcast, I think it's so fun to see how they keep the unscripted feeling in there while also heavily editing the story for readability.

Good points — GRRM definitely knows that his ending wouldn't please everyone, and that it would stir up some new negative commentary. That has to be a factor in his writer's block as well.

Well, every online forum eventually needs this discussion, so I'm happy to get it started here. In the last year or so, I've been less hopeful about ever reading The Winds of Winter than I have been at any other time since getting into the series. Still, I think I'll always have some glimmer of hope that GRRM will give us a great ending. At the very least, it makes it easier to get up every morning if I keep hope alive 😭 This is a pretty deep rabbit hole with a lot of warrens to go down, including GRRM's historical writing pace and his history of leaving ambitious works unfinished. On the other hand, there's one train of thought that really makes me hopeful, which is that GRRM needs to realize he can't finish his story in just two more books. There are too many characters and subplots to wrap up to get it done in two more volumes. He has realized this before and expanded the series — ASOIAF was originally planned as a trilogy, for example — and I think if he honestly wants his magnum opus finished, he'll realize this is the only way. That's why I really think that if we get Winds, we'll get the rest of the series, because if he finishes a publishable version of Winds, it'll break the dam and he'll be able to see the path to the ending he wants. Considering that he's at least 75% finished with Winds, I think it's still reasonable to hope that he'll have this realization, and the finished version of ASOIAF will have eight or nine volumes rather than seven.

I didn't watch anything Dexter-related until the last two or three years, so I definitely don't have a lot of skin in this race, but I feel like the whole premise is hard to approach in 2025. I think Paramount would be better off letting it lie and enjoying the continued streaming views from re-watchers rather than inviting new fans in to re-examine the franchise. The original show makes some weird presumptions about mental health and trauma imo, and those are inevitably going to echo into the newer spinoffs.

I'm interested by scared to see the general answers to this, because personally I know I have nostalgia blinders for DKR. It was one of the only DVDs in a dorm suite I lived in for a year, so at the very least, I can attest that it's watchable and quotable. It definitely has some ridiculous leaps in logic and weird pacing, but then again, I kind of love those because the Nolan trilogy is always touted as more "realistic" than other superhero movies. I think a lot of the melodramatic stuff helps pull DKR back towards comics, which is a good thing.