Friday Reader Rambles - I swear it by the old gods and the new

            So I was just reading A Feast for Crows and…hey, I do too read things other than A Song of Ice and Fire, popularly known as Game of Thrones. This is the next to  last book available at the moment, so indulge me for another blog or two as I work through it.

If you’ve been a long time follower of the Kelswitch, or you’ve just poked around enough, you know that religious issues often catch my attention. Debates over what is right and what is wrong, how different faiths interact with each other in the real world, all of it is fair game for this blog. It’s actually why I started a blog in the first place, a few years back. Anyway, how that ties into what I’m reading, the religions of Westeros are one of the pieces of the puzzle George R. R. Martin has created that fascinate me the most. It fascinates me and it terrifies me at the same time, partly for the sheer fanaticism you see in some of the characters *cough*Melisandre*cough* and partly because of how realistic it is.

That’s the scary thing about A Song of Ice and Fire in general, how much of it is based on our own history, and the cruelty that lies therein.

            I love the old gods. I adore the Seven, partly because of the aspect part of it, which relates to my own beliefs of maiden, mother, and crone. I can’t say which I would follow if I lived in Westeros. I suppose it would depend on my House and where I came from. Houses of the North follow the old gods, the South follows the Seven.

            Touching again on Melisandre, the real reason I wanted to write this blog in the first place. If the old gods and the Seven remind me of Pagan beliefs in the real world, then the Lord of Light and all of his most devout followers remind me of the Christian God. If you’re not with him, you’re against him and he will leave you to the darkness, which to their lexicon is most evil. Besides that, remember the fanaticism I mentioned? Yeah. I live in the Bible Belt, I know how that can go and I see it in Melisandre. I also see a hint of it in the recent focus on the Iron Islands in A Feast for Crows. Their Drowned God seems to require near the same fanaticism, and the scariest part is when the priests preaching for conversion actually start to make sense.

            I must commend George R. R. Martin on his development of religions in not just Westeros, but his entire world. He has done a fantastic job of creating something unique to the world, but believable with echoes of things from our world. It just makes for fantastic reading.

            Until the next fangirling blog over Westeros, have a good weekend. Kelswitch, over and out!

Why Dear, You Had A Facelift

            We take a break from your regularly scheduled reader ramblings to note that the Kelswitch has had a facelift! I’m hoping that it will function in much the same way that Weebly did, putting everything in one place for easy as you please access to my Internet home. Yes, it took me three years to master Blogger in all its glory, and there is probably still some awesome feature I haven’t found yet. I’ll get it eventually, but in the meantime, back to our regularly scheduled program.

            Last week, I finished A Storm of Swords by George R. R. Martin, putting me in at just barely under a month to read it. I must say, once I got past the part that HBO has caught up with, I enjoyed the book so much more. It’s put the excitement back in my blood tenfold for season four of Game of Thrones because of all that I now know is coming. I am counting down to see how they do certain characters from the book that will be introduced this season, especially the Red Viper of Dorne. I was taken with his character in a short period of time, after hearing whisperings of his name across the Facebook fan pages.

            That all being said, I’m still taking a break before I dive into A Feast for Crows. Call it a break for sanity.

            It seems that there always has been and always will be a debate regarding the genuineness of readers who come to a series after it has been made famous by movies or television. Are you a true fan if you didn’t read the books until after the movie? I can almost understand the sense of superiority for having read something before it ever went to the big screen, but in reality, it’s false superiority. Reading something after seeing the movie can change the experience, granted, but that can go either way. Some books were enhanced because of expectations I had based on the movie. Others were found lacking because of previous expectations. It’s a toss of the coin and Hollywood’s effort, but one thing is for sure, getting someone to read an author’s work is never a bad thing.

            I’ve said before that I feel  HBO’s Game of Thrones and A Song of Ice and Fire greatly complement each other’s strengths and weaknesses. Candace Bushnell’s Sex and the City did not live up to expectations from the show, but her other books The Carrie Diaries and Summer and the City were fantastic and so far, the CW show The Carrie Diaries has not disappointed either. I could name off a few more examples of one way or the other, but that’s enough rambling for now.

            If you want to read George R. R. Martin’s work, I suggest doing it before the show completely catches up with him, so you can better appreciate his capabilities without already knowing what’s going to happen.

           

Friday Reader Rambles

            Before this week, the last time I got 5,000 words in one day was in June. I had to go back through my writer log to find that out and it left me scratching my head, wondering what the hell Kel? That’s sad. One of my favorite writers averages 5,000-7,000 a day. That’s what I need to shoot for, and I’ve known this. I don’t even.

            In other news, I’ve been wanting to make Friday Reader Rambles a regular feature on the Kelswitch and that’s going to happen starting now. I’ve been reading two books, The Hunter’s Moon and A Storm of Swords. If that last one sounds familiar, it is the third in the series A Song of Ice and Fire by George R.R. Martin. Down the road, when someone asks what do you think of when you think 2013, I’m going to answer Game of Thrones. Bear and I have gotten heavily into it this year and as previous blogs will indicate, I’m a Targaryen supporter, even if I’ve heard rumblings about Daenerys I’d rather ignore. Shut up Wrac.

            Last night, as I picked up A Storm of Swords to do some reading before bed, it occurred to me about another wonderful power reading possesses. It reaches across the country, across the world, and gives people a connection they might have otherwise never had. I have a specific example in mind.

            Through the sharing power of Facebook, I came across a fellow aspiring author. A page for book lovers shared his author page and I did the customary follow his page, follow his Twitter. I later find out that he is an administrator, whose sign off I’ve seen many a time, on a Game of Thrones page I follow. Now, this guy lives in Australia. It’s an amazing aspect to Facebook, but it’s more about the reading, something that brings people together. It’s funny that reading is such a solitary activity, but most of us want to turn it into a group activity, because we have to gush about our favorite plots and characters and compare “what’s going to happen” theories with someone!

            My first big, positive Internet experience came with a fan forum I was a part of, years ago. It was for Anne Bishop’s Black Jewels Trilogy and though the forum eventually died off and was taken down, I had some excellent discussions and gushings there. As readers, we compared notes and debated theories and it was just one of the best experiences I’ve had on the Internet to date. It wasn’t always about books. Someone was bored one day and started a thread asking if you wad up toilet paper, or fold it neatly. The thread went pretty far. I was very surprised, but it was all in good fun. When it came down to it though, we were brought together for a shared love of Anne Bishop’s work. I was very sad to see that forum vanish into nothing.

            As a writer, the biggest compliment I can think of receiving would be for someone to tell me that my story changed their life, in some way or another. The other biggest compliment would be if my books brought people together, like so many of my favorites have. Writers were always readers first, and readers never walk alone.

Maiden, Mhysa, Crone

            If you were to ask me what I thought was one of the most powerful words in the English language, in any language, I would have this to say: Mother. What brings me to this conclusion is the continued revisiting of the season finale of Game of Thrones. If you haven’t watched it yet, avert your eyes. Thousands of freed slaves crying out to Daenerys Targaryen MHYSA! And the moment when Daenerys asks what it means and she is told it means Mother, that is a powerful moment to me.

            When a woman becomes a mother, she is given a gift to love and care for. A defenseless child, with no idea of the world they just joined. In truth, a child is clay to be molded, at first. How a mother raises her child determines the foundation the rest of their lives will stand on. If you raise a child to value power, as Cersei did with Joffrey, the end result is a power hungry king, hardly fit to rule, more interested in cruel acts than acts of kindness. If you raise a child with values of kindness towards others and a sense of honor, then you get someone who tries to do the right thing. In theory at least. I believe in equal parts nature and nurture. I believe that we can learn to control our darkest impulses, we just have to be given a good reason.

            The future of the world lies in the small hands of our children. We teach them how to hold it, how to cup their hands together so the fate of the world does not slip through their fingers. This is why I believe education is so important. In my nephew’s Kindergarten class, it was strange to look around and think that this is the future and that every child there has the potential to change the world, for good or ill. How we teach them, the foundation they are given means so much in how they will turn out. And it starts with the woman who gave birth to them.

            Whether it’s my nephews or children of my own, I will never speak against their parents in front of them. If Bear and I have children and then decide we can’t get along, we’ve both agreed that we will put our issues aside and do what’s best for them. I’ve seen too much bullshit with certain custody battles and a tug of war with a kid who does not deserve to be put in that position. And even though the situation I have in mind, I do not like the kid’s mom at all, I will never talk down about her in front of him. He loves his Mama and he’s so young that I believe he should be allowed to put her on a pedestal. The day will come when he realizes she’s not perfect and that she has made mistakes, but for the duration of his childhood, she’s his Mama and that’s all there is to it. Period.

            Even if a child grows into adulthood and realizes that their parent has made some big mistakes, maybe even that he/she is not a good person at all, they will still have the memories from their childhood of them. The kid I mentioned earlier whose Mom I have no love for at all, he may grow up and decide he wants nothing to do with her, but no one can take away his childhood memories with her. Nothing can dull the bright place they will hold in his heart. I speak from experience on that one, not with my own parents but other people that have been in my life a long time.

            You grow up and realize the people you put up so high as a kid, they’re not perfect. They’ve done things that make you stop for a moment, frozen by disbelief, but like I said, nothing will take away the special moments you shared with them. And I’ll be damned if I or anyone else ruins that.