George R. R. Martin: “Stop Asking Me Which Game Of Thrones Character Is My Favorite!”

George R. R. Martin, the author of the A Song of Ice and Fire series on which the HBO hit show A Game of Thrones is based, has been doing interviews for the last two months. He’s been talking about the show, the much-awaited sixth book, and the characters.

After all these interviews, he has a message for reporters: stop asking which character is his favorite!

On his blog, the Game of Thrones author ranted:

Tyrion is my favorite character. Okay? OKAY? Can we PLEASE put that one to rest?? I love all my viewpoint characters, Arya and Sansa and Bran, Jon Snow and Brienne, Arianne and Cersei and Jaime, Theon, even Victarion and the Damphair, ALL of them, but I love Tyrion the bestest. Tyrion son of Tywin, the Imp, second son of Casterly Rock. How many bloody times do I need to say it?? I swear, from now on, whenever anybody asks me, “who is you favorite character,” I am going to start naming characters from other people’s books. Cugel the Clever. Flashman. Gatsby. Hotspur. Solomon Kane. A different one each time…

Martin has already taken some criticism from fans after he told the Sydney Morning Herald that

he sometimes wishes people would stop pressuring him to finish.

It will be done when it’s done. I’m working on it. I don’t know what else I can say: I’m a slow writer, I’ve always been a slow writer, and these are gigantic books.

Many fans took offense at the statement, calling the Game of Thrones author ungrateful to the fan base that supports him.

That sentiment is nothing new, though, and author Neil Gaiman decried it five years ago on his own blog, saying,

People are not machines. Writers and artists aren’t machines.

You’re complaining about George doing other things than writing the books you want to read as if your buying the first book in the series was a contract with him: that you would pay over your ten dollars, and George for his part would spend every waking hour until the series was done, writing the rest of the books for you.

No such contract existed. You were paying your ten dollars for the book you were reading, and I assume that you enjoyed it because you want to know what happens next.

Gaiman’s point, while eloquent and accurate, doesn’t necessarily ease the frustration for those anxious for the next installment of their favorite fantasy. Nor does it dispel their image of George R. R. Martin as a curmudgeon.

Curmudgeon or not, though, the Game of Thrones author can be depended on to thrill our sense of fantasy with the next novel, if we only accept that he’ll do it in his own time — and if we stop interrupting him to ask who his favorite character is.

[Photo Credit: Gage Skidmore]

George R. R. Martin: “Stop Asking Me Which Game Of Thrones Character Is My Favorite!”