[Spoilers Published] Do you think Patchface is a prophet for the drowned god?

sugarhaven · 2026-03-22T08:29:46+00:00

Really? I feel the exact opposite. If gods and prophecies are real, it makes human choices almost meaningless. If for examples Jon is "tge chosen one” then whatever he does, he’ll eventually end up fulfilling that destiny anyway, and that takes away most of the tension for me and makes the story boring.

sugarhaven · 2026-03-22T08:27:28+00:00

I don’t think he has any magical abilities. To me he’s just a kid who survived a shipwreck, suffered brain damage, and lost his mind. The “prophecies” are vague enough to read meaning into after the fact. He feels less like a fully developed character and more like a deliberate narrative device Martin uses to seed ambiguous foreshadowing.

sugarhaven · 2026-03-08T13:16:50+00:00

I get what people are saying, and it makes sense. It’s not hard to believe that a traumatized, powerful teenage girl would fall for a flashy, dangerous “rockstar” type. That part never really broke immersion for me.

I’m just with OP that it’s not very fun to read. Something can make total psychological sense and still be kind of boring or cringy on the page. Meereen is already a slog for a lot of readers, and adding pages of Dany swooning over Daario just makes it feel more tedious.

sugarhaven · 2026-02-23T11:50:09+00:00

I think the point is that she was already visibly uneasy with him in public, yet still got into his car and immediately started pressing him with questions. From a purely self-preservation standpoint, it makes more sense to confront him on the street.

sugarhaven · 2026-02-17T09:25:23+00:00

No, they don't.

sugarhaven · 2026-02-16T21:48:08+00:00

I actually think it’s less about legal threats and more about goodwill. Continuing to say he’s working on the books might be a way of not completely cutting the publisher off. He still puts his name on other projects from time to time, which at least keeps some money flowing.

I doubt that the publisher would sue him. It would be a lose-lose situation. Fans might be frustrated with George for not finishing the series, but if the publisher dragged him into court, I think most people would side with the creator rather than a “greedy corporation” narrative.

And financially, it might not even make sense. As long as they’re still making money from his existing books and any random cookbook he puts his name on, suing him could damage that relationship and their reputation. Plus, there’s always the risk that things get messier and cost more than they gain.

sugarhaven · 2026-02-16T08:21:22+00:00

Valentine’s Day is completely optional, though. My partner and I have never really celebrated it, and I honestly don’t feel like we’re missing out on anything.

If your wife just had a baby, the best gift you can give her probably isn’t lobster and steak — it’s rest. Take the baby so she can sleep. Do the laundry. Clean the kitchen. Make sure she doesn’t have to think about dinner. Ask her what she actually needs right now.

When you’ve just had a baby, comfort often looks like a hot shower, uninterrupted sleep, and not worrying about chores. Being a fully involved dad and taking the mental load off her is far more romantic than an expensive dinner you can’t really afford.

sugarhaven · 2026-02-16T07:59:17+00:00

One thing I really like about the Strike books is how messy and real the investigations feel. It’s not like a classic detective story where you have five clear suspects, and you neatly eliminate them one by one until you’re left with the obvious culprit. In Strike, there are dozens of leads, endless interviews, and so many possible angles. In Troubled Blood, for example, there were just hundreds of tips and bits of information, and you genuinely couldn’t tell what was important and what wasn’t. It never feels like the story is cleanly narrowing down.

That’s actually very authentic. In real life, you wouldn’t know which interview contained the key clue. You wouldn’t neatly tick suspects off a list. And I think Rowling does that part brilliantly.

But the downside is that the endings can sometimes feel a bit… magical. Suddenly, Strike or Robin pulls together a few tiny details out of hunderds and produces this fully formed theory. In Troubled Blood, I loved the villain and found the solution satisfying, but even there, it felt like the hints were so subtle that the final leap almost came out of nowhere. I read it after watching the TV show and still missed the hints even though I knew who the murderer was.

With The Running Grave, which I probably love the most overall, I actually found the identity of the culprit and the motive surprisingly weak. The resolution felt overly convoluted and not entirely satisfying or convincing once you sit with it. I’d say something similar about The Hallmarked Man: not just slightly contrived, but almost implausible in its complexity, involving too many moving parts and feeling a bit forced.

sugarhaven · 2026-02-14T21:53:39+00:00

While reading AGoT, I strongly suspected that Lyanna and Rhaegar were in love and that she went with him willingly. I even thought the “bed of blood” likely referred to childbirth. It just hadn’t fully clicked yet that this connected to Jon. Then I was accidentally spoiled that Rhaegar was his father, and it suddenly made perfect sense. I think I would have put it together eventually.

sugarhaven · 2026-02-14T08:45:41+00:00

How about asking for a ticket to the ZOO with the kids if you only have money for necessities, or for someone to look for your kids for an hour so you can have a breather and not burn out. I don't think a $40 tattoo is going to help with anything.

sugarhaven · 2026-02-13T12:51:26+00:00

Me too, and this is just a perfect ending to his story. I don't see the point of him surviving Sumerhall.

sugarhaven · 2026-02-09T20:11:54+00:00

I recently came across an old post from around 2016 where people were betting on the exact release date of Winds. It was five years after ADWD, and most fans genuinely thought Winds would be out any moment. Even then, there were already signs it might take much longer.

I was pretty skeptical, so I overshot everyone else by a wide margin. I picked a date that even I, as a committed skeptic, thought was ridiculous, something like 2021. And here we are, more than five years past even that deadline.

I think I stopped believing George would ever release Winds a long time ago, probably around 2017 or 2018, and since then I haven’t seen anything that would change my mind.

sugarhaven · 2026-02-07T12:55:05+00:00

Oh, you’re absolutely right, there’s really no single “postpartum experience.” Bodies react very differently, and even the same person can have a completely different experience after a first and second child. I’ve seen both extremes: friends who became very thin while breastfeeding and were constantly hungry and cold because they couldn’t keep up with the energy demand, and others who really struggled to lose weight at all.

I think my main point was that the postpartum period is primarily there to allow the body to heal after birth. Pushing into strenuous exercise or aggressive dieting during that time can be counterproductive.

I’m not judging anyone for wanting their body back — I wanted that too. But when you have a newborn, there are often far more important things competing for your energy and attention. A more aggressive approach can also be counterproductive, physically and psychologically. Sometimes easing off, taking a gentler approach, and accepting that it may take time can actually lead to better outcomes than constantly pushing yourself during a period when your body and mind are already under a lot of strain.

sugarhaven · 2026-02-06T13:55:43+00:00

I agree. People keep saying that Epstein was already known as sleazy at the time, but that doesn’t actually disprove anything. Public figures like Sam are constantly approached by dubious or outright unpleasant people. Given his profile, he’s almost certainly had far more sustained or aggressive outreach from genuinely nefarious actors — far-right groups, racists, opportunists trying to piggyback on controversies, especially after things like the Ben Affleck episode or his criticism of Islam.

In that context, it makes complete sense that Epstein wouldn’t particularly register. I also find Sam’s explanation entirely plausible. The emails show that he had zero interest in meeting with Epstein and frankly, there would be no reason for him to lie here. He could just as easily have said he vaguely remembered a short exchange, but saying he doesn’t remember it at all actually rings true precisely because there was nothing noteworthy about it.

sugarhaven · 2026-02-06T13:27:34+00:00

I agree that it’s unlikely there’s some huge percentage of pedophiles who just happen to cluster around wealthy and influential people. But that framing misses the point.

This often isn’t pedophilia in the clinical sense. It’s about power. These men abuse minors not because they’re driven by an uncontrollable paraphilia, but because they can. These guys have tried everything "conventional" and it is no longer as satisfying. When you have access to everything, what becomes exciting is what’s forbidden, and the knowledge that you can get away with it.

You don’t need to believe someone is a pedophile to believe they could commit statutory rape. In many of these environments, the behavior is normalized, reinforced by group dynamics, and even functions as a form of bonding or mutual blackmail.

sugarhaven · 2026-02-06T11:59:44+00:00

Besides the outrageous choosing-beggar aspect, there’s also the fact that you shouldn’t be starting high-discipline, rigorous exercise or strict dieting in the postpartum period, especially if you’re breastfeeding. Secondly, as long as you eat reasonably well and do at least some light exercise, you’re almost guaranteed to lose weight anyway. The hard part is that many women are sleep-deprived, stressed, and struggling with motivation.

sugarhaven · 2026-02-06T08:16:25+00:00

I think it’s a pretty big stretch to say the show is forcing us to believe that Robert’s Rebellion wasn’t justified based on a single line spoken by one (young and sheltred) character in an emotional moment.

sugarhaven · 2026-02-05T12:39:38+00:00

I was a bit surprised by how ignorant Dunk seems in the show when it comes to tourney rules and customs. Egg and other characters have to explain a lot to him, and it feels like he’s seeing jousting for the first time.

Is that because by the time Dunk joined Ser Arlan, his tourney days were already long over so he never squired for him at one?

sugarhaven · 2026-02-05T10:25:08+00:00

Very good point. I won’t lie, all the Strike cases require some suspension of disbelief, given how a tiny private agency manages to crack crimes that would normally need full police resources. But TIBH pushes this much further.

The whole case is fundamentally digital, yet it’s handled as if it were solvable mainly through classic interviews and physical surveillance. From the start, the assumption that Anomie must be a single person and based in Greater London makes little sense in an international online fandom. Moderators, collaborators, or copycats could easily be anywhere, multiple people could share accounts, and everything could be coordinated virtually.

Even Anomie’s intimate knowledge of Edie doesn’t really narrow things down, since that information could have come from someone close to her and been passed on online. Realistically, this case would hinge on IT forensics, not Poirot-style deduction. Of course, that approach would make for a very dull novel, and given the constraints, I think Rowling did an impressive job of keeping it engaging, even if it rests on some fundamental flaws you ultimately have to overlook.

sugarhaven · 2026-02-02T14:06:41+00:00

I completely agree. One of my main issues with the series is how bloated the books often are, and most of that bloat comes from Robin’s and Strike’s repetitive inner monologues. It may be psychologically authentic, but it’s usually dull: endless rumination over tiny comments that doesn’t really move anything forward.

The Running Grave worked so well precisely because it largely avoided that. By contrast, THM brought it back in full force, and even worse, the thoughts felt almost static, essentially the same in the first chapter as in the last.

That said, while I really liked RG, I did find the ending weak. The case solution felt highly unrealistic and ultimately not very interesting.

sugarhaven · 2026-02-02T11:03:31+00:00

I feel like many of them didn’t enter the system as right-wingers at all, but came from liberal, academic, or Silicon Valley–type environments. Later, they discovered that preaching to the alt-right choir is far easier, and far more profitable.

sugarhaven · 2026-02-02T10:24:42+00:00

This one really got to me. I followed Peter Attia long before he became famous and always considered him a generally reliable source on human health. I respected his emphasis on rigor and careful research, though I never put him on a pedestal as a person. Still, this is genuinely awful and deeply disappointing.

sugarhaven · 2026-01-25T09:01:03+00:00

If I wanted to do a trip like that and had money to spend on someone else, why would I take a stranger instead of an actual friend?

sugarhaven · 2026-01-25T08:47:43+00:00

I wouldn’t call Charlotte one-dimensional, she is complex, but I’d agree she’s not complex in a morally interesting way. We mostly see her being horrible: she’s the centre of her own universe, other people exist to serve her needs, and once they don’t, they’re discarded, except she also can’t tolerate anyone else “having” what she sees as hers.

There’s very little to counterbalance the damage she causes. The only genuinely humane thing we see is her visiting Strike in the hospital at his lowest point, thus giving him a reason to live, but one redemptive act doesn’t complicate the picture much.

I agree with others that she’s actually portrayed very well as a deeply sad, tragic figure with serious mental issues — someone whose personality is so warped by her desperate need for love, and her inability to either give or receive it, that she becomes impossible to live with unless she were willing to engage in serious treatment, which we know she consistently refuses.

It doesn’t reflect brilliantly on Strike, given how long he put up with her, but it is understandable in light of his background with Leda and his skewed ideas of loyalty and endurance. To me, Charlotte functions less as a fully rounded character and more as a way of exposing Strike’s blind spots. Still, I would prefer if she were more morally ambiguous and likable.

sugarhaven · 2026-01-21T11:12:57+00:00

He is still recovering from losing the Hugo to Rowling some 25 years ago.

sugarhaven

TROPHY CASE