Erik Kain

Erik writes about video games at Forbes and politics at Mother Jones. He's the editor of The League though he hasn't written much here lately. He can be found occasionally composing 140 character cultural analysis on Twitter.

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  1. Back to Ryan B.’s comment:

    I’m not sure he’s a terrible character. I probably wouldn’t read a book about him, but that’s not the same thing.
    At first I was a little annoyed that he seems uninterested in even trying to learn combat skills and wondered if Jon would re-think taking him on. Later I liked it better as I started to see it as part of Martin’s overall project of abusing genre expectations – Sam isn’t transformed by the generosity of Jon and his friends in a montage sequence of tough love and hard training, he’s just Samwell Tarly.

    • I guess. And it’s “realistic” in some sense that you would have a whiny, annoying idiot who wouldn’t ever change (although I think he’s slowly changing, given the events of book four, which makes the slowness of it even more infuriating), but I really don’t care about him. If someone killed him, I would honestly cheer. I cannot stand him.

      • I always read Sam as a tribute character to the Sam from LoTRs.

        • He’d have to be some kind of mirror image tribute then. Samwise is tough, physical and rather unintellectual (but wise); Sam is intellectual (wish mayeb some modest wisdom) and utterly a marshmellow when it comes to physicality.

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