Actually, as far as I know, Thurman heard about it and came to them? It's pretty arbitrary still, and I do find it pretty odd, because I associate messageboards with older fandoms/fans. These books are only about four years old, and a lot of the fans are in middle or high school. So it really does strike me as weird, that they started up a messageboard, but quite possibly the people who started it didn't have much/any experience with Livejournal. And then if the author talked the place up, then I guess that's why fandom mostly stayed there.
Yeah, this is what's strange to me. Is it a different kind of fan that goes to non-journaling sites?
Yes. Eljay ASOIAF fandom is primarily female, as far as I can tell. Non-eljay ASOIAF fandom...isn't. You get some really boneheaded neckbeard-y men, is what I've noticed. Brienne (who's my faaaaaavourite) is a pretty popular character in eljay circles from what I can tell, for instance, but she's significantly less so in other places. She's also basically a deconstruction of the beloved Lady Knight trope--she's not omghawt or feminine or witty or adorably fiery-tempered or any of the other things that I at least associate with that character archetype. And thus, she's...not hugely popular outside eljay, far as I've seen.
A Song of Ice and Fire has its really good points, and it has its...really not so good points (cf. any time GRRM tries consciously to handle The Gays). Sansa is only barely not my favourite character in the entire series, but in fandom overall (including the non-eljay parts), she's horrendously unpopular--or she's only popular after a certain point in the books. I can understand why people don't like her, but I was very fond of her from the get-go, personally. You probably didn't get quite to the point where a lot of people like her better? I'd suggest trying the books again, or catching the tv series when it debuts, because then you don't have to put up with GRRM's sometimes-awful writing. /o/
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Yeah, this is what's strange to me. Is it a different kind of fan that goes to non-journaling sites?
Yes. Eljay ASOIAF fandom is primarily female, as far as I can tell. Non-eljay ASOIAF fandom...isn't. You get some really boneheaded neckbeard-y men, is what I've noticed. Brienne (who's my faaaaaavourite) is a pretty popular character in eljay circles from what I can tell, for instance, but she's significantly less so in other places. She's also basically a deconstruction of the beloved Lady Knight trope--she's not omghawt or feminine or witty or adorably fiery-tempered or any of the other things that I at least associate with that character archetype. And thus, she's...not hugely popular outside eljay, far as I've seen.
A Song of Ice and Fire has its really good points, and it has its...really not so good points (cf. any time GRRM tries consciously to handle The Gays). Sansa is only barely not my favourite character in the entire series, but in fandom overall (including the non-eljay parts), she's horrendously unpopular--or she's only popular after a certain point in the books. I can understand why people don't like her, but I was very fond of her from the get-go, personally. You probably didn't get quite to the point where a lot of people like her better? I'd suggest trying the books again, or catching the tv series when it debuts, because then you don't have to put up with GRRM's sometimes-awful writing. /o/