Game of Thrones scribe George R.R. Martin killed off another entity, and this time, the casualty was not a character from one of his books.
On Friday, Martin added one of the original social networking sites LiveJournal to his extensive list of victims with one last entry announcing his departure from his aptly titled, "Not a Blog" page.
For those wondering what LiveJournal is, the blog site was created in 1999 and was the predecessor to Facebook, MySpace, Friendster and was a gathering place for aspiring writers and bloggers engaging in friendly debates within a myriad of fan communities.
The famous fantasy writer joined the sanctum of the burgeoning blogosphere in 2005 and continued his contributions to the online community for the next 13 years, even as other Internet writers gradually jumped ship in favor of more advanced platforms like Reddit and Twitter.
Despite LiveJournal's increasing irrelevancy, Martin periodically updated his fans by candidly sharing his thoughts on the literary world, politics, and even the New York Giants.
As Game of Thrones launched him further into superstardom, he gave updates on his blog about convention appearances and even mentioned the next installment of A Song of Ice and Fire's eagerly anticipated book, The Winds of Winter in 2014, 2015, and 2016.
In an entry from March 27, 2014, Martin claimed he "broke the Internet" when he uploaded a sample of The Winds of Winter and thanked fans for their praise. This is an example of his passion in sharing with the community and his level of engagement:
Originally, it was intended to be the opening Arya chapter after the infamous "five year gap," her first appearance in A DANCE WITH DRAGONS as initially conceived. Then it was supposed to be a part of A FEAST FOR CROWS, after I abandoned the five year gap and split the books. Then it was going to be the concluding Arya chapter in A DANCE WITH DRAGONS. But it seemed more like an opening chapter than a closing one, so shortly before ADWD was published my editor and I agreed to remove it from DANCE and shift it over into WINDS.
But fear not, fans. Martin will continue his blogging elsewhere. For the last entry, moderator Minion Raya wrote:
Minion Raya here to let you know that we're moving the Not A Blog to a whole new location! So if you're looking for the latest news from GRRM hop on over to the website and check out the new Not a Blog.
His departure is viewed as the demise of LiveJournal, and while that may be true to some extent, the site will continue to exist as what Mashable called, a "kind of a digital archive."
His newly relocated blog won't be as engaging, however. According to his March 5, 2018 entry, Martin admitted that a lot of exciting projects will keep him from routinely checking in, but his "minions" would continue speaking for him.
I am buried in work, so much that it is starting to overwhelm me. Even with my army of loyal minions. So I am going to step back from blogging — okay, from NOT-a-blogging — for a while, till I get a few of these monkeys off my back.
To the handful of LJ loyalists, Martin's exodus cuts deep. For others, they were too far into current trends of social media to even notice.
Fans are just excited for the fact that he can focus more on churning out more books.
H/T - LiveJournal, Mashable, Endgadget, Twitter