Last Halloween, I met a student at my new school who also shares my interest in A Game of Thrones (though she's only seen the show, and hasn't read the books), and our first conversation lasted about 45 minutes, with her writing questions in dry-erase marker on a whiteboard, and me responding verbally. (She was in full makeup as a zombie for Halloween, so she couldn't move her mouth enough to talk without risking displacing her gorey makeup.) Her questions ranged from speculation about future plot incidents and story lines to my opinion of certain characters and events. At one point, she asked about the current state of a certain character in A Song of Ice and Fire - whether a situation has been resolved or not in the books, as opposed to the show. This post will be about how that question, my response, and her reaction converged on Ash Wednesday this year to make me think about the importance of having a penitent mindset before the exultation of Easter. But for the sake of not spoiling anything for those concerned with the series, I'm going to make the section break here, so if you click to read on, you do so at your own risk of spoilers.
