But a Jape

“Captain Gast unhinged her jaw as she snacked upon a frozen rodent – by the way, did I mention Captain Gast was a sapient anaconda?”

– Fall of the Empire: Gast’s Crusade, Chapter 18

I’ve been reading through the Foundation trilogy by Isaac Asimov and it does this really annoying thing where characters’ appearances aren’t described during their introduction but are then given descriptions pages, or even chapters, later. I was having fun making these people look however I wanted them to look, then Asimov tells me the short, pudgy, redhead I was imagining is actually tall, muscular, and blonde. Sometimes I’ll try to continue imagining them how I originally did, but Asimov will keep insisting “did I mention they’re blonde? That’s really important.”

It’s especially egregious that it took three entire books before Asimov let us know Hari Seldon was a little anime girl.

– James