After a long wait, local man Garwin Hildebrand is said to be nearing the completion of a reportedly excellent joke about George R. R. Martin’s propensity for delaying things.

Garwin’s joke will focus on Elden Ring, Point & Clickbait understands, although if his past jokes are anything to go by, it’s likely to feature references to numerous other games, potentially including some we’ve never heard of before.

“Garwin’s getting there. He’s getting close,” his wife, Helga Hildebrand, told us (Garwin, in an interesting twist, has not appeared within the press cycle of this story, and as such all information about the man has come through Helga).

Garwin, who locked himself in his office shortly after Elden Ring first leaked and has only emerged to work his 9-5 job five days a week and to socialise on most nights, reportedly just wants to be “left alone” to “finish the punchline”.

“The amount of material he’s got, he could easily turn it into as many as four or five jokes”, Helga sighed. “I don’t understand it, personally. It’s so easy. Look, here: ‘Oh, this is bad, George R. R. Martin’s already missing deadlines because he’s addicted to Dark Souls’. There. Done. But I suppose my Garwin wants to get it just right.”

It’s been a hard few months for Garwin – shortly after he began working on his joke, his brother Rander usurped him at the ice cream store they work at, rising to the rank of manager (a position Garwin had long been pursuing).

Harder still was Rander’s sudden and unexpected death: the nature of the poison that killed him is still unknown. Garwin himself was not present at the funeral, declaring that he needed to spend that time working on his joke and saying “it’s what Rander would have wanted.” Sadly Rander, who was often critical of Garwin’s jokes for including “too many detailed descriptions of women’s breasts, and weird ghouls and shit like that,” will not be around to witness the epic conclusion to this Elden Ring laugh riot.

The members of the Elden Ring Reddit community eagerly await Garwin’s upcoming bon mot. “I think skipping his brother’s funeral was a real sign that he’s serious this time,” read a post by user BranShark. “That was a wake up call. He could be poisoned himself, and then we’d all be left here without a resolution. He’s the only one who can craft this punchline.”

Elden Ring has no set release date, but we bet that George R. R. Martin, who is notorious for taking a long time with his projects, will delay it in some way by not working with the sort of efficiency and speed that you want the writer to work with when they’re working on a project like this, and that will mean it will take a long time to release, even though we want to play it right now, and that will be bad.

What, you think you could do better?! Tell us how in the comments, asshole!