Kingsguard Identification: Here’s the Thing (Hair’s the Thing)

Posted: March 25, 2026 by patricksponaugle in Game of Thrones, Opinion, TV
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Last week, as part of my Westeros Wednesday series (filling the time between now and the House of the Dragon season three premiere) I had a long blog post (sorry for the ridiculous word count) talking in-depth about the big Judicial Jousting the happened in the penultimate episode of A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms.

In that post, I took pains to try and track (mostly) the fourteen combatants in that trial. Part of that account included tracking the three Kingsguard involved, who are largely indistinguishable in their identical white armor and feature-covering helms.

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Some Misty Morning Exercise in Ashford

Posted: March 18, 2026 by patricksponaugle in Game of Thrones, Opinion, TV
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One of the major events of HBO’s A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms‘ first season was a dramatic Trial by Combat.

Hold on a moment, I should really have put out some spoiler warnings before I started getting into details.

You should watch this terrific HBO show before reading this blog post. Go watch right now, we’ll all wait. It’s roughly a three-hour time commitment – a very short season of television.

Everyone, take five while people get caught up on the show.

Okay, now that they’re gone, lets talk about the Trial of Seven, and maybe another related (sort of related) melee from George RR Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire.

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A Knight of the Nine Kingdoms

Posted: March 4, 2026 by patricksponaugle in Game of Thrones, Opinion, TV
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HBO has recently finished up a season of its latest A Song of Ice and Fire offering, A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms.

The six-episode season largely covered the events told in The Hedge Knight, the first novella from George RR Martin detailing the adventures of Ser Duncan the Tall and his diminutive and bald squire Egg. There are three written novellas of Dunk and Egg stories, currently collected in a single volume called A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms. I recommend it as reading material for anyone who would like to enjoy some stories that are set in Westeros but that aren’t quite as grim (for various levels of grim) as the narrative that kicks off in A Game of Thrones.

I used to blog heavily about Game of Thrones and slightly less-heavily for House of the Dragon. I won’t make any promises on insightful content, but I do want to write some essays over the next few months about A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms, and a reasonable place to start is with the end of the final episode. (Look, I do what I want to do. Anyone can start writing about the beginning of things…)

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November 2025 MicroStory Collection

Posted: December 1, 2025 by patricksponaugle in Flash Fiction, Writing
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It’s the first of December 2025, so I went through my social media feeds and grabbed all of the MicroStories I’d tweeted* during the month of November. (Full Disclosure: I didn’t tweet any of these to Twitter/X because Don’t Feed Fascism, but I still like using the word tweet as a synonym for posting.)

As a reminder, these represent story-essences composed using no more than 289 characters (so I could post them with the hashtag #MicroStory – following the character limit imposed by the social media site BlueSky.)

Usually, I only post Science Fiction and Fantasy #MicroStories. November was no exception.

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October 2025 MicroStory Collection

Posted: November 1, 2025 by patricksponaugle in Flash Fiction, Writing
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It’s the first of November 2025, so I went through my social media feeds and grabbed all of the MicroStories I’d tweeted* during the month of October. (Full Disclosure: I didn’t tweet any of these to Twitter because Don’t Feed Fascism, but I still like using the word tweet as a synonym for posting.)

As a reminder, these represent story-essences composed using no more than 289 characters (so I could post them with the hashtag #MicroStory – following the character limit imposed by the social media site BlueSky.)

Usually, I only post Science Fiction and Fantasy #MicroStories. October was no exception.

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The Dad-Focused Breakdown for the Knight of the Seven Kingdoms Trailer

Posted: October 11, 2025 by patricksponaugle in Game of Thrones, TV
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Thursday, October 10th 2025, HBO released the trailer for A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms, an adaptation of The Hedge Knight, the first of three (so far) novellas about a lowborn hedge knight named Ser Duncan (the Tall) and his scrawny bald squire, Egg.

George RR Martin, the author of the (unfinished) A Song of Ice and Fire series, wrote these novellas roughly sometime after the third ASOIAF book (I have not researched this) – as part of the background for his main series. The Dunk and Egg novellas take place close to a century before the events shown on HBO’s Game of Thrones series, and roughly 70 years after the events in the still-ongoing House of the Dragon show, detailing the Dance of the Dragons or the Targaryen Civil War. Alright, that’s enough detail. Why am I posting this shot-by-shot breakdown of the trailer?

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Looking Up at Superman (2025)

Posted: July 27, 2025 by patricksponaugle in Comics, Movie Review, Opinion
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Recently (as of this posting) my wife and I got to see the latest SUPERMAN movie, in the theaters (as Rao the Sun God intended for it to be seen.) It was very satisfying seeing a good Superman movie, where the movie is good and Superman is good.

Caption: Superman! Now 47% less broody.
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Batman Day 2024 – Batman Onscreen, Offscreen, and Occasionally Offworld

Posted: October 2, 2024 by patricksponaugle in Comics, Opinion
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International Batman Day for 2024 occurred on September 21st – I was too late to get something written up for it. (But maybe me posting this just a bit over a week late will be okay.)

I started writing blog posts about Batman, to celebrate International Batman Day, back in 2015. (How the time flies!) I was pretty consistent – I followed up in 2016, 2017, 2018, and 2019. I had established a tradition, or so I’d thought.

Then 2020 happened, and I think I just had a hard time for awhile. I’m not making excuses: Septembers just came and went and I’d forgotten about International Batman Day. That’s on me.

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Erryk Vs Arryk, After-Action Report

Posted: June 27, 2024 by patricksponaugle in Game of Thrones, TV
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House of the Dragon is in full-swing on HBO, having aired its second episode, “Rhaenyra the Cruel” – if you don’t want to be spoiled by an event that happens in that episode, please stop reading, right now. (I’m sure you’ve already been spoiled though. BETRAYAL!)

Near the end of the episode, an assassination plan involving Aegon Targaryen’s kingsguard, Ser Arryk Cargyll, comes to a violent conclusion. Arryk came to Dragonstone to kill Rhaenyra, but is foiled when he’s recognized by secondary-character-on-the-rise Mysaria, who gets word (we assume) to Arryk’s brother Ser Erryk Cargyll that the Green Faction twin is up to no-good.

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In Defense of Blood and Cheese

Posted: June 19, 2024 by patricksponaugle in Game of Thrones, TV
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House of the Dragon is back, HBO’s show adapting the historical narrative of Fire and Blood, George RR Martin’s fictional work. The Dance of the Dragons civil war period, the time period of the show, is set before his famous A Song of Ice and Fire fantasy series (and HBO’s juggernaut show Game of Thrones) by roughly 200 years. (Give or take several decades, don’t check my math.)

And back with it is the DISCOURSE that plagued Game of Thrones and the showrunners, who did a solid job adapting Martin’s books (if we kind of ignore much of book five) and were then forced to complete the uncompleted and incredibly complex series, more or less from whole cloth.

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