Archive for May, 2015

Donner Party! All the Party, None of the Cannibalism!

Posted: May 30, 2015 by patricksponaugle in Music
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Last night, my wife, daughter, and I attended a House Concert in lovely Columbia, Maryland. We were fortunate enough to hear the talented Sarah Donner perform.

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I have a legitimate reason for showing this adorable 1-week old kitten. You’ll just have to wait for the explanation.

(For those of you wondering why I have cannibalism in the title of the post, feel free to educate yourself on the Donner Party.)

Sarah is an entertaining musician and renowned cat lady (she once had an Ask the Cat Lady advice vlog where people would send her questions and she would answer them in the form of a song. For an example, you should check out her Can My Pregnant Cat Have Catnip? video.)

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Hellboy vs Cthulhu: A Storytelling Moment (and Stuff)

Posted: May 25, 2015 by patricksponaugle in Blogging, Gaming
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patricksponaugle's avatarComparative Geeks

People play different games and they play for different reasons. Sometimes simply because they’re competitively-natured, sometimes it’s just to kill some time, sometimes to be entertained, and sometimes to be social. (These aren’t mutually exclusive reasons.)

Recently, my wife and I were over for dinner with friends, and we decided to play a game of Munchkin Cthulhu.

Our friends’ names are Chooch and Viv; I’m telling you this to make this anecdote flow. Allegedly.

At least one of those names is definitely a nickname. That would be Viv. Chooch might be a nickname. He looks like a Viking, so let’s just roll with this, shall we?

Everyone here knows how to play the basic set of Munchkin, right? If not, for a full introduction please check out Wil Wheaton’s YouTube episode of TableTop, where Wil plays the game with the lovely Felicia Day, the lovely Sandeep Parikh, and…

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Hitchhiker’s Guide to Westeros: Panic? Don’t! (Or Do. I’m not the boss of you.)

Posted: May 19, 2015 by patricksponaugle in Game of Thrones, Opinion, TV
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Fans of the A Song of Ice and Fire book series had been approaching this current season of HBO’s adaptation Game of Thrones with at least some apprehension.

The show was running out of books to adapt.

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The season already has had characters following the road not traveled in the books, and for the storylines that are being faithfully adapted, by the time the season concludes its tenth episode, most if not all of those stories will have gotten to the end of the published materials (I assume.) Season Six will be setting off into unknown territory unless George RR Martin gets the next book out.

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Other Voyagings in Other Space

Posted: May 16, 2015 by patricksponaugle in Opinion, TV
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Recently, my wife and I made time in our TV watching schedule to watch the latest (and joyous) season of Dan Harmon’s COMMUNITY, no longer on NBC but on Yahoo Screen. But I’m not here to talk about Community (it’s great though.)

I’m here to talk about another show on Yahoo Screen. OTHER SPACE.

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It’s wonderful.

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Mothers Day Going Medieval: Cat and Cersei

Posted: May 10, 2015 by patricksponaugle in Uncategorized
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I’m still on GoT blogging hiatus, but here’s a Game of Thrones Mother’s Day article I wrote for Dave and Holly of Comparative Geeks. (They’re the best, by the way.)

patricksponaugle's avatarComparative Geeks

Happy Mother’s Day to two mothers of kings: Catelyn Stark (née Tully) and Cersei Baratheon (née Lannister.)

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It would be relatively easy to compare these two powerfully political women by pointing out the similarities in Robb Stark and Joffrey Baratheon (and there are many) but this is a post about mothers, not sons.

The pair do share many similarities separate from whom their royal sons were.

  • Both were the eldest in their family, and both suffered the tragedy of their respective mothers dying during childbirth.
  • Both were married off as part of political alliances, and neither married the man they originally expected to.
  • Both of those marriages were initiated by Robert Baratheon’s rebellion (just one was at the start of the conflict, and one at the end.)
  • Both had to suffer the indignity of an acknowledged unfaithful husband. Ned Stark only claimed one illegitimate child, but he kept bastard Jon Snow close at…

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That Time I Got Spoiled About Game of Thrones

Posted: May 5, 2015 by patricksponaugle in Game of Thrones, Opinion, TV
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This post will specifically be mentioning plot points for the third and fourth episodes of the fifth season of HBO’s Game of Thrones. The reasons for talking plot points will be obvious. If you’re not caught up on the series, I recommend that you do so, since the show is great, and there’s no need to read my tale of woe.

(In fact, I won’t be dropping any future spoilers from the books, not of any book events that haven’t happened yet on the show, but I’ll be mentioning some differences which the spoilery-very-sensitive might not want to know… you know who you are, it’s your call to keep reading.)

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A few weeks ago, I posted an article talking about the screener leaks of the first four episodes of this season’s Game of Thrones. That post was only vaguely related to the show, I was focusing on how people viewing the illegal material were describing their activities in show-related terms.

As I mentioned in that post, while I was developing that article one of the Game of Thrones reporters I follow on Twitter announced that someone was spamming out details from the leaked episodes. And shortly after, I was the lucky recipient of one of those tweets.

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April 2015 #MicroStory Collection

Posted: May 1, 2015 by patricksponaugle in Flash Fiction, Writing
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It’s May, so I went through my social media feeds and grabbed all the MicroStories I’d tweeted during the month of April.

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As a reminder, these represent story-essences composed using no more than 129 characters (so I could tweet them with the hashtag #MicroStory.)

Usually, I only tweet Science Fiction and Fantasy #MicroStories. April was pretty much no exception.

For really great #MicroStory action, please follow @MicroSFF, the Twitter account that inspired me to participate in this minimalist writing exercise. That feed puts out great science fiction and fantasy MicroStories all the time.

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