Archive for the ‘TV’ Category

In Defense of Olly the Killjoy

Posted: August 18, 2015 by patricksponaugle in Game of Thrones, Opinion, TV
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This is the second part of a series, contemplating the charges against Jon Snow’s steward Olly and if he deserves all of the Internet abuse he gets. This was somewhat explained in more relevant detail in my last post. To summarize: I say he doesn’t. Maybe?

GAME OF THRONES S04_E09.mkv_snapshot_41.56_[2014.06.09_22.11.06]

How do you like me NOW?
Oh, not very much?
Oh.
😦

Disclaimer: this post will be giving some plot details from the battle at Castle Black from the books (from A Storm of Swords, specifically.) If you’re not a book-reader but one day want to be, what I’ll be telling you won’t be super spoilery – but I wanted to give you fair warning.

Ygritte: the girl kissed by fire, killed by a child.

Near the end of season 4, things weren’t looking too good for Jon Snow. An overwhelming force of Wildlings were assailing the northern face of the Wall, but a more immediate danger in the form of a Free Folk raiding party was dangerously close to capturing Castle Black and securing access to the tunnel through the ice.

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In Defense of Olly: Opening Arguments

Posted: August 18, 2015 by patricksponaugle in Game of Thrones, Opinion, TV
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This article will kick off a series of posts defending Olly, the farm boy and raid survivor turned Night’s Watch recruit in Game of Thrones. If you’re not up to date on the series through the end of season 5, you probably don’t want to be reading this article.

If you really really hate Olly, I assume you’d not want to read this article either. Poor Olly.

olly

Everyone knows how to read. But me.

Things seemed to be a bit simpler a few seasons ago, when nearly everyone was on board hating Joffrey Baratheon. (The team that runs The Joffrey of Podcasts would no doubt say otherwise.)

But with Joffrey’s death in season 3 by poisoning –

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In Defense of the Sand Snakes

Posted: August 4, 2015 by patricksponaugle in Game of Thrones, Opinion, TV
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This post will be covering details from the fifth season of HBO’s Game of Thrones (and therefore all the seasons leading up to that as well.) Should you be behind on your TV watching (you troglodyte) then I recommend you not read this post.

(Others might recommend you not read my posts for other reasons. I do try to be entertaining, though.)

SandSnakes

He had better be entertaining. Or a spear might be thrown into his face. Which would entertain us…

Specifically, this post will be talking about Dorne, the southernmost of the Seven Kingdoms and possibly the weakest storyline in the fifth season. Or was it? (It probably was.)

I’m taking a pro-Dorne stance, or at least I’m going to try and find the silver lining in that dark cloud. It’s what I do.

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In Defense of the Unsullied

Posted: July 21, 2015 by patricksponaugle in Game of Thrones, Opinion, TV
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This post will be discussing plot elements of HBO’s Game of Thrones. If you’re not caught up, then this post will be fraught with peril. Dark and full of terrors, or at least spoilers. If you wish to remain unsullied (whether or not you happen to be Unsullied) then stop reading, and start watching the show.

Go on, get out of here!

game-of-thrones-season-5-episode-4-unsullied-patrol-scene

We’re going! We’re going!

Fine, let’s start.

This post will be talking about the Unsullied’s fighting reputation and how Season Five didn’t do much to support their vaunted rep. Or did it?

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White Walkers and Wights: Not Watertight?

Posted: July 7, 2015 by patricksponaugle in Game of Thrones, Opinion, TV
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This post will be discussing certain plot points from HBO’s Game of Thrones. In particular, Season 5’s excellent episode “Hardhome.” Let this be your spoiler warning. But if you’re not caught up, you really should do so. Hardhome was amazing.

KarsiWaterfront

Damn it to Thenn!!! SPOILERS!!!!!!

In the eighth episode of the most recent season of Game of Thrones, the show delivered on something that had been hinted at in the first season and teased at the end of the second season: an attack by an army of the dead.

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Valyria: Doom, Dragons, and Steel

Posted: June 23, 2015 by patricksponaugle in Game of Thrones, Opinion, TV
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This article will be talking about Game of Thrones, HBO’s adaptation of George RR Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire book series. There will be spoilery details if you’re not up to date on the show.

drogon-in-valyria

That’s either a dragon or a very large spoiler. If this was the Internet, it’d be a matter of debate which is more feared.

For five seasons of Game of Thrones, there had been occasional references to things that were Valyrian. Mostly weapons that were made of Valyrian steel, although Xaro Xoan Daxos had a Valyrian steel safe deposit box door. Daenerys dramatically schooled a slave master in Astapor by speaking the High Valyrian language.

But what does “Valyrian” mean? It took five seasons, but finally the show presented the noun from which the magical adjective was derived from: Valyria.

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Now My Season 5 Watch Has Ended, Now My Season 6 Wait Begins

Posted: June 17, 2015 by patricksponaugle in Blogging, Game of Thrones, TV
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It’ll be a long wait until Season 6 of Game of Thrones starts up again…

GoT_Jon_Snow1-600x338

The season’s over already? I hope this doesn’t have a negative effect on my loyal and obedient comrades…

So my watching of Game of Thrones has ended (for this year) but the resumption of my Game of Thrones blogging has just begun.

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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.

DontPanicThrone

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.

OtherSpaceSmall

It’s wonderful.

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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.)

RedactedSpoilerAlertAndSpoiler

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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