While Game of Thrones was on the air, I was fortunate enough to write about the show over on the excellent show-centric website Watchers on the Wall. But, even though the show has concluded, there are still books due to be published. Over on the WotW site, I have a new feature that largely involves book speculation. Sort of.
In the post, I speculate that Bran Stark’s book storyline might act as a reference to the failed ambitions of his grace, King Stannis Baratheon.
This post will be about the Netflix show The Witcher. Full disclosure, I’ve only seen four episodes, and I will totally be dropping spoilers about what I’ve seen roughly halfway through this post. I will give a warning when things are going to get revealing.
I’m calling this post In Defense of the Witcher, but there’s very little that needs defending in my opinion. It’s a good show; but your mileage may vary. And early on in its release, the show might have needed some defending.
It’s January, HAPPY NEW YEAR so I went through my social media feeds and grabbed all of the MicroStories I’d tweeted during the month of December. It seems so long ago, 2019. Gosh.
As a reminder, these represent story-essences composed using no more than 269 characters (so I could tweet them with the hashtag #MicroStory.)
Usually, I only tweet Science Fiction and Fantasy #MicroStories. December was no exception. Although, the month was special in that my Twitter friend @MichelleDVM99 requested I write a MicroStory based on some photos she sent me. That made my day.
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.
The legal system in Westeros leaves much to be desired. There is no dedicated feudal analog of a judicial branch, ideally guided with fairness, objectivity, and the concept of justice. Instead, legal disputes are adjudicated by lords who often have vested interests in the outcomes and the overpowered ability to settle disputes by fiat (and with the martial support to have their decisions enforced.)
Tyrion is not impressed with this episode of Law and Order: King’s Landing
One would hope that disputes aren’t entirely decided arbitrarily by feudal lords; that local customs, precedents, and traditions might hold sway. But that’s not a given when the common-folk are facing the sharp end of Westeros justice.
Although the smallfolk of the Seven Kingdoms have less flexibility when it comes to facing legal issues, those with more status and privilege do have the option to take decision-making out of the hands of overlords and into their own. If they can accept the risks of Trial by Combat.
It’s December, so I went through my social media feeds and grabbed all of the MicroStories I’d tweeted during the month of November.
As a reminder, these represent story-essences composed using no more than 269 characters (so I could tweet them with the hashtag #MicroStory.)
Usually, I only tweet Science Fiction and Fantasy #MicroStories. November was 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.
The final season of Game of Thrones has come and gone, closing the chapter on the conflict between Starks, Lannisters, and Targaryens with battles, betrayals, and the unexpected choice of a boy-king to rule over (most) of the kingdoms of Westeros. The conclusion of the story was tied in with the tragic fall of Daenerys Targaryen, who ambitiously considered herself The Last Dragon and had long sought to reclaim the seat of power that had been literally forged by her ancestors.
There’s solid analysis talking about Daenerys as a tragic hero in the Shakespearean mold. I’ll be happy to recommend articles from ShakespeareOfThrones discussing the Shakespearean ending to the series, as well as /r/asoiaf subreddit moderator glass_table_girl and her epic opus on Daenerys which predicted a literary-inspired tragic fall. But I’m not here to talk about Shakespeare. Instead, I’d like to talk about Daenerys and her association with the other prominent Targaryen in the story, Jon Snow, from an Arthurian perspective.
I recently had the great honor (at least, from my perspective) of being invited to record an episode of a LOST re-watch podcast, covering two of LOST‘s near-the-end-of-the-first-season’s episodes.
There will be spoilers for LOST, the TV show. This is your final warning.
It’s November, so I went through my social media feeds and grabbed all of the MicroStories I’d tweeted during the month of October.
As a reminder, these represent story-essences composed using no more than 269 characters (so I could tweet them with the hashtag #MicroStory.)
Usually, I only tweet Science Fiction and Fantasy #MicroStories. October was 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.
Hey, the kind people who follow me on my blog might be aware that I occasionally post any MicroStories that I’d tweeted in the previous month. Back in 2013, I started tweeting very small flash fiction “stories” (they had to be small, because … tweets …) and the first of the month, I collected up the previous month’s elevator pitches and made them available on the blog.
Back in 2016, I’d realized that my three-year-anniversary of pretending to be a writer had happened, so I collected all the small stories of the three years and made them available in a macro-collection of micro-stories.
Another three years have gone by, so here is the next batch.
With the results of the 2016 election, my productivity took a hit as a lot of time spent in imaginative creativity (lets pretend I have that) was spent instead on anxiety and stress. On the average, every other month I’d crank out micro-stories. To balance things out, Twitter doubled the length a tweet could be. Originally, I resisted writing stories larger than the original tweet length, but I eventually gave that up.
As is traditional for me in September, in recognition of International Batman Day I try to have a post about my favorite superhero: the Caped Crusader. But with a Joker movie on the horizon, starring Joaquin Phoenix in the titular role, it seems fair to talk a little bit about the clown prince of crime and my observations over the years.
It’s not surprising that in the ~80 years that the Joker has been Batman’s number one nemesis (arguably) the character has had changes and experienced evolution in concept.
Introduced in the 30s as more-or-less another criminal with a schtick, the Joker’s clown-persona was more of a sharp contrast to his cold, calculating murderous ways than someone committing wacky (but still murderous) crimes.
