Sandor Clegane: Surly When Called “Ser”

Posted: January 20, 2015 by patricksponaugle in Game of Thrones, Opinion, TV
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This post will contain spoilers for Game of Thrones, HBO’s excellent adaptation of the A Song of Ice and Fire book series.

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Can’t it be A Song of Ice? Just Ice? Must there be Fire?

Season Four of Game of Thrones left a broken and bleeding Sandor “the Hound” Clegane in a pretty bad state. Having prevented Arya Stark from falling into the hands of Lannister-stooge Brienne of Tarth (I’m thinking like the Hound, here) the badly wounded Clegane begged Arya to grant him the mercy of a swift, clean death.

Arya coldly refused and left the Hound to die alone.

It’s a shame, since the Hound’s journey had gotten interesting. Well, some people might argue that his literal journey of walking around the Riverlands wasn’t super-compelling, but I’m talking about the Hound as a character, his narrative journey.

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A is for Arya, B is for Brienne

Posted: January 13, 2015 by patricksponaugle in Game of Thrones, Opinion, TV
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This post will be talking about two outstanding characters on Game of Thrones. Therefore there will be spoilers if you are not up to date on the show (or have not read the books, but mostly this will be related to the show.)

Fair warning.

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The Orcish Perspective on Game of Thrones

Posted: January 6, 2015 by patricksponaugle in Game of Thrones, Opinion, TV
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I’m not going to mince words. This post is going to talk about plot details of every season of HBO’s Game of Thrones and the three movies of the Lord of the Rings Trilogy. (I’m quite shocked that Peter Jackson made the trilogy with only three movies.) So, if you’re allergic to spoilers, you should probably stay away.

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Spoils? We Orcs Love Spoils! “To the Victor Go the Spoils!” Or So We’ve been Told. We wouldn’t Really Know…

I think it’s a popular thing to compare either JRR Tolkien and George RR Martin as writers or their respective works, Lord of the Rings and A Song of Ice and Fire, as fantasy epics. Usually by someone who has an axe to grind.

Full disclosure: this is going to be one of those posts but I hope it’ll be slightly different. I’m not trying to prove one is better than the other but I plan on doing some comparisons. Trust me, Ned.

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Arya Sure That’s How It’s Pronounced?

Posted: January 1, 2015 by patricksponaugle in Game of Thrones, Opinion, TV
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This post will be talking about HBO’s Game of Thrones, but I’m pretty sure this won’t be spoilery. Unless you want to try come up with your own way to pronounce the names in the books. There are so many names.

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After He Read that Huge Genealogy Book, Ned’s Head Felt Like it was Going to Fall Off.

So. Many. Names.

I usually talk about the television show Game of Thrones, rather than the A Song of Ice and Fire series that it’s based on. I think I do that because I’d like to engage with the Unsullied show watchers who are experiencing the story as presented by HBO.

I try not to be a smug book reader, but it’s hard. Today, I will not hold back my smugness. But fear not. I’m not going to aim my smug focus on the innocent show watchers. I’ll be hitting on the book readers.

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December 2014 #MicroStory Collection

Posted: January 1, 2015 by patricksponaugle in Flash Fiction, Writing
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It’s January (Happy New Year!) so I went through my social media feeds and grabbed all the MicroStories I’d tweeted during the month of December.

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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. December 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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Pat’s Game of Thrones Blogging 2014 Report

Posted: December 31, 2014 by patricksponaugle in Blogging, Game of Thrones
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2015 is nearly here, and in a handful of months, HBO’s excellent Game of Thrones will resume with its fifth season. Hopefully at the end of March, possibly at the beginning of April.

To pass the time, I’ll be doing weekly Game of Thrones blogging.

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Can’t You See I’m Making a Blog Post About Game of Thrones? Harrumph!

Back in 2013, I started writing the random Game of Thrones post, and at the beginning of the year I took on the challenge of writing a post a week. (All you professional and serious bloggers are laughing at the weak weekly output, but it was a challenge for me.)

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Star Trek vs. Star Trek

Posted: December 29, 2014 by patricksponaugle in Movie Review, Opinion
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With the recent announcement of Justin Lin as director of the third Star Trek movie in the JJ Abrams reboot series, I’ve noticed a resurgence of dissatisfaction among some Star Trek fans with the reboot series in general.

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I don’t think that their complaints are particularly invalid (maybe some of their complaints) but a recent image that’s been circulating had me metaphorically shaking my head.

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Where are the Others? Are they LOST?

Posted: December 23, 2014 by patricksponaugle in Game of Thrones, Opinion, TV
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Although the Others were the mysterious antagonists on the great television show LOST, this post will be talking about the White Walkers on HBO’s Game of Thrones. It’s probably best if you’re up to date on that television show if you want to read this post and not be spoiled.

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Meet Up at the Glacier, the Night’s King Said. As if there’s Only One!

The winter solstice was a few days ago, ushering in the calendar’s recognition of the winter season (everyone who dealt with snow in November knows that winter’s already been here.) And we’re at that time (depending on your cultural affiliation) that children are being told that way up in the arctic, an old wizened figure is directing his fey minions in preparation for a magical trip away from the pole and into the warmer southern lands.

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What I’m Re-Reading: Bone by Jeff Smith

Posted: December 12, 2014 by patricksponaugle in Book Review, Comics
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I’m hoping, really hoping, that the next book in George R R Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire series comes out this summer. But until then, I’ll be re-reading some excellent fantasy. Starting with the adventures of this little guy.

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Should you not recognize him, that’s Fone Bone, the diminuative protagonist from Jeff Smith’s epic fantasy graphic novel series Bone.

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Snows, Love Them or Hate Them

Posted: December 9, 2014 by patricksponaugle in Game of Thrones, Opinion, TV
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This post will be discussing plot points from the first four seasons of Game of Thrones. This is your usual spoiler warning. But this is just boilerplate, because everyone’s up-to-date on Game of Thrones. Or at least all the cool kids are.

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Hey! FIRE and ICE!

It’s now December, and Winter, you know, is HERE! (It would have been depressing to say Winter is merely Coming when last month I was walking my dogs in the pre-dawn sub-freezing temperatures. But you guys don’t need to hear all this.)

Anyway, I’m expecting we’ll be seeing more snowfall soon, and that made me want to write about my two favorite Snows in HBO’s Game of Thrones: Jon Snow and Ramsay Snow.

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