I recently celebrated my first year of blogging, and had a post identifying top 10 posts for my bloggoversary. During the year, one of the blogs I follow had a post with weird search terms that had hit on her blog.

I loved reading that post, and it made me occasionally eyeball what search-strings are intersecting with my content.

BoltonsApproachWinterfell

Since my blog is predominantly Game of Thrones related, the searches that I could see* were almost all Game of Thrones-related.

But there were a fair amount of Breaking Bad-related hits. Fair enough. I have done long recaps and observations on all 5 seasons of BrBa.

Sadly, I didn’t have as many as I’d hoped-for stand-out weird searches that had made a hit on my blog postings, but there were themes and frequently asked questions that I think are pretty cool to look at. And so I shall.

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Time to Admit I’m a Blogger

Posted: September 6, 2014 by patricksponaugle in Blogging, Game of Thrones
Tags: , ,

Hey, it’s been over a year since I started blogging. Since there was such a low barrier to entry for tossing words on a website for the Internet to eyeball, I was hesitant to call myself a “blogger”, but I’ve been doing this for about a year and have over 100 blog postings (counting both my blogs), so I might as well commit to the term.

dogs

Chi Chi the Pug and Peanut the Puggle are Celebrating my Blogging Anniversary by Passing Out on Me.

Blog of Thrones

I hadn’t originally expected this blog to be so Game of Thrones focused (or I might have named it more relevantly or something from the beginning) but that’s just the way things turned out once I started defending the allegedly bad decisions of the characters.

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It’s September, so I went through my social media feeds and grabbed all the MicroStories I’d tweeted during the month of August.

aug2014micro

I was super-unproductive in August, at least in regards to writing Flash Fiction, only tweeting out 4 of them.

I also failed to notice that the prevous month marked my year anniversary of doing this exercise, when I tweeted my 169th MicroStory.

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. When I remember to do so.

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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This post will be referencing plot points throughout the four seasons of HBO’s Game of Thrones. If you’re not caught up, shame on you! It’s the most pirated show in the universe!

But I shouldn’t be slack-shaming. Should you need to get caught up, please do so and come back.

renly-death

Being King is Awesome!

My work colleagues are great; the office is a Game of Thrones-friendly environment. Many of us have read the books and nearly everyone’s watching the show.

When I started blogging about Game of Thrones last year, I didn’t necessarily expect my teammates to follow my blog but they have been, since it gives them more Game of Thrones things to talk about (and the opportunity to make fun of my grammar and bizarre typos and run-on sentences and Fnord.)

Most of my early posts were “In Defense of … ” articles, where I’d try to rationalize or defend one of the major character’s bad decisions. After a few of those articles were on the blog, one of my colleagues asked me when I’d go on the offensive and not defend someone, but take them to task.

That time is now.

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After seven seasons, HBO’s southern supernatural series ceased. (I’ll ease up on the alliteration, I promise.)

(Spoilers for Season Seven follow…)

True Blood Season 7 Episode 2

Prudently Investigating by Daylight.

My friends over at Geek Girl Soup had asked some of their associates (including me!) for thoughts and predictions about the final season of True Blood. I cobbled together twenty one predictions and posted them before the season. Boldly. Now it’s time to see how I did.

Spoiler alert: I cheat and use creative math. Each question could score 5 points.

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(Spoiler Warning: this post might be a bit of a downer, but I hope to keep it upbeat. You’ll understand.)

Around 9:41 p.m. last night (that would be Wednesday, August 20 2014 for you benighted souls without calendars) Amazon.com emailed me to let me know that my copy of Murder at Avedon Hill, by P.G. Holyfield, had shipped. Awesome.

MaAH

Roughly one hundred minutes later at 11:20 p.m., the author, P.G. Holyfield, died. (Look, I did say this might be a bummer.)

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This post will deal with plot points through the first four seasons of HBO’s Game of Thrones, the excellent adaptation of George RR Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire. If you’re not caught up on the source material, reading this article will spoil you. You’ve been warned, yo.

game-of-thrones-the-north-remembers

Game of Thrones on HBO recently wrapped up its fourth season, and I don’t think I’m alone in my desire for Season Five to start Right Now.

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This post will be revealing plot elements from the latest Marvel Studio’s theatrical release, Guardians of the Galaxy.

If you are here for a review, the movie is great, go see it. My daughter didn’t want to, she grudgingly went, and then demanded to see it again.

Guardians_of_the_galaxy

Roll for Initiative!

I’ve been known to read a comic book or two, in my time, but I’ll admit to not being up to speed on the sequential fiction magazines that the movie Guardians of the Galaxy was based on. But the trailer made me want to see the movie, even if I didn’t know who the characters were.*

But even though this story was very new to me, I had a strong sense of familiarity while watching, in part due to the recognizable and nostalgia-inducing soundtrack, but mostly because this story was pretty much what I had wanted out of every Dungeons & Dragons campaign I’d ever played in.

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It’s August, so I went through my social media feeds and grabbed all the MicroStories I’d tweeted during the month of July.

JulyMicro

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. July 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.

Read the rest of this entry »

This article will discuss the uncivilized but freedom-loving folk who live north of the Wall on HBO’s Game of Thrones. It’s probably best if you’ve seen the show, because I’ll be talking plot points from the first four seasons.

Styr

If You Spoil Any Plot Points for Us, We will Eat Your Momma. And We will Eat Your Poppa.

Season Four of HBO’s Game of Thrones featured many great and notable things: a certain fancy-pants wedding, a total badass from Dorne, painful and surprising deaths, unexpectedly controversial scenes, and a whole mess of Wildlings.

The Wildling storyline was a major element at the tail end of the season, which was positive for a variety of reasons. Mance Rayder’s massive migration had been a hanging open-ended question, and there have been some problematic things about the Wildlings that needed to be addressed.

Before I continue, I assume that anyone reading this spoilery-post has seen the show or read the books. If not, What the Hell, man?

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