In this episode, Scott Eric Kaufman of Lawyers, Guns, and Money and I discuss religious faith again, personal loyalty vs. political loyalties, the meaning of Theon’s torture, the heavyweight boxing match that is Tywin vs. Olenna, and so much more!
And then, when we were done, we did a spoileriffic extra podcast talking about how the divergences from the books in this episode might or might not work out down the road:
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In this episode, Scott Eric Kaufman of Lawyers, Guns, and Money and I discuss the relationship between nudity and truth, the question of loyalty and honor, the necessities of power, and Scott’s Grand Theory of Significant Asses.
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EDIT: we did a follow-up on religion, as you can see below:
Sorry for the belated update. In this episode, Scott Eric Kaufman of Lawyers, Guns, and Money and I discuss Jaime and Theon’s experience of torture as destructive or revealing of character, how both the Night’s Watch and Brotherhood Without Banners react to defeat, the political machinations of Varys the eunuch, the Tyrells, and Littlefinger, and burnination via dragon.
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Following on the heels of the success of Tower of the Hand: A Flight of Sorrows, a great e-book essay collection from some of the top minds in A Song of Ice and Fire/Game of Thrones fandom, Tower of the Hand is announcing a second e-book, titled “A Hymn for Spring.”
“A Hymn for Spring” is edited by Marc N. Kleinhenz, the editor of A Flight of Sorrows, author of It is Known, and much much more.
Contributors include Amin Javadi, co-host of a Podcast of Ice and Fire, and Steven Attewell (yours truly), writer of Race for the Iron Throne.
Release date is scheduled for June 19th, 2014, but you may be assured you’ll get updated as the project continues.
Scott Eric Kaufman and I did another video recap of HBO’s Game of Thrones. In this installment, we analyze the use of silences, how the show has mishandled and muddled Robb’s military campaign (while still doing good character work), the use of rape as an instrument of war, the artistic merits of horse-head sculpture, and so much more!
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Introduction:
Spencer Ackerman, the well-known national security blogger, recently posted an article criticizing Robb Stark’s military strategy in the War of Five Kings. In the piece, Ackerman argues that:
But the Young Wolf is a case study in the difference between winning battles and winning wars. Robb is an excellent company commander, leading from the front and inspiring his men with both his bravery and his battle prowess. He’s also a terrible general…
Robb’s vainglorious uncle clearly messed up by disobeying orders to hold Riverrun, preferring instead to stop Clegane’s army at Stone Mill from crossing the rivers of the Trident and heading west. Robb rolls his eyes: he wanted Clegane to come west, so the Mountain, who “doesn’t have a strategic thought in his head,” would have been lured unsuspecting toward the eastward-marching Stark forces and killed. “Instead,” the King in the North laments, “I have a mill.”
News flash, Your Grace: Clegane is not worth much more than that mill.
While I think his article does have some important points, I feel that the piece fails to grasp the larger strategic and political environment informing Robb Stark’s military decisions and as such comes to an overly negative conclusion.
Scott Eric Kaufman and I did another video recap of HBO’s Game of Thrones. In this installment, we analyze how Bran and Sansa deal with questions of trusting new arrivals to the drama with the truth, how Arya and Theon both deal with questions of “who are you?” (and ultimately, “who am I?”), how Cersei and Margaery interact so differently with Joffrey’s peculiar blend of misogyny and sadism, and so much more!
So check it out!
So….I did a video thing with Scott Eric Kaufman at Lawyers, Guns, and Money, talking about the history/politics and the visual rhetoric of Game of Thrones:
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Game of Thrones is back, folks, which means it’s time for episode recaps with Entertained Organizer. In this episode, we discuss Night Watch fashion choices, Lego versions of Game of Thrones, GODDAMN GIANTS!, life lessons we learn from the show, social mobility via incendiary devices, my theory about what was going on with that completely inexplicable Harrenhal scene, Tyrion and Tywin’s dysfunctionality, beautiful beautiful dragons, Margaery and Cersei throwing epic shade at each other, nipple torture, and how Ser Barristan is clearly a Jedi.
Over on Tower of the Hand, I’ve written the second of my new series of historical/political essays, this time focusing on the monarchy of Westeros (for my five-part series on the Hands of the King, see here). In Part II, I examine how Aegon I not merely conquered Westeros but also what kind of a monarchy he created, and how that monarchy grew and changed during the first 150 years of the Targaryen dynasty, when the kings on the Iron Throne still had dragons to back up their claim to sovereignty.
