Hey folks! So Part I of the Politics of the Stormlands is ready to go for Monday (this is looking like a three-parter at the most), but in the mean-time we’ve got some good stuff on the Tumblrs.
ASOIAF:
- Bloodraven and Euron.
- Could knights armor themselves without a squire?
- What is a Sub-Treasury Plan? (Economic Development series-related)
- Why would vassals prefer to pay scutage?
- On the Dosh Khaleen:
- Dornish manpower and population losses:
- Simultaneous economic development: winners and losers?
- What would a hospital in King’s Landing look like?
- What happened to Robert’s army after the Battle of Ashford?
- Varys on Kevan Lannister.
- Archery statistics!
- The Grand Maester and the Citadel.
- GRRM and Remixing History.
- Why did the White Walkers go for the Fist rather than Mance’s army?
- How do you tell who’s worth a ransom?
Non-ASOIAF:
Race for the Iron Throne 
I agree about Bendis. It pains me, because some of my favorite comics were written by him, but the guy isn’t going through his best run right now.
I think he did his best when he was younger, not because of an age thing, but because back then he still had someone to tell him “No”. For example, I believe that, back in his initial Daredevil run, he was planning on killing the Kingpin for good, but his editor convinced him that someone would just end up resurrecting him and make a huge mess out of it.
Plus, now that he can do whatever he wants, he can get stuck with comics he’s not a good fit for. He wants to write X-Men? They let him write the X-Men. He wants to write Guardians of the Galaxy? They let him write the Guardians of the Galaxy. He wants to write Iron Man? They let him write 3 Iron Men!
I don’t think he’s a bad writer; he just fails more than he succeeds right now (the Civil War II debacle will be hard to forget) and I can only think of two solutions. Either they pair him with some editors who are more willing to challenge him, or they kick him upstairs and make him an editor himself, so he can he can pitch his ideas to other writers who can think of a better execution.
Bendis has what I call Geoff Johns Syndrome. If you give him a quirky C-lister, he’s great. If you let him build a setting and the characters in it from the ground up, he’s great. If you give him the helm of one of your A-list franchises, he turns to shit. If you do that at the same time you give him both editorial AND writing control, he turns to pig shit.
His failings as a writer sort of… snuck up on me. Starting around the late aughts, I would seem a lot of vituperation directed at the “that bald bastard Bendis” and it puzzled the fuck out of me. I was like “Bendis? Ultimate Spider-Man Bendis? Powers Bendis? Doesn’t everyone love him? His stuff is amazing!”
And, well… the thing was, I wasn’t reading any of Marvel’s mainline books that he had a hand in. At all. So I was totally unaware at the hash he’d made of them until I actually went looking for it. And, well. Yeesh.
My experience with Bendis on main books at Marvel started and ended with the New Avengers. I got really tired of every single one of them talking like a snarky teenager (20 something to be generous). That type of dialogue can work for Spider-Man. It doesn’t work when EVERYONE speaks like that.
Ah, the Stormlands. The part of the Seven Kingdoms that is just kinda… there, despite how important Storm’s End has been in many of the books.
I’m hoping that its time to shine comes in TWOW. Martin is extremely good at making the setting a character in and of itself, and Arianne’s chapter painted a picture of the Rainwood and other environs that was quite wonderful.