Rat-catching was a real occupation from the Middle Ages through to the 19th century. Generally, they used a combination of dogs (terriers being known as especially good “ratters”), traps, and poisons. 

lazyexceptwhencooking:

loveistheessenceoflife:

racefortheironthrone:

So the advance reviews for Iron Fist are here and they are uniformly savage:

• “Iron Fist isn’t just racially uncomfortable, it’s a boring show.”
• “Like ‘Batman Begins,’ If Bruce Wayne Was an Idiot Man-Child” 
• “The Iron Fist TV Series Is Marvel and Netflix’s First Big Failure”
• “Marvel breaks winning Netflix streak with Iron Fist”

What’s interesting about these reviews is how many of them tell a similar story: Iron Fist is really badly whitewashy/chi-splainy, but it’s also poorly scripted (spending way too much time on the corporate intrigue of Rand Industries), poorly acted by its lead, and (arguably most damning) the fight sequences are boring. 

And that’s the surprising part – anyone who’d been paying attention to social media and the press circuit could have told you that the show had walked into a buzz-saw of negative press and fan backlash, in an almost complete inverse of what happened with Luke Cage. But the idea that Marvel would drop the ball on even the minimum requirements of producing a martial arts show is astonishing – and I can’t wait to read the behind-the-scenes accounts to explain how that happened. Lack of care/investment in the project? Just box-ticking its way to Defenders and Power Man/Iron Fist? Inquiring minds want to know.

However, I’m not really coming at this from a place of just gloating, because I have a certain fondness for Iron Fist (more Power Man and Iron Fist) and I think this project could have really worked with a few changes, changes that seem pretty obvious to me but seem to have passed by the creative team entirely.

1. Make Iron Fist Asian-American. 

I’m just one in a long long line of people who’ve been saying this in the direction of Marvel’s increasingly-deaf ears since this project got off the ground. It solves a LOT of Marvel’s representation problems quite easily: the “white savior” morass they jumped into with Doctor Strange goes away, you can still do the K’un Lun fish-out-of-water by emphasizing the assimilated-clueless-Wall Street-dude thing (more on this in a bit), and if the worry was that leaning into stereotype would be bad, well now we have two data points demonstrating that the opposite is much worse. 

But thinking of Overwatch’s approach to diversity here for a second, the main creative reason to have done so is that it expands directions for storytelling in important ways. With Daredevil already there, the writers already had a problem that they were creating a martial-arts-superhero show in a world in which they’d be judged against the one they’d already created. Thus, right off the bat, rather than telling the story of another brooding white dude, you’re telling a different kind of story and you’ve opened up all kinds of new stories that you can tell about how Danny Rand relates to his family, to the revelation of K’un Lun, to martial arts, etc. etc. 

2. Make Iron Fist a Martial Arts Comedy.  

Here’s the thing about Iron Fist: he’s kind of a silly character. I mean, this is a dude who decided to go into superheroing by putting on not just spandex, but deep-V, popped collar, capris-and-slippers, and a Dread Pirate Roberts mask. And while Marvel has occasionally tried to remake Iron Fist into a grim badass, he almost always reverts (especially when he’s around Luke Cage, and that’s important) into being a slightly goofy, hot-tempered, motormouth. More Michelangelo than Raphael, definitely not a Leonardo. 

And that’s great – because it’s a great way to distinguish your show from the brooding Catholic angst of Daredevil. If you’ve already got a martial arts show that’s distinctive for being dark and angsty, the best way to make your new show stand out is to have it be colorful and funny. It also works, and this part is crucial, better for the sake of the larger Netflix Marvel project: in both Defenders and Luke Cage/Iron Fist, you want diversity of personalities so that the writers and actors have something to work off of rather than an angst-off. 

So clearly what needed to happen on Iron Fist is that the creative team needed to be led and consist of people with a deep and abiding passion for not just classic martial arts movies, but specifically martial arts comedies, because there’s an entire genre out there waiting to be borrowed from and played with in ways that could actually deal with some of the critiques people have been having of the Marvel Netflix shows. Are people bored of the Hand? Lean into the ninja jokes by throwing ever-more-ninjas at Danny Rand until it turns into the rake jag, have Danny lampshade the whole situation (here’s where having him be the fish-out-of-water Wall Street dude works in your favor). Are people not liking the corporate intrigue? Shoot the boardroom scenes as ott as action scenes, or have them do a MISSING REEL joke every time someone actually explains what’s going on. 

@lazyexceptwhencooking @coolinsolentsmile

And in addition to an AA actor, AA showrunners and writers but that’s none of my business. 

Absolutely. Jessica Jones wouldn’t have been the show it was if Melissa Rosenberg wasn’t the showrunner and the writers’ room wasn’t well-balanced on gender lines; Luke Cage wouldn’t have been the show it was if the showrunner wasn’t  Cheo Hodari Coker and the writers’ room wasn’t majority black. 

dusty-jester:

racefortheironthrone:

So the advance reviews for Iron Fist are here and they are uniformly savage:

• “Iron Fist isn’t just racially uncomfortable, it’s a boring show.”
• “Like ‘Batman Begins,’ If Bruce Wayne Was an Idiot Man-Child” 
• “The Iron Fist TV Series Is Marvel and Netflix’s First Big Failure”
• “Marvel breaks winning Netflix streak with Iron Fist”

What’s interesting about these reviews is how many of them tell a similar story: Iron Fist is really badly whitewashy/chi-splainy, but it’s also poorly scripted (spending way too much time on the corporate intrigue of Rand Industries), poorly acted by its lead, and (arguably most damning) the fight sequences are boring. 

And that’s the surprising part – anyone who’d been paying attention to social media and the press circuit could have told you that the show had walked into a buzz-saw of negative press and fan backlash, in an almost complete inverse of what happened with Luke Cage. But the idea that Marvel would drop the ball on even the minimum requirements of producing a martial arts show is astonishing – and I can’t wait to read the behind-the-scenes accounts to explain how that happened. Lack of care/investment in the project? Just box-ticking its way to Defenders and Power Man/Iron Fist? Inquiring minds want to know.

However, I’m not really coming at this from a place of just gloating, because I have a certain fondness for Iron Fist (more Power Man and Iron Fist) and I think this project could have really worked with a few changes, changes that seem pretty obvious to me but seem to have passed by the creative team entirely.

1. Make Iron Fist Asian-American. 

I’m just one in a long long line of people who’ve been saying this in the direction of Marvel’s increasingly-deaf ears since this project got off the ground. It solves a LOT of Marvel’s representation problems quite easily: the “white savior” morass they jumped into with Doctor Strange goes away, you can still do the K’un Lun fish-out-of-water by emphasizing the assimilated-clueless-Wall Street-dude thing (more on this in a bit), and if the worry was that leaning into stereotype would be bad, well now we have two data points demonstrating that the opposite is much worse. 

But thinking of Overwatch’s approach to diversity here for a second, the main creative reason to have done so is that it expands directions for storytelling in important ways. With Daredevil already there, the writers already had a problem that they were creating a martial-arts-superhero show in a world in which they’d be judged against the one they’d already created. Thus, right off the bat, rather than telling the story of another brooding white dude, you’re telling a different kind of story and you’ve opened up all kinds of new stories that you can tell about how Danny Rand relates to his family, to the revelation of K’un Lun, to martial arts, etc. etc. 

2. Make Iron Fist a Martial Arts Comedy.  

Here’s the thing about Iron Fist: he’s kind of a silly character. I mean, this is a dude who decided to go into superheroing by putting on not just spandex, but deep-V, popped collar, capris-and-slippers, and a Dread Pirate Roberts mask. And while Marvel has occasionally tried to remake Iron Fist into a grim badass, he almost always reverts (especially when he’s around Luke Cage, and that’s important) into being a slightly goofy, hot-tempered, motormouth. More Michelangelo than Raphael, definitely not a Leonardo. 

And that’s great – because it’s a great way to distinguish your show from the brooding Catholic angst of Daredevil. If you’ve already got a martial arts show that’s distinctive for being dark and angsty, the best way to make your new show stand out is to have it be colorful and funny. It also works, and this part is crucial, better for the sake of the larger Netflix Marvel project: in both Defenders and Luke Cage/Iron Fist, you want diversity of personalities so that the writers and actors have something to work off of rather than an angst-off. 

So clearly what needed to happen on Iron Fist is that the creative team needed to be led and consist of people with a deep and abiding passion for not just classic martial arts movies, but specifically martial arts comedies, because there’s an entire genre out there waiting to be borrowed from and played with in ways that could actually deal with some of the critiques people have been having of the Marvel Netflix shows. Are people bored of the Hand? Lean into the ninja jokes by throwing ever-more-ninjas at Danny Rand until it turns into the rake jag, have Danny lampshade the whole situation (here’s where having him be the fish-out-of-water Wall Street dude works in your favor). Are people not liking the corporate intrigue? Shoot the boardroom scenes as ott as action scenes, or have them do a MISSING REEL joke every time someone actually explains what’s going on. 

I’m all for an asian superhero getting screen time and all that but you can’t just change his race just cause you want to in the comics both of Danny’s parents were white so he is also white I get the whole doctor strange ancient one controversy but if made Danny asian just cause you want to then you’ll get a different complaint from people and that would be why isn’t he white like in the comics

Well, actually you can often do just that, although it depends on the character. But in the case of Iron Fist, it’s even less of a change than normal – Danny Rand’s been an orphan since childhood, so his family background hasn’t been a major influence on his character. 

And as for the people who will complain about that, like the people who complained about Idris Elba being Heimdall or Michael B. Jordan being Johnny Storm, to hell with that crowd of irrelevant racist cranks. 

YES! I mean, ok, the context is creepy, but validation!

This is my theory too, which has some grounding in Old Nan’s stories from AGOT:

nobodysuspectsthebutterfly:

That’s not possible re Craster’s father, as he was the bastard son of a Night’s Watchman and a wildling woman from the village of Whitetree. However, it is possible – actually, probable – that there’s some kind of old tradition beyond the Wall regarding Other worship. I mean, back during the first Long Night and the Battle for the Dawn, why was the Wall placed where it was and why were the people who were north of it left there? Like, with the story of the Night’s King and his Other queen, it’s apparent that the Others can be tempting, as is the urge to sacrifice to them. Or using the metaphor of the Others as the Unseelie Court, they’re beautiful, they’re glamorous (in both the regular and magical sense of the word), and sometimes it’s easier to submit than fight. Praise them, do homage, and hope that you’ll be spared as more useful alive and breeding new masters than as zombified slaves.

So, while time has passed and those wildling survivors of the war have gradually stamped out this worship, replacing it with a (very rational) superstition and dread of the Others instead… it may be that a few families have always kept these practices, secretly or openly, depending. It could be that Craster comes from this tradition, via his mother or via learning about it from another wildling.

Now, that doesn’t necessarily mean that the tradition innately requires an incestuous harem, with all girl babies saved and all boys sacrificed. (Especially since wildlings are normally exogamous, only marrying wildlings from other villages/communities than their own, and have a disgust of incest even greater than the rest of Westeros.) It could be that they were just overtly normal wildling villages, with sacrifices that only took place once in a while, in long winters, just to be safe, and Craster has placed his own particular stamp on this Other-worshipping tradition because he’s a sick fuck.

Or it could be that there is no ongoing historical tradition, and Craster came up with his beliefs and practices all on his own. Like, in our world, while some doomsday polygamist cults with a charismatic leader may base their practices on the Bible, some just create their own writings and revelations to justify their leader’s sick fuckness. GRRM could be going with either kind of trope, here. I mean, like, excluding GoT and the beliefs of Craster’s wives (who may be brainwashed), we have no actual proof that anything happens to Craster’s sons except their dying of exposure or wild animals. It could be a total scam, with the sacrifice-to-the-Others practice as a layer on top of everything else.

As for how Craster got started, as a “black blooded” bastard he would have been an outsider to begin with, shunned by most of his peers. Forced out of Whitetree for ongoing antisocial behavior, he either built a keep in the middle of nowhere or took one over from the previous inhabitants. If the latter option, perhaps he killed all the men in the family and left one or two female survivors. And then in one long winter, when it’s difficult to travel and communicate, he kidnapped a girl from an isolated village, and then another… well. You can look at Varamyr’s prologue for an idea of what that’s like, or the Night’s Watch mutiny, or (if you really want to creep yourself out) Brian David Mitchell or cults like the Manson Family and the like.

Anyway… I’m all kinds of creeped out myself right now, but hope that helps you, at least.

“[wildlings] consorted with giants and ghouls, stole girl children in the dead of night, and drank blood from polished horns. And their women lay with the Others in the Long Night to sire terrible half-human children.”

“In that darkness, the Others came for the first time,” she said as her needles went click click click. “They were cold things, dead things, that hated iron and fire and the touch of the sun, and every creature with hot blood in its veins. They swept over holdfasts and cities and kingdoms, felled heroes and armies by the score, riding their pale dead horses and leading hosts of the slain. All the swords of men could not stay their advance, and even maidens and suckling babes found no pity in them. They hunted the maids through frozen forests, and fed their dead servants on the flesh of human children.”

I mean, it’s always bugged how, if the White Walkers pursued their omnicidal crusade so thoroughly that people remember it eight thousand years later, so many people survived north of Winterfell, let alone north of the Wall, and how you go about surviving in that situation… 

Not a myth, but an oversimplification. What happened at Agincourt was this:

1. Henry moved his men into a position from which they could neither be effectively flanked nor charged by cavalry, and which would impede the French in their efforts to make use of their cavalry and their artillery.
2. There was a failed French cavalry charge which, along with the copious rain, turned the space between the French and British lines into a morass of deep mud. 
3. The French men-at-arms then had to march on foot through that morass for about 300 yards while getting shot with arrows. Now, people debate all the time about how effective these arrows would have been in penetrating plate, but at the very least, the threat forced them to slow down and walk with their heads down to prevent themselves from being shot in the face, further extending their slog.
4. The French men-at-arms then hit the English men-at-arms, and had some success, but this is when the English archers counter-charged and absolutely massacred the French men-at-arms. 

I don’t think the armor was the major factor as much as the exhausting mud march and then getting flank/rear-charged by fresh troops when the terrain has squeezed you into a narrow space where you can’t react effectively. 

Given that fireworks don’t seem to exist in Planetos, I’m guessing a long while. 

Jorah screwed himself trying to get money to buy things for his wife. 

Fixed it for ya. 

Well, I don’t know what’s going to happen in the next Avengers movie, which is kind of a huge stumbling block there. Look, everyone knows Marvel needs to eventually recast their main actors and figure out a way to do it gracefully – especially since Fox of all studios managed to give Hugh Jackman a good sendoff – but the question of how is tricky.

My geeky mind would say: do Cap IV as Madbomb and then have Steve ride off into the sunset as Nomad, giving Sam the shield. 

RFTIT Tumblr Weekly Roundup!

Hey folks! Sorry for two of these in a row, but I did have to do my taxes, so yay for fiscal probity and adhering to the social cotnract! I haven’t been idle, however: Politics of the Reach Part II is up to 2500 words, and I’ve just put in the quotes from Arya II. In the meantime, what do we have on the Tumblrs? Garth Greenhand as a greenseer? Why does Mormont’s raven say “corn” all the time?…

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