1. It means I’m going to be analyzing Dunk & Egg to see what we can learn about the Blackfyre Rebellions from them, as opposed to analyzing other themes.
2. The length of the essays vary depending on what I find in the source material.
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Hey folks! With the behemoth of Tyrion III out of the way, work has begun on the High Spider Part III and Politics of Dorne Part III. When the latter is done, that’ll mark the end of that particular Kickstarter essay series (definitely the longest non-chapter essay series I’ve done so far), which means there will be some space in my rotation. So after the Politics of the Seven Kingdoms series is…
So what were your thoughts on Ragnarok? Did they give enough for Thor to do? Did they utilize Hulk properly? Did they tackle the concept of Ragnarok well enough? And what did you think of the Valkyrie?
So…thoughts on Thor: Ragnarok below the cut:
Overall Thoughts:
Right off the bat, let me say that this is clearly the best Thor movie. And while it felt absolutely like a Taika Waititi film – the sense of humor, the love of awkwardness, the offbeat timing – it also felt like an absolute love letter to Jack Kirby (Hela, the look of Sakaar) and Walt Simonson (Surtur, Skurge the Executioner, the brief mentions of Thor as a frog and the flash of Beta Ray Bill).
That being said, it’s not a perfect film and there were a few places where I felt like it needed a few more minutes to wrap up character arcs or have a bit more plot buildup (I would have liked to see an undercard fight or even just a montage in the arena).
Oh, and they earned the hell out of their use of Immigrant Song.
“Did they give enough for Thor to do?”
Thor gets the most complete arc of any of the characters, starting the movie as much the same arrogant young warrior-prince as he’s been before, albeit a little wiser now (hence seeing through Loki’s disguise). And then in the course of the movie he loses his father, he loses Mjolnir, he has to become the leader of a team, he saves his people, loses an eye, comes into his own as the God of Thunder and not merely the wielder of a hammer, and ends the movie as the All-Father of the people of Asgard. It works as a nice dyptich with the original Thor.
“Did they utilize Hulk properly?”
Yes. Indeed, Hulk specifically gets more characterization in this movie than he’s had in any of the Avengers movies, in no small part because he gets more than one line. We see him living in barbarian splendor on Sakaar being the crowd favorite, we see that he has made a friend, we see him butt heads with but eventually come together with Thor, we see something of his internal anguish in the wake of Age of Ultron, etc.
What we don’t get as much is enough Banner. We get a setup that he’s truly terrified that he’s completely lost control to the Hulk, that he might never come back, and we see him briefly overcome that fear to faceplant onto the Bifrost, but we don’t see what the news status quo is afterwards. We get the setup that he and Valkryie almost recognize that Hulk and Valykrie were friends, but there’s not enough of a payoff for that. I would have like to get a few more minutes of Banner.
“Did they tackle the concept of Ragnarok well enough?“
I thought they did a really interesting reversal through the line about Asgard being its people not the planet, with the heroes bringing about Ragnarok rather than trying to prevent it, in order to defeat a more insiduous evil. And given that it ends with pretty much all recognizable Asgardians save for Heimdall dead and the rest refugees, it’s hard to be more final than that.
And they even gave us a moment of Skurge standing alone at Gjallerbru.
“And what did you think of the Valkyrie?”
The Valkyrie was given just enough of a character arc to be functional – runs away from her confrontation with Hela and then comes back to get revenge for her fallen sisters – but more could have been done. Apparently there were some scenes they cut, some of which involved actually mentioning that Valkyrie was bi, and that would have been a nice addition.
Hi maester steven, in ACOK we’re told that the people of KL think that tyrion is the real evil behind joffrey. Do you think is possible that this notion comes not only from ableism but that Littlefinger had something to do too? The whole myrcella’s marriage thing had happened not long before, and he has proven himself very adept at starting rumours (the whole shireen’s a bastard deal, and the way he used gossip to manipulate the tyrells into the purple wedding and placing loras in the KG).
Not really. I think GRRM shows his hand with this passage:
“His Grace is but a boy. In the streets, it is said that he has evil councillors. The queen has never been known as a friend to the commons, nor is Lord Varys called the Spider out of love … but it is you they blame most. Your sister and the eunuch were here when times were better under King Robert, but you were not.”
I don’t think LF needed to do anything to get the common people to turn on Tyrion.
Have you seen Thor: Ragnarok?
Seeing it tonight.
While I was reading your CBC of Tyrion III, a thought occurred to me: Why didn’t Sybelle Spicer try to convince Tywin to marry Jeyne to Tyrion? Both seemed to have had a problem with arranging marriages for their children for somewhat similar reasons. If she had done this, do you think Tywin would have accepted? Building off that, how come Tywin never tried to marry Tyrion to one of his bannermen’s daughters? It seems like it would have been easier than trying to court “foreign” lords.
If Kevan, the more reasonable and moderate of the two brothers, wouldn’t go near Jeyne because of her “doubtful blood,” why the hell would Tywin ever have?
As for Tywin and his bannermen, I think it’s a bit of wounded pride – Tywin was not content for his children to marry any less than the very best – and not wanting the embarrassment and loss of face of being denied by one of his own bannermen.
So Varys knew about the PW, any chance that he might have suspected about the RW?
Oh, there’s much better evidence that he knew about the RW.
Where do you think Davos got his cargo, why was it salted fish and onions, and what was his original destination? I imagine the war and coming out of winter were influencing factors.
- I don’t know exactly, but I’d guess somewhere in the Stormlands.
- Davos picked cheap, nutritious food that would stretch well and wouldn’t go off.
- Storm’s End was his original destination; Davos heard about the siege and thought he could get a much better deal from starving men for basic staples than he could anywhere else.
Thankyou for the analysis of Tyrion III ASOS, one of my favourite chapters. In it you mention that Varys probably knew about the Purple wedding- why do you think he knew? And if so, why not expose the plot? Wouldn’t a conflict between the Lannisters and Tyrells and a vicious bastard on the Iron Throne make it easier for Aegon to sweep in as a saviour?
I think he knew, because A. he’s got a very good intelligence network to begin with, and B. he’s on the ball enough to know that Sansa was smuggled out by Ser Dontos.
As to why not expose the plot, its success actually advances his interests enormously. With Stannis out of the way, Varys’ next task is to destabilize the new regime in advance of his plans with his perfect prince; having one-half of the new regime assassinate the king in a bid to seize control over a child king (who’s not going to produce any inconvenient heirs that might unite the houses by blood), and causing House Lannister to divide against itself through Tyrion’s arrest and trial, helps him enormously.
Thus, Varys can act literally from the shadows: freeing Tyrion and arranging for him to assassinate his father, planting the Gardener coins to stoke Cersei’s paranoia about the Tyrells, assassinating Pycelle and Kevan to prevent them from stabilizing the regime, etc.
At what age would people in ASOIAF not try and marry widows like Donella Hornwood? She wasn’t able to have more children because of her age, but it seemed like everyone and their cousin was trying to marry her.
It’s not about child-bearing, since her children by someone else wouldn’t have a right of inheritance to her former husband’s lands. Rather, it’s about access to a widow’s “use-rights.” In many cultures, prior to the invention of life insurance or survivor’s insurance, widows had a customary right to use at least part of their former spouse’s estate for the rest of their lifetime, to ensure that they wouldn’t be left destitute.
Thus, marrying Lady Hornwood would give her suitor a claim to the Hornwood lands, at least for the duration of her lifespan. (Another sign of the Boltons’ abuse of the social contract is that Ramsay claims a permanent right to the Hornwood lands due to his forced marriage to/abduction of the widow Hornwood).
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