Given that a Tyroshi slaver off Bear Island would be quite far afield, do you think that, rather than Jorah selling those poachers into slavery being a one-off born of desperation, he in fact made a habit of selling slaves?

Good question!

So in AGOT, they only speak in general terms of Jorah “selling some poachers to a Tyroshi slaver” or “a few lice-ridden poachers,” although the people who talk about this are either slavers-in-all-but-name (Illyrio) or Jorah himself, who has every reason to minimize his crimes.

However, Jorah shows a surprisingly deep knowledge of the slave economy, much deeper than you’d expect to see from a Westerosi lord with only one encounter with this foreign economic system:

“I’ve told the khal he ought to make for Meereen,” Ser Jorah said. “They’ll pay a better price than he’d get from a slaving caravan. Illyrio writes that they had a plague last year, so the brothels are paying double for healthy young girls, and triple for boys under ten. If enough children survive the journey, the gold will buy us all the ships we need, and hire men to sail them.”

My thinking is that either Jorah sold slaves (more than once) in Westeros and/or he did it in Essos (or was otherwise employed in the industry as a guard or an overseer or something). I think the former case is more likely, because it seems somewhat unlikely that he got caught on his first outing. 

People Must Live By Work Book Club: Week 3 (Chapter 2) – Lawyers, Guns & Money

Last week the online book club of my new book (available to the reading public here and here), discussed how direct job creation programs built a place for themselves within the New Deal’s vision of a social security system, even if that place was through a different bill than the Social Security Act. This week, I’m going to …

People Must Live By Work Book Club: Week 3 (Chapter 2) – Lawyers, Guns & Money

The Venture Bros. Podcast: Season 7 Ep 8: The Terminus Mandate

graphicpolicy:

The Venture Bros. Podcast: Season 7 Ep 8: The Terminus Mandate. Get the deep dive scoop on #TheVentureBros in one handy #podcast #venturebros

Come for the long game Venture Bros. lore, stay for the explanation of Curtis Sliwa and the Guardian Angels. Which far fetched as it sounds, is a real thing.

Our podcast examines the themes of The Venture Bros show and all of its cultural and historical references. In this episode Steven Attewell and Elana Levin draw on their knowledge of NY, pop culture and discuss significant themes this season.

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Back on the podcast grind!

Quick Analysis of Fire and Blood Excerpt

Quick Analysis of Fire and Blood Excerpt

Big news for fans of ASOIAF lore: GRRM has released an excerpt from the upcoming Fire & Blood Volume I, which covers Queen Alysanne’s visit to the North.

There’s some really interesting new material here, which I think bodes well for Fire & Blood as a valuable addition to the broader corpus of lore about the world of ice and fire.

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Er, for curiosity’s sake re: the Punisher (I haven’t been keeping abreast of much in that quarter of the fandom)….what is the one sentence?

colonel-green:

racefortheironthrone:

abigailnussbaum:

racefortheironthrone:

One of the Punisher’s bullets hits an innocent bystander. 

Netflix lost me forever on the character when he explained to Karen Page that when he fired into a crowd of people in a hospital, they were never in any danger because as a trained military man, he could ensure that no bullet went astray.  Like, not only is this guy a psychopath, he – or rather, the people writing him – don’t even have the courage to admit it, and instead resort to absurd fictions.

Yep. Which was especially nonsensical, because in the hospital scene, the Punisher is clearly using a shotgun. 

That’s not really any more of an argument against the Punisher than it is against literally any other superhero, though.

Most superheroes don’t use guns for this very reason. 

So I read your post on the prerequisites for a Versailles strategy in Westeros. How would a King on the Iron Throne be able to wean himself off the nobility re: soldiers? I feel like it has something to do with centralization but it’s such a hazy concept that it doesn’t really aid understanding of the issue and the solutions.

When people say that standing armies about centralization, what they are referring to is the development of state capacity to support a standing army. 

This mostly has to do with financial matters – you need to be able to collect enough taxes to keep large numbers of people equipped, supplied, and employed year-round. However, there are also a number of other policy areas involved: logistics (even if you have the cash on hand to pay for everything, you still need to get the paychests, the gunpowder, bullets, replacement pieces for muskets and cannons, food for both humans and horses, etc. to the army on time), a more professional officer corps (granted, you still got aristocrats dominating the officer corps well into the 19th century, but the bigger armies and the need for specialized skills in units like artillery, engineers, etc. meant that you needed educated professionals as well), and so on. 

Er, for curiosity’s sake re: the Punisher (I haven’t been keeping abreast of much in that quarter of the fandom)….what is the one sentence?

abigailnussbaum:

racefortheironthrone:

One of the Punisher’s bullets hits an innocent bystander. 

Netflix lost me forever on the character when he explained to Karen Page that when he fired into a crowd of people in a hospital, they were never in any danger because as a trained military man, he could ensure that no bullet went astray.  Like, not only is this guy a psychopath, he – or rather, the people writing him – don’t even have the courage to admit it, and instead resort to absurd fictions.

Yep. Which was especially nonsensical, because in the hospital scene, the Punisher is clearly using a shotgun. 

Thoughts on the Punisher? I find it interesting that such a small-time character (relatively speaking) has had not one, not two but three unrelated films that all flopped and were critically panned to boot. And yet, the Punisher was given a major role in Daredevil season 2 and now has his own series. Not to mention his numerous appearances in cartoons, and video games starring him. What I’m trying to say is that the character sure gets a lot second changes and I find it curious.

The Punisher gets used a lot because the character is very cheap. Because the character’s inspiration is from revenge thrillers – he predated the Death Wish and Rambo movies, but not the novels they were based on – Frank Castle is just a guy with a lot of guns who goes around killing people in familiar urban environments. 

Which means you don’t need colorful costumes or special effects for super-powers, you don’t need elaborate sets to stand in for alien planets, you don’t even need particularly good acting, because the audience’s interest is in the gunplay. Which means you can get by with the quite modest budgets that action movies used to be associated with.  

I’m not a fan of the character, personally. The danger of falling into some really reprehensible territory on race, guns, criminal justice, etc. is particularly intense, but even when writers avoid those traps, I find that the stories get very samey – Punisher goes up against bad guys, Punisher shoots bad guys, rinse and repeat – without the scope for innovation or whimsy that comes from the clever use of superpowers. 

Bottom line, I don’t think there’s much there to a character whose core conceit could be undone by a single sentence.