What were your thoughts on all the new trailers comic con showed?

captainjackslog:

racefortheironthrone:

Wonder Woman – Gal Godot looks amazing, Chris Pine is funny (it’s been a good year for male leads being better as comically-doofy pretty boys, actually), although I still remain puzzled why WWI rather than WWII, when WWI is a much more morally ambiguous conflict and Wonder Woman was created in 1941.

Justice League – definitely looks to be an improvement over BvSDOJ, but I’ll still wait on people I trust before I go see it.

Suicide Squad – still looking good.

Lego Batman – best Batman.

Doctor Strange – really looking forward to this, even though I think they’re leaning a bit heavily on the ol’ Inception-by-way-of-kaleidoscope.

Iron Fist – might be good, even if it’s not John Cho.

Power Man – looks really really good. Especially from the stills I’ve seen of some of the actual episodes, I think this is going to be one of the most politically-charged Marvel shows ever, and that’s a good thing.

Defenders – not much detail, but I have to admit it hit my nostalgia bone hard to hear “Come As You Are.”

Did I miss any?

I think you missed Guardians of the Galaxy Vol.2 and Spider-Man: Homecoming.

As for your questions about Wonder Woman, I think part of the reason they went with WWI was to help distinguish it from Captain America but that’s just a guess. Also I think the fact that that conflict was more morally ambiguous might work to the story’s advantage but once again I’m just guessing.

I missed them because I can’t find those trailers online. If anyone has links, definitely send them my way.

I don’t know about the WWI thing. Going over the top is not something that should be turned into super-heroics as opposed to a furious indictment of the nationalism and class privilege and idiocy of the generals who sent men marching into the machine guns from the comfort of the rear.

And how do you do WWI without talking about the Russian Revolution? Or the Treaty of Versailles? Or where the hell Wonder Woman was during WWII? Or why in the new DCU society hasn’t been altered by superheroes having been a thing for a hundred years, which you’d think would have come up in Man of Steel or BVSDOJ.

Whereas WWII is so much easier, because the Germans invaded and occupied Greece in WWII. Steve Trevor crash-lands on Paradise Island, the Germans try to capture him, run into Wonder Woman and the Amazons. The Amazons are horrified by Nazi ideology and send out Wonder Woman to help liberate Greece.

Legion

Oh duh, Legion. Yeah, the trailer looked ok, but I find the whole thing quite puzzling. Legion is a super-legacy character – he’s the son of Professor Xavier and Gabrielle Haller (not the best instance of Xavier’s professionalism there), he’s an extremely powerful mutant with Dissociative Identity Disorder, he was held at Muir Island (just like Proteus, who he resembles in many ways), and he set off the Age of Apocalypse by accidentally murdering his own father while time-travelling.

So he’s a really odd choice for an X-Men TV show, as compared to something like New Mutants or Generation X, which lend themselves to the cheaper cast/celebrity cameo model of integration.

What I will say, as a fan of the X books who’s been worried about the whole sidelining of the X-Men because of ongoing rights issues story, is that I’m genuinely pleased that Fox and Marvel TV are working together on this one. I’m keeping my powder dry, but if this eventually leads to a Sony-like deal between Fox and Marvel that lets them use the X-Men in the MCU, or at the very least allows for the “m-word” so that we can finally be done with the Inhumans, and give Marvel a stronger motive to revitalize the X-books, I’d be thrilled.

And if reports can be believed, this collaboration may have given Marvel the Fantastic Four back. Even as someone who isn’t the biggest FF fan in the world, it would be nice to see the FF done right, but it’s even more important because of their rogue’s gallery, which is vital for the MCU’s future. I’m hoping that the Infinity War movies are good, but Thanos is just not as good a Big Bad as Doctor Doom or Galactus or Annihilus or Kang the Conqueror, and in the right hands, I think Namor could out-Loki Loki in the fandom.

What were your thoughts on all the new trailers comic con showed?

Wonder Woman – Gal Godot looks amazing, Chris Pine is funny (it’s been a good year for male leads being better as comically-doofy pretty boys, actually), although I still remain puzzled why WWI rather than WWII, when WWI is a much more morally ambiguous conflict and Wonder Woman was created in 1941.

Justice League – definitely looks to be an improvement over BvSDOJ, but I’ll still wait on people I trust before I go see it.

Suicide Squad – still looking good.

Lego Batman – best Batman.

Doctor Strange – really looking forward to this, even though I think they’re leaning a bit heavily on the ol’ Inception-by-way-of-kaleidoscope.

Iron Fist – might be good, even if it’s not John Cho.

Power Man – looks really really good. Especially from the stills I’ve seen of some of the actual episodes, I think this is going to be one of the most politically-charged Marvel shows ever, and that’s a good thing.

Defenders – not much detail, but I have to admit it hit my nostalgia bone hard to hear “Come As You Are.”

Did I miss any?

How common was atheism/agnosticism/non-practicing believers in the Middle Ages compared to Westeros?

(Trying again because when I tried to do this post on July 3rd it got eaten by a browser crash and I was too busy to re-do it)

To begin with, it’s very hard to know how common social and cultural practices of ordinary people are in the Middle Ages because of the sources we’re dealing with.

It’s especially difficult in this case, because Medieval European sources tend to conflate heresy, blasphemy, and atheism together – which means that you get very divergent opinions among modern scholars about whether you can use records of blasphemy to detect atheist thought or not. (In fact, the word atheism wasn’t used in the West until the 15th century, which means parsing terms gets very tricky indeed) By contrast, there’s actually a pretty rich literature of atheism in the Medieval Islamic world, albeit largely confined to an educated elite.

For more on this, see:

Atheism in the Medieval Islamic and European World by Fatemeh Chehregosha Azinfar

The Oxford Handbooks on Medieval Christianity and Atheism.

Would your Riverine Navies (from your Economic Development Plans for the Riverlands/Reach) consist of Longships (able to transition to the sea) or else to craft solely designed for Westeros’ rivers? TY

I had in mind something more like the river galley we see in Jaime I of ASOS.

Dear maester Steven, you’ve mentioned at times in the past that the only part of Westeros’ central government that seems out-of-date for the Late Middle Ages is the Judiciary, and to rectify this you suggested the creation of royal courts similar to the ones that Henry UK built. However, if a King of Westeros did intend to do this how many courts do you think should be built for the entire realm?

Well, let’s take Henry II’s judicial reforms as a jumping-off point: he’s perhaps best known for the Assizes of Clarendon (which in addition to asserting exclusive royal jurisdiction over criminal cases and royal jurisdiction over land disputes, also created some of the first grand juries) where he established the justices in eyre – six judges from Westminster who divided England between them and would travel in a circuit from county to county, covering their entire circuit every two years. He also established permanent judiciaries in the capitol which would eventually be known as the Court of Common Pleas and the Court of King’s Bench.And this was pretty much how things went from about 1166 to 1285-1360, where the system of local justices of the peace began to replace the justices in eyre in terms of who does the majority of judicial work.

So if we were talking about providing a judiciary for Westeros, I think you’d probably start with a system of itinerant justices who could cover a good deal of territory between them, and you’d probably stagger the numbers by the size of the territory involved: Iron Islands are pretty small geographically so you could get away with one, Stormlands and Crownlands could probably be covered by two justices each, Westerlands and Vale maybe three or four each given the difficulty of mountain travel, the North and Dorne would probably need 5-6 given the long distances but also the lower population density, and the Reach would probably need 10 or more given the size and high population.

So I don’t know if you subscribe to this theory, but if Rhaegar were funding the Harrenhal tourney, how would he do it? How rich do you think the Crown Prince would be? I can’t really see Dragonstone (even if he controls its lands and incomes) being a richer fief than Harrenhal, so do you think it is possible he loaned against his future income as King?

Well, Dragonstone isn’t richer than Harrenhal, but it’s pretty rich. Likewise, Rhaegar could probably call upon other income streams: even with Aerys’ paranoia and Tywin’s frugality, a crown prince is going to get an income to keep them in sufficient splendor so as to add luster to the royal court (as opposed to being an embarrassment). Likewise, it’s possible that Elia came with a dowry or had incomes of her own that Rhaegar could call upon. And yes, Rhaegar might have borrowed based on his future incomes, it was a quite common trap that a lot of heirs found themselves falling into.

But overall, the very fact that the theory was bruited at the time suggests its plausibility – if it was evident on its face that there’s no way Rhaegar could possibly have afforded to finance the tournament, no one would have believed the rumor and it wouldn’t be given credence in the text.

And finally, Rhaegar doesn’t necessarily have to pay for the whole thing himself – he only would have had to pay for enough of the cost to make the rest affordable for the Lord of Harrenhal.

Dear maester steven, I was wondering if I could ask you something regarding Deepwood Motte. You mentioned the coast nearby was one of the few places on the west coast of the North where a large number of ships could be held, and this seems right as Asha docked enough ships here for the 1000 Ironborn that took the castle. However, the books describe the coast as being tidal flats, which aren’t good for docking ships unless they have been dredged. Did they dock somewhere else on the Bay of Ice?

Ah, I see what the issue is. You’re thinking deepwater ships, whereas the Ironborn primarily use longships which have extremely shallow drafts and a fairly flat bottom.

Unlike a deepwater ship, which can’t really be beached without some very complicated launching procedures, longships can be hauled up off the beach and pushed out to sea very easily, which is part of the reason they were so suited to hit-and-run riverrine missions when you wanted to go a-viking.

So a tidal flat is actually ideal for longboats, as you can sail/row them up pretty close to the tide line, portage them if necessary, and the tide makes launching them again super-smooth. Meanwhile, galleys and other ships with long fin keels and deep drafts can’t pursue the longship onto the tidal flat lest they run around.

why is the right of pits and gallows so important to the nobility?

Good question.

Firstly, historically speaking, the nobility have tended to be very conservative in the sense of wanting to hang on to their traditional rights and privileges in the face of modernizing innovations from the central government.

Secondly, and going along with that, the nobility tend to be localists as opposed to nationalists, b/c regionalism also means a free hand for themselves. Hence Northumberland “knew no prince but a Percy” or “Je Suis Le Sire de Coucy.”

The right of pit and gallows gives the lord an enormous amount of social, economic, political,etc. control over their own fiefdom as the source of law. Cross the lord in anything, and he can throw you in his dungeon or hang you. If the lord does anything to you that you don’t like, you can’t take him to court because he is the court.

This is one of the main reasons why kings historically sought to bolster their authority and power through the extension of royal justice. It creates a direct connection between the sovereign and the individual subject that diminishes the exclusivity of control by the local lord, it allows the subject to appeal to the king against the lord and thus allow the king to use the mechanism of the law to punish “over-mighty vassals,” and it creates a popular constituency behind the king that can be very handy when it comes to raising taxes and armies.

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