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About Jon Arryn’s responsibilities as Hand, was he really in charge of war? The way Robert talks about the Hand’s duties when he’s asking Ned to take over makes it sound like he expects Ned to handle the military. Yet in the Greyjoy Rebellion I can’t find any reference to Jon participating. It sounds like Ned and Robert handled it together rather than leave it to the Hand. Is this because Robert let himself go after the Rebellion, or am I forgetting something?

I see Jon Arryn as more of an Eisenhower role – he’s not the field commander, he’s there to focus on logistics, politics, and grand strategy. You can definitely see his hand in the Rebellion – he was the one who raised the banners and sent his charges from Gulltown to raise their levies, he was the one who kept the Tullys in the fold, and he was the one dictating peace terms in the end. 

During the Greyjoy Rebellion, he likely remained in King’s Landing to coordinate a rather complicated war effort – coordination between the Crownlands, Stormlands, Riverlands, North, Westerlands, and Reach, logistics and supply for an amphibious landing by a royal army, etc. – so that Robert could finally have some fun in the field. 

Chapter-by-Chapter Analysis: Bran VII, ACOK

Chapter-by-Chapter Analysis: Bran VII, ACOK

“war everywhere…each man against his neighbor, and winter coming…such folly, such black mad folly…”
Synopsis: Bran is risen. He is risen indeed.
SPOILER WARNING: This chapter analysis, and all following, will contain spoilers for all Song of Ice and Fire novels and Game of Thrones episodes. Caveat lector.
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Do you consider pre-cave Bloodraven to be a villain? Or just a ruler going a little overboard trying to prevent a (real) rebellion?

Even villains see themselves as the heroes of their own stories. Bloodraven believed that he was fighting for a good cause, and that that cause justified any action or sacrifice done in its name, no matter how repugnant. 

In the name of preserving House Targaryen, Bloodraven became a kinslayer and a murderer, allowed Dagon Greyjoy to burn his way all along the west coast, did nothing while starvation and drought and crime punished the interior, and constructed a fearsome police state the likes of which had never been seen before. He violated every conceivable taboo and custom, save for slavery. But he also kept Daeron’s line on the Iron Throne, brought Dagon to justice, stopped the spread of plague in King’s Landing. And at least he recognized that his own actions were abhorrent, hence why he accepted his punishment for the murder of Aenys Blackfyre. 

Even now, Bloodraven remains an arch-utilitarian, like Varys. He turns children into his instruments of his twilight war, and while he would probably point to the heart of winter and say that anything to eliminate that existential threat is justified, I can’t help remembering the  “bones of a thousand other dreamers impaled upon their points.”  

Do you think the Drowned God is a real entity? I see a lot of people subscribe to the idea (especially discussing matters regarding Patchface) and yet I don’t think I buy it. In a world where human/earthly powers and types of magic that seem to be natural in Planetos are mistaken for signs of the divine (the Old Gods actually being the conscience of generations of greenseers and fire/blood magic being perceived as R’hllor’s ‘miracles’) I wouldn’t like The Drowned God to turn out to be (c)

© any closer to The Real Thing, especially since Grrm has made it clear that there will be no materialized deities featuring in the novels. But then again, it could be my distaste for anything Lovecraftian speaking.

Well if you don’t like Lovecraftian, I hate to tell you, but there are these things called the Deep Ones…

That being said, I think there’s some philosophical nits to be picked here – given historical traditions of ancestor-worship and animism, what exactly is the difference between the Old Gods and the collective spirits of the greenseers? What makes a god a god, in other words?

Out of curiosity Maester Steven, might one please ask if any works produced by the “Distinguished Competition” have ever secured a hold on your affections? (as a long-term DC Deadhead who still has plenty of room in his heart for the MCU and Marvel comics, one would love to know if your fondness for Earths Mightiest Heroes leaves any room for their Peers from another Publisher).

Question: does Vertigo count? 

If not…to give some background to my comics background: when I was a kid, I didn’t have a comic store nearby. So I didn’t have a regular pull list. What I did have was a guy in the neighborhood who sold stuff off a card table. And that stuff was the most 90s stuff imaginable – foil covers, holographic covers, spurious #1s, you name it. Which meant I kind of jumped into the Big Events of the 90s – Knightfall, Death of Superman – completely out of context. After the fact, I’d say that the former stuck with me a lot more than the latter, in part because Knightfall’s scenario was way more psychologically troubling whereas Doomsday was a giant punchy thing. 

However, I also had bookstores that sold graphic novels, although the comics companies weren’t nearly as good at collecting everything into continuous runs as they are today. When it came to DC, my starting point was Greatest Superman Stories Ever Told, Greatest Batman Stories Ever Told, and the various decades books. The stuff that stuck with me there: Alan Moore’s “For the Man Who Has Everything,” Denny O Neill’s “"Death Strikes at Midnight and Three.”

But seriously, my favorite DC is Denny O’Neil/Neil Adams Batman. 

Hello! I really like your thoughts on ASOIAF, and when I had this doubt, I thought you may know the answer. So, in Westeros, last names are a privilege of the nobility, right? Only nobles and aknowledge noble bastards have last names. In that context, what class can be the Pooles, for exemple, put in? If they are only servants, how come they have surnames and their own coat of arms? If they are low nobility, how come they are not vassals, but servants? Thanks for your time!

I think you’ve gotten confused by the servants thing. The Pooles are stewards of Winterfell, the same way that the Tyrells were stewards of Highgarden under the Gardeners. They’re not servants, they’re a minor noble house who have a bit of patronage from their liege lord. It’s the same way that the Cassels are the masters of arms and captains of the guard, but are definitely minor nobility. 

If you don’t mind me asking, what are your hopes for Captain America: Civil War? While I loved what the Russo Brothers did with The Winter Soldier arc, I am a little worried that this Civil War will be a psychological thriller rather than a film based on politics (The comic version of Civil War, at it’s best, about the Patriot Act IMHO)

Oh man, don’t get me started on the Civil War comics. Total trainwreck, and a huge part of it is that the writers couldn’t decide whether the Registration Act was gun control, the Patriot Act, or the total abrogation of the 13th Amendment. (And remember, if Civil War was supposed to be about the Patriot Act, Millar thought that pro-Patriot Act was the right side…)

Here’s what I want from the Civil War movie: make the conflict make sense for both Tony Stark and Steve Rogers. Let them both have important points to make that are grounded in their characters, rather than turn Iron Man into a fascist because you need that to make the fight happen. 

Yes, it’s going to turn out that Baron Zemo and HYDRA are manipulating General Thunderbolt Ross. But let’s have that exacerbating tensions between positions that both men hold already. 

We’ve already seen the foundations of this – Iron Man 3 and Age of Ultron show that Tony Stark (partially due to his PTSD) can’t stop himself from trying to build the whole world an Iron Man suit (or build a giant fleet of drones to be everyone’s personal Iron Man) despite the awful consequences of that, and if someone hurt one of the people he cares about (even in self-defense) that would kick it into overdrive. (Also, Tony tends to over-correct when he fucks up – hence blowing up the Iron Man suits, hence building Ultron, hence embracing Sekovia Accords after Ultron goes rogue)

And we already know that Cap will react to that kind of security state the same way he did to Project Insight – fear vs. freedom, the individual’s right to due process etc.. He’s not going to stand for Ross and Stark building a black site prison in the middle of the ocean, or preventative detention for people supposedly too dangerous to put on trial. This is especially the case when it comes to Bucky, someone whose possibility of redemption he has already shown himself willing to risk his life for. 

Oh not you too! The Marvel brand isnt doing cinema any favors. These trite morality plays arent helping superhero movies either. Arent you exhausted by Marvel’s aesthetic? I hear the defense that it’s a genre, but the problem is that it’s a brand. These are shot like car commercials, no real direction. You want actual cinematic superhero films? Try Shyamalan’s Unbreakable; PWSA’s Res Evil 4&5. Cinema isn’t supposed to be a poly-sci essay or a polemic, told in clunky close-ups, bland action, etc

poorquentyn:

racefortheironthrone:

**poli-sci… and you know what’s infinitely better than any Marvel movie? Jupiter fucking Ascending. Hell, any Wachowski film. Or Edgar Wright’s. Sorry for rant but you were praising CA like it’s a goddamn Edward Yang movie. It’s all shouted worldviews, heinous action coverage, grimdark fetishism, horrible use of lighting, no sense of even competent cross-cutting. Meta diologue analysis of American exceptionalism? No thanks.

I think you and I have fundamentally different aesthetics, Anon. 

1. Marvel’s films can be incredibly stylistically different from one another – Joe Johnston, Joss Whedon, Kenneth Branaugh, James Gunn, the Russo brothers, are quite distinctive in their styles and interests, and indeed have produced movies that belong to different genres that all happen to be superhero movies. 

2. Captain America: First Avengers is not grimdark fetishism. (If it’s grimdark fetishism you’re looking for, Batman v. Superman is over yonder) It’s 40s camp, and it’s absolutely expressive of Joe Johnston’s aesthetic. Seriously, go watch Rocketeer and then watch Captain America and tell me that you can’t see the visual and thematic similarities. And yeah, I like some ideas in my super hero movies; better that than Zack Snyder. 

3. I don’t find your alternatives appealing in the slightest. Unbreakable is over-praised and incredibly self-serious from one of the biggest flash in the pans in cinema history. PWSA’s movies are video game movies rather than super-hero movies and they’re frankly unwatchable. Jupiter Ascending is ridiculously overstuffed, badly acted, poorly plotted, and strangely pro-bestiality, and if you don’t like cinema as polemic, how can you enjoy Matrix Reloaded or Matrix Revolutions? 

But at the end of the day, this is just my opinion about my aesthetic preferences. You don’t have to like what I like or vice versa. 

Amen. This widespread notion that the Marvel movies are homogenous frankly baffles me. It’s true that the MCU-building is their weakest aspect, but I kinda think people are just assuming any such studio-brand series must be inherently machine-tooled, ignoring the variety of the individual movies. 

And what variety! Winter Soldier is a straight-up ‘70s paranoid thriller, complete with Robert Redford. Thor finds Branagh mashing up B-list Shakespeare, disarmingly sweet fish-out-of-water rom-com, and the Rainbow Road level from Mario Kart, and somehow making it work. Avengers is a superbly acted ensemble comedy interrupted by the Old Ones. Guardians (my fave of the bunch) is a staggeringly beautiful ensemble comedy with a Tarantino soundtrack. Iron Man is basically a Shane Black flick. 

Oh but sure, they’re no Jupiter Ascen…bwahaha, I couldn’t get through that with a straight face! (Srsly, who praises Edward Yang and PWSA in the same breath? Don’t tell me “vulgar auterism” RE the latter is still a thing, that was the dumbest cinephile fad.) And yeah, calling the Cap movies “grimdark” while a Snyder movie haunts theaters, what even. 

Speaking of the MCU-building, I think we may have to reassess that in the future. For the longest time, there hasn’t really been anything to compare it with. Sure, other studios wanted to do the whole shared universe/megafranchise thing, but most of those efforts stalled (Universal with the movie monsters, for example) before reaching the big screen . The only thing that comes closest is Deadpool and the X-Men, and even then it’s incredibly tangential and you really get the sense that Fox is not ready to let people play with its toys yet. 

But by the old gods and the new, compare that to BvS trying to do a decade’s worth in one movie (that was already two movies), and suddenly Marvel looks like a master of understatement. Confining the world-building stuff mostly to post-credit scenes and visual hints meant that those who were there for the world-building could get it, but people who weren’t could just enjoy them for what they are. 

It started to get a little unwieldy in Age of Ultron, and I would caution Feig et al. that they should look at the shortcomings of that film (mostly the fact that film only lets you have so many well-developed characters on screen, so don’t try to push it too far or you get Spiderman 3 syndrome) as a guide for how to steer the MCU into the future. Also, while I’m at it, now that moviegoers are broadly familiar with the main heroes, it’s ok to have non-intro solo films develop the villains a bit more.