Thoughts on "A Dance With Dragons" part 2

Part 2 of my Thoughts on “A Dance With Dragons” by George R. R. Martin.

Spoilers...

This novel really began to illuminate the rest of the Ice and Fire world. Up until this novel I was convinced that the other places in the world were just kind of there, but not really important as far as the story Martin wanted to tell. They also never seemed real to me. Westeros, its people, and its culture has been examined at such length that it seems real to me. The rest of the world was just a couple of passages here and there and someplace for Daenarys to wreak some havoc. However, so much of “Dance” takes place outside of Westeros that you really start to get a feeling about the bigger picture. There is a whole world out there most of which could care less about Westeros

At the beginning of the novel, Tyrion meets Illyrio Mopatis, the Pentosi merchant who hid Daenarys and her brother. We’ve known since “Game of Thrones” that he’s been working with Varys, but we didn’t know why. Illyrio gives Tyrion several explanations such as gold and power, but I don’t buy those answers. I think Tyrion almost hits on the true answer when he looks at a map of the free cities and says something about how close they are to Westeros yet the Targaryens never moved across the Narrow Seas to conqueror them. Illyrio doesn’t want Daenarys to rule in Westeros for wealth or power, he wants her to rule in Westeros so she stays the hell out of Pentos.

Little People

In “Dance” Martin seems to write the “little people” better than his main characters. I don’t mean dwarfs. I mean the characters that only appear briefly. These throwaway characters had interesting stories that were often times only hinted at, but it was always enough that my imagination took over and filled in the gaps. The characters also had motivations that I readily understood like hatred, revenge, and lust. Characters like:

Lord Manderly- Since White Harbor is the only useful eastern port in the North, the Lannisters and the Freys are interested in currying his favor and yet Lord Manderly’s son Wendel was killed in the Red Wedding. Manderly hates the Freys and Lannisters but is unable to oppose them openly for political reasons. It is fun to see this bit of intrigue play out. And to see how when when he is trapped in Winterfell with the other nobles how hard it is for him to maintain his façade as the days begin to pile on.

Lady Dustin- Who as I mentioned previously, blames Ned Stark for everything that has gone wrong in her life. Events that in her delusion are Ned’s fault include King Aerys II's burning Brandon Stark and others to death, The War of the Usurper and more specifically the death of her husband Lord William Dustin at the Tower of Joy.

House Blackwood and House Bracken- The two neighboring Houses have apparently had an ongoing feud reminiscent of the Hatfields and McCoys since before the recorded history of Westeros. In fact, both Houses believe that they were the “Kings” in the region during the time of the First Men and both House believe the other House betrayed them and usurped their rule. Everything possible has been done to end the feud including intermarriage, but somehow the feud continues. I also love the imagery that at the center of the Blackwood’s castle (Raventree Hill) is this tremendously large and completely dead weirwood tree. It’s been dead for a thousand years (The Blackwoods claim the Brackens poisoned the tree) and yet since weirwood doesn’t rot, the tree remains. Each night it is home to hundreds of ravens, that “cover the tree like black leaves.” Can you imagine what a depressing castle that must be? I think the Blackwoods would feel better about their lives if they moved out of that castle.

Main Characters

These kinds of “little characters” contrasted with some of Martin’s main characters whose motivations and reasonings were so murky that I often felt as if I didn’t understand the character at all despite the fact that the chapters were written from their perspective.

Daenarys Targaryen- I didn’t understand what was going through her head for the entire novel. The image I have of her from the previous novels is decisiveness. She struck me as the only character truly worthy to rule Westeros. In terms of arc, her story always goes from bad to worse and then she wows you at the end of the novel, but I felt like this was the first novel where she was just acting foolish the whole time. Couldn’t she see that she was fighting a losing battle in Meereen? She never had the hearts of the people. The Harpys would never stop and no ruler could ever change a culture in which slavery was so ingrained. She took away their livelihood their self-image and offered them nothing in return. Of course you could argue that Daenarys ends the story in a better position then before since she has mastered a dragon, but I would argue that I’m not sure if she ever learned a lesson about how to rule. I’ll be happy if she at least learned how not to rule.

John Snow- Martin got me again. I was positive that Jon was Martin’s fair-haired boy. Sure he had a bit of a rough time of it at the Wall, but he rose all the way up to Lord Commander in a few short years. I was also convinced like many fans that he was Rhaegar Targaryen and Lyanna Stark’s child and that Eddard knew Jon would be killed by Robert if that was revealed…but none of that matters now does it?

Snow’s end shouldn’t have surprised me he spent the entire novel pissing off every living creature at the wall. Was he really oblivious to the fact that his men were just waiting for him to slip up so they could mutiny justifiably?

A lot of people are convinced that this is just a cliffhanger ending and that Jon Snow will end up being alive. I don’t know, I think it’s clear Jon is dead. Maybe Melisandre’s magic will revive him, but the Jon that returns will not be a brother of the Night’s Watch. Maybe he’ll become a nameless wildling, and he’ll romance Val… Or maybe he’s just dead!

Stannis Baratheon - continues to not impress me. He is a rigid man who does not believe in compromise. He lives in the shadow of a brother whom despite his faults was still a better man than Stannis will ever be. But, Stannis continues to barrel forward despite the fact that he is in over his head at every point. I do not believe he is dead as Ramsey’s letter stated. It was clear from the letter that Ramsey was looking for Theon and the false Arya. They were last seen with Stannis. Therefore it would seem that Ramsey hasn’t found him yet. Notice how there is no mention of Asha. Is it possible that Ramsey merely killed the Umbers that were standing outside Winterfell and banging their drums?

Theon Greyjoy- Reading his chapters was quite disturbing, in a series full of scum and villainy, Ramsey Snow/Bolton really takes the cake. He took Theon to a point through torture where Theon’s will snapped. Theon was no longer human instead he was a sort of sniveling animal thing. I mentioned this to a friend that hasn’t read “Dance” yet and he said that Theon sort of deserves what he got because of how he betrayed Winterfell. And he further commented that it is kind of ironic that I feel sorry for Theon despite his evil actions. And yet, I guess it’s just good writing because I can’t help but feel sorry for Theon. I wouldn’t wish what he went through on my worst enemy.

Tyrion Lannister- His chapters were always a highlight of the novel. They are full of humor and yet were by no means comic relief. Martin does not treat Tyrion with kid gloves, if anything Tyrion is put in extra-tough spots and yet always manages to somehow talk his way out of them. My favorite Tyrion moment is when he goes into a laughing fit because he realizes that Aegon took his bait and is going directly to Westeros and also realizes that despite the fact that he is technically Jorah Mormont’s prisoner, Mormont is taking him exactly where he wanted to go in the first place: to Daenarys. I fully expected Tyrion to meet Daenarys by the end of the novel and/or figured he might use his book-knowledge of Dragons to try and wrangle one of them. Instead his story kind of ends with a whimper and I just kind of went “is that it?”

Here is Part 1 of my review of "A Dance With Dragons"
Ramsey Bolton artwork is from an Italian Game of Thrones site Terra-di-Mezzo

Thoughts on "A Dance With Dragons" part 1

Spoilers...

The thing about "A Dance With Dragons" by George R. R. Martin, and the series in general, is the complexity of it. Not only are we expected to recall the events we read about 6 years ago and the books before that, but we are also expected to understand references to hundreds of places around Martin’s world and hundreds of Houses and their family trees. The librarian side of me has always found this aspect of it to be fascinating; Constantly having to put the book down and study the maps in the front of the book, or the appendix in the back.

I’ve also found some great maps online, such as the map above. The full map is a true work of art. Here's the most complete map of Westeros I've seen as well as a world map (Though the Free Cities are a bit off. We were all just guessing about those until Martin put the map of them in "Dance." Thanks Martin!)

I use a website called the Citadel, they have a concordance of the series, but find it quicker for simple things to search the Wiki of Ice and Fire. However, sites like this have started to update so anyone reading “Dance” for the first time will have to use great caution.

I wonder what Martin uses to keep all these characters and locations straight. How does he remember how many children Maege Mormont has or which of Lord Manderly’s kids was killed at the Red Wedding? Does he have a database or pen and paper charts. It never ceases to amaze me that he can keep it all straight.

In “Dance,” we met Lady Dustin. She revealed that she was in love with Brandon Stark and that the feeling was mutual. In the Stark crypt she talks about how she blames Ned Stark for all of her life’s woes. Anyway, I was sure she’d never been mentioned before. I thought I’d finally found an example of Martin thinking of something after the fact, but nope, she was mentioned back in “Game of Thrones.” Martin knew exactly who she was and what her story was even though he waited 5 books to start to tell it. It’s like what they say about Homer’s Illiad, “No one dies nameless.”

The final complexity is that we are expected to understand hundreds of years of Westeros historical and cultural references. Martin has outlines 300 years of Targaryen rulers and centuries of legend before that. In “Dance” that history seems more alive and relevant then ever before.

For Ser Barristan “the Bold” Selmy, many events of almost 50 years ago are just as vivid to him as the events of his present. And it is not only him, the surprise appearances of Jon Connington and Aegon Targaryen made the events of the War of the Usurper seem more influential to Martin’s overall story than the War of 5 Kings.

I think, two mysteries in particular are integral to Martin’s story: Who was the knight of the laughing tree at the tournament in the year of the false spring and what happened at the Tower of Joy? Barristan revealed some more clues, and I’ve had my own theories, but I’m sure we won’t get definite answers until the last novel.

I was fascinated with Barristan recalling the events of the Defiance of Duskendale and how in a way he is responsible for the events that followed since Aerys II lost his mind during his imprisonment. I liked the dichotomy that the Defiance was a high point in Barristan’s career since he single-handedly rescued the king, but he personally considers it a low point when he considers all the awful things the Mad King did and the war that stemmed from those actions.

Ser Barristan Selmy artwork is from an Italian Game of Thrones site Terra-di-Mezzo

Jim Shooter's 1979 Dazzler Cartoon Treatment

Jim Shooter quietly released a bombshell on his blog this week. [I’ve got to hand it to Shooter, most comicbook writers, and artists have thus far been giving their personal papers to Universities where they unfortunately will probably only even be seen by a few people a year. Stan Lee’s papers are at the University of Wyoming, hardly a heavily visited area. Or worse, their papers are slowly mildewing in their garages or attics. I’ve long envisioned all of their papers in one Archive, run by me of course, but that’s just a personal fantasy.] Anyway, Shooter is sharing his stories and his archives through his blog. You should check it out!

A recent post told the story of his treatment for a Dazzler animated television Special and included the treatment as a pdf. It is well known that the Disco Dazzler (as she was originally called when disco was still “cool” in the late 70’s) was created with the intention of piggy-backing the character with a real life singer who would have a recording career as the Dazzler. Anyway, this treatment that fortunately never saw the light of day was chock full of celebrity voices: Cher, Donna Summers, KISS, The Village People, Rodney Dangerfield, Robin Williams, and Lenny and Squiggy.

The Dazzler was going to be voiced by Bo Derek. If you look at the issue of People magazine Shooter put on his blog you can see Derek's boyfriend is holding a stack of Marvel comics. Derek was studying up.

However, someone else would have done the singing, so why not just cast the singer as the voice too? Hollywood is so baffling; didn’t this cartoon already have enough marquee names?

The Dazzler is performing at a concert at the beginning of the cartoon, but other than that there are no musical numbers in Shooter’s treatment. But, considering it was meant to launch the Dazzler’s real life counterpart’s music career and was full of popular musical artist’s voices, I’m sure the first draft of the script would have been full of musical interludes.

Shooter didn’t write any jokes for Williams, Dangerfield or Lenny and Squiggy, but he did point out that Lenny and Squiggy’s jokes would not be funny until the end of the cartoon when the two characters would meet for the first time. Just what every special needs, characters who are constantly unfunny on purpose!

The cartoon was going to feature Marvel characters so people would know the Dazzler was from the Marvel Universe. The characters were Spider-man and a collection of random Avengers (Iron Man, Beast, Scarlet Witch, the Wasp and the Falcon).



The descriptions for the Avengers Shooter wrote into the treatment were written for someone who’d never seen a Marvel comic and were hilarious. Spider-man didn’t need to be introduced.

Iron Man- Secretly inventor Anthony Stark, who clad in solar-powered circuitized armor of his own design, is an invincible modern knight.

The Falcon- Whose rocket-powered wings give him the power of independent flight. He is actually Sam Wilson, a black teacher from Harlem.

The Scarlet Witch- Born Wanda Frank, she is a mutant, who with a gesture can cause disasters to occur. She is Eastern European, and has a rather formal bearing.

The Beast- Also a mutant, Hank McCoy is furry and bestial in powers and appearance, but extremely intelligent and erudite. He’s crazy.

The Wasp- Jan Van Dyne Pym was given a serum by her scientist-husband that enables her to shrink to insect size and sprout wings. She is an heiress, and very much a lovable scatterbrain.

Did I mention that nearly every character from Cher to Donna Summer, to KISS and The Village People were all going to have super powers of their own?

I don’t blame Casablanca Records for saying this treatment read more like a feature animated film because it was really ambitious, but in Shooter's defense he was only trying to use all the celebrity voice actors he’d been told to use. Given the enormous number of characters he was told to include in a half-hour show, I thought he did a decent job. But I am still very happy that soon after Shooter wrote this things changed at Casablanca Records and the Dazzler project died.

And the world had no idea the bullet it dodged until now. Mr. Shooter I don’t know if I want to thank you for releasing this or whether I wish you’d burned it. If you released it as a way of asking for forgiveness for this sin, I want you to know that I absolve and forgive you.

[The Spiderman and Dazzler drawing is by Tom Beland.]

Uh-oh! Somebody’s Actually Reading This- Part 2

It’s been almost two months since I made the first post about my blog’s statistics. It seems more than a little bit self-centered to make another one, but I feel like I figured out some things since the last post, so I wanted to do a quick update. As you can see from the above chart the number of views on my blog have increased by almost 3,000 in the last month.

The first thing I can say with more confidence, now that I’ve been able to study it, is the only reason I have even that number of views is…I’ll give you a hint, almost no one views my blog because of my great wit, large vocabulary, and propensity towards extrapolating deeper meanings and life-lessons from science fiction and comicbooks. Instead, I’ve only got these views because I like to use large pictures.

“What if Spiderman had Rescued Gwen Stacy” and “Childhood’s End” were my top articles at the time I wrote my last post. Since then every time I’ve seen them get hits it’s been though searches on Google images.

What I also discovered is that the Google search engine is more likely to put your image higher on results screen if you have an article title that includes keywords, and have your pictures saved with keywords too, rather then just using something like image_ 1 or whatever code your camera automatically generates.

I tested this theory on a couple of my old articles that hadn’t gotten a lot of views. It turned out to be the perfect month to tweak my old Thor Review what with the new movie out in theaters. According to my Photobucket account, which also has some statistical records, since I renamed the Thor photos in my article and made them more searchable I got 323 views in a month.

The second thing I figured out is that one of the easiest ways to get views is to be a leech. I wrote an article “Meeting the Angry Video Game Nerd.” I wrote it just to get it off my chest, I felt like there was a certain bit of universality in the fact that I felt a connection to a celebrity, but meeting him brought the illusion of that fantasy into harsh clarity. My father used to call this the Johnny Carson effect because Carson said one time that people would come up to him on the street and start talking to him about their sick aunt or that Jimmy just graduated from middle school. They felt so at home with him due to seeing him every night on TV that then deluded themselves into thinking it was a two-way connection. Anyway, the article didn’t get a lot of views until the Nerd himself posted an article and a video montage about the game convention where I’d met him. I posted a simple reply on his website it just said, “I was at the convention too. I met the Nerd and I wrote an article about it. Here’s the link…” And from that I got 386 views on my article in one day!

Here’s a chart where you can clearly see that day where I had so many views. I have to admit I got sort of giddy over it at the time.


My third lesson was to pick popular subjects. The first article I did on the “Game of Thrones” series got some views so I got an idea for the ultimate “sell-out” article. I thought of it as selling out because it was the first time I wrote an article just to see if it would get views. I slapped on lots of pictures onto the article, plugged in some humorous text, and I had a best seller. “The Top 10 Game of Thrones Bad-Asses.” turned out to be the exactly the juggernaut I imagined. It has generated 1,572 views in one month. 474 of those are from image searches for Tyrion Lannister, obviously the fan favorite character.

Now I’m sure you’re thinking, "who cares? So some people are looking at pictures you posted what good does that do you?" To tell you the truth I’m not really sure. All I’ve been doing is experimenting and seeing how I could tweak things to maximize views and so far my experimenting is bearing fruit. Now that I figured out in about a month how to get people to look at my pictures, maybe in another month I can figure out how to get them to read my text?...Okay, it will probably take much longer than that.

Anyone got any advice?

Trip to Centralia, PA

My friend Stefan and I took a trip to Centralia, PA, a town that has been largely abandoned since the early 80’s because of a coal mine fire that has been burning underneath the town since the late 70’s.

We read about the town online and got mixed accounts so we didn’t really know what to expect.

We saw pictures of craters and steam rising up out of them online. (Here is one of our own pics).



I pictured a post apocalyptic looking town with various abandoned building and craters thoughout the town. I also thought that all the roads into the town had been blocked off, so I though we’d have to hike in and out. I thought the only people we’d see would be the 5 residents that Wikipedia said still lived in the town.

Wikipedia also said that a boy had fallen into a sinkhole and had to be rescued by a quick acting uncle. I was skeptical about this account, but we decided to be cautious and bring a full pack with water, food and rope.

The coolest part of the day was walking on a mile long stretch of Highway 61 which has been blocked off due to massive cratering. Walking this road felt like being in Mad Max or the Postman (The novel, I didn’t care for the movie).



However we quickly realized we were over prepared for the day as it was a popular spot for parents to bring their whole family and there was even ample parking in various spots. The reworked stretch of Highway 61 still goes through Centralia.

Also disappointing was that there are no buildings left abandoned except for one right off of Route 61 and the 4 or 5 houses that people still live in. Everything else had been demolished and the remains cleared away. It was hard to tell that a town had every actually been there.

Stefan and I wandered around for most of the afternoon thinking that around every curve we’d hit a clearing and find blocks of abandoned building. Instead the day turned out to be mostly a nature hike.

There are also huge hills of coal in one part of town.




Don’t get me wrong it was still a lot of fun. For instance we were goofing off at the end of the day and I told Stefan to pretend he could repel into the biggest crater.



There are a lot more pictures on photobucket, just click on one of the pictures here and you can click through everything.

Thoughts on Super 8...

Super 8 is a sort of a throwback to those great 80’s movies like the Goonies, E.T., Stand By Me, etc. The whole time I was watching this movie, I was remembering what those movies meant to me as a kid. This movie had that same magic, but I’m also old enough that I realized this film will belong to the kids of today in a way that it can’t for us adults.

One of my favorite elements was that the kids in the film are attempting to make a zombie movie. (You definitely have to stay for the credits during which they play the entire movie the kids made). I like how almost none of the events that happen around them such as the train crash, an evacuation of the town by the military, etc, deter them from their goal. Instead the director talks about production value and they film in front of the train crash or in front of the military personnel searching a house.

It brought back memories of when I wrote movie scripts and tried to film them with my friends (and sometimes my brother and my father too). The sad thing is I think the kids in the movie outdid anything I managed to film, but I’d like to think my scripts were better. I dusted off an old gem so you can judge for yourself. Dave and Stanley Scene: Bach Vs. Chopin

Ironically the premise of the first movie I wrote was that me and a bunch of my friends filmed a horror movie in our high school’s lunchroom during lunch using nothing but a Super 8 camera. The novelty of using such an old technology seemed like a neat idea. I guess I was about 11 years ahead of the trend.

The thing I remember best about directing is how you are in control, everyone from the actors to the cameramen are looking to you to tell them what to do. It is deeply scary and at the same time somewhat intoxicating.

Out of the cast I was most impressed with Elle Fanning who I thought gave an excellent performance that seemed wise beyond her years.

Super 8 definitely requires you to suspend your disbelief at times, but it is exciting and entertaining and I’d highly recommend it.

Dave and Stanley Scene: Bach vs. Chopin

Here's one of my favorite scenes from a movie script I wrote 11 years ago when I was a freshman in college. The characters Dave and Stanley are at their college's gym. These two best friends seemed to always have very funny arguments.

INT. GYM- DAY

Dave is doing the bench press and Stanley is spotting him.

STANLEY
Come on big guy, one more.

Dave is visibly struggling.

STANLEY (CONT'D)
Come on, you are as weak as the Baroque period of classical music.

This makes Dave have a boost of strength. He finishes the set and sits up.

DAVE
I don’t know why you bring up this up every time we come to the gym.

STANLEY
Because you won’t admit I’m right. The Romantic period is far superior.

DAVE
Just get on the bench, Bucko.

Stanley gets on the bench.

DAVE (CONT’D)
How can you completely disregard Bach?

Stanley does 8 reps.

STANLEY
I find his music to be very straight forward and lacking emotion.

DAVE
How can you say that? Bach’s music has never moved you? Fugue in C minor?

STANLEY
Fugue in C minor is one of the most mechanical pieces of trite I’ve ever heard.

DAVE
Toccata?

STANLEY
Crap.

DAVE
Fugue in D minor?

STANLEY
Boring.

Greg comes over. He is a muscular looking jock.

GREG
You still arguing about Bach and Chopin? I don’t know how the two of you can completely ignore Mozart and Beethoven.

DAVE
One discussion at a time.

GREG
But how can you ignore them?

STANLEY
Greg, we like our argument.

DAVE
Yeah, buzz off.

Greg goes back to working out elsewhere. Dave and Stanley prepare the weights to use the leg press.

STANLEY
So the other day I was listening to Chopin’s Nocturne in B. I was fascinated by the complexity. All of those trills were so complicated. From a musician’s point of view, I was completely in awe that someone could write something so rich with variety.

Dave starts the exercise.

DAVE
I find that piece to be overly busy. All that complexity is distracting.

STANLEY
How can you say that? I suppose you think Chopin should have just left some of the instruments out of his orchestral pieces so that they could be more simplified as well?

Dave finishes his set.

DAVE
Actually, I do.

STANLEY
You’re infuriating.

Dave points to the leg press.

DAVE
(condescendingly)
Your turn my friend.

Enraged, Stanley barrels into the exercise.