Game of Thrones Post 2: chapter 2 and 3 (Caetlyn and Daenerys)

To recap what we learned last week:
- death is a thing that happens
- Others are creepy
- First People are apparently Different People than the Rest Of Westeros's People
- Stark kings need to kill people in person
- people don't trust direwolves


ON TO THIS WEEK'S POST!

Caetlyn's chapter
Caetlyn, originally of House Tully and married into House Stark, seems to be an expositional character. She finds Ned (her husband) in the godswood after killing the dude mentioned in Bran's chapter. It seems that a godswood is a forest dedicated to prayer, it seems. One tree of importance seems to be the weirwood tree, which has had a face carved into it for a very long time. (No clues to why there is a face carved into the tree, or why most of the other weirwood trees have been, according to the text, "cut down or burned out a thousand years ago... Up here [in the north] it was different. Here every castle had its godswood, and every godswood had its heart tree, and every heart tree its face").
Other things that are established in this chapter:
- Ned asks about the kids first
- "Winter is coming" is an unusual phrase for Family Words; apparently, the Starks are the only family not to talk about honor, glory, loyalty, etc.
- "beyond the Wall" is something nobody wants to hear as a destination - no clues to why, but still.
- more information about the Others: that they have been gone for eight thousand years, like the children of the forest.
- Jon Arryn is dead. Apparently this is a bad thing - he is Ned's brother-in-law, married to Caetlyn's sister.
- Ned had apparently been fostered with Robert Baratheon
- Robert Baratheon is KING (of... what, exactly?) and is COMING TO VISIT NED

QUESTIONS:
- who the crap are the children of the forest?
- why is Robert coming to visit Ned?
- are we at the inciting action yet?


DAENERYS
NOW FOR SOMETHING COMPLETELY DIFFERENT!
Apparently, from what I can gather, 13-year-old Daenerys and her brother, Viserys, may or may not be descended from dragons. They have purple eyes, an affinity for dragons, and their family has copulated amongst siblings to "keep the family pure," or something; since dragons don't have sex with common farm animals, neither should the Targaryens. Apparently, Daenerys is about to break that cycle, because Viserys is about to marry her off to Khal Drogo, who is Dothraki. Viserys is marrying his 13-year-old sister to a man with an army because Viserys demands REVENGE. Since the Usurper and the Kingslayer had killed the Targaryen rulers (the parents of Dany and Viserys), Viserys can't get over the defeat and needs VENGEANCE. So he marries his 13-year-old sister off to a non-Targaryen with 40,000 warriors, because VENGEANCE.
Viserys also mentions that he would let his sister endure some very unpleasant sexual things if it meant getting the 40,000 warriors on his side.
I hope he gets smited. He seems like an ass.
I can see where Viserys is coming from - he's styled himself as a beggar king because he and Dany are essentially homeless after their entire family was killed, and it's EVERYONE ELSE'S FAULT. But, personally, I'd try not to alienate my only living relative before I got my 40,000-man army.

MENTIONED IN THIS CHAPTER:
Illyro of Pentos - master of one of the Nine Free Cities; current host to Daenerys and Viserys
The Usurper and the Kingslayer - the Kingslayer is Jamie Lannister (I think), who killed Dad Targaryen; the Usurper is Robert Barantheon, who took the throne later.
Ser Jorah Mormont - this is a knight amongst the Dothraki. Since this is a rare occurrence, I'm including him. He may become imporant.
Khal Drogo - Dany's future husband.

QUESTIONS:
- who are the Dothraki?
- Why is Ser Jorah among the Dothraki? What did he do to make the Usurper want his head?
- Why did he go to the Dothraki?
- How do the Dothraki feel about this?
- Will Viserys succeed?

New Shakespearean Information

The works of William Shakespeare can come off to a modern reader as some highbrow material that they hated reading in high school (and maybe college). It's not difficult to see why - we can barely understand the word order sometimes, much less why there has to be two second-person forms of address. How the crap did someone write everything in such a prolific manner and get the second-person pronouns right?

The short story is that Shakespeare was the master of stereotypes. He was writing for a theater company that put up six different shows a week, and not all of them were performed a second or third time. He had to write for his actors, because there was so little rehearsal time; unlike today, when actors have a few weeks to get inside the character's head, Shakespeare's actors had several hours of personal rehearsal time and only one or two group rehearsals total. They had to already be inside the character's head, so Shakespeare wrote characters based on the personality traits of his actors; similarly, the actors could play a prince or a pauper as long as the character had similar traits to him. One actor often played the Fool archetype, but he could do it differently than another actor. One actor played a Natural Fool, who is genuinely just stupid, and so Shakespeare wrote a bunch of Natural Fool characters throughout the plays for this one actor. When that actor left, Shakespeare needed to hire a new actor; the man he hired tended to play a Wise Fool - someone who acted stupid but who was truly insightful (think Touchstone from As You Like It).

It's hard to say whether or not Shakespeare is truly genius because of this. On one hand, the archetypal roles allowed Shakespeare to churn out dozens of plays; on the other hand, though there are some intentional parallels among the plays, there is still a formula to them.

Game of Thrones Post 1: Prologue and Chapter 1 (no POV and Bran)

SUMMARY OF PROLOGUE
There are three guys named Will, Gared, and Ser Waymar Royce, who are going through the forest. They are, apparently, members of the Night Watch. Will and Gared have lots of experience and Royce, an 18-year-old noble, doesn't have so much. Guess which one's in charge? (If you said "Gared the 50-something-year-old man who has over 40 years of experience and would be the logical choice to head something like this," guess again. If you guessed "the 18-year-old lordling," you are correct). Royce frustrates me. He's the sort of guy who might say things like "being scared is for sissies. Don't make a fire when it's well below freezing and there's snow on the ground. Fires are for sissies."
Of course, Royce is the first casualty in Game of Thrones. He is struck down by an "Other," which either kills him or turns him into a zombie-Other; it's hard to tell which. (Well, to be fair, you have to be dead to be a zombie, so maybe they killed him and made him a zombie-Other). What the crap is an "Other," anyway? I assume "Other" is capitalized because that's the name of the kind of creature - sort of like how Elves can be capitalized in Lord of the Rings. From what I can tell, the Others are some kind of super-deadly, super-mysterious ice monster thing.
At any rate, Royce is definitely the first to collapse, but he turns into an Other-type thing and kills Will. Gared is nowhere to be found.

QUESTIONS RAISED BY THE PROLOGUE:
1. WHY IS AN 18-YEAR-OLD NOOB GIVEN AUTHORITY OVER A 50-SOMETHING WITH 40 YEARS OF EXPERIENCE?
2. WHY DOESN'T SAID 18-YEAR-OLD NOOB RESPECT THE WISDOM OF SOMEONE WITH LITERALLY DECADES MORE EXPERIENCE?
3. WHAT THE CRAP IS AN "OTHER?"
4. WHERE THE CRAP IS GARED AT THE END?


BRAN'S CHAPTER
There are several Stark children - in this chapter, you know there are five (plus Jon Snow the bastard and Theo Greyjoy the ward), but you only meet Robb (14), Jon (14), and Bran (7); Rickon (3) is also mentioned. Ned Stark, the head of the family, has to kill some guy for treason. There's an interesting passage here about how kings become too separated from death if they hire out executioners.


SPOILER SIDE NOTE (highlight over the text to see what it says):
I find it interesting that Ned dies by execution. Not sure the circumstances, but keep that in mind.


END SPOILER SIDE NOTE

Anyway, at the end of the chapter Jon finds a litter of five abandoned direwolves. This may be significant because the sigil of the Stark household, Winterfell, is a direwolf. Jon finds himself an albino direwolf to take care of, and he and Robb insist that the kids are capable of raising the direwolves on their own. Ned agrees, so long as the kids do it and not anyone else.



QUESTIONS RAISED BY THIS CHAPTER:
1. Ned mentions to Bran that they are descended from the First People, or something like that. According to My Roommate the GoT History Buff, the First People are important because they're a different species of people than the rest of the world. Like Homo Erectus vs. Homo Sapiens, or something? Anyway, will this be explored?
2. Why are they trusting the care of direwolves to kids 14 and younger? They say themselves that direwolves are bigger than the normal wolves - possibly bigger than Bran's pony. Sure, they're only pups, but 3-year-old Rickon won't be able to actually direct the direwolf, and Ned said that none of the staff should be involved with the raising of the direwolves. HOW THE CRAP IS A 3-YEAR-OLD GOING TO RAISE A DIREWOLF?
3. What's the deal with Bran having to see the death?

On public gyms

I went home for a volunteer gig this weekend. While home, my mom and I pursued our quests for personal fitness by going to the community center to use the workout machines. I have no problem with this. I like this plan.

The part I always forget about public workout facilities is that they're public. Technically, there is nothing wrong with this. When I'm home, however, I'm used to running on trails in regional parks - outdoors and alone. The only real social courtesies you have to remember are to make sure the people ahead of you hear if you want to pass them, and not to let your dog poop on the trail without picking it up. However fast or slow you go is up to you - and you run into all speeds and skill levels.

Public gyms put everyone in the same room and add a social layer of visibility: no matter you fitness level or mile time, THEY CAN SEE YOU. Sometimes the only consolation I can offer myself on a bad day is that only God and I saw the whole run. When I'm in a public gym, though, I'm plagued by self-doubt - usually along the lines of "I bet that five-year-old chasing his dad around the track is running faster than me" and "I'm sure those teenagers playing basketball are secretly laughing at my lack of endurance" and "those gray-haired individuals probably think this 20-year-old is a wimp."

The thing is, most of those are probably untrue and are very self-centered. I dom't have any kids I have to look after, so I have many years of training to make sure I can keep up with any five-year-olds I may wind up having custody of. As judgmental as people can get, I'm pretty sure the teenagers and gray-haired people alike care more about their own games of basketball and badminton than they care about my mile time.

And yet, all the fears I have are directly proportionate to how many other people per square foot there are in the workout area. There are few times anyone else cares about my pace: to make sure they can get their basketball off the track before I (or any other runner) accidentally run them over, or when my mom is wondering when I'm done. So why do I care so much? The very fact that I'm priming my muscles for fitness should send the signal that I am working on being a physically viable member of the species, and that I am resisting the urge to sit on the couch and marathon Doctor Who with a bunch of yarn and cookies.  Maybe I'm scared that people would realize I sometimes prefer the TV-and-cookies route and call me an imposter?

In the end, though, nobody really cares. Just like in real life, be polite to people in the gym. And that's all. 

I'm back! AGAIN!

1. happy 2015! I'm excited to spend the new year here. I'm also excited to try and actually post on a regular schedule.
2. The third sentence of #1 was a lie. I'm not excited for many things schedule-related, but I'm doing the thing anyway.
3. It's time to unveil THE NEW 2015 POST SCHEDULE!!!!!!

I'm going to try and post three times a week: Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.
Mondays are going to be THESE ARE OBSERVATIONS ABOUT LIFE. For example, it could involve Things I Did This Weekend, or I AM SO ANGRY AT THIS HIGH-PROFILE INCIDENT LET ME TELL YOU ABOUT IT.
Wednesdays are going to be Read Game of Thrones with Wild Card. It will be my attempt to finally get through reading the books, so I might as well document it. I'm going to try to do a few chapters every week, starting with next week. Although the first book (and the first season of the TV show) have been out for a while, people laugh at me for being worried about spoilers; I don't care. In case you're concerned with Game of Thrones spoilers, as I am, please read the following: THERE WILL PROBABLY BE SPOILERS. TREAD CAUTIOUSLY ON WEDNESDAYS. I WILL TAG THE GAME OF THRONES POSTS, BUT I DON'T KNOW HOW TO BLOCK TAGS ON BLOGGER. PROCEED WITH CAUTION.
THIS HAS BEEN YOUR SPOILER ALERT.
Fridays will be something thematic, too - probably some sort of history thing that I'm curious about, or some story from my life that week.
Farewell til then!

Updates and Stuff

I know that I've been slacking on posts this week. I apologize for that. I'm taking most of this week off for holidays and things, so I'm going to post again NEXT MONDAY with the full plan for next year. HUZZAH!

On Plans for the New Year

So I've made a few decisions for the new year with regards to this blog.  Hopefully they'll work!  Right now they're just in the "MAYBE THIS IS A THING I COULD POSSIBLY DO?" category.
Firstly, I'm going to try and do three posts per week.  For a whole year.  Though the whole Blog Twice A Week isn't going so well this year, that might just be due to my scheduling.  Or my laziness.  Or both.  Either way, keep an eye out for POSSIBLE NEW POSTING SCHEDULE????
Secondly, I've been thinking about doing some sort of long-term, overarching theme with the blog.  Less of a "HERE'S WHAT HAPPENED IN MY LIFE" blog and more of a "HERE ARE COOL ANALYTICAL THINGS" blog.  There are a few major things I can do with this; one of the things I was thinking was a "read along with me" series.  In order to get through the books that I want to read, the first books on the list would be A Game of Thrones.
This is all in the works, though. I'm going to figure things out and let you all know.

I'm Done With Finals!

Firstly, I apologize that this post is so late, and that I didn't post on Monday. This was finals week, so I was studying and doing other things of that nature. I'm glad to be home, to be honest. The food is better, the running opportunities are better, and I have a better chance of getting a good night's sleep. It's great! I'm excited!
Three weeks! AT HOME! HUZZAH!

I will be celebrating (and sleeping and eating well) over the weekend. We will resume regularly scheduled programming on Monday.

Things I Learned This Semester

So today was the last day of classes before the end of the semester, so it's time for the Semester Roundup, where I write about what I learned this semester and stuff.

ACADEMICS

1. In Shakespeare class, I learned that there are a bunch of different ways to insult people. One of those ways is to address someone as "thou," as opposed to "you." (I already knew this, but it's worth repeating). I also learned my new favorite oath: "OUT, VILE JELLY!" (from King Lear. Someone's eyes got poked out).
2. In Greek Historiography, I learned that Herodotus is allegedly the Father of History, but he was far more mythologically inclined than Thucydides. Thucydides is far more fact-based and wrote history in a manner that is closer to what we see today. Also, Xenophon wrote the Anabasis, or the March Up Country, which is about Cyrus trying to do some conquering, but gets killed 1/3 of the way through. The rest of it is about how people try and not get killed by residents of places where the army doesn't reside. Also, that Shakespeare drew some inspiration from Plutarch.
3. In Uses of the Bible in Literature, I learned that pretty much everything is a reference to either the Bible or Shakespeare. And sometimes Shakespeare alludes to the Bible. Also, Satan was never explicitly stated as being the Fallen Angel Who Was Mean To Everyone. He was referred to as The Accuser in the book of Job. He took over Judas's brain in the book of Luke and John. He is never described in detail, however, so the whole "Satan is Evil McEvil, the fallen red demon with a pointy tail and horns" description isn't entirely Biblical.
4. In Journalism, I learned how a proper news story (PUT HUMAN ELEMENTS FIRST), and how to write a personality profile. I learned that, as a blogger, my professor thinks I am narcissistic. I learned that there are two kinds of ledes (the lede is the opening paragraph or so): the hard ledes get the WHO WHAT WHEN WHERE WHY out of the way immediately; the soft ledes tell a bit of a story about a person affected by the thing before you get to the news about the thing.

OTHER THINGS

1. It's possible for a college student to write a novel in 30 days.
2. That student may or may not doom themselves to carpal tunnel syndrome later in life.
3. back up your files. You never know when your computer is going to crash on you.
4. Sometimes, it's important to take a break and play with puppies.
5. It's hard to let people go - from relationships, from organizations, from life. That doesn't mean you can't talk to them again. That doesn't mean you have to be on horrendous terms with them. You still need to be civil, and it is possible to be so.
6. It's important to have someone to talk to, but it's also important to act. If you need to go on a tangent, do it. But when the tangent is over and your friend offers a solution, do your best to take it.
7. Talking to authorities can be intimidating. What could wind up being more intimidating is the consequences - is it worth freaking out now to have a terrible resume/ GPA/ whatever later?
8. Losing someone in a romantic capacity could lead to the romantic partner you never realized you liked.
9. DILIGENCE, PEOPLE.

On Surprising Spare Time

For five years, December 1st has felt weird. It's one of the only days guaranteed to feel a bit... too open. WHAT DO I DO WITH MY TIME?
I'll leave you with that until I figure that out.