FIRST DRAFT

A Different Kind of Prison: Game of Thrones Thread

These two. It's like somebody sat down and said let's invent something that will make your heart explode. If the actors sucked maybe my chest wouldn't ache. 

Never Quite Awake: Game of Thrones Thread

So you're Sansa Stark, and you've just been promised to marry a lion. 

The Leap: Game of Thrones Thread

God's not supposed to talk back. That's kind of the point.

Rise Up Again: Game of Thrones Thread

How many times can you get back up?

Always one more.

Harm No Child: Game of Thrones Thread

He was never a Stark.

Rhaegar Fought Nobly: Game of Thrones Thread

Spoilers within. 

Under This Skin: Game of Thrones Thread

I love this filthy little chicken-rat like she is my own child. 

Changelings: Game of Thrones Thread

Awww yeah. He's completely my favorite. 

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

A reminder that if you want to get your authentic Irish on, you can always purchase this book. Since you know the authors and all. 

Mike will be signing up at the Village Vintner in Algonquin from 1 p.m. to 3 p.m. I'll be there too, mostly to just drink. Come say hi if you're in the neighborhood! 

A. 

Malaka Of The Week: Google

It's institutional malakatude week here at First Draft. This has nothing to do with Google's desire to conquer the cyber world, that's what big ass tech corporations do. I have a more specific lament: they're 86-ing Google Reader effective July 1. I've used it for years and really like it so I'm pissed.

Do any of you lot have any suggestions as to what a poor boy can do to replace this service?

I'll let Split Enz have the finally word. Why? Why the hell not?

Catelyn Stark is My Spirit Animal

Michelle Fairley is a badass also: 

In person, Fairley speaks with the same deep, smoky tones with which Catelyn so often counsels war-leading son Robb, but she’s a lot more fun: wide-eyed and enthused, at one point she apologises for slapping our leg in a fit of laughter – “Oops, I shouldn’t have done that, you might charge me with sexual harassment!” It’s only when we cheekily ask her about details of season three that we get a flash of that trademark Winterfell sternness. “Life wouldn’t be worth living [if I told],” she says, eyeing the publicists in the room. “And I like living.”

SHOW'S COMING BACK SHOW'S COMING BACK SHOW'S COMING BACK. 

What's coming this year is just so ... I mean, yikes. I am MADLY in love with Ciaran Hinds, so there's that, and Riverrun, and Stannis and Davos, and Beric Dondarrion, and I forgot how fast the Jon & Ygritte storyline develops, and just how much is packed into this installment. We're going to be scrambling to keep up. 

WITH ALL THE AWESOME.

Season 3 Extended Trailer

A. 

BAAAAAACK

*pokes head in door* 

Hi, guys! 

Tommy called me on the super-seekrit First Draft sat-phone and told me somebody tried to smuggle a komodo dragon into the crack van "to feng shui it," and last he checked on Claire she was drinking Jude's bong water while Doc fed Riot all the Doritos and peanut butter I was saving for my lunch. He also said Adrastos let some hippie camp in the yard. I assume that's where the goat came from. 

I HOPE THAT'S WHERE THE GOAT CAME FROM. 

In all sincerity, thanks for your patience while I made a valiant but ultimately unsuccessful attempt to drink South Florida dry. I could pack all my shit and move to Key West tomorrow. It was like Madison with a beach. I saw a half-naked dude riding a rickshaw around and the back of it said, "where the weird go pro." You are my kind of place, KW. 

I see that while I was gone BOTH SIDES DID IT, and John Kerry continued to be awesome, and the president said something dorky, and we'll have lots of words on the first thing because JESUS TITS AND GOD AMERICA, I was listening to MSNBC on the radio and the coverage made me want to get on a raft and paddle to Cuba. I made a list on the plane home, of things to write about, and things I am not allowed to throw to feel better about writing about them. 

This vacation in no small part was to celebrate being done with the second job that took me away from you all, as well, so hopefully when I am around here from now on I will be less likely to snap at you when you ask me reasonable questions like, "Is there a way to get Nutella off the ceiling and if not, can you pretend I never said anything?" 

A. 

Holy mixed metaphor, Batman

President Obama's geek cred is on the wane after he said this earlier today:

"Even though most people agree that I'm being reasonable; that most people agree I'm presenting a fair deal; the fact they don't take it means I should somehow do a Jedi mind meld with these folks and convince them to do what's right."

Uh, Mr. President there's a Vulcan mind meld and there are Jedi mind tricks. One is Star Trek, the other is Star Wars but the trekkies got there first. The Tweeter Tube is, quite predictably, going bonkers right now since they've finally gotten over Seth MacFarlane, and have moved on to the latest hive mind snark fest like rabid Borg bjorn again...

The Prez needs to call JJ Abrams immediately to serve as his bridge between these diverse nerdly kingdoms. I'm more of a Trekker myself but I can imagine all the mixed sci-fi imagery we'll be subjected to when the BSG, Babylon 5 and even Lost In Space fans start chiming in.

Make it so, Dr. Smith, and so say we all that resistance is futile.

I could go on all day like this but y'all have done nothing to deserve that. Plus, I don't want to end up in Deep Shit 9 since our editrix is on her way home to Ferret central...

Battlestar Galactica: Blood & Chrome Thread

Jacob, writing about Bill Adama: 

Bill sits alone, in a Raptor, in the black. He reads Searider Falcon; his fingers on its pages, its scent in his nose. It keeps her close. On the wall behind his head there's the flash of a jump, and the proximity alarms go off. Louder than they've ever gone before.

Bill heads to the cockpit, refusing to blink, younger than ever -- is it the flightsuit? -- and scans the sky for more. It's just that one. Just her. He refuses to take his eyes off her, as he straps in for the approach.

The hatch opens, on a Baseship deck as alien as anything, and as close as home. He makes his way toward her without pomp, with a fair amount of grace, like a boy. She tries to speak, twice. This is his show.

"Missed you." He is the bravest boy in the universe.

He was so terribly young then. He's older than that now. 

Housekeeping Stuff

The Galactica: Blood & Chrome thread will go up sometime tonight, after I actually have a chance to watch it. 

And there will be a crack van for the State of the Union tomorrow night, so be here or miss out on the kitten noises. 

A. 

EVERYONE TALK TO ME ABOUT LES MISERABLES

It's one of my favorite books, but I decided I was over musicals a while back, and then the previews came out, and then Anne Hathaway who is my motherfucking homegirl, and I haven't seen it on stage since high school, so hey, why not? 

Spoilers within. 

Apologies

Either you're slingin' crack rock or you got a wicked jump shot.

So at some point between unloading our last, shitty domain company and taking on the new, hopefully less shitty domain company, the chinchillas who run our servers saw a sliver of daylight under the door and made a run for Tijuana. When Jude caught up to them they were blind on the cheap shit and one of them was nuzzling Karl Rove's leather slave. 

Jude sobered them up, I posted their bail, and the best road trip ever would have ensued but for the border patrol, who objected to what they deemed "a mobile petting zoo that smells like four days of tequila-piss and ball sweat" rolling into the great US of A. We agreed we should go on ahead and we'll send for the chinches later, assuming they haven't been rolled into the Minutemen by now. 

All of which is to say for now, we have a bunny running the server wheels and he seems to be doing just fine. Apologies for the inconvenience, and if anybody sees a chinchilla by the side of the road with his thumb out, bring him straight to my place. 

A. 

Geobloggers for Science

Maitri and others team up for projects based in reality. Go forth and support if you can. 

A. 

Claire Supported First Draft Before It Was Cool

Supporting your favorite blogs is so mainstream nowadays. 

(Yes, those are actually glasses on her, though we 'shopped out the weird-ass decor going on at Casa Athenae these days in favor of this fine photo studio background. People make little glasses for dolls. I am glad we live in a world where this is the case.)

WE DID IT! Doc will be posting a picture of his lizard shortly since you maniacs can't be stopped!

Thanks to everybody who contributed to First Draft, who hit up the tip jar, posted about the drive, retweeted and commented in support! I've tried to get everybody a personal thank you e-mail and I apologize to anybody I missed sending one to. It means a lot to know you care about what happens here and want to keep it going. Our 10th year is going to be a great one. 

A. 

First Draft Fundraising Day Four: The Bribery Begins

All right, we're nearing the midway point of the drive, which is usually when I have to remind everybody of what you can get when you generously donate to First Draft: 

That's right. You get a ferret in an outfit. If we reach our goal by Friday, we'll give you a Claire, or a Bucky, or maybe even a Chicken-Riot, in a hat. Or a hoodie. Or a fetching pair of earmuffs. Because that's how we roll around here. Other websites may give you more trenchant observations on the human condition, or funnier cock jokes, but we pimp our pets for your enjoyment. My mother is incredibly proud. 

(Adrastos has not volunteered to have Della or Oscar dress up in anything. Yet. The day is young.)

In all seriousness, thank you to everyone who's contributed so far. And if you haven't hit up the tip jar, please do so today!  

A. 

This Ain't No Freepathon: First Draft Fundraising Day 3

No, I'm not going to shut the site down and send the whole Internet home without its supper if we don't get our way. That isn't how this works. I can't scare you with tales of server expenses and, I dunno, a new gas grill because mine got knocked over in the rain or something. 

What I can tell you is that your contributions are a vote of confidence in what we're building here. An independent place for commentary, discussion, fun, and good. A place for people who don't just want to bitch about stuff. A place for people who want to make things better. A place to tell each other to get back up, and to figure out how.

Your contributions tell me that that's something you think is worth doing every day, worth getting up and writing for, worth maintaining right down to the Freeper sewers and the filters full of Chinese porno spam. Your tips mean we can do what we want to do here, but they also mean you want us to keep doing it. 

Hit the tip jar. We're about a third of the way to our fundraising goal. I'd like to see us get there. I'd like to hear you think it's worth it. 

A. 

First Draft Fundraising Day Two

Thank you to everyone who contributed to the drive so far! 

If you haven't hit the tip jar, please consider doing so. In an election year, I know there are lots of other places asking for your donations and attention, and it means a great deal to know that you value the commentary and the coverage we provide here. Your contributions make this place what it is, and I'm immensely proud of what it's become over the years. 

Keep the crack van running! 

A. 

 

Support First Draft Week

Hey all, it's that time again. Once a year, we ask that if you value what you get from the site, to please hit up the tip jar for us. Your contributions keep the site running, support the coverage we provide and the commentary you take part in, and we value your investment here. Next year's our 10th anniversary, and we've got some big things planned. Be a part of it. Contribute to First Draft today. 

 

On Not Being Creepy

Basically, this boils down to TAKE THE HINT: 

10. Someone doesn’t want you around? Go away. Here are some subtle hints: When you come by they don’t make eye contact with you. When they are in a group the group contracts or turns away from you. If you interject in the conversation people avoid following up on what you’ve said. One of the friends of the person you are interested in interposes themselves between you and that person. And so on. When stuff like that happens, guess what? You’re not wanted. When that happens, here’s what you do: Go away. Grumble to yourself (and only to yourself) all you like about their discourteousness or whatever. Do it away from them. Remember that you don’t get to define other people’s comfort level with you. Remember that they’re not obliged to inform you about why they don’t want you around. Although, for God’s sake, if they do tell you they don’t want you around, listen to them.

In working events for a number of years now, both as an author and a volunteer at various conferences, I've come to know this kind of guy much better than I want to know him. At a recent event, there was a dude who kept hanging around the entrance where I was working check-in and talking to me about things unrelated to work. Standing too close. Leaning over. Staring expectantly at me like a cat at a mouse hole. 

This was problematic for a couple of reasons. One, I wasn't there to have chitter-chat. Two, his standing around was causing a backup and a crowd at the door, and if there's one thing that drives me bananas at events, it's badly-designed ingress and egress routes that cause crowds, because right from the get-go people are inconvenienced and pissed. The point of event check-in is to get people inside as fast as possible so they can enjoy themselves.  

I asked the fellow to please move off to the side, and told him I was sorry but I didn't really have time to talk. He wandered off for a while. Later, when the crowd had thinned out a bit, he came back, again standing just a little too close, staring just a little too intently, and I had no built-in excuse to make him leave. I was stuck at the entrance, and he was taking advantage of that. Once again, I smiled and mentioned that I had work to do. "Oh, don't mind me," he replied, smirking. "I'm just here to bother you." 

I'm claustrophobic. Not in elevators or cars, but in crowds. If you trap me, I get the overwhelming urge to make like a badger and claw and chew my way out of whatever enclosure I'm in. If that enclosure happens to be your ass or face, best MOVE. 

Now, I don't for a second believe this guy was hitting on me and being sweetly clumsy about it. First, he was the steady boyfriend of someone else at the event. Second, the whole time this was going on Mr. A was sitting right beside me (also working, and we're not that couple that gets each other into fights), so if he was trying to ask me out it would have been spectacularly inept, even by the standards of Weirdos I Have Known. Third, I don't assume everybody who's an asshole is that way because they secretly want me, because please. 

This guy wanted to bully. He wanted the petty power that comes from making somebody else twitchy and he wanted to be the good guy who was just trying to be nice when the bitch told him to go away. He wanted that BAD. 

That's the thing about this. People who accuse women (especially women at cons, because geekdom does have its own boundaries and issues therewith) of taking this all too seriously ignore the fact that you always KNOW. I mean, unless you have some kind of condition that causes you to miss social cues and you haven't dealt with that, generally, though, people know when someone is approaching them trying to be charming.

There's a warmth there. A genuine interest. A willingness to give space, to have some kind of open response and approach. Most of all, a lack of presumption: I want to be near you, but I don't think for a second I have the RIGHT to be near you contrary to your wishes. I've had many, many, many friendly encounters with strangers, even flirty ones, and rarely felt threatened, but the couple of times I have, it's been night and day. And in those cases, I was incidental. They would have been creeping at anybody who was behind the table, because bullying is never about its object. 

What eventually happened at my event was I was rude enough to this dude to get him to think I was just one of those bitches who don't appreciate Nice Guys, and off he went, hopefully to his actual girlfriend. I felt bad, momentarily, and wondered if he'd cause some kind of trouble about it. Because I'd be the one to get into trouble, you see, for not being nice enough.

That's the point of bullying someone like this. It's not because you just LOVE THEM SO MUCH. It's that you want to be able to make them uncomfortable with no repercussions for yourself, by putting them in a position where objecting to your behavior makes them the bad guy. 

A. 

Just This Side of a Snuff Film: The Newsroom Thread

TWO PHONES, ONE HEAD, MOTHERFUCKER.

Dan Rather, from a while back: 

Things I especially liked (and know to be true based on my own experience): How a newsroom springs to life when a big breaking story hits. (The example they used is the Giffords shooting in Arizona.) How it's nearly always true that some good reporter gets fixated on some "way out" story (The example for this is the "Big Foot" story that won't die.) The sleepless nights of anchormen (and women), who, if they are any good, have more of them than most people—sometimes for good reasons, sometimes for trivial ones.

Because that's it, you know? The passion's right. The rest of it, forgivable, fixable, whatever. But this gets the dynamic right. 

'We've got wheels down on Mars'

Via a Facebook pal, video from Mission Control as NASA puts a fucking car on fucking MARS. 

Fast-forward to 4:30 to see what people look like when they're doing what they were made to do. 

A. 

The Jersey Scene: The Newsroom Thread

He's such a total badass.

Spoilers within.

YOU'RE A FUCKING NEWSMAN, DON: The Newsroom Thread

MAGGIE. And other women I love: 

Alison Pill’s meek Maggie, who is pushed around by her newsbeau on the show, and once hid under a dorm-room bed while the guy who stashed her there had sex with an old girlfriend — is a more annoying version of Donna from Sorkin’s West Wing, someone we’ll get to watch grow, and who will probably grow on us.

Or must all the women on the show be strong as well as brave? To those who complain about how often the male characters tell their female counterparts what to think and do, I’d just say that’s been known to happen in real newsrooms, too.

Not every female character must carry the banner of the sisterhood in just the same way, be a heroine or a villainness, but always strong. I remember the same complaints about Donna and CJ (who is my motherfucking homegirl) and especially Dana Whittaker because of what a train wreck her personal life was, but they were all exponentially more interesting than anybody on the Walking Dead. 

Based on Logic: The Newsroom Thread

Is it wrong to want fanfic of her and Charlie in the Vietnam years? Because you know that happened. 

Spoilers within.

Be Grateful You Weren't Facing The Other Way: The Newsroom Thread

First of all, I have to talk about this, because I spent the first part of last week being actually really upset and ill about it: 

“Listen here, Internet girl,” he says, getting up. “It wouldn’t kill you to watch a film or pick up a newspaper once in a while.” I’m not sure how he’s forgotten that I am writing for a newspaper; looking over the publicist’s shoulder, I see that every reporter is from a print publication (do not see: Drew Magary). I remind him. I say also, factually, “I have a New York Timessubscription and an HBO subscription. Any other advice?”

He looks surprised, then high-fives me. Being not a person who high-fives or generally makes physical contact with interview subjects, I look more surprised.

“I’m sick of girls who don’t know how to high-five,” he says. He makes me try to do it “properly,” six times. He also makes me laugh; I’m nervous, and it’s so absurd. He loves it. He says, “Let me manhandle you.” Then he ambles off, hoping I’ll write something nice, as though he has never known how the news works, how many stories can be true.

I Remembered, I Run A News Division: Newsroom Thread

I mean it, it's different this time. It's really special. You wouldn't understand. 

I'm going to take a page from Aaron Sorkin's book and tell you why smarter people than I am are absolutely wrong. Pierce: 

Cronkite did his famous "We are mired in a stalemate" in 1968, which was about six years at least after said stalemate was obvious to people like Neil Sheehan. A year after Cronkite's broadcast, a solid plurality of Americans polled were still in favor of "total military victory," whatever the hell that meant, and the war groaned on for four more years, more than 20,000 more dead Americans, and god alone knows how many more dead Asian peasants. Murrow certainly contributed to Joseph McCarthy's downfall, but not as much as Joseph Welch did, and Murrow did it while still hosting a show where he had to ask Liberace when he was planning to get married. Sorkin is so attached to his own personal Great Man theory that he applies it retroactively to events most of his audience is old enough to have lived through, and, at those moments, he seems to be relying on the general American historical amnesia so many of his characters spend so much time decrying.

Spoilers within.

Nothing But LOLCATS!

Apparently it's Be That Guy Who Deplores the Tone in the Room Day. Lucky me. 

There’s been a lot of talk in the navel-gazing media about the fact that the New York Times is partnering with Buzzfeed to cover the conventions later this summer. Here’s what I don’t get with all the condescension towards Buzzfeed and Gawker: in what world is having your work featured beside Honey Badger mash-ups and side-boob shots more damaging to your journalistic reputation than kissing up to Joe Scarborough and Hugh Hewitt and Laura Ingraham? All these serious journalist motherfuckers (Tapper, Fineman, Halperin, Allen, etc.) are chuckling along with all manner of radio and morning tv scumbags in order to promote their “work”. A little LOL cat page-view whoring between stories seems pretty harmless in comparison, no?

Meow.

For the unfamiliar, BuzzFeed is the brain child of technology and marketing whiz Jonah Peretti, who delights in churning out stories with pretty pictures for the “bored at work” crowd. The site’s bread and butter is stuff like “37 Items the Kardashians have slapped their name on” and “Flock of Angry Kittens gets a Bath” that are intended to generate a maximum amount of Twitter and Facebook hoopla. BuzzFeed  recently launched a politics vertical that offers items like “Eight Images from Mitt Romney’s business career” and “A Very Sad Picture of Newt Gingrich.”

Heaven forbid. 

The Twitter comments are even bitchier and more self-congratulatory. 

Ugh.

A. 

Font Nerds

No seriously, it's a whole movie about a typeface, and it is AWESOME: 

A. 

Locking An Empty Safe: Game of Thrones Thread

First of all, take a look at this. The first is a young Michelle Fairley, our Catelyn, found here. The second is Maisie Williams as Arya. 

 

Second, there be spoilers inside for the finale. 

Stand and Fight: Game of Thrones Thread

Spoilers below. 

A Girl at the Edge of the World: Game of Thrones Thread

Spoilers within. 

Trust and Honor: Game of Thrones Thread

 

Spoilers inside. Hold on to your direwolves because Jaime Lannister is about to become awesome. Yeah. Don't worry, it blew my entire fucking mind the first time around, too. 

Prove Yourself: Game of Thrones Thread

Spoilers within.

Skinchanging: Game of Thrones Thread

Spoilers, as always, within. 

Government Spending is Bad Except When It's AWESOME

Charles Krauthammer would like us to show China and Russia whose dick is the biggest, like we used to back when we were led by real men and not Socialist chicks:  

Nor for the private sector to get us back into orbit, as Obama assumes it will. True, hauling MREs up and trash back down could be done by private vehicles. But manned flight is infinitely more complex and risky, requiring massive redundancy and inevitably larger expenditures. Can private entities really handle that? And within the next lost decade or two?

Neil Armstrong, James Lovell and Gene Cernan are deeply skeptical. “Commercial transport to orbit,” they wrote in a 2010 open letter, “is likely to take substantially longer and be more expensive than we would hope.” They called Obama’s cancellation of Constellation a “devastating” decision that “destines our nation to become one of second or even third rate stature.”

“Without the skill and experience that actual spacecraft operation provides,” they warned, “the USA is far too likely to be on a long downhill slide to mediocrity.” This, from “the leading space faring nation for nearly half a century.”

Which is why museum visits to the embalmed Discovery will be sad indeed. America rarely retreats from a new frontier. Yet today we can’t even do what John Glenn did in 1962, let alone fly a circa-1980 shuttle. 

First of all, Chuckles, are you seriously admitting that private enterprise isn't the answer to everything? Did you miss your dose of the Stupid Pills? Did they accidentally slip you a placebo? What the CHRIST is going on up there? 

For what it's worth I'm a total space nerd and think we should launch all sorts of shit up there not to show off but to find the aliens so I can finally live my dream of inhabiting Babylon 5, but you can't do that while simultaneously lamenting government spending on everything everywhere all the time, opining that every time the national mint prints another penny God kills a kitten, and other wingnut truisms. 

A. 

 

 

The Internet: Will It Never Stop Ruining Everything?

Also kids, on their iPhones, and there's nothing but Kim Kardashian out here, and it's just made everything suck all the time: 

To the shock of most sentient beings, Facts died Wednesday, April 18, after a long battle for relevancy with the 24-hour news cycle, blogs and the Internet. Though few expected Facts to pull out of its years-long downward spiral, the official cause of death was from injuries suffered last week when Florida Republican Rep. Allen West steadfastly declared that as many as 81 of his fellow members of theU.S. House of Representatives are communists.

What the tits do "the 24-hour news cycle, blogs and the Internet" have to do with Allen West being a jackass? Allen West has been a jackass as long as he's been alive. I think I can authoritatively state that if he had to mimeograph his idiocy and hand it out on street corners, he'd still be saying stupid shit all the time. It's not like the Internet caused him to lose his damn mind. 

Look, I get that the thing is supposed to be funny, hee hee, an obituary for facts, but it pushes a larger narrative in traditional journalism, which is that we were once all sober and thoughtful people, and then along came Google and screwed it all up. 

If your beef is with the mendacity of politicians, as the author's seems to be: 

Though weakened, Facts managed to persevere through the last two decades, despite historic setbacks that included President Bill Clinton's affair with Monica Lewinsky, the justification forPresidentGeorge W. Bush's decision to invade Iraq and the debate over President Barack Obama's American citizenship.

Facts was wounded repeatedly throughout the recent GOP primary campaign, near fatally when Michele Bachmann claimed a vaccine for a sexually transmitted disease causes mental retardation. In December, Facts was briefly hospitalized after MSNBC's erroneous report that GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney's campaign was using an expression once used by the Ku Klux Klan.

But friends and relatives of Facts said Rep. West's claim that dozens of Democratic politicians are communists was simply too much for the aging concept to overcome.

Then there's a very simple solution: STOP COVERING STUPID SHIT. If you think Allen West's utterances are ridiculous, as many thinking people do, then make the grown-up editorial decision to not run his nonsense. Stop returning his press interns' calls. Send his press releases straight to the recycle bin. You are not helpless in the face of all this, as your passive-voiced academics seem to think you are: 

People unable to understand how science works began to question Facts. And at the same time there was a rise in political partisanship and a growth in the number of media outlets that would disseminate information, rarely relying on feedback from Facts.

"There was an erosion of any kind of collective sense of what's true or how you would go about verifying any truth claims," Poovey said. "Opinion has become the new truth. And many people who already have opinions see in the 'news' an affirmation of the opinion they already had, and that confirms their opinion as fact."

Um, NO. Opinion did not "become" the new fact. An erosion did not "happen." This did not just fall from the sky. There are any number of insane print publications and conspiracy scandal magazines out there that for decades have been publishing stories about aliens among us and celebrities being Cleopatra in past lives and shit like that, and we were perfectly content to ignore it until it started to occur to media executives and odious "consultants" that there was a buck to be made there. 

If TMZ hadn't been started, we would have ended up here anyway, courtesy of some other easy excuse for not being the grown-ups we wanted to be. 

"American society has lost confidence that there's a single alternative," she said. "Anybody can express an opinion on a blog or any other outlet and there's no system of verification or double-checking, you just say whatever you want to and it gets magnified. It's just kind of a bizarre world in which one person's opinion counts as much as anybody else's."

You know, maybe I'd be a little more inclined to chuckle at this shit if I hadn't been in journalism before blogs, and heard countless glib assholes arguing with me about how "you can't believe everything you read in the paper." People were bitching about media bias during the Lewinsky thing, they were bitching about media bias and general up-fuckering during the first Bush administration, they've been bitching about this stuff since Joseph Pulitzer was actually running a paper. This is not new. 

What is new is we've decided that a preponderance of news outlets we have access to has given us the excuse we've always wanted to just fucking give up, and we're taking it hard. 

A. 

Proving Yourself: Game of Thrones Thread

 

Spoilers inside. 

Belonging: Game of Thrones Thread

Brienne of Tarth and Margaery Tyrell are better than you. 

Spoilers abound below the cut. 

The Iron Price: Game of Thrones Thread

I wouldn't piss on Theon if he was on fire, and it doesn't diminish that one bit to say it's useful to remember he was basically fathered by Denethor, without the warm and cuddly side. 

Spoilers below the cut, but first, this from last week: 

The impressive young actress Sophie Turner plays Sansa with the thousand-yard stare and flat-affect voice of an abuse victim living from beating to beating. Sansa gets a lot of grief from fans of the show and the books alike – she's stupid, she's insipid, she's prissy, she's gutless. Bullshit. She's doing what she needs to do to survive, as the episode's opening scene demonstrates. She instinctively plays to Joffrey's narcissism and cruelty, convincing him to spare a drunken knight's life while dropping enough "Your Grace"s on him to make him think it was his idea. If she'd been less courteous, like the other Starks would have been, she'd be dead.

It's easy to underestimate certain characters on this show whose arcs are more traditional. Arya is easy to cheer for, right? She's kickass. She doesn't want to sew. She wants to fight! She breaks down stereotypes of highborn ladies! She's everybody's favorite and don't get me wrong: I love that angry, filthy little chicken-rat like she's my own flesh and blood. Ask me who I most identify with, and I'd say Arya in a heartbeat. Sansa and I would not have been friends as children. Sansa would not have deigned to step over me in the street. 

But there's a problem with Arya fanclub (and to a lesser extent the Tyrion fanclub, which is a whole other post) where I'm not sure we all understand that being an underdog doesn't make her virtuous. The same way Sansa being pretty and a capital-L lady doesn't make her suck. They're doing the same thing, trying to become who they are while staying safe enough to grow up. They're just doing it differently.

When we start seeing these characters as roles instead of people, instead of actors in an ongoing power struggle, we lose what we're meant to be looking at. There's a reason the show starts with that rotation, with the sun, sweeping over the map: See it all, see how it turns, all at once. 

Game of Thrones Thread

That's Rory McCann's audition for Sandor Clegane, in which he tells Sansa the story of how he was maimed, instead of having LIttlefinger tell it. This is the part of the story, that started tonight, in which he becomes my favorite character. Him, and her. 

TV spoilers below. Let's try to keep book spoilers out of the comments, too, for those who are doing this as they go. 

Game of Thrones of Hotness

You have to be KIDDING me. I know I like 'em old and scruffy, and that's not exactly the Justin Bieber set's cup of mead, but I wouldn't touch Littlefinger with the tip of my umbrella. Viserys really should be disqualified from any ranking like this based on the first damn episode, and Loras Tyrell, man, I'm not a dude so not his target demographic, but REALLY? He makes the list (along with characters who could charitably be referred to as Guy In The Back In the Crowd Scene Number Four) and the The Old Bear doesn't? 

What about Ser Barristan the Bold? 

The Hound? 

Benjen Stark? 

At least Jory's on there. Stannis Baratheon doesn't even make the cut, and he's played by perhaps the most beautiful human being on the PLANET. I've always had a soft spot for Stannis, on the basis of he's usually right even if he can never make himself stop being an asshole about it, and when I heard they cast Stephen Dillane I knew all those chickens I sacrified to Ceiling Cat had not been in vain. 

(So there's this show that's coming back on on Sunday and I'M A LITTLE BIT EXCITED.) 

A. 

Girl in the War: The Hunger Games and Violence for Children

My Facebook friend RP pointed the way to this repulsive piece in Slate about how, just how on earth, we will ever explain to anyone younger than 40 that the world sucks: 

That Mockingjay will eventually become a movie is one of the safest bets in Hollywood. With Hunger Games, Lionsgate is hoping to unleash the next great young adult movie franchise, filling the void left by the $7 billion Harry Potter series, and Twilight, which has already earned $2 billion and wraps up with a final film this fall. The studio (which also produced the Twilightfilms) has already announced its plan to render the book trilogy as four movies. At some point, then, the producers are going to have to figure out how to make the depressing and chaotic finale into a film (or films) with broad appeal and a PG-13 rating. How will the producers satisfy Collins' 20 million or so readers, along with millions more curious newcomers, with what is essentially a war movie, and, more troubling, an unmitigated bummer?

Children, naturally, being notoriously sheltered from violence. Children who would never ever endanger each other for the sport of the rich. Children whose deaths are so much more moral, because at least we don't televise them for our entertainment. 

Mr. A and I hit a midnight screening of the film, unable to wait for a sedate daylight matinee, and so we were the oldest people in the sold-out theater not toting a minivan full of teenagers. When the opening credits rolled the cheers about busted the roof off, and these were young women, girls primarily, packed six deep in the popcorn line.

They were leaning forward in their seats for a story about a young woman their own age who takes an entire political system designed to dehumanize and punish, and tells everyone involved in creating it to go right to hell. To take all their neuroses and all their needs and all the ways they've made young people something for their own amusement, and shove it up their privileged, entitled, arrogant asses.

The imagery was terribly violent and upsetting: the Reaping, with its deliberate echoes of draft boards and concentration camps; the fighting, filmed like a contemporary war documentary in nausea-inducing shaky-cam verité. Teenagers with their necks snapped, teenagers with knife wounds, shot through with arrows, blown up in explosions, turning on one another. Overcome with fury, weeping with fear, singing out in laughter in even the direst of straits. One of the most upsetting scenes in the entire film is, of course, about an act of kindness, because it's so alien amidst all this.

Forget any parallels to Occupy, though they're there. Just think about how adults talk about teenagers generally. Just think about the drumbeats for every war that ever was: How "we" in the person of some 18-year-old who signed up because college is a forlon hope or to feed his family or to get out of some burned-out hellhole must defeat "the enemy" and how the minute one of those actual 18-year-olds says if it sounds so awesome to you let's switch places, they become that enemy themselves. It's not too much of a stretch, from there to here. 

Who fights our wars? Who signs up for our armies, full of pride about representing their countries? Who dies in the bombings, who is blasted to pieces by mines? Who runs the drugs? Who packs the crates and ships them off to blow a crater in someone else's life? Who comes home burned, broken, sorrowing, scared of his own shadow? Who comes home in a box, the flag draped over it intended to give some kind of comfort?

We're fighting two wars in this country right now, do we really think it's so strange a thing, a story about the aftershocks of conflict and the effects on those who had least to give and most to lose? A story about the sacrifice of the young and innocent, about what happens when people become abstractions amidst The Rules? 

Do we really think that will be so hard to understand? 

A. 

 

Game of The King in the North

Your Sunday night video of AWESOME: 

The first time I saw this I totally missed Catelyn's OH WE ARE SO FUCKED NOW face. 

A. 

JUNE 5 BITCHES

That's when Walker will be evicted, the baby flying spaghetti monster willing. 

Epic First Draft drinking crack-vanning VERY SERIOUS PROFESSIONAL REPORTING is planned. 

A. 

Pitchers and Catchers Reporting to Blog Camp

All right, you circus animals, we's shaking stuff up around here.

With regret, we bid adieu to Virgo on Wednesdays. She's done a great job and I'm sorry to see her leave, but she kept chewing through the leather straps and digging under the electric fence. That shit isn't cheap and we need every dollar to feed Tilly. 

In all sincerity, thanks for your work here lady, and don't be a stranger.

And we have a new guest poster on Tuesdays: Southern Beale! Everybody show her where Tommy's Haz-Mat suits are and try to keep the ferrets from stealing her shoes -- for the first week or so at least. As I tell people who've been to my house more than once, "You're family now, so get your own damn beer." 

A.