April 2012
22 posts
Yara Greyjoy vs. Asha Greyjoy
I know that I don’t speak for only myself on the matter of Asha’s transition to Game of Thrones when I say that I’m yet to be impressed by Theon’s onscreen big sister. The Iron Islands and its inhabitants, even in the books, are dour and joyless, and reading about them was a chore; the only times they came alive were when Asha’s blithe irreverence brightens the pages. Yara, though, fits only too well on the Islands — yet another grey, joyless Greyjoy. With such different personalities between portrayals of Theon’s sister, I’m beginning to wonder if Weiss and Benioff changed her name not (merely) to avoid confusion with Osha, but because Yara is supposed to be an altogether different character from Asha.
SPOILER ~ Arya/ACOK
The Politics of the Polysyllabic
Via The New Yorker’s Book Bench blog, Mark Dery just got himself a new customer:
Obviously, no writer devoted to the craft of writing would deny that clarity and concision are essential to good prose style, especially in a form of public address like the popular essay.
That said, there’s something endearing about Big Words and Weird Words — their giddy delight in ornament run riot, their sublime uselessness in any everyday context.
It’s this exuberant uselessness that makes such words political, in the culture-wars sense. Their extravagance violates the canon law of modernism — form follows function — and, at the same time, mocks the Protestant virtues of sober restraint, thrift, homespun simplicity (Quaker plainness, Shaker furniture, “’Tis a Joy to be Simple,” etc.).
As well, Big Words and Weird Words rouse the Anglo-Saxon suspicion, which runs deep in the American grain, of poetic excess (hence British analytic philosophers’ dismissal of Gallic theorists such as Foucault and Derrida as just so much “French fog”).
if I didn’t know better, I would say I’m in love with Davos Seaworth.
I’d say the same thing, but I’m waiting for him to chop off my fingers first.
The Night Lands, and the Art of Adaptation, Quickly
Loved the captain’s daughter scene, it felt like I was reading the book again.
Then why not just read the books again? The point is, the series is a different canon, dealwithit.gif. Why not take pleasure in seeing a new world unfold?
