There’s a nice fat Tumblr post here serving up all the dudgeon about the fact that the show version of Tommen Baratheon has been aged-up sufficiently to consummate his marriage with Margarey Tyrell (in the books, Tommen is only eight at the time of his succession, and so Margarey manipulates him in other ways). The… Read More Why Aging Tommen doesn’t Bother Me: A Game of Thrones Pondering

Since Scream, there’s been an expectation of a certain level of meta-horror film, a film that turns the tropes upside down. Parodies of the genre have become almost old hat. Films like Cabin in the Woods and Funny Games are of a piece with this idea, that the “genre is dead” and that deconstruction is necessary and possible,… Read More Horror Movies: A Mood, or a Series of Tropes?

Unexpected good news is the best kind….

It’s such fun as a cord-cutter, having HBONow, watching GoT like a real show, instead of bingeing it a year later. It’s also sort of fun as a book-reader, now that small divergences are leading to major divergences. Pretty much all of Brienne and Podrick’s current arc did not happen in the books, and this… Read More The Game of Thrones Celebration Post de Jeur

McArdle on not being stupid about de-incarceration: We’re hampered by the rampant perception that all we need is to wise up and stop incarcerating people for simply possessing drugs, something many of us feel shouldn’t be a crime at all and certainly shouldn’t merit prison time. At the event I attended, someone who has actually… Read More As it Turns Out, People In Jail Commit Real Crimes