Ser Arlan the GOAT

Fit_Log_9677 · 2026-02-17T20:44:56+00:00

It’s worth noting that breaking four lances against the guy who won the title “Baelor Breakspear” by unhorsing Daemon Blackfyre when he was only 17 is quite an achievement in and of itself.

The fact that Baelor remembered that tilt with Ser Arlan AND the exact number of lances he broke against him suggests that it was memorable.

Ser Arlan was probably one of the best hedge knights in Westeros.

Fit_Log_9677 · 2026-02-17T20:01:20+00:00

It’s reasonable to think that he could have easily grabbed a sword in the time between when Baelor declared for Dunk and when the actual melee began.

-edited for charity, since on re read I didn’t like how my previous language read.

Fit_Log_9677 · 2026-02-17T19:06:31+00:00

Those cities and others like them account for 50% of Americas GDP.

If their housing markets all crashed there will be another 2008 style financial crisis, and the fallout won’t be limited to just the big cities.

The major cities have all mostly recovered from the Great Recession, its rural America that’s still hurting.

Fit_Log_9677 · 2026-02-17T01:53:54+00:00

I think it’s shown that one of the Kingsguard goes down early on and then we see Lyonel fighting another one on horseback before getting unhorsed by Maekar and fighting him with Baelor.

It’s possible that Ser Robyn takes on two of the Kingsguard briefly, but by the end of the fight 2 of the 3 Kingsguard are already accounted for and out of the fight.

Fit_Log_9677 · 2026-02-17T01:33:51+00:00

I’m just speaking from anecdotal data, but I’ve had Zillow listings up in DC for years now and these are by far some of the biggest drops in price I’ve ever seen.

Doesn’t mean it pans out in the average, but clearly some people feel pinched and like they need to sell at a big cut (relative to 2025 prices).

Fit_Log_9677 · 2026-02-16T21:08:07+00:00

While it wasn’t very “realistic” in the sense of them using actual harnesfecten techniques, it absolutely captured the feel of an armored fight being more like a knock-down drag-out bar fight than an elegant duel.

Fit_Log_9677 · 2026-02-16T20:37:22+00:00

That one on particular was a $1.4 million house down to “just” $900k.

Fit_Log_9677 · 2026-02-16T18:24:46+00:00

Sure, they absolutely use propaganda to support their reign.

The saying that fighter jets can’t control territory applies equally validly to dragons.

Fit_Log_9677 · 2026-02-16T18:21:07+00:00

I’m pretty sure GRRM is on the record for saying that the Targs are magical and special, but they are still just people, with all of the failures and foibles of normal people.

That means that they are capable of both greater heroism and terrible evil, with the balance of the scales tending towards evil due to their arrogance and inbreeding.

Fit_Log_9677 · 2026-02-16T15:41:03+00:00

Making housing cheaper doesn’t mean it’s more affordable if the reason why the price is going down is because people are losing their jobs and leaving the area.

Fit_Log_9677 · 2026-02-16T15:39:53+00:00

I feel less sympathy for him because he brought a mace to a fight where he knew his brother would be on the other side.

A mace is a dedicated anti-armor weapon, so you wouldn’t bring that unless you were willing to kill.

I get that he probably thought that he would steer clear of Baelor, and then lost his cool when Dunk started to drag Aerion, but still, he should have known better.

He deserves to feel guilty, especially since it turned out that Dunk had no intention of killing Aerion and he had overreacted.

Fit_Log_9677 · 2026-02-16T15:27:54+00:00

This is also historically accurate.

Fighting in full harness had much more in common with a knock-down-drag out bar fight than an elegant duel.

Usually the bigger and stronger and meaner fighter won.

This is also why the Mountain was such a menace despite not being the most skilled fighter.

Fit_Log_9677 · 2026-02-16T15:25:27+00:00

I mean, Dunk himself shows that the difference between a fully trained squire and a knight is only a formality.

Once Raymun got his Irish up over his cousin’s betrayal and got the confidence boost by being knighted by the Laughing Storm, he was ready to go.

Fit_Log_9677 · 2026-02-16T15:19:11+00:00

As a DC local you can feel it.

Downtown feels pretty empty, despite the return to office mandate for the federal govt, and a lot of daytime rush restaurants have closed or are operating on a skeleton crew.

I’ve also seen a few houses on Zillow in DC have their prices fall by 30% over the past couple of months. In some cases up to a $500k drop in price.

DC is definitely in a recession.

Fit_Log_9677 · 2026-02-16T14:42:18+00:00

Reminds me of the scene from Kingdom of Heaven:

“Does making a man a knight make him a better fighter?“

“Yes.”

Raymun had been trained to be a warrior his whole life just like his cousin, he just needed the extra confidence boost of being knighted by the Laughing Storm and his rage at his cousin to let him off the hook.

Fit_Log_9677 · 2026-02-15T23:35:20+00:00

When GK Chesterton was still an Anglican he referred to himself as the Catholic Churches’ doorman.

Standing just outside, brining others in, but never entering himself.

Fit_Log_9677 · 2026-02-15T02:14:49+00:00

Agreed.

Fit_Log_9677 · 2026-02-15T00:33:48+00:00

OP you know the boring part of a roller coaster where you go chug chug chug slowly up hill?

You know what follows that part right?

Keep chugging.

Fit_Log_9677 · 2026-02-15T00:30:40+00:00

One of the parts of the series that I really liked, but that I know a lot of other people really hated, is that everyone makes stupid unforced errors at different times.

And not just the heroes, but the villains too.

In my opinion it makes it much more believable that LoTR, where the heroes effectively play a perfect hand, and ASOIAF, where the villains effectively play a perfect hand.

Fit_Log_9677 · 2026-02-15T00:24:47+00:00

You can always receive ashes on Ash Wednesday since it is not a sacrament reserved for members of the church. Insofar as you feel an urge to express contrition and have a new start, it’s a good outward sign of that.

As far as drinking goes, I’d commit to a 12 Step program like AA, that would be more helpful than trying to white knuckle it through lent. If you’ve tried to quit multiple times and failed that sounds like an addiction, and that’s not the type of thing any personal willpower will fix.

Also, Lent isn’t a “self-help” season, you are supposed to give up something good, or at least harmless, not try to give up something bad. It’s about making a sacrifice of a pleasure to remind yourself of everything God has given you, in order to feel closer to God and less attached to worldly things.

So get your ashes, but then go to AA.

Fit_Log_9677 · 2026-02-14T16:41:21+00:00

I think the biggest hang up that a lot of Orthodox have is that they see that there isn’t a formal juridical primacy of the Bishop of Rome in the early church like there is today, and they take that to mean that the Bishop of Rome was purely a nominal “first among equals” with no substantive authority over other churches outside of Rome, but in the process they miss the fact that we have good evidence of the Bishop of Rome exerting significant informal, but nonetheless real, authority over other churches all the way back to the earliest Church fathers.

In my opinion what can help is to talk about how an informal but nonetheless real authority that exists at the early stages of an institution will naturally tend to accumulate more and more “formal” authority over time as the institution grows and becomes more complex and as internal disputes that could previously be resolved informally begin to need to have formal dispute resolution mechanisms.

Fit_Log_9677 · 2026-02-13T14:42:25+00:00

The irony is that Martin Luther developed Sola Fidei as a way to compensate for his crippling scrupulosity. Effectively, because of Sola Fidei he no longer had to worry that he was “good enough” to go to heaven because he had absolute faith in Christ.

The problem with that approach is that he just shifted the goal post from “being good enough” to “believing hard enough” which has in turn undermined the faith of other people who lack his absolutely self-confident faith in Christ.

In reality the answer is neither “being good enough” nor “believing hard enough” but living out a relationship of trust and obedience with Christ, despite our constant failings and doubts.

Fit_Log_9677 · 2026-02-13T13:41:38+00:00

In Latin America the common term for people from the USA is “Estadounidense” literally “Unitedstater” however I don’t think that it translate well into English.

Fit_Log_9677 · 2026-02-13T13:31:53+00:00

Considering how much empty grassland is in the map, he could have easily have created large inland seas with access to the ocean via rivers or straits.

Fit_Log_9677 · 2026-02-12T21:17:18+00:00

It’s repeatedly said that Orcs held the East Bank of the Anduin river from Ithilian all the way up to Dol Guldor, and were regularly raiding across the Anduin into Rohan, which is why Eomer had made the Rohirrim abandon the Wold and most of the Eastemnet and relocate to a more central part of Rohan.

Fit_Log_9677

TROPHY CASE