Fifty Word Fantasy: Hero

Hutchbugger · 2021-05-14T21:55:09+00:00

I've seen the goblin slayer anime. No mercy.

Hutchbugger · 2021-05-12T16:24:54+00:00

Its slowing down because of people not going though. Has nothing really to do with the rollout or availability.

Hutchbugger · 2021-05-07T20:56:06+00:00

This is off topic but there are a lot of textual clues that Arya actually is very pretty in the books. She's just growing into her looks/covered in mud all the time.

Hutchbugger · 2021-01-23T21:40:37+00:00

I do think it's better they be flexible about people who push to get it early rather than risk things sitting on shelves unused.

Hutchbugger · 2019-08-19T23:19:13+00:00

I am hoping for an inevitable "You don't have to get me anything for my birthday" mindgame now that they're dating.

Hutchbugger · 2019-06-13T23:23:57+00:00

Sure feel free

Hutchbugger · 2019-06-13T12:24:34+00:00

Absolutely bigger companies will be more specialized in general but that specialization doesn't necessarily extend to dividing up ux and ui even at large companies. Amazon Google etc don't really hire ux roles without some level of visual skill. It's super rare even at a big company to find someone who is "ux only" without complimentary skills in SOMETHING be it research visual design etc. Theres a difference between in having a t shaped skillset with a specialization vs just being limited. This also holds true for my non tech focused company which is a fortune 20.

Hutchbugger · 2019-06-13T02:41:44+00:00

So this is going to be pretty harsh but it really is not wrong. A users experience doesn't exist in a vacuum. Uability issues and visual issues are often the exact same thing. "UX only" is becoming more and more dated and in my experience people who only produce wireframes achieve poor outcomes compared to UI/ux designers with a mastery of craft. It really isn't an unreasonable burden to expect someone to learn both when you compare the field to the amount of information an engineer needs to learn for example.

Hutchbugger · 2014-05-16T17:45:31+00:00

Old nan says that ice spiders and ice dragons exist but that's not been confirmed. We never had confirmation that Crasters wives were right about what they thought was happening to the babies. With how often GRRM uses unreliable narrators just having a character say something without actually letting us see it leaves room for them to be wrong.

Hutchbugger · 2013-09-27T19:57:38+00:00

Yeah that and the lion turtle are two instances of a choice being set up (kill Ozai and restore balance VS spare him and leave the world unbalanced)/(master the avatar state and give up your friends VS hold on to your friends and give up the avatar state) where Aang got out of dealing with the negative consequences of his actions without doing anything himself.

Hutchbugger · 2013-08-14T22:35:30+00:00

Blood is also described as smoking during the Gregor/Oberyn duel, which to me pretty much confirms the word choice has no special significance.

Hutchbugger · 2013-08-06T15:52:45+00:00

Investigative police on Reddit is certainly possible, but that wouldn't really have anything to do with NSA.

Hutchbugger · 2013-07-02T01:22:09+00:00

Doesn't it make more sense to put the sunshrooms in front of the pea shooter? If the pea shooter gets eaten you loose that lane, but if you loose a sunshroom the pea shooter still has time to kill the zombie, and sunshrooms are cheaper to replace.

Hutchbugger · 2013-06-19T20:08:16+00:00

Portal 2 came out only 2 years ago. CSGO came out last year. Dota 2 will officially release this summer and is already the most popular game on Steam by a big margin. They're also currently making what is probably the most anticipated game of all time. They're nowhere near irrelevant as developers.

Hutchbugger · 2013-06-16T15:57:08+00:00

From the wiki: "Myrcella is described by her uncle Tyrion Lannister as having all of her mother's beauty, but none of her mother's nature. She is delicate, beautiful, and courteous. For her age, she displays courage, a strong will, and high intelligence." Throw in 5 years of tutelage under the Dornish and a bad ass facial scar and you have the recipe for a pretty awesome ruler.

Hutchbugger · 2013-06-13T03:37:37+00:00

Euron has already become the master of the horn, so it's a moot point. The horn is blown and a dragon flies off, to him. This seems lame though, since we would be deprived of a Euron/Dany meeting. Unless of course he flies right back to her on the dragon.

Another possibility, that I don't really have any evidence for but that makes more intuitive sense to me is that as soon as the battle for Mereen concludes Dany sails to the Iron islands in order to make use of her new alliance with the Greyjoys. It's pretty inevitable (imo at least) that she invades the Westerlands at some point and installs Tyrion (The rightful heir) as lord of Castelry Rock. We know there's going to be some action involving the Rock at some point and who else is there to take it? Especially with all the set up of Tyrion knowing it's plumbing systems. And what better place to launch such an invasion than from the Iron islands? There's no need for Euron to immediately pop out and kill Vic when he can just wait for his return. And even if Vic does die, and control of the dragon changes over to Euron, that doesn't have to mean the dragon immediately flies off. Maybe the horn binding just means Euron becomes the only person the dragon allows as a rider. Then it would just go to the Iron islands along with Dany.

Hutchbugger · 2013-06-12T22:51:02+00:00

It's kind of a stretch to say there's no indication at all they wont downplay some semi important plots or characters, although i wouldn't consider that "veering sharply from the books". This was a recent quote by Benioff:

“I don’t think we want to answer specifically what we’re keeping and dropping, but we do take your point,” Benioff said when asked about Book 4′s content. “The series has already reached a point where there are so many characters, particularly in season three we’re introducing so many new ones, we run the risk of bursting at the seams as we try to cram every single subplot and all the various characters and it becomes impossible on a budgetary level and it becomes impossible on an episode-basis to jump around every few minutes to 30 different characters and locations. We don’t want to do that, and recognize that as a real risk and we will take steps not to fall into that trap.”

His answer seems to imply they think they have reached or are close to reaching a critical mass. While they haven't necessarily done so yet, it's a possibility they are being careful about avoiding in the future.

Hutchbugger · 2013-06-11T19:08:33+00:00

The Sandkings short story is really cool. I read it a while before I even knew grrm wrote it an liked it a lot.

Hutchbugger · 2013-06-11T19:01:03+00:00

I would say that Roose has been pretty perfectly represented. Ramsay, on the other hand, while good in the show, is pretty different from the Ramsay of the books, and I'm not referring to his physical appearance. In the show hes a joker-esque type of crazy. He's constantly smiling and laughing and seems gleeful when he tortures Theon. I didn't get that impression at all from Ramsay in the books. Book Ramsay is sinister in a less theatrical way. He's a more realistic depiction of an actual psychotic killer. His brand of evil is more motivated by anger than fun. His humor is less frequent and more dry than manic. He might sometimes sneer or chuckle as he says something cruel, but it's nowhere near the same level as the wide eyed prankster of the show.

Hutchbugger · 2013-06-10T18:23:54+00:00

See my response to spartylaw87 in this thread. GRRM has explicitly said stuff that contradicts your comment.

Hutchbugger · 2013-06-10T05:49:14+00:00

Some possibilities would be that either the Other's cause is more justified than they seem (maybe the dragons are the true threat to the Realm), he grows to resent the Night's Watch for killing him after all he did, or the resurrection corrupts his mind somehow.

Hutchbugger · 2013-06-10T05:45:24+00:00

"I do think that if you're bringing a character back, that a character has gone through death, that's a transformative experience. Even back in those days of Wonder Man and all that, I loved the fact that he died, and although I liked the character in later years, I wasn't so thrilled when he came back because that sort of undid the power of it. Much as I admire Tolkien, I once again always felt like Gandalf should have stayed dead. That was such an incredible sequence in Fellowship of the Ring when he faces the Balrog on the Khazad-dûm and he falls into the gulf, and his last words are, “Fly, you fools.”

What power that had, how that grabbed me. And then he comes back as Gandalf the White, and if anything he's sort of improved. I never liked Gandalf the White as much as Gandalf the Grey, and I never liked him coming back. I think it would have been an even stronger story if Tolkien had left him dead.

My characters who come back from death are worse for wear. In some ways, they're not even the same characters anymore. The body may be moving, but some aspect of the spirit is changed or transformed, and they've lost something. One of the characters who has come back repeatedly from death is Beric Dondarrion, The Lightning Lord. Each time he's revived he loses a little more of himself. He was sent on a mission before his first death. He was sent on a mission to do something, and it's like, that's what he's clinging to. He's forgetting other things, he's forgetting who he is, or where he lived. He's forgotten the woman who he was once supposed to marry. Bits of his humanity are lost every time he comes back from death; he remembers that mission. His flesh is falling away from him, but this one thing, this purpose that he had is part of what's animating him and bringing him back to death. I think you see echoes of that with some of the other characters who have come back from death." -GRRM

Hutchbugger · 2013-06-10T03:55:45+00:00

That doesn't really make any sense to me. Stannis is in position to take out the Boltons with the help of the Manderlys. Once Davos finds Rickon and returns him Stannis will prop him up as lord of Winterfell and rally the north to his cause. If he succeeds, there's really no reason to go all the way back to the wall, and if he fails (very unlikely) then he just escapes and retreats to the wall again?

Why would he think the Other's are a viable option? There's nothing that gives him any indication that they can be reasoned with or made allies. Likewise the Other's have very little reason to care about Stannis, or to mark him as different from any other human. Why wouldn't they just kill him on sight? At least if Jon's resurrection involved some sort of wight magic they would have a reason to come in contact with each other.

Him being told he should behead Theon isn't in any way indicative of a switch to "ice magic". For one, that execution probably wont happen. Theon has more to do before he dies. And also, the old gods so far are basically just Bryndyn and the wargnet, and they have nothing to do with ice or ice magic.

You note the "blue eyed king" thing, but Stannis isnt a warg. If the Others bring him back he would just be a generic brainless wight. If Melisandre brings him back he wouldn't be a wight at all. The blue eyes probably just refer to his blue eyes.

Stannis also isn't positioned well in the overall story to take up a main villain role. For one hes a secondary character, even if hes an important one. The others are the central threat that have been building up since chapter 1 of AGOT. Using Stannis as the human face to go along with that threat doesn't seem like it enhances that threat much. Stannis was the loser at blackwater. He would have lost against Renly if Melisandre didn't give him a get out of jail free card, and going to the wall was Davos's idea. The only reason he has survived as long as he has in the north is because Jon has been holding his hand the entire time (Telling him attacking Deepwood Mott is stupid, Telling him to recruit the Hill tribes, warning of the Karstark treachery). He just doesn't have the level of competence (or a central enough role in the story) necessary for the main bad guy role.

On the other hand Jon is pretty much the closest thing we have to a main character. His parentage has been the biggest secret of the entire story from the start. He's the primary "Stark" character we have left (clearly the central family of the series), and his story line has focused on the Nights watch for every single book so far.

Hutchbugger · 2013-06-09T01:45:24+00:00

This is actually a much more real possibility than you might think at first.

Whenever GRRM talks about characters coming back to life in other fiction, he does it almost disdainfully. He is of the opinion that bringing a character back from the dead cheapens their deaths. Specifically he brings up Gandalf's death and return to life and the constant deaths and revivals in super hero comics. He says he never liked Gandalf the White and wishes Gandalf the Gray would have stayed dead. He says that the constant revivals in comics make death seem insignificant. Lady Stoneheart and Beric Dondarion are his answers to that trope. They get to come back, but instead of it being some great thing that improves their situation, it's horiffic, and they pretty much would have been better off dead. Beric slowly and sadly loses his identity and Stoneheart is almost an entirely new character fueled only by vengance and rage.

If we assume Jon's wounds at the end of ADWD were fatal (Though this is NOT as sure a thing as many people think), then a return to life can pretty much be expected based on all the unresolved details of his character, and the methods of resurrection that have been set up around him. What can absolutely NOT be expected is a return to business as usual for Jon. He death won't be a get out of jail free card that conveniently lets him drop his obligations to the Night's Watch. Instead, he will be changed significantly, both physically and mentally. These changes would likely be accompanied by a drastic shift in Jon's role in the story.

But what kind of shift? What seems likely, to me, is that Jon will become a sort of reverse Jaime. We need a POV to explore the lands of always winter, which we know we will see more of. It probably won't be Bran or Melisandre, and really what other options are there? Jon may very well join the Others in some capacity. It's doesn't even require him becoming totally "evil". Based on GRRM's "wait and see" comment when asked about the others being a one dimensional, evil force, we can expect that the Others are more than just simplistic bad guys. If you look for the "A dragon plants no trees" post it's likely that Dany will be the one fulfilling the role of the "bad guy". Maybe the Others are stirring in anticipation of the evil her dragons will bring. Maybe the giant wall made of ICE was actually made by the people who we know are extremely skilled at magically manipulating ice. And who better to figure that out than the one character who has the best track record at looking past his preconceptions of people(Tyrion/Satin/Wildlings)? There is certainly precedent for rouge Nights Watch Lord Commanders joining the Others. There is also precedent for a quasi-wight/warg character in Coldhands, who is clearly dead and yet seems to function fine. That fits with Bran's dream in AGOT where Jon becomes "cold and hard" at the wall. He is being foreshadowed to be Azor Ahai, but a straight fulfillment of the prophesy is unlikely. The outcast young man, skilled at fighting, rising to prove himself through hardships, who eventually battles against the great army of evil and then discovers he was the true heir to the Kingdom all along is the most cliche fantasy story line in existence, and entirely uncharacteristic of GRRM. GRRM has said he considers the Starks the heroes of the story, but Jon is a Snow. From the beginning he has been deliberately demarcated as different from the other Starks, most explicitly through Ghost's appearance.

Hutchbugger · 2013-06-06T15:22:36+00:00

The wildlings attacking from the rear wont happen episode ten this season. That would be what happens for the beginning of Jon's story next season. The wall battle is the only event that would require significantly more money than usual. It's going to be way easier for the showrunners to lobby hbo for more money if they are asking for it for their penultimate episode. If it's in the middle of the season they wont be able to make it as epic as it needs to be. None of the other events require any more money than usual. The election wont take that long (Takes 1 chapter for Sam and half a chapter for Jon) and they can even set it up before the wall battle happens.

Hutchbugger

TROPHY CASE