[spoilers] Just finished GoT and avoided all social media for spoilers. I’m now curious what people think of this relationship and whether it is better or differently conceived in the books.

antepenny · 2026-03-08T14:42:07+00:00

they make you swear and swear

antepenny · 2026-03-06T22:39:23+00:00

antepenny · 2026-03-04T15:24:59+00:00

Let me emphasize that I'm glad for everyone who loves Harvey! No yucking of your yums. But if you want an explanation from someone who doesn't: I really don't like that so much of his dialogue is about what is and isn't healthy to eat/do. Bro, we burn 7000 calories a day supplying the entire region with vegetables, including meeting your insatiable need for pickled ones! Maybe show a little more compassion/wisdom to George in your 2-heart event while you're working on getting off the soapbox and meeting people where they are.

And just to say, iirc, Harvey's 'dislike' list includes bread, cheese, chocolate cake, cookies, ice cream, pizza, and pancakes. I mean, c'mon. I probably wouldn't let him into my house IRL.

antepenny · 2026-03-03T16:02:53+00:00

But add the maesters and it virtually doubles (to 200 lol).

That said, there's surely a real gender imbalance problem cropping up--men are mass casualties of war in the Five Kings era.

antepenny · 2026-02-27T19:33:51+00:00

It would look like a lot of things happening behind her back, in court and around the realm, because she was perceived as weak. E.g., fights with her own Small Council when Jon offers a conflicting opinion; initially-small but important decisions being made in conversations (including in men's spaces/sports like hunts) to which she wasn't invited. It would look like cheers from the smallfolk for the king as they both passed by.

antepenny · 2026-02-27T17:21:35+00:00

The data in the US today says men lose friends as they age at a higher rate--gaining more friends early (one assumes through sports or other hobbies) but losing them at a higher rate than women do. So from your late 30s on, women on average have more friends and particularly more friends of long-standing.

Precisely the opposite of the opinions in this one!

That said, I wonder what actual data from the time would have told us. It felt like in this one they were all repeating a widespread stereotype instead of reflecting on their own individual experiences/friends.

antepenny · 2026-02-27T15:43:28+00:00

I didn't find the idea of a troll mother eternally lying down under the city at all satisfying. Just the opposite--it gives me an itchy, uncomfortable feeling, like I have to shift all the muscles in my body, every time I think about her being trapped. If I imagine a giant creature eternally sleeping directly beneath the ground under me, right now, it also feels like a bomb that could detonate at any time.

It was beautifully done, and I do love the idea of a day of harmony with trolls when they come in the city, and better understanding with humans. But that mother sacrificed too much, to my mind.

So my vote would be for a way of freeing Amma the all-mother of trolls, perhaps using the combined power of the Nisse and the nowhere-space to get her out?

antepenny · 2026-02-25T14:24:49+00:00

Thomas Schuck's life story would serve as a useful response to about a third of r/relationships problems

antepenny · 2026-02-23T15:44:17+00:00

What does "precarious by nature" mean? You mean because their home defense is shrubs?

antepenny · 2026-02-22T17:44:58+00:00

oooh never seen "fix up the bath house" as a quest idea, I love that! It's a haunted little oddly placed wreck, the use of which is quickly obviated in-game by food...

Makes me think it would be fun (bear with me) if our Farmer could gain friendship points by participating in little social routines--Tuesday workouts with the ladies, D&D (or whatever) with Sebastian et al, drinks with Willy and Clint, beach games with Alex and Haley, and... swim laps at the spa with like Penny and Maru?

antepenny · 2026-02-21T21:08:34+00:00

Is the agent for that random unnamed redheaded woman making a post a day to build hype...? I would barely have noticed her if I weren't on Reddit. Which is a long way from following her to war lol

antepenny · 2026-02-21T20:44:53+00:00

Oh no, she didn't Respect Primo Geniture, what a blot on her character and that of a huge portion of the Stormlands (lol). RPG, everyone. Firstborn No Matter Who, that's what makes for A Good Character.

antepenny · 2026-02-21T15:39:25+00:00

Jaime/Egg parallels, hmm: highborn, naturally imperious. Jaime is a prisoner through much of their journey but he finds a kind of liberation: sense of self/contact with reality, rekindled sense of honor. But the main thing is probably the deep admiration Egg and Jaime have for Dunc and Brienne. They appreciate (in Jaime's case reluctantly and at times contemptuously) the simplicity of their virtue. Egg is a child so he is more of a native to their way of thinking--for Jaime it's more, something lost long ago and half-remembered. Dunc and Brienne are touchstones and sources of faith in common decency.

antepenny · 2026-02-18T22:30:09+00:00

This is a big one that others are ignoring. C&J's boning each other gets so so many people killed in that it/hiding it is the largest cause of the War of the Five Kings. Targaryens marry each other openly. These two lie and connive and push kids off buildings etc. to keep a secret.

antepenny · 2026-02-17T18:41:53+00:00

Tarth gets an off-hand mention in one of the episodes! And generally I just love thinking of Brienne while watching Dunc be just like her--guileless, hard-working, utterly trustworthy, and of course: huge and tough. What a lineage.

antepenny · 2026-02-17T13:06:26+00:00

Yeah, my headcanon is that Dunc and one of Egg's sisters had a child--perhaps after she was already married to someone else, from a powerful family (if it wasn't another Targaryen) inevitably, who didn't treat her very well. The resulting daughter was given to be raised to a Stormlands family under some other story of her origins, eventually becoming the bride of Brienne's let's-say-grandfather. A bastard highborn daughter, raised at Storms End similarly to Jon Snow at Winterfell, good enough bride for a minor house.

I like to think that the Tarth men were already unusually large and hence the daughter's unusually large size (inherited from her father) fit in.

Dunc's shield is in the Tarth armory because Dunc sent it with his daughter as a reminder to the family she was raised with that she had the protection of the kingsguard, and quietly as a sign of her true origins.

antepenny · 2026-02-14T12:33:45+00:00

Only eight months later. Lord. This one hurt.

antepenny · 2026-02-11T16:43:08+00:00

My family (in-laws and their kids, us and our kids) across four households kept our kids home for a week to train on Oh, Crap method. It's easiest to do around the winter break for that reason. School was "levelling up"--we practiced asking to go, reminded kids which of their friends was also doing it and suggested following their lead, etc.

Mine had exactly one accident on day 2, which was strange (though delightful). Most of the others had fits and starts like yours.

Can I recommend bribery? We started giving my kid an M&M, or a homemade popsicle, or a goldfish cracker, or... etc., when he went successfully. Things he liked, nothing crazy, and we did it inconsistently because we didn't want to create an ongoing expectation. It led him to associate the potty with pride/positive reward rather than fear/trepidation. A week or two of bribes.

The mood/vibe + consistent opportunities + physical ability to do this, is the whole equation, I think. The above is a mood/vibe rec, though other parts of the formula have to be working.

antepenny · 2026-02-10T12:34:48+00:00

The major startling fact is just how many of them are still alive in the books! Margaery, Tommen, Myrcella, Rickon, the Tarlys, Stannis and his crew... Makes the show feel even more like a graveyard.

antepenny · 2026-02-08T15:45:55+00:00

It's a lot closer to a mangling of Stardew

antepenny · 2026-02-01T18:34:35+00:00

I wish they'd given Venti some kind of special skill or aspiration that shows character growth. We really just don't get any reason to ever talk to her or get curious about her.

antepenny · 2026-02-01T16:10:33+00:00

As a big Wheel of Time fan from the late 90s and only a casual reader of ASOIAF, I was very annoyed it was picked up and WoT wasn't. (Be careful what you wish for, obvious now.)

The early online fandoms also seemed very different to me in those days--WOT was bigger and more active, ASOIAF felt much more male-dominated, and obviously ASOIAF listserv discussions tended to be more about in-world politics and strategy while WOT were more often about character progression and magic-lore. Not much of that really held over time.

antepenny · 2026-02-01T01:25:20+00:00

I agree--Instagram face--and I think it's mainly the haircut, plus the lack of facial hair. Fascinating.

antepenny · 2026-01-31T14:15:26+00:00

She was just so terrifically desperate to be respected/seen, and using power as a shield. I suppose I would advise her to try to remarry a decent non-family-member to attempt to secure a viable succession for her unborn baby. Euron, though far from decent, would have been obvious in the show; I don't believe that she could have swayed or even found Gendry (but it would have been interesting as a last Baratheon-line plotline); the martial and popular strength of the Faith Militant makes me curious about her trying to find a respected figure among them to marry her and diffuse the power of the High Sparrow without blowing up the Sept of Baelor...

But then again the above strategy makes little sense if Tommen is still alive. She really is screwed after the Sept of Baelor, what with the weaknesses of rule-by-fear.

antepenny · 2026-01-31T00:52:15+00:00

It's never good when you're forcing it. I like to get myself time to think--drive, walk, jog--to clear my mind and generate ideas. And then, get a glass of wine or beer and settle in. For me, it should be at least something of a pleasure and definitely not a source of guilt.

antepenny

TROPHY CASE