Elizabeth Sandifer
Posts by Elizabeth Sandifer:
Mother’s Mercy
In case you missed it, I responded to some more stuff John C. Wright has been saying, and pushed Recursive Occlusion to a wider release as well.
State of Play
The choir goes off. The board is laid out thusly:
Lions of Meereen: Tyrion Lannister
Lions of Dorne: Jaime Lannister
Lions of King’s Landing: Cersei Lannister
The Dragon, Daenerys Targaryen
Direwolves of the Wall: Jon Snow
Burning Hearts of Winterfell: Stannis Baratheon
Ships of the Wall: Davos Seaworth
Burning Hearts of the Wall: Melisandre
Snakes of Dorne: Ellaria Sand
Direwolves of Braavos: Arya Stark
Direwolves of Winterfell: Sansa Stark
Archers of the Wall: Samwell Tarly
Flowers of the Wall: Gilly
Butterflies of Meereen: Missandei
Swords of Meereen: Daario Noharis
Spiders of Meereen: Varys
Chains of Dorne: Bronn
Kraken of Winterfell: Theon Greyjoy
Flayed Men of Winterfell: Ramsey Snow
Shields of Winterfell: Brienne of Tarth
Coins of Braavos: No one
With the Bear of Meereen, Jorah Mormont
The episode is in nine parts. The first is three minutes long and is set in the Baratheon camp north of Winterfell. The opening image is of melting icicles.
The second is four minutes long and is set at the Wall. The transition is by hard cut, from Stannis to Jon Snow.
The third is eleven minutes long and is set in Winterfell. It is in sections. The transition is by hard cut, from Jon Snow to an establishing shot of Stannis’s march.
The fourth is six minutes long and is set in Braavos. The transition is by family, from Sansa to Arya Stark.
The fifth is five minutes long and is set in Dorne. The transition is by hard cut, from Arya’s blinded face to an establishing shot of Jaime and company boarding a boat.
The sixth is six minutes long and is set in Meereen. The transition is by family, from a wide shot of Jaime’s boat to Tyrion Lannister.
The seventh is four minutes long and is set in what one assumes is the Dothraki Sea. The transition is by dialogue, from everyone talking about Daenerys to Daenerys.
The eighth is thirteen minutes long and is set in King’s Landing. The transition is by hard cut, from a wide shot of Dothraki swarming Daenerys to Cersei in her cell.
The ninth is four minutes long and is set on the Wall. The transition is by hard cut, from Cersei to the elevator at Castle Black. The final image is of Jon Snow, dead in the, well, snow.
Analysis
As a cliffhanger, it’s something of a puzzling one. It is, of course, the biggest cliffhanger from A Dance With Dragons. But the reality of television production is that they cannot actually keep us in suspense as to whether Kit Harrington is in the next season. Of course, there are plausible outcomes here that amount to some version of “recast the role,” including replacing Kit Harrington with an actual lost puppy, but… yeah. Really wondering how that’s going to play.
More broadly, taking “cliffhanger” in the sense of talking about where all the characters are, it’s almost jarring to end up so close to the state of play in the books after a season that has felt this defined by its departures.…
An Open Letter to John C. Wright
As I suspected, he is not a real pagan, not old-school, but one of these modern post-Nietzsche types who regards the gods as instruments to be used, if not constructed out of his own thinking. He is playing with occultism as a diverting bit of entertainment. To him it is an abortive psychic technology: something he wants to get something out of, not something he wants to serve.
He would not die for Odin or castrate himself for Cybele.
Sir, a real pagan would kick your ass.
Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell Episode 1: The Friends of English Magic
John C. Wright Has Just Advocated For My Murder
In the comments over at Vox Day’s blog, John C. Wright posted the following:
The first line is Wright quoting a previous post of mine. The second paragraph is him advocating for my murder. Because he disagrees with my definition of mysticism.
I am, to be clear, not particularly scared by this. I do not imagine that John C. Wright will now be hiding in my bushes, waiting for the opportune moment to strike. This is empty, vicious rhetoric of the sort that Day and Wright specialize in – sound and fury that, while not exactly signifying nothing, is still clearly told by an idiot. Hell, if I were a woman blogging about the stuff I blog about I’d get half a dozen far worse threats a day. The threat itself is not a big deal.
My goal has never been to make the very obvious point that Vox Day and John C. Wright are absolutely terrible human beings. If that’s not obvious to you, frankly, you’re beyond hope. But I have long been interested in demonstrating the depth and nature of their evil, which goes far beyond the most superficial and obvious horrors of what they say.
This is, after all, the man who wrote a story about how one must obey the dictates of god (or at least the dictates of god as relayed by a talking cat) whether or not one understands them or believes them to be right. This is a man who believes in the importance of blind and fanatical obedience. And his god’s dictate is apparently that people like me should be murdered because we use definitions of words differently than him.
So when I say that I believe the god he worships to be a monstrous, vicious tyrant that is nothing more than his own prejudices and hatreds projected into metaphysical grandeur, this is why. This is the vision the Sad and Rabid Puppies exist to advance. This is their true face. Not the constant spew of racist, sexist, and homophobic drivel. Not the Twitter bullying of anyone who disagrees with them. Not the bullshit campaign to fire Irene Gallo for a minor infelicity of phrasing on her personal Facebook page. This: a world in which god demands that anyone who doesn’t think like them be put to death.
In which case perhaps the saddest thing about them is that I don’t have anything to fear. Nobody is going to be showing up on my doorstep with a knife. They serve a mad tyrant who apparently demands that people like me be killed, and yet all they’re willing to do in his name is bitch on the Internet and fuck with literary awards.
We should thank God that such evil should also be so utterly pathetic.…
Our Skullbabies (The Last War in Albion Part 100: Girls)
This is the first of five parts of The Last War in Albion Chapter Eleven, focusing on Alan Moore’s The Ballad of Halo Jones. An omnibus of all eleven parts is available on Smashwords. If you are a Kickstarter backer or a Patreon backer at $2 or higher per week, instructions on how to get your complimentary copy have been sent to you.
The Bojeffries Saga is available in a collected edition that can be purchased in the US or in the UK.
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Figure 794: The debut of Halo Jones. |
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Figure 795: Call me Kenneth as Jack Kirby pastiche. (Written by John Wagner, art by Ian Gibson, from 2000 AD #17, 1977) |
The Vox Day Interview: Transcript
Although this interview was not funded by my Patrons, I have the time and ability to pursue work like this largely because of their generous support. If you enjoy the work I do here and can spare a few bucks a month, please consider backing.
Below is a transcript of my interview with Vox Day, aka Theodore Beale, which you can listen to over at Pex Lives. I’ve lightly edited it to remove infelicities of language on both Day’s part and my own. I’ve also added a couple of footnotes clarifying aspects of the discussion. I am sure that Day would offer several clarifications of his own. Those interested in more of my thoughts on the interview should check out Jack Graham’s Shabcast 6, in which Jack and Kevin and James from Pex Lives sit down with me for a two hour chat about the interview and the proper course of action when talking cats tell you to kill. It is cheeky and irreverent in the ways that I expect my readers would prefer.
Comic Reviews (June 10th, 2015)
Hello all; as of this week, my comics reviews are being crossposted to ComicMix, so I suppose I should tack a paragraph introducing myself onto the start. I’m Phil Sandifer, a blogger covering various forms of pop culture and media with my own idiosyncratic long-form analysis. I’m responsible for TARDIS Eruditorum, my now-concluded history of Doctor Who, and the still-ongoing The Last War in Albion, a sprawling history of the most important magical war of the last century, the rivalry between Alan Moore and Grant Morrison.
A Brief Treatise on the Rules of Thrones 2.03: What is Dead May Never Die
The Vox Day Interview
At long last, and with sincere thanks to Kevin and James over at Pex Lives for hosting, I am pleased to announce that my interview with Vox Day is live. You can find that right here. It’s a roughly two hour long discussion if John C. Wright’s One Bright Star to Guide Them, one of the Sad/Rabid Puppy nominees for Best Novella this year, and Iain Banks’s debut novel The Wasp Factory, which I’ve previously covered here. Though don’t worry if you’ve not read them; the interview should be perfectly accessible to anyone who doesn’t mind some spoilers.
I’ve also recorded a conversation with Kevin, James, and Jack Graham that’s something of an afterparty, in which the four of us and Jack’s cat Quiz have a nice long chat about the interview, our thoughts on it, and what it revealed. It’s at times very silly and at times very interesting, and is available here. While the interview itself is obviously the more general interest item, I have to say, if you’re coming at this from the perspective of someone who likes my stuff, which, since you’re here, I assume you are, the afterparty is frankly essential listening.
I think both make for excellent and edifying radio, and hope you enjoy them.…