asoiaf read: notes on bran in a game of thrones

so i'm gonna try something.

i've recently decided that i was gonna read a game of thrones, but only the chapters told from the pov of female characters (and later, also bran), as well as doing it one character at a time. i read all of bran's last night and took notes on the things i noticed, so i'll post those here. i'll link to the synopsis of each chapter on a wiki of ice and fire so you can have context if you aren't a book reader, or just haven't looked at it in a while.

bran I:

• as bran is relaying the stories old nan has told him about the wildings, i noticed how westernized (southernized?) the descriptions of them were, and how they also seemed to be conflated with other "savage" or "barbaric" societies like the dothraki. it seems like there's a prevalent "all savages are the same" attitude, when it comes to the stories at least, where they demonize them by saying that they drink blood or are cannibals or own slaves. a very black and white view that erases the nuance of the situation with the free folk and erases the negatives of westerosi society, of which there are many.
• i noticed that bran is really perceptive to the way people change how they act in certain settings and situations, which he rationalizes as 'faces' (ex: father vs 'lord stark of winterfell', robb his brothjer vs robb the lord, etc). i wondered if maybe the other kids thought of it this way too, though i won't know until i read their chapters. with arya, in particular, this could be foreshadowing.
• i know nothing about swords, so idk how ice can be as big as robb and still be useable. it's much shorter in the show.
• this is something i've noticed throughout bran's chapters, but it came up here first: it's very unnerving how desensitized to death theon is. this comes from me being used to my own writing, but i also had to periodically remind myself how much older theon was, and that he came to winterfell at nine after having lived through a war.
• and of course i noted the dead direwolf scene, where the stag antler in the neck represents ned's death. i wrote that that was kind of a misdirect, since the person who killed him is a baratheon in name only, but i guess that's the point? also, joffrey never believed he was anything other than robert's son, as far as i know. and even though cersei had her hands all in it, jofffrey called the order. besides, i don't know if there are any lions in westeros anyway, especially north of the neck.
• also noted that the fact that the stark kids have to raise the pups themselves is foreshadwing to when their dad dies and they're all separated, having to fend for themselves.

bran II:

• bran mentioned that jon seemed to be missing the day of the hunt, but ned said that he wouldn't tell jon that he was allowed to go to the wall until the end of the visit so... is he just hiding or something? where's jon?
• i'm still confused at the fact that jaime is demonized for killing king aerys when people knew aerys was violent and cruel. maybe it's because i'm coming from a modern perspective? but i just don't see why he's seen as so bad for it. and i know people didn't know about aerys wanting to destroy the city during the sack, but still. i thought it was well known that aerys was a shit bag. what gives.
• i loved the HEAVY FORESHADOWING toward what was gonna happen to bran at the end of this chapter with all of the stories about how scared cat was of bran falling. establishing how good he is was good set up to them realizing something was up, though.

bran III:

• the 'fly or die' thing reminded me of harry's after death scene in deathly hallows for some reason. i linked the fact that bran was being given a choice to live or die with dumbledore telling harry that he can choose to take a train onward if he'd like. though, i know the circumstances aren't exactly the same.
• the amount of symbolism in bran's dream is STAGGERING:
• bran remembered jaime's face, but it seemed like the crow made him forget? i'm not sure he recognized it as jaime though, it just said s/t like "a golden face". but the crow did tell him to 'put it away' or s/t like that.
• it'd been a while since i read this, so i didn't notice that there was literally a storm over king's landing in his dream, even though the location wasn't specifically noted.
• the whole thing with the three shadows on the kingsroad has been talked to death, and it's pretty obvious that one is jaime and one sandor clegane, but i'm still unsure if the third is ser robert strong or not.
• are the 'dragons stirring beneath the sunset' dany's dragons? i was unsure b/c the line followed a mention of asshai, and i thought maybe they were somewhere else. idk.
• i wonder if bran saw where the others come from when he looked beyond the 'curtain at the end of the world'. i know that's what the crow was warning against. or maybe he just saw the others themselves. also: what the heck is the curtain at the end of the world?
• the three eyed crow/raven is definitely brynden rivers right? and the crow pecking at bran's forehead is him opening his third eye. just wanted to make sure i was clear on that.

bran IV:

• i noted bran's thing with faces again with the introduction of 'robb the lord'
• i made a note of the fact that it seemed like the show writers read tyrion's appearance in this chapter and based their whole read of him off of it.
• i noticed twice (here and in the next) that bran remembers certain things about his accident but has no context for them. in this one in particular, whenever someone mentions that he fell, specifically that, he blurts out that he never falls.
• when robb tells bran that they'll go to the wall to see jon, it'll be an 'adventure'. bran gets his adventure to the wall, but it's under very different circumstances.

bran V:

• the second thing i noticed: bran fears the lannisters but doesn't know why. again, he lacks the context to connect it to the fall. this also means that he might have known that that was jaime's face in the dream, or at least that of a lannister's.
• is the "dark wings, dark words" quote reoccurring? or is it just foreshadowing to the letter from king's landing in his next chapter.
• spoilers for a later book, but is the kyra from the winter town the same kyra that gets killed by ramsey snow?

bran VI:

• i wondered if the karstarks still counted as family, in reference to when robb kills rickard later, wondering of that counted as kinslaying still.
• i noticed that bran wasn't afraid of the weirwood tree anymore and how that was evidence of his emerging greenseer powers.
• i also wondered why robb didn't get betrothed before he went south, just because it might have stopped a lot of the trouble later with the freys. but hey.
• bran totally called the 'king's landing black hole,' which is the fact that 99% of the people who go to king's landing never come back home. the fact that anybody gets out is amazing every time.

bran VII:

• i wondered if the whole thing about bran fighting on hodor was foreshadowing to him being able to warg into hodor in later books.
• i also wondered if rickon sees the three eyed crow. he never mentions it, though.

and those are the notes. tell me if this is something you liked, if you don't mind. the next one will be catelyn.

uh (and a review or two)

so... I've been gone for a while.

Understatement of the year, I know, but hear me out: I've been at an all time low with writing both here and elsewhere. It's not just the blog. However... I still haven't been blogging.

The thing is, I don't know what it is I want out of this blog. I know I had the review thing going, but I don't think that's a gig I want to keep up, at least not the way I'm doing it now. It's too monotonous. But I don't want to get rid of this blog for reasons, because I've convinced myself that there is something I can use it for. But I don't know what that is just yet.

So I guess that means we're in a transitional period. But there's still something I want to do.

I'm going to keep these relatively short due for both of our sakes. I mentioned in my last post that I had gotten both LEGO Batman 3 and Disney Infinity. I finished both of those games last month, and I didn't want to leave you guys hanging.

So LEGO first: LEGO Batman 3: Beyond Gotham came out last November for all platforms. In it, Batman and Robin's adventures take them beyond earth and to outer space, where they, the Justice League, and the Lantern Corps end up teaming up with a bunch of villains to battle the evil Brainiac. I thought this game was really fun. The cast has been expanded, the controls have improved drastically, and the worlds and levels are more diverse. My only complaint is that there weren't nearly enough female characters (only two playable during the main game), and that I thought it was really weird to call this LEGO Batman when the story doesn't center around him like the first two did. Also, it was a little heavy on the fanservice, but since it came out during the 75th anniversary year of Batman's publishing, I can let it slide. Overall, I had a lot of fun with this one, and would definitely recommend it, especially if you found the previous game a little frustrating like I did.

Disney Infinity: Marvel Superheroes also came out last year, in September (Disney Infinity 1.0 came out a year earlier). For this game you buy separate play sets that determine which world and adventures you have. I had the Avengers play set that came prepackaged with the 2.0 re-release. The story of this, like most Avengers media post-MCU phase 1, pits the eponymous team against Loki, who is trying to take over New York City with the help of the Frost Giants. The team has to work to take him down before he rebuilds the Casket of Ancient Winters and freezes the whole city. I thought this game was fun as well, if a little repetitive. The controls are a little off to me, but I'm willing to attribute that to me being so used to playing LEGO games and still adjusting to a new game. The New York of this world feels bigger than it actually is due to the scale (another thing throwing me off because I came from LEGO). I am still upset about the lack of female figures for this (only Black Widow and Gamora for Marvel, and they can't even play on the same sets together), but this play set, at least, had three more girls show up in the game itself, evening out the cast. Since the other Avengers besides the one you play as don't show up except for cut scenes, because e I was playing as Nat it was basically four female characters and Nick Fury. In the end I also recommend this one, because once I got used to the controls it was pretty fun - and its a LOT less frustrating than the Guardians of the Galaxy play set, which I'm working through at the moment.

And there you have it. I don't know when the next time I'll post on this blog will be - hopefully sooner than later, though. I've got some thinking to do.

a note

i just wanted to tell you guys that i got lego batman 3 and disney infinity for christmas, so those reviews will be upcoming !!!

LEGO Harry Potter Years 5-7- a review

Well, hello again!

LEGO Harry Potter Years 5-7 is the second of the two LEGO HP games. This one came out in 2011 for all platforms available that year, and covers Harry's last three years (Order of the Phoenix, Half-Blood Prince, and Deathly Hallows). Though, like the films, the last year is split in two, so you still have four sections with 24 levels like before. Also like the last game, the story comes straight from the films, with a few accommodations for co-op, so if you've seen them you know what goes on.

So, as it stands, this game is kind of a mixed bag. For a game made later, this one manages to have a lot of the same pitfalls as the first. The game did add on-screen prompts (something that's standard in all LEGO games now), but they didn't help me much. Of course, that's just me: I already knew the mechanics from playing the first game, so I didn't need them. I'm totally in favor of them though, because I do know how helpful they can be, and I personally don't find them distracting. However, even with these, there are still some things in this game that can get obtuse. It's not as bad as before, though.

Also, this game still doesn't have a map, which doesn't seem like a good idea because I'm pretty sure the map is bigger. The only reason i knew my way around is because I'd played the first game and started to memorize where things are, and that's to say nothing of trying to find the new stuff they added. The upside to this is that the Hub is much larger (adding a London street, the campsite from DH part 1, and King's Cross Station to the Leaky Cauldron and Diagon/Knockturn Alley), they've expanded the Hogwarts grounds to include the train station to and the path between it and the castle, and you can explore Hogsmeade. Those places aren't too big, so you don't need maps to get around there. Since I started to memorize the layout of the castle, this began to bother me less and less as the game went on.

Unlike some other, earlier games that lacked open worlds (and even the first one, to and extent), this game's story mode is super long. The downside is that it can feel like a lot of backtracking, especially during the parts that take place at Hogwarts, but on the upside that's a lot of game content. And, unlike Lego Batman 2, it was actually long, it didn't just feel like it. This was an aspect I didn't mind all that much.

And then there's the character selection. This one has over 200 available character tokens, a wide array of characters for you to choose from, from mains to random people like the milkman. And out of those, there are... 71 female tokens! One more than the last game, despite the fact that there are about 50 more characters. What in the world. Sure, the ratio is still better than some of the other games, and I got to play as Luna and Tonks, but that's just shameful. I'm getting really tired of this.

There is one thing that is undeniably good about the game, and that's the graphics. There is so much more detail in this, and the lighting is fantastic. Even little things, like the fact that spells cast light onto surrounding objects, adds to the overall tone and mood. The single, solitary, downside of this is that in Hogwarts there pillars with flames in them that you can hit to light, and sometimes the lights from those, in conjunction with the permanent fires and the reflections, can become a little overwhelming. Luckily, you can turn those off.

Overall, I completely and totally recommend this game, especially is you played the previous. Even with its downfalls, it's really good, and an overall enjoyable experience.

So, looks like I've played the last of the LEGO games in my tiny game collection. It looks like we'll be finding new things to talk about on this blog... who knows what, but for now let's hope I get LEGO Batman 3 and Disney Infinity for Christmas! Meanwhile, I'll be forcing myself to play 'grown up' games, like the Elder Scrolls and the Batman: Arkham series -grumble grumble something about those games being hard grumble grumble-.

LEGO Harry Potter Years 1-4 - a review

Hello hello friends, it's about that time again for me to review another LEGO game.

LEGO Harry Potter came out in 2010 for all platforms. It is one of two LEGO Harry Potter games, and covers Harry's first four years at Hogwarts (Sorcerer's Stone, Chamber of Secrets, Prisoner of Azkaban, and Goblet of Fire). Of course, my copy was for the Xbox 360.

Like LEGO PotC, this game doesn't have an original plot: it is based on the first four Harry Potter films, and so the stories of each section of the game come from that. And when I say that it's based on the films, I mean it; the books aren't really represented here, with the exception of a few easter eggs. The game does add a few flourishes to things, either for comedy or to accommodate the two player function (like having Hermione be present for the first task in Goblet of Fire, which would have been forbidden in the actual games). If you've seen the movies you know how the games go. There are four sections, each with six levels, meaning 24 levels in all, the most of all four of the LEGO games i've played so far.

So, downsides first, because, again, i have relatively few complaints. For one, oh man does this game get obtuse at times. This game has a consistent problem with not telling you what's going on at all. And it's not due to the fact that it lacks voice acting - I had no problem figuring out how to do things in PotC. They just straight up don't tell you some things. Like, you get descriptions of how your spells work, and then they send you off. Maybe this was this game's attempt at making you work your brain, but sometimes it just makes things unnecessarily hard.

Going along with that, THIS GAME HAS NO MAP. You're forced to memorize where things are in Hogwarts, which has a lot of sections. And I know that, of all the games with open worlds, Hogwarts is relatively small, but by its nature the school is like a maze. I take off points for any Harry Potter game that forces you to roam around Hogwarts with no map. Thank god for people on the internet who'd spent time drawing up and labeling ones themselves.

And lastly, I experienced a game breaking bug while playing. I don't really understand it, but my game is making it impossible for me to get two character tokens in the Defense Against The Dark Arts classroom, making 100% completion impossible. After looking it up it seems I'm not the only one, either. There were also people saying that their games would make it impossible for them to enter that classroom at all without the game glitching, so watch out for those if you play on Playstation of Xbox.

You might have noticed that one of my most common complaints about the LEGO games is missing. That's because I'm not quite sure where to put this. There are quite a few more women in this game then there are in any of the others I've played: 39. However, this is out of 109 individual playable characters*. That's better than the 11 in Batman, the 23 in Marvel, and miles better than the 9 in Pirates, but it's still not enough! The 70 other characters are all dudes.  I'm happy that there are so many women in this game, but what do I have to do to get a LEGO game where at least half of the characters are girls?

So, on to the good things now. As a Harry Potter fan, nothing really tops running around the Hogwarts castle in terms of immersion. It helps that the scenery is great and detailed. The stuff looks like it came straight out of the films. It also had the scores from all of the films included, but it is heavy on the original John Williams stuff that made the Harry Potter music so memorable. There is also a lot to do in this game, what with it having 24 main game levels and then 11 bonus levels. The ten bonus levels that you access through Gringotts function more as giant puzzles than miniature levels (like the ones in Marvel), which was something different that I appreciated. I like the selection characters that you can play as in free mode, which includes lots of side characters like the Patil twins and Susan Bones and Hannah Abbott. Altogether I didn't mind replaying the levels of this game, which is something that Batman 2 very nearly soured me on.

Overall I recommend this game, especially if you are a Harry Potter fan. Personally, I can't wait to play the next installment.

*Though there are 167 character tokens in this game, some of them are for different outfits for the characters, and, for some reason, Harry, Ron, and Hermione show up twice in the roster (see for yourself here), so there are 109 individual characters in all.

Lorde, a continuation (or: why White Teeth Teens is awesome)

As the title states, I'm not done talking about Lorde just yet, but I didn't want to weigh down my other post by wandering off topic.

Starting where we left off in my previous post, in my eyes Royals is like a glaring red mark on what is otherwise a pretty stellar track record. It seems especially so when you consider that Lorde has covered similar topics multiple times, and she did it better, and without being racist or otherwise offensive.

The most obvious comparison is the song Team, her third single to be released. This song is what Royals wanted to be: a song about how Lorde and her friends don't care that they're poor, because they make the best of it and have fun anyway. Hell, she even mentions how she's tired of a mainstream trend in this one as well, but this time around her representative line is one that's ubiquitous in anything you could label as 'club' or 'party' music - the phrase 'throw your hands in the air'  doesn't really specify any genre or group of artists. "I'm kind of over being told to throw my hands up in the air" has a similarly nonchalant tone, but this one comes across as much more ambivalent and breezy, as opposed to the more sneering and condescending 'we're not caught up in your love affair'. I have no trouble imagining a playful shrug as she throws out the words, "so there".

White Teeth Teens is another that I thought of. I feel like I can't bring up this song without bringing up The Love Club, from the eponymous EP (which is no longer available, to my knowledge, but the song in on the deluxe version of the album). This is only because these two songs are really similar; I'd almost say eerily so if they weren't by the same artist. White Teeth Teens could almost be seen as a remake or retelling of The Love Club - it has the same themes and a similar story, but, in my opinion, is much more fluid and coherent as a narrative. The Love Club kind of jumps around with telling what's happened to Lorde, while White Teeth Teens happens in chronological order and has discernible settings and scenes.

Like Royals, White Teeth Teens concerns Lorde and rich folks, but whereas Royals flippantly insults the way you choose to spend your money in its quest to show how much Lorde doesn't care about said rich folks, White Teeth Teens sits you down and describes a series of events with the aforementioned clique - basically, it shows instead of telling. There is also a change in premise that works to this song's advantage - Lorde is with them, which lends to her credibility as a narrator. Royals!Lorde doesn't seem like the kind of person who's ever had a conversation with a rich person, let alone befriended one. White Teeth Teen!Lorde is relaying this info to you first hand, and therefore it feels more genuine.

This song is also subtle. While it's obvious that she's in a clique (something that happens in like 70% of her songs that include more than one other character), Lorde never comes right out and says that it's a clique of rich kids. You're trusted to glean this information from the language she uses to talk about them. She refers to the leader of the clique as the Empress, for example. The fact that they're even called the White Teeth Teens speaks to this: their teeth are so white that they glow, which means that they aren't just using whitening strips and good brushing techniques; they're getting them professionally done, something it costs good money to do.

Lastly, and this is one of my favorite parts, this song has the nerve to have a plot twist in the form of a reveal. After taking you on a journey through a night with these kids as they drink and preen and seemingly wreak some havoc, Lorde pulls the listener aside and informs you that she's not actually a White Teeth Teen. And it really is constructed that way - listen for yourself. At about 2:17 in, her voice starts singing "and everything worked out so good/I wear the robe like no one could" repeatedly, and over this Lorde starts talking directly to the listener, using the word 'you' for the first time, saying that she has 'something big' to tell us. She then goes on to say that she never really fit in with them because it's 'in the blood'.

This is something that comes up in Royals too, and one of the reasons I related the two - they share the idea that this isn't something you can really come into, instead having to inherit it. Lorde could never truly be a White Teeth Teen - or a Royal, for that matter - because she doesn't come from the same crop. However, the hip-hop indicators in Royals render this point nonsensical, since a large number of black rappers (including Jay Z and 50 Cent, two of the ones she most closely implicated) came from close to nothing before they got big. In White Teeth Teens it makes a lot more sense, because she's not just talking about being born into money, but also being raised in an entirely different culture from ones that those of us less fortunate are.

These last few lines manage to throw a new trope onto the song that cast the rest of it into an entirely different light. Suddenly, Lorde's reliability as a narrator is called into question. She says straight up that she 'tried to join, but never did', so what events is she relating in the verses? Are they from when she tried to join? Or did she make it all up? She's still a liar either way - in the former because she uses the word 'us' in the chorus, which tricks you into thinking she's one of them, and in the latter because she made the whole thing up. It's hard to settle on either of these, though, because of that constantly repeating line playing in the background. Is that a statement of denial now, because she never got in? It doesn't seem that way, judging by the mood of the song, but it could definitely be read that way in both cases. Did it only exist to cement the idea of Lorde being a White Teeth Teen in our heads before she pulled the rug out from under us? Was she tricking us this entire time? The possibilites pile up the more you examine it.

That being said, the explanation that came to me while listening is that Lorde is lying, just not to us. She's in the clique, but she lacks the pedigree, and is pretending to be something she's not. I think this neatly explains a lot of aspects of the song - why it's in first person, the use of we in relation to the clique, etc. This idea came to me because of the admission. Like I said above, it seems to be done in the form of an aside, but with the two theories I posited above, that doesn't make much sense. If you look at it this way, however, it's like that because she's telling us a secret - the biggest of her secrets in fact. It even explains the lines she's speaking over: they're there because they represent the facade, that she belongs (i wear the robe like no one could), and this is being projected toward the rest of the clique while she breaks the fourth wall to speak to us, hence while it's in the background. The return of the chorus after this is her putting the fourth wall back up and resuming her place, her secret safe with us, and from the rest of the crew.

It's stuff like this that makes me wonder if Royals was included on the full album outside for any reason besides its popularity. It really has no place amongst stuff like this and Buzzcut Season and Ribs; it just falls flat in comparison. Why listen to something that's implicit in the oppression of a marginalized people when you can listen to a layered story like this?

how lorde slipped up in royals, or: i finally figured out why i stopped listening to this song despite it not bothering me that much initially

I know I'm late to the game (on a formal post, anyway), but while I was in the shower this morning I had a revelation.

So, as some of you already know, Lorde's uber-popular song Royals hit some sour notes back when it started to get really big, for reasons of, "us black folks are getting really tired of white folks telling us that rap culture is materialistic without understanding why it's that way". I've always agreed with this stance, but I used to argue that, compared to some other forays into this area, Royals was the tamest one I'd seen, mostly because of the song's very laid back, almost apathetic, attitude. Despite this, I still stopped listening to the song, because something about it bothered me. I was never able to quite put my finger on it, until today.

I do stand by what I'd said about the song's mood - there's nothing even a little bit aggressive about this song - but there is something a bit insidious lurking beneath it's chill surface. At a glance, the parts of the song that make you cry foul are the things she lists off as what "everybody's like" - particularly the Maybach, Cristal, diamonds on your 'timepiece', and the gold teeth (and possibly the grey goose). She could have chosen anything, and pretty much did for literally everything else (tigers on a gold leash?), but instead she chose to include these hip-hop indicators - products that frequently appear in rap music by black artists. The real problem, and the thing that turns this song racist, is the line "we're not caught up in your love affair".

Um,

See, here's the thing: without that line, the song could easily be (and was meant to be, i'm sure) one about how Lorde and her friends don't care to be rich, don't want to be rich, and have fun even though they aren't rich, even with the hip-hop indicators. However, the combination of those and the aforementioned line changes everything - suddenly, she's talking down to these people - not just shallow rich people or even 'fame whores', but also black rappers, group of people made up mostly of people who were dirt poor before they got enough money to even begin to think about any of those things. The idea of 'rap materialism' is one that tends to forget that small fact. Are there rappers that are materialistic? Yeah, definitely, but do they need Lorde, or any other white person, to tell them that? No.

And it's not like there's really anyway we could look around this, because the stuff she chose to call out is pretty specific. Go listen to a Jay Z bragging song, preferably from the mid-2000s. Or a 50 Cent song from around the same period. She very nearly called these guys out by name. Do I think that Lorde knew what she was implicating when she wrote this? Probably not; most white people don't get they don't have a place criticizing aspects of black culture. Hell, a lot of non-black people don't understand that rap is a part of black culture and not just a music genre. But that doesn't mean we can excuse this from Lorde, or anyone else.

And this song could have been saved. Had Lorde kept on with whatever motivated her to mention tigers on a gold leash and listed other outlandish, nearly cartoonish rich people antics, the line about  not getting 'caught up in your love affair' could have worked. What should have been a fun, harmless song gets relegated to a trash bin full of condescending lectures toward the wrong people, all because of ten words and a single line. It's a shame that such a talented storyteller has this blemish on her record because she's yet another white person who doesn't know what white privilege is (and even worse because only a few of us see it this way).