Man, that game. Yet it also did the best job justifying the Jedi as both effective and deliberative. "We're the unconscious masters of ripple effects!"
"How does that work out?"
"Great for everyone else and ok for us, or bad for everyone else and amazing for us!"

There are actually a lot of vikings in the books. The one's I've read are basically 100% viking mercenaries of Alfred being confused/bemused by his decisions and then frustrated that they seem to work out.
"Soooo… we're not going to just loot all the peasants? Pshaw, we'll see how that works out. Come next campaign…

On that note: here's a piece on the Cardinal's role in the whole thing. Which sounds like it might come up again?

Wicker cares only for bees, as I understand it.

Man, I don't know. I ran into a conversation where someone was pulling comments out of dictionary pages. It was… intense and varied.

It's semi-paywalled but…
http://www.economist.com/no…

The economist has a good recent article on the church's finances in the US. Essentially you can get good dats from bankruptcy documents and some other sources (with the caveat that you would never normally analyze an industry based largely on bankrupt firms).

I read Sensation Comics - had a neat Poison Ivy/WW team-up; the Party, Party volume of Teen Titans Go; and the Green Lantern (can't remember the title) volume of Batman the Brave and the Bold.

I really wish the show about the crime-fighting priest in King of the Hill were a thing.

I really liked it too.

I thought the reviewer did a pretty good job articulating how she thought the connection worked.

I definitely think that feeling of 'universality' was part of the scene/critique, but at the same time we know the characters are at least 'aware' there are other options. And it works because it's hard to justify something like Brakebills based off of the people who go do work in war torn areas or try to balance the…

Presumably someone that spells the genre correctly?

Though I feel like it's also an important part of Grossman's story/critique that this isn't the universal experience of the graduates or (arguably) even the general experience and that you don't even have to have been at Brakebill's to create a similarly toxic coterie of special people.

As someone who works in higher ed, it is not. It most sadly and emphatically is not.

The AV Club
Equivalent of a see saw, either be rich and fascinating or a train wreck

I've seen it many times! And, I gotta say while your complaint is noted:
(A) It's at least noting diversity in small towns and the presence of immigrant populations in the vast American interior - which is unusual in general and particularly for that sub-genre
(B) While the Italians are Vaudeville characters, Cheech is…

Eh, there's a word there that seems a little bit like a reach.

…to his knowledge.

Later he had a hand of living water that could heal people, and between that and the harpoon had he had a golden cyborg thing.