Maisie Williams hair is her own—she cut it for Arya and now it’s growing out. Brienne’s also looks to be hers.

Well, that he’s a Stark—which is one of the reasons he’s thought to be Ned’s nephew.

All the direwolf names tell us something about their owner—Shaggydog would indicate someone who will be rough on the outside, but, perhaps, civilized within. We’re told everyone’s a savage on Skagos, but there’s no reason to really believe that, given that distortions about other peoples are common in Westeros.

Yeah, the Japanese really appreciate making a small thing really, really well.

Every now and then I pop over to the forums at westeros.org just to see how long the arguments are. Yikes.

It seems more in line with the books—Danaerys is wily and has been shown to have a knack for adapting to the culture around her. Her issues in Mereen are the result largely of her anti-slavery stance, not because she can’t suss out the cultural norms. Even so, she manages to survive with a little dragon help. She just…

I disagree that they were adapting from an utter mess. The motives of the different characters and the logic of the actions are much stronger in the books. No one’s acting abruptly out of character in them. However, books 4 and 5 are sprawling, so I understand that B&B are faced with replotting and rewriting so they…

Book Brienne has such a different story at this point, it’s hard to say. It’s like the Dorne storyline—we have a very gutted version of what’s going on. Presumably they get to the same end place, but the meaning of it will be different because such a large chunk of the story is missing.

So was the half-Asian Kreuk playing Tenar, one of the few characters in Earthsea who is actually supposed to be white? Whitewashing Ged really is pretty awful—I can see why LeGuin wrote such a great takedown of it.

What “right” is that? I mean, yes, there’s a right to free speech and to have an opinion, but there’s no student right to have input into a curriculum. This students and her parents are way over the line here. Don’t like the curriculum? Don’t take the class.

No, wanting the books out of the library so no one else will read them is book-banning. Trying to dictate the professor’s syllabus because you’re offended is censorship. Students *don’t* have an inherent right to determine curriculum. It’s not a democracy. The student is way out of line.

This. What is with the damn coddling these days? When did feelings become the end all/be all of what should and shouldn’t be taught? What is wrong with, say, reading Persepolis and being upset by what war and an authoritarian regime does to people? What is terrible about having an emotional reaction?

Lack of imagination on Hollywood’s part—it seemed like a sure thing so the studios pretty much promised James anything—but I suspect there’s some regrets given that James is so demanding that people dread working on the films and it makes doing the sequels that much more of a challenge. No established director wants…

Nah, no defense here—more like, wow, weird—and how appropriation has all sorts of issues and not a good history in this country.

Well, she did have four adopted siblings from Africa, so I guess . . .

Harry Potter magic is pretty much what Rowling made up. The magic in Jonathan Strange connects to older ideas about the faerie world. Faeries in old English ballads and Irish fairy tales aren’t cute, they’re creepy, amoral, often beautiful, but with their own nonhuman agenda. I love that Clarke incorporated that…

Ooh, thank you. I don’t get BBC America, but I do want to see this.

This is one of the reasons why we don’t have good sense memories of pain and one of the various reasons to avoid hearing labor war stories if you want kids.

Well, I’m not black, but I’ve known a lot of mixed-race people and, yeah, she does not look it. The blue-eyed blonde who headed the black students union at my college looked it, though she passed accidentally all the time, but this woman doesn’t have a single facial feature that reads black. She has a narrow mouth,…

Yes, but this seems like great news in that you have a number of vets who became maimed this way in combat (well, explosives). We have a lot more people who survive severe injuries than we used to, so it’s good to see progress in areas like this and 3-D printed prosthetics. 3-D printing’s been amazing on that…