Video: Game of Thrones Birthday Rap

BLUE BUDDHA: 2014 PREVIEW

Press Release

Blue Buddha Press, the publishing company behind Tower of the Hand: A Flight of Sorrows and the It Is Known series, has a brand-spankin’-new, completely free ebook out today. Think of it more as an ecatalogue, actually: it contains a listing, overview, and extensive excerpt from each of its releases, including those that have yet to come out.

The can’t-miss part of all this for the diehard Song of Ice and Fire fan? The inclusion of the first, full-length sample from our upcoming Tower of the Hand: A Hymn for Spring – some eight months before the book comes out. There’s also some other little details announced about it, as well, such as who our next author is going to be (hint: A Podcast of Ice and Fire fans should be very happy).

And if all that isn’t enough for you, we have a Q&A with ASOIAF super-writer Stefan Sasse about his very first (American) ebook release, along with a pretty lengthy first-look at it.  

And we do the same grand introduction for the controversial Remy Verhoeve, who has Waiting for Winter: Re-reading A CLASH OF KINGS coming out in just a few short weeks (his best chance for a shot at redemption?).

These are the books that you’re going to be reading to help pass the time until The Winds of Winter is out – you might as well start getting to know them now. =)  

WARNING! Due to Amazon’s demands, we are only able to provide Blue Buddha: 2014 Preview for free for the next five days. That means you only have until Wednesday, November 6th to check out A Hymn for Spring and all the other great titles for no money whatsoever. After that… well, we’re working on a permanent solution, with or without Amazon. But in the meantime, click away before you lose out!

Stefan's Theory Hour, part 49

Thursday is Theory Day! Since it's issue 49, I have to do something special for 50. Ideas and suggestions in the comments!

This is the fourty-ninth article of the series. Since there are a lot of theories floating out there and I'm asked often enough what I think of them, I thought I write it down. You can then laugh about me when I am totally proven wrong by "The Winds of Winter" or something like that. Rules are as follows: you put a question about any theory or plot element (really, let's stress "theory" a bit for the sake of interesting questions) either in the comments of any theory post or by mail (stefan_sasse@gmx.de) and I will answer them in an upcoming post. And if you now ask "Stefan, isn't this a shameless rip-off of Sean T. Collin's "Ask me anything"?", I would tell you to shut up, because you are right.

Prepare for part 49. Spoilers for "A Song of Ice and Fire", obviously. 

Boiled Leather Audio Hour episode 22

Vendettas and Hypotheticals: The Consequences of Vengeance, plus a few “What If?”s (feat. Amin Javadi)

Don’t call it a comeback! Stefan Sasse & Sean T. Collins return with our first BLAH since June, and we’re bringing our chum Amin Javadi of the mighty A Podcast of Ice and Fire along for the ride. It’s basically two episodes in one: For the first half hour or so, we discuss my essay “Savoring the Taste?: On the Role of Revenge in A Song of Ice and Fire” from the expanded Collector’s Edition of Tower of the Hand: A Flight of Sorrows — TotH's excellent collection of essays by various luminaries in the ASoIaF community. I argue that quests for revenge, no matter how horrendous the crime being avenged, are self-perpetuating engines of violence that have had awful consequences for these characters and their culture. Please note that the Collector's Edition — a print book, no less — is only on sale through the end of this Friday, November 1st, after which it will disappear forever. Buy it now and let’s talk!
In the back half of the ep, we get exquisitely nerdy and discuss various what-if scenarios, predicated on major events and decisions going a different way than they had before. What if Brandon Stark had escaped the wrath of the Mad King and lived to lead the North? What if Renly had sworn allegiance to Stannis and helped him in his quest for the Iron Throne rather than declaring himself king instead? What if the rebel lords who rose up against Joffrey following the deaths of Robert and Eddard had kept the king’s peace and traveled to King’s Landing to swear allegiance as requested? What if Ned had lived through his public confession and gone to the Wall as planned? I had an absolute blast teasing out the consequences of each of these divergences and hope you’ll enjoy it too. It’s good to be back!

Mirror here.

Previous episodes here.

Podcast RSS feed here.
iTunes page here.
Sean’s blog here.
Stefan’s blog here.

A Flight of Links

- The Father of Infographics!
- Dramatizing journalism (Newsroom...)
- Warface has the stupidest trailer in a long time. 
- Extra Credits talks about Spectacle creep, which is a problem in every entertainment industry.  
- Proposal to make math an elective. I agree, but why stop at math?
- No more blockbusters, says Mr. Jackson
- I want to play Star Citizen so bad! 
- BSG newbie recaps continue
- All six Apollo Moon landings in one video
- Pacific Rim recreated in Lego 
- Really, really bad bootlegged video game ripoffs. 
- We need soldiers to write about games
- Red Letter Media reviews Gravity and Carrie
- A Dark Knight for all occasions 
- Review 12 years a slave 
- Ever wanted to hear Academy Award winners read the texts of current pop songs? 
- Ill news for Star Wars Episode VII

Stefan's Theory Hour, part 48

Thursday is Theory Day!

This is the fourty-eigth article of the series. Since there are a lot of theories floating out there and I'm asked often enough what I think of them, I thought I write it down. You can then laugh about me when I am totally proven wrong by "The Winds of Winter" or something like that. Rules are as follows: you put a question about any theory or plot element (really, let's stress "theory" a bit for the sake of interesting questions) either in the comments of any theory post or by mail (stefan_sasse@gmx.de) and I will answer them in an upcoming post. And if you now ask "Stefan, isn't this a shameless rip-off of Sean T. Collin's "Ask me anything"?", I would tell you to shut up, because you are right.

Prepare for part 48. Spoilers for "A Song of Ice and Fire", obviously. 

A Flight of Links

- BSG Newbie recaps for Razor and the Webseries
- 11 Horror movies with lessons about society
- Adapting GOT season 5 - I disagree with a good part of it, but an interesting read nonetheless.
- Synopsis for the next hobbit movie leaked
- Carrie review
- More leaked information about the Desolation of Smaug, from a rather strange source. 
- The 4 best moments in the 4 worst movies
- The troubled story behind Mafia II. Very interesting!
- Dexter's writers weren't allowed to kill him off. Hardly a surprise after that disappointment of a show. How can they dare compare it to Breaking Bad.
- Sean T. Collins tries to fix Homeland, but as I argued, it's not really salvagable.
- A great article about the role of "Star Trek Next Generation", very emotional.  
- 7 disappointing movies that should have been great. 
-  Tarantino's boldest moments
- 7 excellent but morally problematic movies
- In Germany, yesterday the biggest battle of the Napoleonic Wars was reenacted by 6000 actors.

Article update

I updated the post "Series I stopped watching", because there are quite a few that were added or that I missed the first time.

Curse and Blessing: experienced roleplaying groups

OK, I lied to make the title more interesting. What I'm talking about - experienced groups that play well together - are a blessing, never a curse. Experienced roleplayers that despite their years in the hobby still suck are a curse, but you don't want to play with them anyway. So, let's have a look at the specific challenges you can run into with the more experienced and well-cooperating kinds of groups that I touched in the last article already.

Seek the aptly named guide here.

Stefan's Theory Hour, part 47

Thursday is Theory Day!

This is the fourty-seventh article of the series. Since there are a lot of theories floating out there and I'm asked often enough what I think of them, I thought I write it down. You can then laugh about me when I am totally proven wrong by "The Winds of Winter" or something like that. Rules are as follows: you put a question about any theory or plot element (really, let's stress "theory" a bit for the sake of interesting questions) either in the comments of any theory post or by mail (stefan_sasse@gmx.de) and I will answer them in an upcoming post. And if you now ask "Stefan, isn't this a shameless rip-off of Sean T. Collin's "Ask me anything"?", I would tell you to shut up, because you are right.

Prepare for part 47. Spoilers for "A Song of Ice and Fire", obviously. 

Bad Lipreading Game of Thrones

This is so cool!

A Flight of Links

- Avengers assemble! In the Star Wars universe!
- MovieBob about Gravity
- The first five minutes of Burial at the Sea look awesome
- Stormsongs rereads Arya V
- Marc Kleinhenz talks about ruins in ASOIAF.  
- Two German articles about the change in TV brought by Netflix and tablet PCs.
-  Fucking read these essays. 
- Extra Credits, Epsiode 4 and Episode 5.
- A conservative history of the United States of America. Hilarious. 
- Hilarious Arnold Schwarzenegger impersonator. 
-  Kit Harrington might play Reed Richards. 
- 10 wrong SciFi myths.
- Much stuff about GRRM, including him receiving death threats. 
- Ewwwwwwww, aren't they cute?
- Machete kills review
- BSG newbie recaps
- ASOS reread, Jon IV

Two new books for the special interest

Beginning today, you can get two new small ebooks from me at Amazon. They're more for the special interest. If you are in boardgames, you may know either of "Twilight Imperium 3rd Edition" or "StarCraft the Boardgame", both of which are queen-sized strategy games of almost unique quality. I played them a lot and still enjoy playing them, so writing strategy guides for them came somewhat naturally. 

Both guides are about 60-70 pages in length and cost only 3.36$, so if you play these games or plan to do so (I can really recommend them), check out the guides and step up your game!

Buy StarCraft the Boardgame Strategy Guide and Twilight Imperium Strategy Guide on Amazon! 

You find the German pages here and here if you live in Germany. Buying from these links earns me a small share as well.

Stefan's Theory Hour, part 46

Thursday is Theory Day!

This is the fourty-sixth article of the series. Since there are a lot of theories floating out there and I'm asked often enough what I think of them, I thought I write it down. You can then laugh about me when I am totally proven wrong by "The Winds of Winter" or something like that. Rules are as follows: you put a question about any theory or plot element (really, let's stress "theory" a bit for the sake of interesting questions) either in the comments of any theory post or by mail (stefan_sasse@gmx.de) and I will answer them in an upcoming post. And if you now ask "Stefan, isn't this a shameless rip-off of Sean T. Collin's "Ask me anything"?", I would tell you to shut up, because you are right.

Prepare for part 46. Spoilers for "A Song of Ice and Fire", obviously. 

Gamemaster's finest: Choice in RPG games

If you ever took the seat of the gamemaster in a roleplaying game session, be it in a Pen&Paper game or in a LARP, odds are that you ran into the greatest threat gamemasters face and which every gamemaster fails initially (and bad gamemasters consecutively): restraining the urge for choice of the players. Roleplaying games pride themselves on the aspect that the players as their characters can basically do what they want within the contraints of the game. Often, this creates problems, because players making their own choices deviate from the carefully planned storyline. What happens then can lead to all-out disaster or a smooth transition into the next episode of the game, with the players asking themselves how the heck their gamemaster pulled it off again.

The one movie that ruined it for the Eastern Front

In 2001, a slightly unusual World-War-II-movie hit theaters: "Enemy at the Gates". It was unusual because the heroes of the story were the Soviet soliders in Stalingrad, not the heroic American soldiers storming the beaches of Normandy or holding out in the grim winter against the German onslaught in the Battle of the Bulge. Since there isn't exactly a flood of movies about the Eastern Front in World War 2, "Enemy at the Gates" came to shape the view on that part of the conflict for pretty much everyone who saw it. And that's not exactly a good thing.

A Flight of Links

- Game of Thrones cast Hizdar zo Loraq. We all know what that means. Meereenese knot, guys!
- What combat feels like, presented in the form of a graphic novel
- WonderWoman fan trailer. 
- Yahtzee about writing horror games. 
- BSG newbie recap continues. 
- Penny Arcade, new issue
- io9 talks about human longevity. 
- GTAV review by Yahtzee
- Thoughtful text about Steam-OS.
- Thoughts about Boardwalk Empire. 
- Trailer for the new Jack Ryan movie. Guess it only gathers attention because Clancy died; the trailer looks utterly stupid and unimpressive. Come on, Chris Pine as Jack Ryan?!
- Why Renly would have made a good king. I agree. 
- Disappearing characters on GOT. I really don't agree.
- Sullivan sees Breaking Bad as embodiement of Machiavelli. 
- BioShock Infinite promotes the new DLC with a moch documentary. 
- Prototype Steam specs revealed
- All references in Del Toro's Simpsons intro 
- Some real great Breaking Bad stuff, check it out here, here, here and here.
- 5 absurd exploitation subgenres.

Stefan's Theory Hour, part 45

Thursday is Theory Day! Finally, I did it in time.

This is the fourty-fifth article of the series. Since there are a lot of theories floating out there and I'm asked often enough what I think of them, I thought I write it down. You can then laugh about me when I am totally proven wrong by "The Winds of Winter" or something like that. Rules are as follows: you put a question about any theory or plot element (really, let's stress "theory" a bit for the sake of interesting questions) either in the comments of any theory post or by mail (stefan_sasse@gmx.de) and I will answer them in an upcoming post. And if you now ask "Stefan, isn't this a shameless rip-off of Sean T. Collin's "Ask me anything"?", I would tell you to shut up, because you are right.

Prepare for part 45. Spoilers for "A Song of Ice and Fire", obviously. 

An obituary on Tom Clancy

Tom Clancy 1989 (Gary W. Gilbert, CCBYSA 2.0)

Today, Tom Clancy died in a Baltimore hospital, age 66. I can't say that I have been a huge fan of his work in the last decade. But Clancy was formative for my youth, I can't deny it. I fell in love with his style and his universe, but at some point, the love died, and we departed. I haven't touched one of his products again, save for a failed attempt of a friend to bring me in on the Ghost-Recon-games. 

I think I first read a book of his age 14, perhaps 15. It was "Red Storm Rising". A curious choice perhaps, not being a Jack Ryan novel, but a friend picked it up, liked it and lent it to me. At that age, the idea of NATO and the Warsaw pact trying each other on the battlefield without nuclear weapons has a clear appeal to someone who builds models of various military equipment and has a collection of little plastic soldiers that would make a coup in Woody's little toy realm a perfectly possible option. 

My thoughts on the Breaking Bad finale

Spoilers for Breaking Bad's final episode, "Felina", coming. 

Boy, I'm not sure about this one. It was good, no mistake, but somehow Walter White's redemption seemed too perfect for me to be true. Not that dying on the floor of a filthy neo-nazi methlab was that positive an ending, but, look, we're talking about Walter White's here. I get it: if you're a fan of Heisenberg, you just got cream all over you. It's the first time ever a Heisenberg plan went exactly as planned from start to finish. Of course it was cool to see the MG60 blast through Jack's whole fucking gang. Heartbreaking how Walt said goodbyes. Somehow satisfying that Lydia died in the end. But on the other hand, I would have wished for another finale.

Not that one, granted.