Game of Thrones quotes to tide you over.

How's that Game of Thrones withdrawal going for you? Season 3 airs Sunday March 31, or in 240 days, 4 hours, 38 minutes 3 seconds from this posting. Luckily there are a few ways to feed your addiction: you can re-watch the episodes (like I just did with the pilot), and read or re-read the books (just started reading A Game of Thrones as well). Here are some fun quotations from the pilot episode Winter is Coming:

Robert Baratheon to Eddard Stark: “You’ve got fat.”

Jaime Lannister: “Don’t leave me alone with these people.”

Benjyn Stark: “I rode all day. Didn’t want to leave you alone with the Lannisters.”

Ned Stark: “I hope I’ll serve you well.”
Robert Baratheon: “You will. And I’ll make sure you don’t look so fucking grim all the time.”

Ned Stark: “How did he get so fat?”

Catelyn Stark: “He only stops drinking when it’s time to eat.”

Benjen Stark “Dire wolves south of the wall, talk of the walkers, and my brother might be the hand of the king. Winter IS coming.”

Check out the scars on that Stark. Did you notice them the first time through?

Ned Stark: “The king takes what he wants. That’s why he’s king.”

Catelyn Stark: “And I’ll say, listen, fat man, you are not taking my husband anywhere.”

Benjyn Stark to Ned: “You at a feast is like a bear in a trap.”

The Hound (Sandor Clegane) “I didn’t pick you for a hunter.”

Tyrion Lannister: “I’m the greatest in the land, and my spear never misses.”

The Hound: “It’s not hunting if you pay for it.”

Robert: “You as good with a spear as you used to be?”

Ned: “No, but I’m still better than you.”

Robb Stark: “I hear the prince is a right royal prick.”

Theon Greyjoy: “Think of all the southern girls he gets to stab with his right royal prick.”

Robb Stark (about Jon Snow): “Go on, Tommy, shave him good. He’s never met a girl he likes better than his own hair.”

Ned Stark: “I don’t fight in tournaments, because when I fight a man for real, I don’t want him to know what I can do.”

Jaime Lannister: “Well said.”

Ned Stark: “How did he get so fat?”

Catelyn Stark: “He only stops drinking when it’s time to eat.”

Tyrion Lannister: “All dwarves are bastards in their father’s eyes.”

Magister Illyrio: “A Dothraki wedding without at least three deaths is considered a dull affair.”

The maid says, "It's too hot milady!" Foreshadowing that Dany is the real dragon?

Viserys Targaryen: “I piss on Dothraki omens.”

Ser Jorah: “There is no word for 'Thank You' in Dothraki.”

Magister Illyrio: “Dragon eggs, from the shadowlands beyond Ashai. The ages have turned them to stone, but they will always be beautiful.”

The Hound: “Rough night imp?”

Tyrion Lannister: “If I get through this without squirting from one end or the other it will be a miracle.”

Jaime Lannister: “The things I do for love.”

Should you watch the Once Upon a Time pilot on ABC?[Review Time]

Emma Swan is a bail-bondsperson, a loner, a mother who gave up her child for adoption, an orphan, and the daughter of Snow White. Or at least that's what her son Henry tells her when he shows up ten years after being put up for adoption. 

The story really begins at Emma's apartment after a birthday wish to not be alone. The doorbell rings, and there is the son she gave up, as well as the first hint of magic in a very mundane life.

Even when the wish comes true, Emma keeps her distance from Henry, and she certainly doesn’t believe him when he tells her she needs to come to his home, Storybrook Maine, to save our favourite Fairy Tale characters from the terror that is life in the real world, where they’ve been put by the Evil Queen. That's right: the Queen's curse is to live the kind of daily life we live, with no happy endings.

Emma is resistant to staying with Henry, but of course, he's a meddling kid, the kind we all love that can always find a way to get what he wants.

Game of Thrones on HBO: It's the sex! [Review Time]

It grew on me. Judging from the hype, I’m probably alone in that I wasn’t blown away by the Game of Thrones television adaptation from the beginning. Although the book series, A Song of Ice and Fire by George R. R. Martin, is going on close to two decades of readership, it wasn’t until HBO gave it a primetime slot that the whole world starting raving about A Game of Thrones and the book sales skyrocketed. It definitely got my attention, but also left me wondering, how is this so different from all the Fantasy that’s rotting on the bookshelves at Borders, the piles of crappy generic, poorly-written re-tellings of The Lord of the Rings? The pilot of Game of Thrones answered my question relatively quickly: it’s the sex.

Battlestar Galactica [Review Time]

"There's a reason you separate military and the police. One fights the enemies of the state, the other serves and protects the people. When the military becomes both, then the enemies of the state tend to become the people."

A very solemn quotation to begin with, but since my theme is the irrefutable quality of Battlestar Galactica, it seems a fitting one. Still, for me much of the love for this series comes from the humour embedded within a dark situation, so make no mistake - the above quotation doesn't say everything there is to say about the series. That's my job :)

A Theme of Themesea. By Ursula Theme Le Guin. [Review Time]

Only in silence the word,
Only in dark the light,
Only in dying life:
Bright the hawk's flight on the empty sky.

Well isn't this just your graying literature prof's wet dream. A Wizard of Earthsea really gets in there with the themes and then hits you over the head with them, repeatedly. Let's see, we have lots of good stuff on identity, the power of language, arrogance, forces in opposition, balance, and the mentor/pupil relationship. Well done, Ursula Le Guin, you've really gotten a lot of shit packed in there, and you really milked it for all it was worth.

Buffyverse on Twitter

So, if you're like me, you want your Twitter feed to be full of tweets from your favourite celebs, and what actors could be more charming and hilarious than Whedon's faves? So here's a few of your favourite Buffyverse characters and the names you can find them under on Twitter. Just to let you know right off the bat, our hero Miss Buffy Summers doesn't have a certified Twitter account. You won't find Sarah Michelle Gellar on Twitter, but I'll update this if she ever gets an account.

So Many Firefly Quotes, So Little Time.

I was really surprised to find upon rewatching an episode in the series that many of my favourite quotations came from the pilot episode, Serenity, alone. Here are a few of them:

Mal: We're not gonna die. We can't die, Bendis. And you know why? Because we are so... very... pretty. We are just too pretty for God to let us die. Huh? Look at that chiseled jaw, huh? Come on!

Romance in Battlestar Gallactica? [review time]

Love is a strange and wonderful thing, Chief — you be happy you experienced it all — even if it was with a machine. -Gaius Baltar

Ok, I'm going to go ahead and be the girl here and talk about romance in Battlestar Gallactica, but it's not what you think. I'm not going to go all Team Tyrol on you or moon over how sexy Apollo is and how perfect he is for Starbuck and how I'd throw Dualla out of an airlock. Actually, I find most of the love subplots on BSG to be very trivial and unrelatable, but since I find the show to be incredibly masterful, I'm going to argue that these love affairs really contribute to the overall themes of the story. Because there is a pattern here. Some might say the drama between romantically involved characters was a filler addition to BSG aimed toward mass appeal, but I'm going to say that this drama was necessary to the show. I'm two seasons in right now and I find that it's the human relationships on the show that are fickle, shallow and unrelatable, while somehow the Cylons are capable of meaningful relationships, involving commitment, and inspiring of unconditional love.

Blogging about Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog, starring Neil Patrick Harris, by Joss Whedon [review by starlight]

"And by the way it's not about making money, it's about taking money. Destroying the status quo because the status is not quo. The world is a mess and I just need to rule it."

Dr. Horrible is just another of those nerdy cult things that requires a few watches to really fall in love with, which in my opinion makes a great piece of "film". Of course, Dr. Horrible is difficult to classify as either movie or tv series because it is too long to be a short flim, too short to be a movie, and there's only one episode. So maybe it's a single-episode TV show? Anyways, if you like either Joss Whedon or Neil Patrick Harris, there's really no downside to taking about 40 minutes out of your life to enjoy this weirdly unclassifiable piece of... whatever it is.

Well, I just can't help but post about Buffy... again [rant and rave]

"And they have no purpose that unites them, so they just drift around, blundering through life until they die, which they-they know is coming, yet every single one of them is surprised when it happens to them. They're incapable of thinking about what they want beyond the moment. They kill each other, which is clearly insane... and yet here's the thing. When it's something that really matters, they fight. I mean, they're lame morons for fighting, but they do! They never... they never quit. So I guess I'll keep fighting too." -Anya on Humanity

After watching the series finale of Buffy for the first time, I found I had a bit of a rant in me. Don't get me wrong, it was thrilling, there's just one flaw. But please, allow me to begin with how great a conclusion my hero, Lord Whedon, came up with, and rave about how it made me cry and cry and cry, and how everything went as it was meant to - including who lives and dies.

Angel Season 4, Awakening [musing, with spoilers]

What made this episode, entitled Awakening, so incredible is that Joss Whedon gives us an ending to all of the show's current issues tied up in a nice little bow, and then dismantles it all, and with just a single line, leaves the whole thing in a painful, ugly mess. The plots had all been resolved with a disappointingly fairy-tale ending, and I can't believe I didn't expect that Whedon would pull something along the lines of the "it was all a dream" ending, except far more spectacular.

14 years ago, the Slayer started slaying - The anniversary of Buffy the Vampire Slayer [musing with nostalgia]

I know I recently posted about Buffy, but today is the 14th anniversary of the show airing on the WB. To celebrate, here are some great quotations from the first episode!

Buffy Summers: So, you like to party with the students? Isn't that kind of skanky?
Rupert Giles: [witheringly] Oh, right. This is me having fun. Watching clown hair prance about is hardly my idea of a party. I'd much rather be home with a cup Bovril and a good book.
Buffy Summers: You need a personality, STAT.

Once More with Feeling, the Musical [review by starlight]

"That's the penalty/When life is but a song"

The full-length cult musical is right. Once More with Feeling is perhaps the most beloved episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, in which the series' venerated cast sing, dance and fight demons. This episode is not a completely random addition to the series - it actually had some foreshadowing and a flushed out plot. Dawn comes across a trinket in the Magic Box in a previous episode, and tucks it away in her pocket for safe keeping (the little thief!) The trinket is used to summon a demon of song and dance from another worldly plane, whose songs can become violent and lead to death (of course).

Are you afraid of the dark? [musing with nostalgia]

I almost wasn't going to post on this, but I watched an episode on (godbless) youtube and was intrigued by how dark this show actually was. And I mentioned there would be something only recognizable to Canadian kids growing up in the 90s. Most people I've asked have seen this show, but then I'm from Toronto. Essentially a bunch of children venture into the forest every week to exchange ghost stories. If my memory serves me well, they were pretty neat. Cheesy, but neat. The episode I watched was so much darker than I expected. Children's shows go so far out of their way to avoid topics like death, and this show seems so much creepier to me now that I'm older. If you've never seen Are You Afraid of the Dark, I don't by any means recommend it, but if you have seen it, check out episode 55, The Tale of Station 109.1 with Ryan Gosling (The Notebook and Blue Valentine) as a little tyke. Joanna Garcia (American Pie 2 and How I Met Your Mother) is in the intro as well.

Xena: Warrior Princess [nostalgia time - failure]

Despite it's nauseating title, I had faith in my nostalgic memories of Xena. It's a show about Greek mythology and heroes, what's not to love? It had Aphrodite and Ares and Caesar, Hades and Athena and Poseidon. How could it possibly be bad?

Dollhouse - Another Joss Whedon series to watch out for [review by starlight]

 

"She can be anyone, except herself"

I enjoyed finally watching the pilot of Dollhouse last night. Not the unaired pilot, mind you, just the one Fox chose to show us, which was a little bit confusing and offputting. The premise of the show is delivered through some really terrible exposition. It's about an illegal laboratory operation where people who have gotten themselves into some trouble can have their identities erased - for a price, obviously. We are given the story of Echo, the incredibly beautiful and talented Eliza Dushku, as an example. She has gotten herself into a fix she can't get out of, and choses to give herself to the Dollhouse for a five year term. Her memory and personality are erased, and she gets loaded up with different people's minds for different assignments. In this first episode, we see how she can be given all of the knowledge of a hostage and kidnapping negotiator and perform this woman's job using all of her skills, which have been loaded into her head Matrix style.

Thinking Maybe it was Time to Let the Slayer Die [review and musing time]

I've been a fan of Buffy the Vampire Slayer since maybe the 3rd grade when I used to cuddle up on the couch next to my sister and actually quiver in fear at the scary vampires. I'm a dedicated fan, I won't lie. Until recently I had never watched much of it in sequence, but I remember I was in the 7th grade when season six was airing, and we actually had pajama party sing-alongs to Once More With Feeling. I've suffered attacks from people who wonder how an English major can suffer the cringe-worthy dialogue and corny plots. I argue that it's all incredibly charming when you let the show take you in. There's not much more I can argue in terms of the quality of the show except, as I've said before, that Joss Whedon knows what he's doing, and if it's deliberate, it's art.

How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Get Over LOST [review and musing time]

It may have taken about seven months since the airing of the Season Finale, but I have finally come to terms with the unresolved mysteries left in its wake. All over the internet you easily find blogs, forums and sites listing the many questions that went unanswered, despite the fact that the Lost team made the choice to end the series early and wrap everything up well, instead of dragging it out. After reading one such list, and considering my own response to the finale upon its airing, I felt that maybe the answers were better left unsaid, and here's why...

Firefly - You can't take the sky from me [review by starlight]

Embarking on an unfinished 14 episode stint in a sci-fi television show may be unattractive to both regular nerdling viewers and the main stream, but whether you regularly sink your teeth into 20 year spaceship journeys or prefer to keep your feet firmly on Earth, Firefly is definitely worth your attention for a mere half-season at the least. You can put aside your Battlestar or your Gossip Girl for a week or two and find out why the premature end of this cult favourite is bewailed by watchers everywhere.

The Untimely Demise of Heroes [review and musing time]

I was a Heroes fan until the very last. I never gave up on the show, and watched every episode weekly, no matter how little hope there was that it would really come back. The first season was excellent, and the ideas were always there, but the show got progressively worse. There are many negative things I could say about Heroes, and the show has obviously gotten many negative reviews before it was dropped at the end of its fourth season, but I am going to focus on the positive in the hopes that I can bring other Heroes fans to grieve with me.