Tag: game of thrones

It could only have ended poorly

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

When I was in the third grade, I used to “read” Choose Your Own Adventure books by deliberately making the worst possible decisions possible in order to get to a The End as fast as I could.  And as soon as I got myself killed, about to be killed, or in a position to eventually die, I declared the book “read” and entered it into my Pizza Hut-sponsored Book-It reading list, where every 4-5 finished books meant a certificate for a free Pizza Hut pan pizza, which meant a perfect excuse for my parents to take me to Pizza Hut, which undoubtedly contributed greatly to my childhood obesity.

I abused the hell out of this system, until my teacher caught onto my little system, and eventually prohibited me from reading anymore Choose Your Own Adventure books, at least as far as the Book-It program was concerned.  I eventually began reading them more thoroughly, and enjoyed a vast number of them throughout their publication, but the point is, the whole thing started with me reading like six pages of the book in total, and deliberately making all the worst choices, in order to get to an ending, regardless of if it were good or bad.

So that being said, Game of Thrones.  The series is now, officially over.  For better or worse, considering the putrid manner in which the series ended.  I’m still mentally deliberating on where GoT’s ending falls in comparison to other shitty endings out there, and I think I’m a place where it’s somewhere in between Mass Effect 3, and the series finale to Dexter.  Needless to say, that puts in pretty rarified air of being especially terrible, and a lot of it probably has to do with the fact that all aforementioned series’ churned along swimmingly at various points and collected large numbers of dedicated fans, sucking up emotions and commitment and dedication for several years, before taking all their hopes and dreams for a good ending, stabbing them in the heart, boating them into a hurricane and synthesizing them with machines.

I mean, I can’t say for a second that I didn’t see this coming.  Endings are the hardest thing in the world for any story, and the list of popular, epic and legendary stories that have shitty endings is longer than the equator.  Plus, the dumpster fire that episodes 4 and 5 steered the story going into the finale all but sealed the series’ fate as just another story with a shitty ending incoming, because they simply went past the point of no return in episode 5.  The question really was, how shitty the finale was going to be, because at this point, the vast majority of people I knew who watched the show had all resigned themselves to the obvious notion that it was going to suck.

And boy, did it ever suck.  I found myself predicting just about everything that occurred in the episode like 10 seconds before it happened, like particular characters saying certain things, doing certain actions, or predicting very obvious outcomes.  Getting back to the point of talking about Choose Your Own Adventure books, it legitimately felt like the entire season 8 was one live-action Choose Your Own Adventure story, where there was one linear plot that consumes the majority of the season, but when it comes time to start winding down, there was literally nothing but a whole bunch of shitty and rushed endings, where not a single one of them is capable of making the viewer not seem I’m not mad, just disappointed.

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Let’s talk about Game of Thrones

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Normally, I haven’t really posted much about Game of Thrones.  It’s one of those properties that I really love, and I often times don’t really write about the things that I really love until they’re over, be it being between books, seasons, or a definitive end of some sort.

But with the show winding down, and that we’re getting to the point where the remaining episodes presumably are all going to be epics in their own right if episode 3: The Long Night was any indication, I’m finding it difficult to contain all the things swirling around in my head about GoT, and by the time the next episode rolls around, I’ll probably lose my shit if I don’t take the time to do any writing about it.

Plus, speaking of writing, it’s pretty clear to me that George R.R. Martin isn’t actually ever going to finish the actual book series,* so as far as I’m concerned, the tv show is pretty much shaping the end of the series, definitively.

*Even if Martin finishes, I have little faith that the evolution of the show will mutate all of the thought processes that went into the original five books, to where he’ll deliberately alter and swing the story (and not in good ways) to keep book followers on their toes, and there’s no way he’s not going to be picturing Kit Harrington, Sophie Turner, Peter Dinklage, Lena Headey or any other actor in his head when he’s writing key characters.  The books will DJ Tanner Wrestle tragically as a result, and it’s at this point where I’ll bust out the phrase “Dextering” again, named after the shitty way Jeff Lindsay steered the Dexter book series long after the television show started and ended.

SO, the Long Night – needless to say, this is where I write my disclaimer about how there will be spoilers, but also the fact that I’m still offline, and there’s no definitive timeline to when I’ll ever be back online, because I never have any time, and even if I did, by this point, I’ll have nearly four years’ worth of posts to back fill into the brog, which is a Sisyphus’ boulder in its own right.

SO, the Long Night – fucking incredible.  Kind of everything I had imagined the inevitable, eight-year build up to the battle between man and dead would be.  I can’t really think of anything that I was legitimately disappointed in, and despite the fact that a lot of my GoT death pool predictions did not come true, I still felt a sense of great satisfaction when it was all over.

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Photos: Dragon*Con 2017

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

[2020 note]: Among many of the things random visitors might be remotely interested in seeing, would be convention pictures from years past.  And of the several cons where I took my camera with me to take photos, Dragon*Con 2017 would be one of them.

I’ll be honest, this was a particularly trying D*C for me, and there was a lot going on in my personal life that was justifiably distracting me from having any semblance of genuine enjoyment during the weekend, and it was pretty evident as far as I was concerned.  But it wasn’t to say I didn’t enjoy the company of many friends that I did get to see.

However, the fact that there’s literally only a singular gallery from the convention itself should say enough about where my head really was, but there’s still some good stuff amongst the photo dump.

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Let’s talk about Game of Thrones

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

With season 7 now in the books, all Game of Thrones fans are astutely aware that we are down to one season left, and if all the claims are true, there will only be six episodes.  So there are going to be six episodes left to close out a whole butt-load of storylines.

I’ve enjoyed the show all the way to current in spite of what people on the internet have been saying about it, and the incessantly endless debates between book purists and show-exclusive fans.  It’s entertaining, I don’t put that much tremendous thought into the plot, and the show writers are good at drumming up tension and drama, artificial as it might seem to some, and it leads to watchable television.

But six episodes to cover the sheer volume of plots and resolutions, that’s a tremendous task to be asking for, so I can’t help but be skeptical at what the quality of the final season can possibly be.  Maybe if every episode is stretched beyond an hour, they could literally buy some more time to tell more story, but if we’re talking about five hour-long episodes and maybe an extended finale, I just feel like season 8 is going to be a ride faster and more furious* than the entire Fast & Furious franchise combined.

*Especially considering the fact that characters are traversing from one end of Westeros to the other and back on horse and buggy faster than Vin Diesel could ever do a quarter mile, but let’s not debate semantics

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Draconian Punishments: driving with cell phones

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Over the last few weeks, I’ve been driven to my wit’s end because of people constantly driving around while distracted by their cell phones.  It doesn’t seem to matter that such behavior is classified as illegal and ticketable by a police officer, but the reality is that there simply aren’t enough cops out there monitoring for this shitty behavior, and they’d most likely be disinterested in ticketing people for cell phone use when there’s speeders and even more reckless drivers on the road to keep vigil for.

At least once a day for the last few weeks, I’ve identified situations where I’ve nearly been merged into, witnessed someone absent-mindedly drive into a potentially harmful situation, or simply not gone on a light-turned green, if not multiple of the above.  My favorite (read: the shit that infuriates me the most) are the people whom you can see their heads dipped down, as the foot comes off the gas when their eyes leave the road, and they slow to dangerously slow speeds while they check something on their phones, and then resume driving like a retard when they realize they need to pay attention to the fucking road again.

Needless to say, I have laid down on my horn on nearly a daily basis, and I’m absolutely sick and tired of people on the roads who can’t seem to get the fuck off their cell phones.  Such doesn’t change much on people outside of their cars, but at least the repercussions of their idiocy aren’t necessarily potentially lethal (as much).

Regardless, the only way that this behavior is ever going to improve is to integrate draconian punishments for those caught violating the rules.  Fear of tickets and fines aren’t good enough, as it feels like 80% of drivers are still content to drive around with their eyes anywhere but the essential view ahead of them, so I think we the world, need to change things up.

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Photos: Europe Trip 2016, batch 1

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

[2020 note] Lost content, never posted in 2016 on account of brog downtime.  Photos of then-mythical gf and I on vacation in Europe, starting with layovers in New York and a visit to Ippudo, another one in Paris, where British Airways lost track of our luggage, and our arrival in Italy, where we spent a single night in Milan, before heading to Venice where we would take port on the start of our cruise.

Gallery encompasses our stops in King’s Landing Dubrovnik, Croatia and Kusadasi, Turkey, which was ironically my first ever foot stepped in the continent of Asia, despite my wanting Korea to have that distinction.

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Thoughts on Europe and cruising

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Admittedly, I thought I’d be way worse off coming back from Europe after basically a two-week vacation.  Sure, the 22-hour trek that saw two layovers in New York and Detroit before getting back to Atlanta was pretty tiring, but I didn’t have that much difficulty in not using my recovery day, and instead returning to work immediately the next day.  Frankly, after two weeks unpaid, it seemed like the smart thing to do.

So Europe.  So cruise.  Long story short is that the vacation was pretty good, and I had a good time traversing various cities in Italy, and my first cruise ever was pretty enjoyable overall.  Maybe not as much relaxation as I’d hoped to have gotten, but I was able to sleep in for a few mornings, and those were quite pleasant.  Alternatively, there were a lot of mornings that were on the schedules of either shore excursions or travel deadlines, leading to some jam-packed agendas at times too.

Among the things learned about planning a destination vacation as such, is that in the future, shelling out a little bit of cash in order to have some travel insurance might not be such a bad idea.  Mythical gf and I got a pretty decent flight to Europe, but it was pockmarked with several layovers both to-and-from the states, and in the months approaching our trip, there were at least more than one deal that showed up with fewer layovers at a comparable price that made us come to the conclusion that perhaps there is some merit to timing.

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