[Red Pen Reads] A Game of Thrones – Eddard

Ned’s chapters are coming so often that he’s starting to remind me of Old Spice Man. “Now back to me!” Unlike Old Spice Man, however, Ned does not have the abs with which to entice me. He doesn’t have diamonds either, and he’s one of the few Starks who are not, have not been, and are not planning to be on a boat.

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[Noel’s Knoll] Rom: Spaceknight, issue 5 – “A House is Not a Home”

“I am no sorcerer, Dweller! But the elders of my world saw fit to arm me with Galador’s greatest weapon – the Neutralizer! A weapon which can shatter! And which can sear with seething flames! Thus, I answer fire with fire!”


It’s still night on that road just outside of Clairton, West Virginia. Brand, Steve, and Rom huddle in the woods while police comb through the wreckage from last issue’s battle. Rom isn’t sure if these people are human or Dire Wraith, but he can’t risk using his Neutralizer without giving away his position and endangering Brandy and Steve. As he looks to Brandy wrapped in Steve’s arms, Rom thinks back to the day he volunteered to become a Spaceknight, when his girlfriend Ray-Na confronted him over the choice to give up his humanity and their love.
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[Red Pen Reads] A Game of Thrones – Eddard and Sansa

Ned is internally whining about how uncomfortable the Iron Throne is. That’s not a metaphor about the burdens of kingship, the throne is literally the least comfortable seat imaginable. On the other hand, at least it’s a seat, the people flooding the hall to seek the king’s justice have to stay standing, except for Varys and Littlefinger (and Pycelle, who doesn’t count). I think the entire scene is a metaphor for this book: the little guys are screwed, the kings are screwed in a more showy fashion, only the slimy bastards are doing well for themselves.

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[The Ohtori Archives] Renge is the Hosts’ Paparazzi

Episode Three: …in which a Host’s BIGGEST FAN makes her appearance, and it is GLORIOUS.

Before I get started, I’d like to give a heads up and say: Proceed Cautiously. This episode’s pre-chapter mini manga consists of four of our six main characters trying to jump ship, a delusional fangirl, and Tamaki flailing in distress. Consider yourself duly warned. Thar be Otaku, ahead~! Continue reading

[Noel’s Knoll] Rom: Spaceknight, issue 4 – “The Fire, the Friend, and the Foe”

“Do you feel the pain, human? Do your senses scream as I strike time and again at the armor which you thought was only lifeless metal?”


Rom and Firefall (Archie Stryker) erupt out of the underground complex and into the West Virginia night sky, locked in a furious battle as Firefall unleashes the Living Flame of Galador and Rom debates the consequences of using his Neutralizer on a misguided human. On the road below, Brandy’s questions to the federal agents who took her into custody are ignored. She quickly realizes from their reactions to Rom’s battle in the sky that they’re Dire Wraiths. When she goes for the wheel, they take her out with a lungful of chloroform. They don’t realize that her boyfriend Steve is rapidly catching up on the road behind them.
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[Red Pen Reads] A Game of Thrones – Jon and Tyrion

Ser Alliser Thorne is giving the Night’s Watch recruits an inspirational speech, a phrase that here means being emotionally crippled by deep-seated childhood trauma, stemming from the incident during which he witnessed his mother fellating a pony only to later find out that it was his father indulging a My Little Pony fetish, and therefore being able to express feelings towards men younger than twenty-five only by metaphorically jerking his dick and ejaculating a pile of abuse all over them.

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[The Ohtori Archives] Congratulations, it’s a…Host!

Episode One…in which our heroine is the star of Victor-Victoria…Irashaimase~!

Scruffy scholarship student, Harry Potter Haruhi Fujioka, grumbling about the noisy rich kids who need to STFU SRSLY or maintain SILENCE IN THE LIBRARY, Doctor, accidentally discovers the secret lair meeting place of Ouran Academy’s Host club. Though initially taken aback by “the Pretty” of a reverse-harem Stylized Freeze Frame, surprise overcomes her hormones when they mistake her for a young gay man. The club members’ casual condescension of the resident “commoner,” as well as a flamboyant, glittering boy-Diva not of the Cullen-pire persuasion, make her eager to make her escape. In her haste to get away from a clingy Loli-Shouta, Mitsukuni Haninozuka, a.k.a. “Hani Sempai,” she knocks over a vase worth $80,000 (8 million yen, roughly) that the club was planning to use to con money out of the rich fan girls put up for auction. In order for her to pay back her massive debt, the club forces elects her to act as the club’s dogsbody until she graduates, or leaves Japan forever…whichever.
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[Red Pen Reads] A Game of Thrones – Catelyn

Catelyn is feeling poetic about the view from her window. It sounds very pretty, but Tyrion’s fate is hanging in the balance, so maybe we should hurry this along, hm? I will say this about the picturesque beginning to the chapter: it’s about a waterfall named Alyssa Arryn after a woman who’s been dead for six thousand years. Now, it could just be me, but six thousand years seems like an awfully long time for one family to still be ruling this one patch of land. I don’t think any dynasty on Earth ever cracked the thousand-year mark, and I’ve done extensive research, a phrase which here means spending five minutes on Wikipedia. Forget ruling dynasties, is there even a family, any family, that can be traced back that far? How politically stable would a region have to be for allow for that kind of longevity not to mention records-keeping? Look up 4000 BC, we certainly don’t know much about it.

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[Red Pen Reads] A Game of Thrones – Eddard

Ned is flying high on “milk of the poppy.” We all know what it means when a character is injured, unconscious, and medicated: it’s dream-sequence flashback time!

(The role of a dreamscape’s shimmery border is here played by italics.)
Ned is accompanied by six people, but the only name we need to bother remembering is Howland Reed. He’s facing three enemies, knights of Aerys’s Kingsguard, and we don’t really need to care about any of them except maybe Arthur Dayne. Even in his dreams, Ned is on top of his favourite high horse — honour and duty! — and questioning the knights about their absence from the Battle of the Trident, the slaying of Aerys in King’s Landing, the Siege of Storm’s End, and Ser Willem Darry’s flight to Dragonstone with the pregnant queen and little Viserys. The knights are fairly certain that Ned’s mother was a hamster and his father smelt of elderberries. Ned apparently took offense, because a skirmish ensued, and at some point before, during or after, Lyanna was wailing her brother’s name and Ned was promising her something.

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