Tyrion and the Blood of the Dragon

Tyrion in the Song of Ice and Fire series (aka "Game of Thrones") is believed to be one of the three heads of the dragon, as per the prophecy of Azor Ahai / etc.

Evidence in support of this is the facts/rumours that:

#1. Tyrion is actually the son of the Mad King Aerys, who supposedly slept with Tyrion's mother approx. 9-10 months prior to Tyrion's birth.

#2. Tyrion has very little fear of fire - as shown during the Battle of the Blackwater.

#3. Tyrion has never been burnt by fire or scalded by hot water. Instead he prefers to be hot/warm all the time. Nor is he bothered by the cold, as shown by his visit to the wall.

#4. Tyrion admits to having childhood dreams about dragons and flying. During the book Dance of Dragons he has one such dream as he gets closer to his destination, suggesting that his dragon dreams are increasing as he gets closer to the dragons.

#5. Tyrion has the golden hair of a Targaryon, who historically have silver or gold hair - although this is not a guarantee as sometimes Targaryons have been born with black hair.

#6. From a literary perspective the story does tend to focus on Jon Snow, Tyrion and Danaerys - this suggests these three characters are of more importance than others, ergo, the Three Heads of the Dragon.

What I find interesting however is that Tyrion has spent a significant amount of time whoring his way across Westeros, which implies there could be multiple bastards out there who have the Blood of the Dragon in their veins thanks to being sired by Tyrion. So there could be spare "heirs" to the title of being Blood of the Dragon.

Sort of like how King Robert sired lots of bastards and they are floating around out there.

Podrick Paine, Hot Pie and Gendry are probably all bastards of King Robert. They are literally a dime a dozen. Gendry and Podrick may be the more warrior-like of the two bastards, but Hot Pie is the one who most resembles the king.

Thus given the considerable time Tyrion also spent whoring, certainly he has sired quite a few bastards too right?

Food for thought. All Men Must Pie.

Lunch Time!

Did anyone bring a fork?

Epic Fantasy - The Crimson Companions Trilogy

By Charles Moffat - May 2015.  Updated September 2019.

Epic Fantasy is a genre where huge battles and massive armies decide the outcomes of the plot. Or is it?

Well, yes, but not all of the time.

Epic Fantasy is really about stature.

Game of Thrones (the TV show and the book series ASOIAF) contains a lot of large epic battles, so it has several elements of epic fantasy, but truth be told you aren't shown a lot of those battles in the TV show, and the battles are often covered in the books as subtext. Most of the battles are unseen. Indeed most of the books are just people squabbling over things with rare bits of combat / magic / dragons doing cool stuff.

The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings could also be classified as Epic Fantasy, as there are similar large battles, but most of the books are the characters traveling from place to place. It is mostly about the epic journey.

So the battles are only part of it. Does epic fantasy have to contain huge battles? No, I don't think it does.

How we define epic fantasy is also a matter of debate. See the two images below which represent the two schools of thought on the topic.

Speaking for myself I prefer the top definition.

Does it describe Epic Fantasy by referring to the word epic twice in its own definition? Yes. But I don't care. The second definition in the image below is wholly wrong in my opinion.

Using the second definition a fantasy book would count as epic even if it is just 300,000 words of a group of talking anthropomorphic puppies rescuing people on a tiny island with a town called Adventure Bay. There you go, I just described the plot of "Paw Patrol". Could someone write 300,000 words on that topic? Yes. Would it be fantasy? Yes, because it has anthropomorphic talking dogs which ignore the laws of physics. Is it epic fantasy? Definitely not.

Let us ignore the definition and talk about an author who is well known for his Epic Fantasy books.

David Eddings.

I used to read a lot of David Eddings books back in the 1990s. In his books knights rode on horseback and fought demons, dragon-like creatures, evil armies, and even killed a few evil gods. And the knights do this across multiple continents.

The characters spent half of their time solving problems and planning things, and the other half actually doing the epic things they discussed (often with something unexpected happening).

And his books were amazingly enjoyable to read. Some day I must go back and re-read them. (Same goes for Dave Duncan. He also does Epic Fantasy quite well.)

Epic fantasy is about scale and power. The setting is massive, often spanning kingdoms and continents. The characters are heroic in stature. The plot is about life on a massive scale.

Let us compare two examples.

1. A tiny village is having a festival that brings in many visitors and a dragon kills one of the villagers a week ahead of the festival. The villagers go out and kill a tiny dog sized dragon and bring back its corpse. Meanwhile the real threat, a massive dragon, is lurking in the mountains... and the villagers just killed her hatchling.
2. A kingdom is invaded by an army of dragonriders and in order to fight back they send a tiny group of griffon riders on a long journey to find a legendary wizard known as Dathek the Dragonslayer and bring him back. But when they get there Dathek is too old to barely move, but he agrees to help anyway. They journey back and it is unclear if Dathek will even survive the dangerous journey.

Now which of these two plots sounds more epic? The first one is basically the plot from the film Jaws, but replaces the 1 large shark with 1 large dragon. The second plot has a whole army of dragons, a long perilous journey, and a powerful wizard with failing health. Certainly the 2nd one with the higher stakes, large dragon army and a dying wizard is more epic, right?

And 99% of the time, yes, it would be.

But it is possible that the first plot could end up being more epic as a storytelling if it is told properly... and if the dragon is properly huge. Like 10 times bigger than Smaug.

So it really depends on who the writer is.

When you read the taglines and loglines for books it should give you an idea of what the book is about, and also just how epic the story is.

Let us use the loglines from my book trilogy The Crimson Companions as examples and I shall highlight in red any words that give the reader clues that what they are about to read is epic fantasy.

Paladin Assassin
(Part One of "The Crimson Companions")

The Minotaur Emperor has been assassinated and the continent is on the brink of an epic war between minotaurs and humans. Wynic Doxon, the Arthian Royal Assassin, is asked to track down the assassin who killed the emperor and help prevent a war that would destroy the ancient city of Athex.


Ice War
(Part Two of "The Crimson Companions")

An evil army has set up camp in the northern reaches of the continent and plots are afoot. The heroes from "The Paladin Assassin" are ordered north to confront this new danger and to seek out the legendary Spear of Destiny.


King Culprit
(Part Three of "The Crimson Companions")

The epic finale to the Crimson Companions Trilogy! Waytorn, the king of the crime underworld has decided to retire and it creates a power vacuum as mafia kingpins converge on the ancient city of Athex to scheme and fight to the death as to who should carry on his criminal empire. Meanwhile Rades and the other members of the Crimson Companions struggle to survive as chaos unfolds and a new force threatens global domination.

Ahem.

Now just judging by the amount of red, I should probably go back and modify the old description for Ice War so that there is more words of an epic nature in the description. Or not. Just leave it be. I like it the way it is.

So this is my point about Epic Fantasy. Its very nature is about scale. Size. Continents. Empires. Global. Far reaching qualities and quantities.

To use a gun analogy a .45 Colt is a nice old gun. Looks nice in a gun collection. But a nuclear war is epic by its very nature of being both massive in the size of the explosions and the far reaching impacts of nuclear radiation on people, on politics, and on the environment will be felt through generations.

"Not all wars are epic, but 

all nuclear wars are definitely epic."

If you are curious about my books they are *currently available* on both Kindle and Kobo.

* This may change in the future. I have been thinking about dropping Kobo and becoming Kindle Exclusive for all future books.


UPDATED PRICES, AS OF SEPTEMBER 2019.

1. Paladin Assassin is now $2.99.
2. Ice War is now $5.99.
3. King Culprit is now $5.99.

Or you can buy all 3 in The Crimson Companions Trilogy for $9.99.

Scientific Cookie Testing

Want to make really good cookies using SCIENCE?

Start by making 8 different cookie recipes, using different variations to experiment with the quality of the cookies - and have kids / adults do taste tests to determine which cookies they think taste best.

Continue your research, periodically changing the recipe and comparing which cookies people respond best to in terms of taste, texture, etc.

HBO deliberately leaked 4 episodes of Game of Thrones

Hey there Game of Thrones fans!

You may have already heard that 4 episodes of Game of Thrones (season 5) were leaked a few days before the airing of the first episode of season 5, but did you know the episodes were deliberately leaked?

HBO deliberately leaked the first 4 episodes of Game of Thrones Season 5 in an effort to do the following:

1. Create buzz around the show by utilizing news media for free advertising.

2. So they could create free buzz for HBO's newest service "HBO Now", a new streaming service.

3. So HBO could track illegal downloaders in the USA for potential lawsuits - which is technically entrapment.

HBO claims the episodes were leaked via people in the media who had received screener copies of episodes for them to review and post reviews in newspapers, magazines, TV shows, etc - however that seems more like a cover story - a scapegoat - when their real intent was to deliberately create buzz for both the show and HBO Now, while simultaneously giving them an excuse to entrap Americans who download the show before the release of the first episode.

Fascinating don't you think?

And best of all nobody can prove who really released the first 4 episodes. Without proof it is basically a Schrödinger's Cat situation.

Hinterland's Who's Who - The Ewok

The following video is a Star Wars parody of the Hinterland's Who's Who commercials made by the Canadian government during the 1960s and 1970s.

For more parodies of Star Wars' Ewoks, why not visit the website YouTube and type in ewok parody.





For fun here is an extra Ewok parody:   The Empire Got Defeated by the Ewoks (Ewok Parody)

Game of Thrones Season 5 Trailer

Winter is coming.

Again.

Season 5 of Game of Thrones will soon be here.

The 10 episodes will be airing between April 12th and June 21st 2015.

But in the mean time watch the trailer for season 5 so you can get all excited and wait with bated breath for the new season.

And if you get bored of waiting, go watch The Walking Dead instead.

Kevin Smith talks about Jon Peters and Superman Lives

In the clip below Kevin Smith talks about his role in the failed making of Superman Lives and the idiot movie producer Jon Peters.

Sean Connery is a ham actor 2

If you have any doubts that Sean Connery is a ham actor, then please watch the trailer for the 1974 film "Zardoz". See the trailer further below.

It is undoubtedly Connery's worst film ever.

If you are still not convinced, read Sean Connery is a ham actor.

Eventually after seeing enough bad Sean Connery roles in movies you will realize that he really only showed up, said his lines, and wasn't actually that good at putting any emotion into his acting roles.

Now I understand some people get really upset when I say "Sean Connery is a ham actor", but honestly, I am not saying this to hurt your feelings. I am saying in an effort to teach people the difference between good acting and bad acting. Watch the trailer for Zardoz and you will realize Sean Connery really has almost no acting skill and is really just hired for his looks and accent.

Nerdovore.com, New Domain Name

Yesterday we registered Nerdovore.com - I figured it was past time I registered a domain name for this website.

We recently surpassed 230,000 hits and I figured we should have a proper domain name before we reach the big 250,000 - which will likely happen sometime during the release of the new season of Game of Thrones, as Nerdovore always sees a spike in visitors during the new seasons of Game of Thrones.

The popularity of Nerdovore.com for Game of Thrones fans is apparently due to our Fantasy Maps section, which includes quite a few maps of Westeros and other locations from the world created by George R. R. Martin.