House Cambodia

I'm still tickling myself with an idea I had in another thread - that in the prologue to TWOW, Sybell Spicer (Maggie the Frog's granddaughter) prophesies to Jamie that he will be killed by his sister. Won't their meeting up be interesting!

Funny you should say that. I'm currently writing a novel where a megastorm is the inciting incident to the whole narrative. Even funnier is you should mention Hamish Macbeth. The TV show was one of my favourites ever. My novel is coincidentally set somewhere in the vicinity of Lochdubh. When I have free time and nothing better to read, I read a few chapters of the books. M C Beaton astonishes me - one of the worst writers I've ever encountered whilst still managing to be entertaining!

Surprising if Liverpool aren't interested, but to be fair, in history only one manager has ever come out of Portugal and hit the ground running in England.

While that's absolutely true, what went wrong at Chelsea is he was forced to take sole responsibility for buying in players, which he didn't feel qualified to do. He might actually do well with a competent full backroom in place. 'Might' doing a lot of heavy lifting, to be sure.

He is tactically astonishingly incompetent. You can't teach that. He must have had a successful template at Ajax, but when he arrived at United and found none of the players suited his system, had no idea how to adapt. Take yesterday specifically, when Coventry pulled one back, any sensible manager would have instructed his players to pass the ball around and take the heat out of the opposition. Instead, he got them to keep counter-attacking which resulted in losing transitions and with their joke of a defence, they let in two more goals. His usual tactic is to get his forwards to press high and have his defence sit low, leaving a farcical huge hole in the middle, which every Premier League manager exploits.

So if we restrict the issue to the present day (ie 303AC) we have the rise of the Faith Militant, imprisoning, torturing, humiliating women for perceived sexual transgressions. Tolerant?

Yes, in their guise as Andal invaders with 7-point stars etched by knives on their foreheads, burning weirwoods and slaughtering Children. Once the Andal race had settled down and started to build civilization, the religion institutionalised. But it had/has its intolerant wing, currently to the fore in the form of the Faith Militant.

I'd like to add an important detail to the R'hllor religion in Essos. In another very lively thread, there's been debate about slavery. It's worth noting that as an Essosi religion, it fully accepts slavery. 'Melony, Lot 7' was purchased as a child slave to serve the religion. They buy temple prostitutes and soldiers. It's interesting that they know Daenerys has an agenda to end slavery, an institution they depend on as much as the cities, yet they decide to co-opt her. I think Dany is going to wise up to this and be faced with this question - 'Do I accept their much-needed support for conquering and holding Westeros, or do I stand up to their pro-slavery stance?' Given the religion is excessively intolerant and sees everything is such black-and-white terms, only one side can compromise. Stannis didn't believe in the religion at first (and maybe never has) but saw the personal benefits of going along with Melissandra's agenda. Will Dany do similar? I don't think she will, but it will be a key issue in the next book. Ultimately, I think the religion is deluded and dangerous. Tyrion worked that out and led fAegon away from hooking up with them. Dany will be much more involved until she sees through it. I'm not so sure unDead Jon will wise up to Melissandra.

I was building up to give a reasoned argument, but then you finished with a gratuitous point about 'gay-bashing', which I don't see as in any way relevant. If that's your pre-emptive strike to anyone disagreeing with you, so be it. I won't return to defend myself. I was going to say that "Blackfyre" isn't one person - it's an idea. There are plenty of examples in history of a young and innocent person being used by anti-establishment nefarious actors to further their cause. So long as the symbol of their cause lives, so does the idea.

That's not how it works, astrophysically speaking. Debris could hit the Earth/Planetos and cause volcanic activity that leads to volcanic ash blocking out sunlight for years. I'm quite persuaded by David Lightbringers hypothesis that an asteroid hit the moon or maybe even shattered a second moon (far less likely in my opinion), causing debris to hit the planet leading to all sorts of devastation such as the Breaking of the Arms, the fall of Essosian kingdoms and fragments of the asteroid in the form of oily black stone falling here and there. This led to the rise of the Bloodstone Emperor's reign. I do agree that over thousands of years of oral tradition timelines and details have become hopelessly muddled, and of course each local pre-scientific society centred the myth on themselves and made assumptions such as meteorites hurtling towards the planet were 'dragons' and something something sun, since dragons breathe fire and it sort of made sense. A kind of analogy is the global spread of universal flood myths from distant prehistoric times.

Jeez, the jam United have had this season

Casemiro showing the kids the way

4-3 last min ET. United have F***ed it!!! Oh FFS. What does the Forest chairman think about that????

We have a game! (for 15 minutes)

I don't think I've ever used a washing machine.

It's taken the better part of a week, but I've just finished Duncan Hubber's Notes from the Citadel. https://www.amazon.com/Notes-Citadel-Philosophy-Psychology-Song-ebook/dp/B0CQRG5QWP The author has a YouTube channel that gets virtually no clicks, and had a podcast presence on her many years ago. I'm very pleasantly impressed by both his erudition and accessibility in presenting deeper insights into ASOIAF.

Can't say that victory was deserved, but Chelsea only have themselves to blame. Spunk a billion quid and not buy a decent striker

City shocking at the back. Chelsea gonna rue missing all those chances.

Can't help thinking how when Boehly took over and went on his big dick rampage, Saudi Arabia came along and dug them out of a HUGE hole in massively overpaying for players they couldn't otherwise get rid of. And here they are, still effing up the finances!

^ Today I learned that the city of Amsterdam has only ONE professional football club

Quite a few YouTube videos came out when they news broke Dunk & Egg TV Series: BOTH LEAD ROLES OFFICIALLY CAST!!! (A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms)

Forgot about Villa. Let's get behind them!

A different flavour of 'badass' here, but at the end of the 'story so far', Cercei has defaulted on payments to the Iron Bank with dire consequences in order to divert funds into building a 'king great fleet of ships. The fleet has been built, just in time. And where is it? Aurane Waters has only gone and nicked it!

So who had West Ham as Britain's last remaining side in Europe on their bingo card? Shame to see all the clubs crash out, but at the same time, it salves that queasy feeling when seeing the Premier League with all its filthy lucre dominating every competition.

City completely dominating.... um, as they were last year.