There's a Legit Error in A Feast For Crows

And this isn't one of those mistakes in character, like when Martin forgets an eye colour, or an unreliable narrator like Sansa's kiss - this one is just a mistake.

Here's the relevant text, from the second-last Cersei chapter, from the torture of the Blue Bard (real name Wat)-
"His father had been a chandler and Wat was raised to that trade, but as a boy he found he had more skill at making lutes than barrels."

A chandler doesn't make barrels - chandlers make candles. It's coopers who are responsible for barrels.  I can't imagine any way this could be a code or something otherwise meaningful, so it looks like it's just something which slipped by Martin and his various editors.

Here's something that bothered me in A Feast For Crows!

So there's this part in A Feast For Crows that really bothers me. Which is doubly upsetting because that's my favourite book in the series - my favorite chapters are Theon's from A Dance With Dragons, but looked on as an overall work, I put FFC at the top.

One thing really bugs me about it, though - there's a line that takes me right out of the book. It's not one of the jokes or references aimed at one of George's friends - I learned about those long after reading the books, and they're largely so subtle that they don't bother me at all. No, this quibble is about language.

Here's the relevant line from the text-

"He brought them the gold they asked for, but they hung him anyway."

"Hanged, Ami. Your father was not a tapestry."

It's an old joke, it's funny and it works, but it still bothers me. Westeros is a fake, continent-sized version of England in an alternate version of Earth (or a terraformed planet in the distant future, depending on who you ask), and as I'm reading the books, I enjoy the various strange flights of language and zoology. They call forts 'holdfasts', and there are still Direwolves and Aurochs wandering around. "Sir" is spelled "Ser".

When Martin has gone through such trouble to come up with so many little ways to reinforce the idea that his world is strange and different and unique, to have one criticize someone's grammar in such a modern way is just puzzling. I can accept dragons and ice vampires with zombie henchmen, and time traveling trees, and psychic wolves, but for some reason, the idea that the people of Westeros, speaking in their common tongue, have the exact same weird rule about using different forms of the past tense of 'hang' to describe people and things is a step too far, and pulls me right out of the book.

Next time: A legit error!

Tales From the Golden Age of Comics!

It's another new feature here at Castle Vardulon! Check out the video below in which I take viewers on a journey through one of my favorite Golden Age Comic Stories!

New Video Project! The Next Day: The Boy (2016)

That's right, 'The Next Day' is back - in video form! The stars of TheAvod bring the aftermath of prominent horror films to life, or at least audio!

The first installment is 2016's 'The Boy'!

Simpsons Math!

I'll present one of my favorite moments of Grandpa Simpsons nonsense, from the Critic Crossover Episode "A Star is Burns":



I'd never given the line much thought beyond what a perfect example of old-timey gibberish it is. Then, listening to the radio one day, I heard reference to a Hog's Head being a size of barrel used in liquor production. Naturally this meant it was time for some calculations!

I couldn't find an official exact conversion, but it seems that the hog's head is about 60 gallons, While a Rod is a little over 16 feet.

This means that, the way Grandpa likes it, his car uses up 60 gallons of gasoline to travel 640 feet. This works out to 480 gallons of gasoline per mile traveled, or 0.002 MPG.

Does Grandpa drive a cruise ship? Or some kind of rocket?

Programme 37 (5-Novemeber-77)

Cover:

Now this is the kind of Supercover I like. Crazy, inventive, a promising an unexpected story inside. Is it the future? Is it space? Both? Only time will tell!