Paulo Seabra

A while back I was taking a class on something or other, and at one point we had to do some presentations about personal character traits. In my presentation I wanted to bring up two or three of them, and subsequently confront them with more or less their respective opposites. One of those traits was humility, and I wanted to confront it with its polar opposite, which I consider to be arrogance. And what I came to realize is that either humility and arrogance can indeed be pretty much the same thing, or alternatively it's just that extreme humility can at times become virtually indistinguishable from plain old arrogance... In order to illustrate this for the presentation I immediately thought of Jon Snow of all people, a fella known for being virtuous and humble, but perhaps to the point of a stubbornness that borders on arrogance or even momentary blindness, as he followed the moral example of his adoptive father who was likewise virtuous and humble, even unto death... Whether or ...

For a long time now I've been fascinated by George R. R. Martin and his epic creation. However, it wasn't always so. I watched the first season of Game of Thrones in late 2012 when it was relatively unknown, at least compared to how it would eventually become, and while I found it interesting, though I didn't quite get it and made the worst predictions ever, I didn't have the thirst to continue on through the second season. Later on though, in the summer of 2014, I went back, now with four seasons available, and got immediately quite hooked. Nowadays I have seen the show at least thrice, and the first four seasons two more times, and the first season by itself like two or three extra times on top of that. I also read the books once, currently rereading them, and I've listened to George in interviews countless other times... And in all those times I can never tell where my feelings for this story lie, because at times I rather dislike some of its elements, while oth...

People who love one of these stories tend to either really love, or at times really hate, the other. I guess it's just one of those sports teams kind of thing. Anecdotally, I'd say that there are more fans of Berserk who delved into A Song of Ice and Fire rather than the other way around, perhaps because the former, while universally beloved amongst manga fans, didn't quite achieve the same level of international fame throughout its ongoing run and adaptations, whereas Game of Thrones was a colossal hit. In any case, and being a fan of both, the comparisons between them got me thinking, and when going through the main themes within each story, I've found quite a few similarities which, if anything, are fun to point out. Before even getting into the stories themselves we can find some interesting meta stuff in that both stories began quite a while ago, Berserk in 1989 and Ice and Fire in 1996, both born into a certain medium, manga and novels respectively, but they...

You heard it all by now – Game of Thrones sucked. Everyone and their aunt-girlfriend has talked about it. I won't go into too much detail about it but suffice it to say that I agree with the majority opinions, namely that the show was rushed, that every ounce of logic went out the window so as to give way to cool shots, that characters stopped making any sense, that everything the show was built on was totally forgotten, such as the political intrigue, the house allegiances, old oaths and rivalries, all that and then some. On a positive note, the dragon CGI was an ace. But was it enough to save the show? No, not really. Cool vistas, even very cool ones, only get you so far. If the story isn't any good then the charm of the visuals just wanes with each subsequent viewing. For example, as a huge fan of the first four seasons, I still often find myself rewatching random dialogue scenes from those episodes, just for the smart characters and the political complexity. But on my seco...