Just Sayin'

Lyanna Stark I saw the new trailer for the new season of Game of Thrones the other day (the best thing about spring is the new seasons of TV shows), and it got me thinking about the origins of A Song of Ice and Fire . If you only watch Game of Thrones and haven't read the A Song of Ice and Fire books, you're missing a HUGE chunk of the plot. There's a huge pre-story that informs the action of the show in monumental ways, and all that begins and ends with Lyanna Stark -- the single most important character that never appears in any of the books or the TV show. In case you're unfamiliar with the pre-history of A Song of Ice and Fire , Lyanna Stark is the younger sister of Ned Stark. Before the start of A Game of Thrones she was 'kidnapped' by Rhaegar Targaryen and taken to the Tower of Joy, causing the start of Robert's Rebellion. She late dies at the Tower of Joy. I say 'kidnapped' because everything that's insinuated about Lyanna indi...

For an English major, I'm remarkably chill about grammar. I've blogged about this before. I don't really care about spelling and who and whom and things like that, but one thing I really don't care about is subject verb agreement. Lemme explain what I mean: as a chill English major, I feel it is my sworn duty to address the gender neutral pronoun issue in the English language. In case you're unfamiliar with the gender neutral pronoun debacle, it comes down to this: the burrito eater must realize that they will become a burrito . Did you see anything wrong with that sentence? If no, congratulations: you have successfully internalized the descriptive trend towards gender neutral pronouns in English.  If you're a prescriptivist, this makes your brain EXPLODE. Someone with a more prescriptive attitude towards grammar would probably tell you that this sentence is incorrect because "eater" is singular whereas "they" is plural. Technically, the...