kissdbyfire

And a fantastic playlist!

Israel overdoing a response? Impossible, would never ever happen. /s

Yes oh yes. No problem at all w/ any other critter, not at all afraid or bothered, but cockroaches... yyyyyyiiiiiikkkkkeeeeeeeessss! And in the non-critter department, sleeping with socks on. Eeeeeeewwwwwwwwwww!

Sure, if we were reading an altogether different story. I don't know about reputation, I know only my opinion and that is that their stuff is usually ridiculous tbh. Instead of finding possible clues to something and trying to work out a cogent theory, they seem to have ideas they find interesting and then try to shoehorn these ideas into the text. It obviously never fits, but I'm sure they have their share of fans.

Pasting from my first reply: All that said, we do get a little clue in ASoS and AWoIaF. In the former we learn that a black brother spoke during the feast at the Harrenhal tourney urging men to join, and in the latter we are told that Benjen took the plea to heart. Bold + italics above = verbatim. As to heirs, yes, Jon is a bastard. But if push comes to shove Ned would have done something about it if by that point he hadn't had more sons with Cat.

Yeah. Someone turned up a manuscript copy of ADwD after it had been pushed and it's full of handwritten notes by the editor and Martin. And there's a page where the editor, referring to Coldhands, asks if he is Benjen and Martin wrote in reply in all caps "NO". ETA: clarification: I think someone went to some library or something and this manuscript copy was there and they took photos or something along those lines. I don’t remember all details, it was a long time ago. But you can find these photos online quite easily.

And we now know for a fact Benjen = Coldhands can be crossed off the list of options. I think he's dead. Not dead and buried though, but dead and... digested as @sweetsunray proposed a few years back.

Perhaps it isn't so much that they look for unpleasant people but rather that the people who are willing to work there and engage in blatant lying, dog whistles, fear mongerimg and all the rest end up being the unpleasant types.

Also, the notion that Benjen resented Ned is ludicrous, there’s zero evidence for it. And even worse is the idea that Benjen manipulated Jon into joining to spite Ned. This is classic order of the green hand stuff.

Benjen was ~ 13/14 years old at the time of the Harrenhal tourney. It is entirely possible that a good speaker with stirring rhetoric about a noble cause yadda yadda yadda could very well impress a boy of 13 to the point that he thinks then that it is a noble and worthy cause. Now, it’s not said anywhere that he decided then and there he was going to join, only that the recruiter made a positive impression on him. And then later, given things he might have known or actions he might have taken and seeing how it all turned out, including but not limited to the deaths of Rickard and Brandon… well, I think it makes perfect sense that he might see joining as a form of deserved exile while also thinking that at least it’s a worthy cause. I’d be surprised if Ned had sent him and Martin never included a single line pointing to that. If we look at Benjen’s convo with Jon during the feast at Winterfell, the strong impression there is that he decided to join, not that Ned made him join. Also, yes, their father and older brother had died, but Ned came home married and with two sons or an heir and a spare. And Benjen could have been the KotLT for all I know. In fact, other than Lyanna he is the only other credible possibility.

I saw the cnn legal analyst (Honig?) talking about that last night. He said that usually lawyers aren’t picked but that in this case the factors were a) so many people saying right off the bat they didn’t think they could be impartial and b) “NY has a lot of lawyers”. I can see the former being true but not sure if he was serious about the latter or just being cheeky.

- Patritotism! - but not really if it's just ultranatíonalism w/ everything that it entails. - Freedom! - but not really when it's only for some and the opposite for 'others'. And of course, "save the children!" - but truly not at all when it's both an excuse and a way of forcing children to be what some expect them to be and not at all about really saving anyone since there are actual millions of children that do need saving - from hunger, from disease, from war - all over the world and we are doing fuck all to save them, and this applies to the "save the children" crowd more than anyone else.

Are you sure whatever Mel or Euron did achieved what they expected?

If sacrifices are to work at all, instead of being some type of red herring where characters believe a sacrifice is necessary and goes on to do atrocious acts only to have nothing come of it or have an unexpected and undesirable outcome, then it will be only a willing self-sacrifice. Otherwise it just becomes a free for all where every important player is sacrificing people left and right to achieve whatever end, regardless of said end being “good” or not.

It makes sense that this was proposed by order of the green hand since it reads more like having an idea one finds cool or interesting and then twisting everything to make it fit and then calling it a theory. Martin has left some questions about Benjen joining the NW unanswered on purpose. IMO because yes, revealing everything would also reveal details of other plots that he doesn’t want to reveal yet. All that said, we do get a little clue in ASoS and AWoIaF. In the former we learn that a black brother spoke during the feast at the Harrenhal tourney urging men to join, and in the latter we are told that Benjen took the plea to heart.