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The Main Conflict in the Story


300 H&H Magnum

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Please check out the discussion below to read our discussion on pivotal characters if you are curious:

http://asoiaf.westeros.org/index.php?/topic/145503-pivotal-characters-and-choice/

The main ideas presented in those discussions as well as the previous discussions referenced in that topic are:

  1. The Cup of Ice and Cup of Fire are the weirwood paste and shade of the evening, respectively.  They impart knowledge to the people those who partake of the cup.
  2. Daenerys and Bran are the parallel characters.  Jon is not Dany's parallel.
  3. Daenerys and Bran are the main pivotal characters whose choices will determine the fate of many.
  4. Jon already played his pivotal role.  He chose Arya over the realm he was sworn to protect. 
  5. R + L, whoever that child maybe and if the child actually lived, is not destined for good things.  The union of ice and fire has brought nothing but disaster so far. 
  6. The main conflict in the story will take place in the heart but the overall fight will be between fire and ice.
  7. Ice wants to enslave.  It represents hive mind, warging, and skin changing.  Fire wants to stop slavery.  See how they oppose?
  8. Fire and ice are necessary just as night and day are.  They will not annihilate nor destroy each other. 
  9. The naked woman sprawled on the floor in the HotU is literally a woman being used and consumed by the little men, who are related to the CotF.
  10. The Children played the same trick on Bran as Manderly did to the Freys and the Boltons.  Both were made to eat their friend(s).  Everything  is the opposite on the fire side  in the farmer making false claims about Drogon eating his child.  Bones prove nothing in this case with fire.  Bones prove the Children's blood thirsty tree worship in the ice side from the looks of the bones in that cave.
  11. The wildlings in the north are fighting to keep from losing their freedom to the iron throne as they see it.  The masters are fighting to keep from losing control of what they see as their human property to the owner of the iron throne.   Both wildlings and masters are using guerilla tactics, both are bad. 

In my opinion, fire and ice will conflict.  What Rhaegar and Lyanna did and what they might have produced is not good for the realm.  I can see the Starks siding with the WW against the realm.

 

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It's not about fire vs. ice.  

The heart of fire is ice; the heart of ice is fire.  They are indivisible as the whorl of yin and yang.  If you would sacrifice one, you would sacrifice the other, and with it the world.

 

The main conflict in the story is between:

(a) making a sacrifice of others (for oneself)

vs.

(b) making a sacrifice for others (of oneself)

 

I'm not the first to have had this idea:  it was previously expressed in these terms by @TheSeason and @Kingmonkey

I know Jon will decide (b), always and without fail.  I know Euron will choose (a) -- don't be stupid!

I am more interested in what Bran and Dany are going to choose.  Because, yes, they are the main conflicted characters, morally, if not the main conflict.

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Though I agree with the point that Dany and Bran are the parallel characters. I'm not so sure about your assertion that ice enslaves. Lest we forget that the Valyrians (i.e. Fire) took and used more slaves than any civilization. It's only Dany that seems to have a problem with slavery. And that's only because of the influence of her unique life experiences. Fire seems to be more about enslaving than Ice. Ice does represent hive mindedness and warging however within the right context, one could view both of those things as a source of liberation. When one is connected to the weir woods, they are now free to go anywhere and see anything throughout time. Warging in the same respect has been described as a symbiotic relationship between animal and man. The warg doesn't enslave it's animal, it shares its mind, with the warg becoming more like the animal and the animal more like the warg. 

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Ice is not enslavement, ice is preservation. Fire is consumption. Dany will wish to sacrifice their child, burn it, consumption. Jon will choose to save their child, preservation.

Ice and fire are extremes and in their extremes life can not exist. Total ice, a sunless earth for example, and everything is preserved but there is no life. Total fire, the sun for instance, everything is consumed and nothing lives. Life exists in between the two extremes.

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15 minutes ago, chrisdaw said:

Ice is not enslavement, ice is preservation. Fire is consumption. Dany will wish to sacrifice their child, burn it, consumption. Jon will choose to save their child, preservation.

True. 

8 minutes ago, The Doctor's Consort said:

Another Stark/Jon hate thread. How original *yawning*

Yup. *bigger yawn*

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10 hours ago, 300 H&H Magnum said:

The Children played the same trick on Bran as Manderly did to the Freys and the Boltons.  Both were made to eat their friend(s).

Didn't Ran pooh-pooh the Jojenpaste theory?

Also no.5: there's nothing icy about Lyanna. That girl's all fire.

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1 hour ago, Hodor the Articulate said:

...

Also no.5: there's nothing icy about Lyanna. That girl's all fire.

Frost's Fire and Ice which GRRM once mentioned:

Quote

 

Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I’ve tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To say that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice.

 

Both elements are destructive. Put crudely, fire is desire, ice is hate. Characters, though, can't be reduced this way. Starks are loving, warm with one another--hardly full of hate (ice). Targs come in all types--hardly "fire." Maester Aemon and Aerys are both Targs.

As for what this novel is "about," and why Starks and Targs can't be reduced to types, GRRM has Davos express it: People are "grey," not ice or fire. People are valuable; saving a single life is "everything." That's the point of endless forays through the Riverlands, the suffering of innocents, "broken men," "revenge is bad."

As for the child of ice and fire: I think it has nothing to do with ice or fire. Like Starks&Targs, Jon can't be reduced to ice/fire/some combo thereof. However, his parentage might represent the possibility of alliance between peoples, the North, the wildlings, and the rest of Westeros vs Walkers (ice, hate) who are coming for everyone. As such, I think he is a symbol of healing, of union, rather than of hate and division.

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1 hour ago, kimim said:

As such, I think he is a symbol of healing, of union, rather than of hate and division.

Attacking the Boltons is not an act of healing and unity.  It's an act of doing something destructive to save a loved one even if it hurts many people.  

13 hours ago, 300 H&H Magnum said:

The Cup of Ice and Cup of Fire are the weirwood paste and shade of the evening, respectively.  They impart knowledge to the people those who partake of the cup.

They also represent temptation.  Daenerys wants knowledge to take back her family's kingdom.  Bran wants to "fly" or more specifically, he wants to be whole so he can be what he once was, bring his family back,  and take back Winterfell.  

Remember, the House of the Undying took place before Astapor.  Dany at this time wanted information she can use to obtain the resources necessary to take back her kingdom.  Astapor was eye-opening and made Dany change her immediate priorities to the liberation of the slaves.  

Bran's started off wanting to get his legs back and then being run out of his castle by the Ironborn.  He learned about girls during his journey and I believe what he wants is a little more complicated now.  Yeah he wants to be whole.  He wants his family back.  He wants his castle back.  He also wants Meera.  

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10 minutes ago, Widowmaker 811 said:

Attacking the Boltons is not an act of healing and unity.  It's an act of doing something destructive to save a loved one even if it hurts many people.  

They also represent temptation.  Daenerys wants knowledge to take back her family's kingdom.  Bran wants to "fly" or more specifically, he wants to be whole so he can be what he once was, bring his family back,  and take back Winterfell.  

Remember, the House of the Undying took place before Astapor.  Dany at this time wanted information she can use to obtain the resources necessary to take back her kingdom.  Astapor was eye-opening and made Dany change her immediate priorities to the liberation of the slaves.  

Bran's started off wanting to get his legs back and then being run out of his castle by the Ironborn.  He learned about girls during his journey and I believe what he wants is a little more complicated now.  Yeah he wants to be whole.  He wants his family back.  He wants his castle back.  He also wants Meera.  

As I said in that post, one of the themes is that humans are grey. They can't be easily categorized as pure good or evil, though I think there are exceptions: Cersei in Feast/Dance, slavers, Ramsay are near-total evil. Expecting Jon to be entirely good is unrealistic; he is, like most others, grey. Even if his move against Ramsay is wrong, that, alone, does not turn him dark. His decision to include the wildlings is right and practical. It's what Westeros must do in order to stand against the Walkers, and it's what his parentage represents (imo).

As for Bran and Dany, I agree they both realize the stakes are higher than Winterfell or the Iron Throne, but they're not the only ones who do. Davos got that back in Storm. Mel has known it all along. Jon got it in Clash, which is why he wants the wildlings south of the Wall, putting himself at odds with the traditionalist crows who see wildlings as the enemy. That Jon gets this, of course, does not mean he will be entirely consistent, entirely "good." There's no such figure in the novels.

 

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15 hours ago, chrisdaw said:

Ice and fire are extremes and in their extremes life can not exist. Total ice, a sunless earth for example, and everything is preserved but there is no life. Total fire, the sun for instance, everything is consumed and nothing lives. Life exists in between the two extremes.

:agree: GRRM has said many times that he's not interested in the simplicity of good vs. evil, rather in shades of grey. In picking fire & ice as his dipole, he's following a tradition of shades-of-grey fantasy that owes a lot to Michael Moorcock and his "new wave" movement. 

The dipole in Moorcock's Eternal Champion series was Law vs Chaos. In small doses, it seems as if Law is good, and Chaos evil -- law brings peace while chaos brings war. However a victory for Law would mean an unchanging universe of lifeless order, whilst a victory for Chaos would mean a universe of formless confusion. Neither works out well. This idea has been a common one in sci fi & fantasy since. 

Varys and Littlefinger seem to be pretty much direct representatives of Law & Chaos, but the same balance is seen in fire and ice. If either one gets too powerful, humanity is screwed. You really don't want White Walkers OR dragons, they're both bad news. 

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I'm not sure that fire wants to stop slavery at all. Think of the Valyrians - they enslaved people to feed them to their mines (either metaphorically or literally as sacrifice to produce more dragons).

As for what's more dangerous, fire or ice... If you freeze the world, it might thaw and nature could reassert itself (the Earth has had a couple of "snowball Earth" moments in its geological history). Life can survive in the oceans of a "frozen" world. A burnt world is just dead permanently - oceans evaporate (think Mars). Now ideally you wouldn't want one or the other, but in considering which posed the danger first, it seems more likely that human hubris and greed created dragons. The Long Night and the Others were a "last resort" cure for the threat that the original Dawn Age dragons posed. I don't think the First Men came to Westeros with only literal fire, I think they came with these dragons, and the Long Night is what killed the dragons and set the FM back to basic civilisation level.

In terms of the hive mind... I don't think the CotF are "good" for humans (the old trope of the gentle wise green people who just want to help), but that's only because humans are so bad for the world. It may be that the CotF do want to restore balance, but see humans as the real threat, and the dragons as the ultimate expression of that threat. CotF take the long view: a cataclysm like the Long Night is bad, but the world recovers. It might not recover if humans breed enough dragons and start having fire wars all over the place (nuclear war basically).

As for Jon, Dany and Bran. I agree that Dany and Bran are the "opposites", like Bloodraven and Quaithe/Shiera are (as the puppet masters who pull the strings). Jon will face the choice of having to stop them both: stop Dany's dragons because they shouldn't exist, and then stop Bran from bringing about another Long Night, convinced that humans and fire are the real danger. I also don't think Jon will succeed, and there will be another Long Night. Always thinking back to the worn out line that the human heart in conflict with itself is the only thing worth writing about: it applies to all major characters. It's about the awful choices they face, where there's no good outcome, and wanting to do good but there being awful consequences. The ultimate one would be for Jon to have to choose between Dany and Bran, but then it turning out that both need to be destroyed. Not because they're consciously evil (that would be too easy of a decision, where's the inner conflict there?), but because their good intentions, what they believed to be right, would cause them to destroy the world, or make it unliveable for humans.

I'm very cautious about any predestination, like saying that a child born of a union of ice and fire is destined to do this or that. Ultimately Jon having both ice/CotF blood (through the Starks) and fire/dragon blood (through the Targs) gives him certain abilities that he MIGHT use to stop Dany and/or Bran. Like the ability to warg his wolf when he dies so that when he's resurrected, his soul is intact - thereby remaining himself, but essentially undead or unkillable and resistant to freezing. He could then be in a position to ride a dragon (undead or otherwise) and fight both dragons and the Others, who couldn't harm him. And I think that perhaps he will need to do both, successively: stop Dany, and then try to stop Bran from giving into the urge to destroy all humans because of their fire/dragon-based transgressions through another Long Night.

That is of course what Jon MIGHT do, but it's not his destiny. There is no destiny. He could choose Dany over "the realm" (meaning over the fate of the world), or he maybe won't be able to bring himself to kill Bran. His core conflict of love and duty is what defines him, he has been forging himself in difficult choices involving those two things. I don't think that process of forging is over, because it never is, for anyone. 

I also don't generally think that any of the main characters will slip into "evil mode" where their "true" evil nature is finally revealed, "muahahaha gotcha" style - again it all smells like predestination and one-dimensional evil-by-intent, which is cheap. Some of them will be faced with hideous choices and bitter realisations that wanting to do good can bring about a lot of harm, or the exact opposite of what they wanted to do. That inner conflict without the possibility of a happy resolution or even a resolution that isn't terrible, the deeply human side of things is what I think the whole story is really about, that's the song of ice and fire.

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4 hours ago, Lord_Pepsi_Cupps said:

I'm not sure that fire wants to stop slavery at all. Think of the Valyrians - they enslaved people to feed them to their mines (either metaphorically or literally as sacrifice to produce more dragons).

Maybe the Valyrians have taken a lesson from real world history about freedom and work? 

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On 26/04/2017 at 3:20 AM, 300 H&H Magnum said:

In my opinion, fire and ice will conflict.  What Rhaegar and Lyanna did and what they might have produced is not good for the realm.  I can see the Starks siding with the WW against the realm.

Hahahahaha no. There is literally nothing to indicate that any surviving Stark would side with the Others. Jon is trying his damnedest to fight them and the Starks were not only the ones to stop them the first time and build the Wall to keep them out, they then manned that wall for thousands of years for the same purpose.

There are other elements of your post that I disagree with; mainly that Jon has brought nothing but harm and that the wildlings are 'bad'; but overall the entire post just seems to be stretching the facts a bit.

Also....

On 26/04/2017 at 3:20 AM, 300 H&H Magnum said:

Everything  is the opposite on the fire side  in the farmer making false claims about Drogon eating his child. 

Do we have anything to prove that the farmer faked this? Because I can't recall catching anything about this being fake.

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8 minutes ago, Adam Yozza said:

Do we have anything to prove that the farmer faked this? Because I can't recall catching anything about this being fake.

There are no text proofs to point at this. Heck even Hazzea's father wanted to blemish Drogon's reputation he would had done it in front of others, he didn't. Even Dany herself admits that it was Drogon only Shavepate thinks that he wasn't the one to blame.

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9 hours ago, Durran Durrandon said:

There is ultimately no conflict between ice and fire, between the Drowned and Storm Gods. The conflict is a delusion of the priest casts.

 

 

The story will end with the most of everyone dead, but the seasons in balance.

The story will end in a second Long Night with the destruction of the second moon. Planetos only had balanced seasons when there were two moons, and has been slowly dying ever since. Once that balance was disturbed, there's no going back. With the second moon gone, seasons will eventually stop changing and Planetos will dry up completely and end up like Mars. Some people will survive for a time, maybe build up another civilisation lasting a couple thousand years, and that will be that.

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3 hours ago, Lord_Pepsi_Cupps said:

The story will end in a second Long Night with the destruction of the second moon. Planetos only had balanced seasons when there were two moons, and has been slowly dying ever since. Once that balance was disturbed, there's no going back. With the second moon gone, seasons will eventually stop changing and Planetos will dry up completely and end up like Mars. Some people will survive for a time, maybe build up another civilisation lasting a couple thousand years, and that will be that.

How is that bitter sweet? That's just bitter! I was promised bitter sweet!!!

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1 hour ago, Durran Durrandon said:

How is that bitter sweet? That's just bitter! I was promised bitter sweet!!!

NO SWEET FOR YOU!!

I do think it's bitter sweet - the realisation that there's no grand plan or destiny, just lives to be lived while they can be lived.

For example, someone like Sansa might survive to become the leader of a remnant population, live out her natural life and see some semblance of normalisation. Generations might still live and even prosper, as the Long Night 2.0 lifts and Planetos keeps a sufficient "wobble" on its axis (it wouldn't immediately stop tilting when the second moon goes, momentum would keep for a while) to have occasional cooler seasons to stave off the drying. But then eventually it's kaput. It's bitter sweet in that in the time remaining, lives can still be lived, stories can still be told. And no world is eternal - it's got to end some time, right?

"In the long run, we're all dead."

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11 hours ago, Lord_Pepsi_Cupps said:

NO SWEET FOR YOU!!

I do think it's bitter sweet - the realisation that there's no grand plan or destiny, just lives to be lived while they can be lived.

For example, someone like Sansa might survive to become the leader of a remnant population, live out her natural life and see some semblance of normalisation. Generations might still live and even prosper, as the Long Night 2.0 lifts and Planetos keeps a sufficient "wobble" on its axis (it wouldn't immediately stop tilting when the second moon goes, momentum would keep for a while) to have occasional cooler seasons to stave off the drying. But then eventually it's kaput. It's bitter sweet in that in the time remaining, lives can still be lived, stories can still be told. And no world is eternal - it's got to end some time, right?

"In the long run, we're all dead."

Okay, I grok your Zen explanation on how this qualifies as bitter sweet, It's a legit philosophical argument.

I still disagree about the second moon being destroyed as a cause of Long Night 2.0 It's pretty well established that Long Night 2.0 is already beginning at the start of the story, without the second moon being destroyed. Yes, I get all the symbolic arguments. I just don't think it matches the evidence we see in the story.

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