Heresy 200 The bicentennial edition

[MaesterSam]

5 hours ago, JNR said:

It's quite plain to me what GRRM had in mind in talking about dark lords.  

As usual, his criticism is informed by the post-Tolkien, pre-ASOIAF tropes of popular fantasy as established in the seventies and eighties. I'm talking about the work of writers like Terry Brooks, David Eddings, Robert Jordan, etc.

Virtually all the best-selling fantasy series prior to ASOIAF had such dark lords.  They were Sauron variations: all-powerful instruments of evil, overlords of trusted evil minions (like the Nazgul) and hosts of evil (like the orcs), almost invariably collectively described as "the shadow."  Another instance would be Voldemort and another would be Palpatine from Star Wars.  

The books simply do not have such a figure except in the imagination of Melisandre and other red-faith zealots.  This is not, IMO, something that's likely to change, because it's a deliberate design choice by GRRM as an expression of his contempt for such super-cliches.  

Notice that there is no reference to such an entity in the 1993 summary, either.  There we find Popsicles, another villain type known as the neverborn which he apparently scrapped because it was a shameless "borrowing" from Robert Jordan, the wights, and that's that.  I don't think it even occurred to him at any point that there would be a single overlord as the architect of Popsicle strategy or behavior.  

If, after he sold the rights to another organization, that organization's show-runners made such a choice?  Well, that is not something he would have appreciated much IMO.  I picture quite a bit of eye-rolling on his part.

You can also see GRRM taking the same dismissive tone he takes in the statement "We don't need any more Dark Lords" any time he talks about other failings of pre-ASOIAF fantasy.  Examples include:

• Protagonist heroes, fated to save the world, who are immune from harm due to their destiny.  Think Luke Skywalker, Harry Potter, etc.  ASOIAF has no protagonist at all.  Certainly Jon Snow is not the protagonist or hero of the series, but only a major POV character (and his POV chapters don't even exist in one of the published books).

• Saucy smallfolk who talk back to, or otherwise defy, royalty.  GRRM's favorite phrase to describe what would realistically happen to such people is "tongues would be ripped out with hot pincers."

Don't forget the hidden prince (a sub-category of the protagonist hero). This character starts out as the apparently lowborn misfit with a mysterious/unknown backstory. He unwillingly gets involved in a plan to save the world, usually bringing his friends along, and it later it turns out he was the rightful king all along. 

 

[Black Crow]

I'm still minded to look at Jon as a possible King of Winter rather than Bran, especially if he's dead or at least not alive, and I can't help but point out that if, as some would have us believe he is really the last best hope of House Targaryen, why would the Old Gods send him a a weirwood dog?

[Black Crow]

4 minutes ago, MaesterSam said:

Don't forget the hidden prince (a sub-category of the protagonist hero). This character starts out as the apparently lowborn misfit with a mysterious/unknown backstory. He unwillingly gets involved in a plan to save the world, usually bringing his friends along, and it later it turns out he was the rightful king all along. 

 

Ah, you mean Gendry? 

[Matthew.]

3 hours ago, LordBlakeney said:

I think you're absolutely right. It seems as though detractors of the show are criticizing an idea of the Others that isn't necessarily what the show is portraying. Rather unfairly, they ascribe motives and ideas to the Others in the show and then criticize those motives, but let's remember that we hardly know any more about the Others in the show than we do in the books. 

This is exactly right, which is why I keep repeatedly raising the challenge for someone to articulate why the show Others are behaving "more evilly" than the book Others.

The truth is that they aren't--in both mediums, the Others and their hordes of slain have all the superficial signs of an evil army.

The distinction being made is that, in the absence of motives being revealed, people are imagining them: the showrunners are bad, so their Others have these boring motives that we have imagined, and GRRM is good, so his Others will surely prove to have interesting motives.

I don't really disagree with that assumption, I disagree with the leap that there couldn't possibly be a parallel to the show's NK within the books--that just as GRRM's WWs are meant to be beautiful and nuanced in a way that the show's WWs are not, GRRM might have his own WW 'leader' that is nuanced in a way that the show's WW leader is not.
_______________

As an aside, and I don't even mean this as an argument or a criticism, but I do like what the dark lord discussion reveals about people as readers, and what they think constitutes a 'good' or 'bad' story.

The Others behave like absolute evil, but they're still well written if their master is some human or CotF hidden behind the scenes.
The Others behave like absolute evil, but they're still well written so long as they have no leader among their ranks, if they have no master at all.

The latter I find especially curious, because it suggests that GRRM has avoided the cliché on a technicality: the Others all individually behave like Dark Lords, but it's fine, because none of them dishes out the orders; they're Dark Egalitarians.

[LordBlakeney]

8 hours ago, JNR said:

ASOIAF has no protagonist at all.  Certainly Jon Snow is not the protagonist or hero of the series, but only a major POV character (and his POV chapters don't even exist in one of the published books).

I think a lot of your theories are going to be proven off-base. A story with no protagonists, no antagonists, and an author who just rolls his eyes at everything? What a piece of garbage. You must have a very intimate relationship with Martin, and a very high tolerance for time-wasting, to come to these conclusions.

2 hours ago, Matthew. said:

The distinction being made is that, in the absence of motives being revealed, people are imagining them: the showrunners are bad, so their Others have these boring motives that we have imagined, and GRRM is good, so his Others will surely prove to have interesting motives.

Exactly this. This is a story about good vs evil. It's building to something. Don't assume you have all the answers yet, there's still a lot to come.

I just wish I could see @JNR's face when GRRM publishes Jon Targaryen slaying the dark lord the Night King, taking the Iron Throne with Dany as his wife and Tyrion as his Hand, and setting the realm to rights. (facetious, but call me old fashioned, I do believe Good is going to beat Evil in these books)

[Mace Cooterian]

3 hours ago, LordBlakeney said:

I just wish I could see @JNR's face when GRRM publishes Jon Targaryen slaying the dark lord the Night King, taking the Iron Throne with Dany as his wife and Tyrion as his Hand, and setting the realm to rights. (facetious, but call me old fashioned, I do believe Good is going to beat Evil in these books)

Given that we are unlikely to see GRRM's next edition before the mummer's release this coming Sunday....all bets are speculative.  What a profound statement on my part.

I'm just dropping by before H200 closes up to offer....nothing.

[Matthew.]

9 hours ago, alienarea said:

And, going by the latest GRRM Quote, Jon is dead but moves. Fits the acting.

On a serious note, that was surprisingly direct for GRRM. Jon will never truly be alive again, and it certainly doesn't seem as though he can have any sort of happy ending as a shambling corpse with no heartbeat.

I also wonder whether or not we can conclude anything about Mel from that interview--at one point in her POV, "black, smoking" blood runs down her thigh. Is it black and smoking because she's a fire wight, filled with congealed blood...or does the fact that her blood can still 'run' contradict theories that she's a fire wight?

[Black Crow]

38 minutes ago, Matthew. said:

On a serious note, that was surprisingly direct for GRRM. Jon will never truly be alive again, and it certainly doesn't seem as though he can have any sort of happy ending as a shambling corpse with no heartbeat.

I also wonder whether or not we can conclude anything about Mel from that interview--at one point in her POV, "black, smoking" blood runs down her thigh. Is it black and smoking because she's a fire wight, filled with congealed blood...or does the fact that her blood can still 'run' contradict theories that she's a fire wight?

Rather depends on how we define blood.

Being human, I have some bright red O pos running through my veins. Danaerys little pets on the other hand, being fire made flesh have something very different, black and smoking, running through theirs, just like our Mel

As to Jon, I think we've always had to contend with another Coldhands - Beric may be a touch extreme in that its emphasised how his humanity has been eroded less by the process than by the frequency. In either event a wight-like shambling doesn't seem in prospect, but whatever his condition it also erodes not only his humanity but the perceived importance of his supposedly being the true heir to the Targaryen throne

[LynnS]

2 hours ago, Black Crow said:

Rather depends on how we define blood.

Being human, I have some bright red O pos running through my veins. Danaerys little pets on the other hand, being fire made flesh have something very different, black and smoking, running through theirs, just like our Mel

As to Jon, I think we've always had to contend with another Coldhands - Beric may be a touch extreme in that its emphasised how his humanity has been eroded less by the process than by the frequency. In either event a wight-like shambling doesn't seem in prospect, but whatever his condition it also erodes not only his humanity but the perceived importance of his supposedly being the true heir to the Targaryen throne

Well, what is dead can never die; doesn't seem to be entirely true in Beric's case.  I'm not quite sure how it is that he is killed over and over again, requiring repeated resurrections.  Or why Coldhands appears to be more concerned about meeting up with white walkers than wights.

Wights can't be killed in the manner of Beric even if you cut off their appendages. Only fire will do the trick.

So if we compare Beric to a White Walker; both can be vanquished if you stick them with the appropriate weapon. As Syrio Forell says, men are made of water; if you poke them, the water spills out as in the case of WW.  With Beric, a castle forged sword will do; but he is clearly not made of water...  he's more like a blow-up doll that deflates when poked; if you will excuse the clumsy comparison.

I think what is foreshadowed is that Lady Stoneheart can also be dispatched in the same manner as Beric. 

In either case; it's the firey or icy breath that resurrects.  The killing cold has the advantage, since ice preserves while fire consumes so I doubt we'll see an army of fire wights to match the ice wights. 

I do see similarities between Beric and Coldhands.  I doubt either has any kind of blood running through their veins like Melisandre or the White Walkers.

What is distinct about Melisandre is that she has an unbroken connection to the cup of fire through her ruby and she doesn't seem to be fully transformed.  She gets tired and thirsty and she tolerates the pain of 'swallowing' the fire. 

I think it curious that she tells Jon that there is power in him and in the Wall if only he would use it.  I would also hazard a guess that Mel's firey sacrifices have more to do with keeping her alive or increasing her power than they do with honoring R'hllor.      

[Melifeather]

In that latest interview with GRRM he referred to Beric as a wight animated by fire:

And Jon Snow, too, is drained by the experience of coming back from the dead on the show. 

Right. And poor Beric Dondarrion, who was set up as the foreshadowing of all this, every time he’s a little less Beric. His memories are fading, he’s got all these scars, he’s becoming more and more physically hideous, because he’s not a living human being anymore. His heart isn’t beating, his blood isn’t flowing in his veins, he’s a wight, but a wight animated by fire instead of by ice, now we’re getting back to the whole fire and ice thing.

In case you missed it, I understood GRRM as saying Beric is foreshadowing for Jon.

And Catelyn:

In my version of the story, Catelyn Stark is re-imbued with a kind of life and becomes this vengeful wight who galvanizes a group of people around her and is trying to exact her revenge on the riverlands.

So why didn't Othor and Jafer speak like Beric or communicate like Lady Stoneheart? They didn't seem to have as much control, but they do fit the descriptions as "vengeful".

[The Fattest Leech]

1 hour ago, Feather Crystal said:

In that latest interview with GRRM he referred to Beric as a wight animated by fire:

And Jon Snow, too, is drained by the experience of coming back from the dead on the show. 

Right. And poor Beric Dondarrion, who was set up as the foreshadowing of all this, every time he’s a little less Beric. His memories are fading, he’s got all these scars, he’s becoming more and more physically hideous, because he’s not a living human being anymore. His heart isn’t beating, his blood isn’t flowing in his veins, he’s a wight, but a wight animated by fire instead of by ice, now we’re getting back to the whole fire and ice thing.

In case you missed it, I understood GRRM as saying Beric is foreshadowing for Jon.

And Catelyn:

In my version of the story, Catelyn Stark is re-imbued with a kind of life and becomes this vengeful wight who galvanizes a group of people around her and is trying to exact her revenge on the riverlands.

So why didn't Othor and Jafer speak like Beric or communicate like Lady Stoneheart? They didn't seem to have as much control, but they do fit the descriptions as "vengeful".

I saw that interview. I read this as show only info, otherwise, George is spoiling his own books because Jon has only just been stabbed and we are supposed to still wonder what is happening (bookwise). And the show only has Mel there. No other options and no answers for the wights besides show Night King raising them. I guess I am now curious if other people think George was talking book info here. 

[ravenous reader]

6 hours ago, Matthew. said:

does the fact that her blood can still 'run' contradict theories that she's a fire wight?

No.  Beric's blood 'runs':

Quote

A Storm of Swords - Arya VI

"This cave is dark too," said the Hound, "but I'm the terror here. I hope your god's a sweet one, Dondarrion. You're going to meet him shortly."

Unsmiling, Lord Beric laid the edge of his longsword against the palm of his left hand, and drew it slowly down. Blood ran dark from the gash he made, and washed over the steel.

And then the sword took fire.

 

A Storm of Swords - Arya VI

Sandor Clegane jerked backward, still burning. He ripped the remnants of his shield off and flung them away with a curse, then rolled in the dirt to smother the fire running along his arm.

Lord Beric's knees folded slowly, as if for prayer. When his mouth opened only blood came out. The Hound's sword was still in him as he toppled face forward. The dirt drank his blood. Beneath the hollow hill there was no sound but the soft crackling of flames and the whimper the Hound made when he tried to rise. Arya could only think of Mycah and all the stupid prayers she'd prayed for the Hound to die. If there were gods, why didn't Lord Beric win? She knew the Hound was guilty.

 

4 hours ago, LynnS said:

I do see similarities between Beric and Coldhands.  I doubt either has any kind of blood running through their veins like Melisandre or the White Walkers.

Beric's blood also 'runs' -- see above.

[JNR]

20 hours ago, Matthew. said:

if the Others consider the NW their primary obstacle, then what we see unfolding might be a successful strategy to weaken the Watch and the Wall.

The best case for this IMO is the wights from AGOT.  They were clearly (going by eye color) wighted prior to being taken south, they played dead to get there, and then rose in the night to attack the LC; this is almost certainly not by accident.

So, yes, there's evidence of thought and planning at work there, of some sort.  There's also some knowledge of the Watch -- for instance, that they are led by an LC, whom it would be helpful to murder.

The extent to which this applies to the specific case of chopping down weirwoods to disable CotF greenseers remains ambiguous to me, though, because it's just not at all obvious to those outside the cave system that there's a greenseer there at all (or what a greenseer is, or how they're connected to weirwoods).  

None of the Watch, to this day, have a faint clue about any of that, despite having ranged the North for thousands of years.  Do the Popsicles know more?  It's hard to say.

[JNR]

17 hours ago, MaesterSam said:

Don't forget the hidden prince (a sub-category of the protagonist hero). This character starts out as the apparently lowborn misfit with a mysterious/unknown backstory. He unwillingly gets involved in a plan to save the world, usually bringing his friends along, and it later it turns out he was the rightful king all along. 

Well said.  It's been my opinion all along that this is the uber-trope GRRM wanted to dismantle more than any other, and that he took some pains to fool his reading audience into thinking he was, so far from dismantling it, implementing it.

I suspected Jon would be such a hidden prince almost immediately in AGOT.  It was perfectly obvious that he was the classic teen male who was in an awkward social situation (raised a bastard) with the mysterious background.  And when Ned and Bob had their crypts heart-to-heart, it was also obvious how Jon could turn out to be a hidden prince.  

So the whole idea that R+L=J is somehow subtle did not work for me, and I don't think it would work for anyone familiar with pre-ASOIAF fantasy (which much of GRRM's audience is not, because he's taken such a godawful amount of time to finish up).  I think GRRM confidently expected his audience to seek out such a hidden prince and, through an unholy brew of bloodyminded determination and cognitive dissonance, find a way to make him work in their theories despite all the weighty problems.

[MaesterSam]

8 hours ago, Matthew. said:

Sure, which is why I'm not going to give too much weight to the fact that the Others aren't destroying the heart trees--merely observing that it's the sort of thing that might turn out to be foreshadowing.

I've had mixed feelings about their capacity to strategize, as they've performed several actions that I believe could be read as demonstrating intellect: in attacking Royce's group (a nobleman's son, accompanied by two veterans) and allowing one veteran to escape, the Others have created a situation that was too troubling for Mormont to ignore, which is why the First Ranger is set to the job.

Subsequently, the First Ranger also goes missing, and his two companions are discovered, dead with blue eyes (playing possum?), one of whom later makes a beeline for Mormont in the dead of the night. All of this prompts the Great Ranging, taking a threadbare Night's Watch into the far north--where they're most vulnerable.

Finally, given the choice between the massive, tempting concentration of life that Mance's army must surely represent, the Others choose instead to attack the NW in force. IMO, the restraint the Others show with regards to Mance's army at least demonstrates that they don't mindlessly throw themselves at everything with warm blood.

Now, this could just be basic survival, if they don't believe they yet have the numbers to overwhelm Mance's army, but it could also be strategy--let Mance throw himself against the Wall and further weaken what's left of the Watch, then come in and resurrect what is left in their wake.

While I'm far from certain that all of this actually represents a pattern, it does strike me that, if the Others consider the NW their primary obstacle, then what we see unfolding might be a successful strategy to weaken the Watch and the Wall.

Ooooh I love it!!!! 

The fact that the Others appear to consider the NW their primary opponent (judging by the effort they have spent on it, as you explained so well) is evidence in itself that they possess intelligence. They don't just go after anything with hot blood in its veins; if they did, they would be gorging themselves on wildlings, and wouldn't look twice at the NW until their human supply ran out in the far North.  Instead, they are clearly aware that the Wall and NW are standing between them and most of Westeros, and they are working on trying to find a way to get across.

It's also interesting that, unlike in the mummer's version, the Others do not appear to be actively building a large army of the dead North of the Wall (aside from, of course, the wights that will automatically be raised when someone dies). Their main goal is not to kill as many people as possible. Instead, they dueled Ser Waymar, sent trojan wights into Castle Black to attack the Lord Commander, attacked a well armed, well trained opponent who had the high ground rather than the extremely vulnerable wildlings nearby, and didn't even move in for the kill after the battle at the Wall, when the wildlings were trapped with their backs to the Wall- literally!, and with no means of escape. 

I remember various discussions, here and elsewhere, in which the idea was floated that the Others seemed to be herding the wildlings to the Wall deliberately. I don't think I remember anyone suggesting that they are doing it so the wildlings will attack the Wall for them though, and that fits so very well!! They harassed them just enough to get them to unite under Mance and then herded them to the Wall, essentially forcing them to attack it. Maybe they hoped that Mance would find the Horn of Joramun, but even without that, if the tunnel were breached, who knows.... 

Old Nan told us that the Others can't pass the Wall as long as the men of the NW are true - so what happens if the last NW brother is killed off?

[JNR]

14 hours ago, LordBlakeney said:

A story with no protagonists, no antagonists

You've just described history pretty aptly, which is to say, GRRM's primary inspiration.  Well done.

When he says things in interviews like "We're all the heroes of our own stories" this is what he has in mind.  Nobody calls himself a dark lord.  And series like HP, in which you have a character who is actually named "the Dark Lord" are particularly cartoonish.

On the other hand, from the typical reader's perspective, and that means mine too... in TWOW the Popsicles and wights will absolutely be the antagonists, and the human beings, CotF, and giants will certainly be the protagonists. There's no stopping readers from taking sides, and GRRM knows that too.

14 hours ago, LordBlakeney said:

I just wish I could see @JNR's face when GRRM publishes Jon Targaryen slaying the dark lord the Night King, taking the Iron Throne with Dany as his wife and Tyrion as his Hand, and setting the realm to rights.

Well, we're perhaps eight years from the series conclusion -- assuming GRRM can finish in two more books -- but I think you're going to see the death of these concepts by the end of TWOW.  

What you've just summarized is the kind of series GRRM has been objecting to since about 1975.  Try reading an interview or two with him; he invariably dismisses such a simplistic good vs. evil outlook, and ultra-happy ending of your preferred type, and has done for most of his career.

[MaesterSam]

17 hours ago, Black Crow said:

Ah, you mean Gendry? 

LOL. Yes, exactly. Gendry. 

17 hours ago, Matthew. said:

This is exactly right, which is why I keep repeatedly raising the challenge for someone to articulate why the show Others are behaving "more evilly" than the book Others.

The truth is that they aren't--in both mediums, the Others and their hordes of slain have all the superficial signs of an evil army.

While I don't necessarily disagree with your overall point that the presence of the NK doesn't "ruin" the Others as the antagonists in the mummer's version, I do think there are some subtle but important differences in terms of how evil they seem in books vs non-books.

For example, the fact that in the books, ONE of the Others duels Ser Waymar, fairly, and the other Others (lol) don't move in until he is defeated, points to a code of honor. In the mummer's version, the NW men are essentially ambushed and there is no fair fight, we don't hear the Others talking or laughing or mocking. They are less "civilized", IMO. Then there is the scene where Sam kills an Other. In the books, Small Paul attacks first (as does Ser Waymar, by the way, and both times the NW is trespassing in Other territory), while the mummer-Other is going for Gilly and the baby with no provocation by any humans. Lastly, the massacre at Hardhome has only been hinted at in the books, and we don't know what exactly is happening there. 

In other words (no pun intended), the books leave room for the reader to imagine motives for the Others that might still justify their actions. Maybe there was an agreement that no humans were to go North of the Wall, and they are simply clearing their lands of trespassers. They do have a language, and maybe they told Ser Waymar some important truths that unfortunately he didn't understand. Maybe they are herding the wildlings south to save them from the winter, etc. Sure, they seem evil in both versions, but IMO the books are a bit more ambiguous than the mummer's version.

 

14 hours ago, LordBlakeney said:

I think a lot of your theories are going to be proven off-base. A story with no protagonists, no antagonists, and an author who just rolls his eyes at everything? What a piece of garbage. You must have a very intimate relationship with Martin, and a very high tolerance for time-wasting, to come to these conclusions.

Exactly this. This is a story about good vs evil. It's building to something. Don't assume you have all the answers yet, there's still a lot to come.

I just wish I could see @JNR's face when GRRM publishes Jon Targaryen slaying the dark lord the Night King, taking the Iron Throne with Dany as his wife and Tyrion as his Hand, and setting the realm to rights. (facetious, but call me old fashioned, I do believe Good is going to beat Evil in these books)

You are certainly entitled to your opinion.... but if this is how you feel, and this is the tone you want to use to express it, you might be happier in the R+L=J threads with others more like you. No disrespect, but the title makes it clear that this is a place to consider/discuss non-typical outcomes and ideas. We all disagree from time to time, but describing another's ideas as "garbage" is not really appropriate.

 

37 minutes ago, JNR said:

Well said.  It's been my opinion all along that this is the uber-trope GRRM wanted to dismantle more than any other, and that he took some pains to fool his reading audience into thinking he was, so far from dismantling it, implementing it.

I suspected Jon would be such a hidden prince almost immediately in AGOT.  It was perfectly obvious that he was the classic teen male who was in an awkward social situation (raised a bastard) with the mysterious background.  And when Ned and Bob had their crypts heart-to-heart, it was also obvious how Jon could turn out to be a hidden prince.  

So the whole idea that R+L=J is somehow subtle did not work for me, and I don't think it would work for anyone familiar with pre-ASOIAF fantasy (which much of GRRM's audience is not, because he's taken such a godawful amount of time to finish up).  I think GRRM confidently expected his audience to seek out such a hidden prince and, through an unholy brew of bloodyminded determination and cognitive dissonance, find a way to make him work in their theories despite all the weighty problems.

Couldn't agree more. For someone who doesn't like fantasy tropes, GRRM sure put the Prince of Ice and Fire front and center from the very start. He is also given the typical physically inferior but smart and loyal sidekick, and receives magical aides almost right away in Ghost and Longclaw (why wouldn't Mormont have given the sword to Benjen, if he wasn't going to send it back to Bear Island after his death? Why didn't Ned, an actual Stark, keep the special direwolf for himself?). Not to mention his future Queen - the most beautiful woman in the world- is in a parallel plot across the sea, raising dragons which they will fly together.... 

 

[LynnS]

56 minutes ago, ravenous reader said:

No.  Beric's blood 'runs':

 

Beric's blood also 'runs' -- see above.

Yes, thanks for that citation.  Thoros' also in spite of his loss of faith in his god.

Quote

 

A Storm of Swords - Arya VII

"I have no magic, child. Only prayers. That first time, his lordship had a hole right through him and blood in his mouth, I knew there was no hope. So when his poor torn chest stopped moving, I gave him the good god's own kiss to send him on his way. I filled my mouth with fire and breathed the flames inside him, down his throat to lungs and heart and soul. The last kiss it is called, and many a time I saw the old priests bestow it on the Lord's servants as they died. I had given it a time or two myself, as all priests must. But never before had I felt a dead man shudder as the fire filled him, nor seen his eyes come open. It was not me who raised him, my lady. It was the Lord. R'hllor is not done with him yet. Life is warmth, and warmth is fire, and fire is God's and God's alone."

 

Thoros' wordplay on Melisandre's nightly prayer is also interesting:

Quote

Justice. I remember justice. It had a pleasant taste. Justice was what we were about when Beric led us, or so we told ourselves. We were king’s men, knights, and heroes... but some knights are dark and full of terror, my lady. War makes monsters of us all.^[

Quote

 

A Storm of Swords - Davos III

"The war?" asked Davos.

"The war," she affirmed. "There are two, Onion Knight. Not seven, not one, not a hundred or a thousand. Two! Do you think I crossed half the world to put yet another vain king on yet another empty throne? The war has been waged since time began, and before it is done, all men must choose where they will stand. On one side is R'hllor, the Lord of Light, the Heart of Fire, the God of Flame and Shadow. Against him stands the Great Other whose name may not be spoken, the Lord of Darkness, the Soul of Ice, the God of Night and Terror. Ours is not a choice between Baratheon and Lannister, between Greyjoy and Stark. It is death we choose, or life. Darkness, or light." She clasped the bars of his cell with her slender white hands. The great ruby at her throat seemed to pulse with its own radiance. "So tell me, Ser Davos Seaworth, and tell me truly—does your heart burn with the shining light of R'hllor? Or is it black and cold and full of worms?" She reached through the bars and laid three fingers upon his breast, as if to feel the truth of him through flesh and wool and leather.

 

Black and cold and full of worms brings me back to Othor and Jafr who certainly qualify as (k)night terrors.  It's curious that the weirwood dog brings Jon the severed hand of a wight:  Take my hand?  Or that Othor attempts to place his hand in Jon's mouth and that his severed arm wriggles around like a snake or a worm.

Quote

 

A Dance with Dragons - Bran II

The child went in front with the torch in hand, her cloak of leaves whispering behind her, but the passage turned so much that Bran soon lost sight of her. Then the only light was what was reflected off the passage walls. After they had gone down a little, the cave divided, but the left branch was dark as pitch, so even Hodor knew to follow the moving torch to the right.

The way the shadows shifted made it seem as if the walls were moving too. Bran saw great white snakes slithering in and out of the earth around him, and his heart thumped in fear. He wondered if they had blundered into a nest of milk snakes or giant grave worms, soft and pale and squishy. Grave worms have teeth.

Hodor saw them too. "Hodor," he whimpered, reluctant to go on. But when the girl child stopped to let them catch her, the torchlight steadied, and Bran realized that the snakes were only white roots like the one he'd hit his head on. "It's weirwood roots," he said. "Remember the heart tree in the godswood, Hodor? The white tree with the red leaves? A tree can't hurt you.

 

A tree can't hurt you but grave worms with teeth are a different matter.  Ice wights in other words.

 

[wolfmaid7]

18 hours ago, MaesterSam said:

Don't forget the hidden prince (a sub-category of the protagonist hero). This character starts out as the apparently lowborn misfit with a mysterious/unknown backstory. He unwillingly gets involved in a plan to save the world, usually bringing his friends along, and it later it turns out he was the rightful king all along. 

 

The messed up thing is there are several characters not named Jon who can fill this role.

18 hours ago, Black Crow said:

I'm still minded to look at Jon as a possible King of Winter rather than Bran, especially if he's dead or at least not alive, and I can't help but point out that if, as some would have us believe he is really the last best hope of House Targaryen, why would the Old Gods send him a a weirwood dog?

I agree with you about Jon.But I think he doesn't have to start out dead.

17 hours ago, Matthew. said:

This is exactly right, which is why I keep repeatedly raising the challenge for someone to articulate why the show Others are behaving "more evilly" than the book Others.

The truth is that they aren't--in both mediums, the Others and their hordes of slain have all the superficial signs of an evil army.

The distinction being made is that, in the absence of motives being revealed, people are imagining them: the showrunners are bad, so their Others have these boring motives that we have imagined, and GRRM is good, so his Others will surely prove to have interesting motives.

I don't really disagree with that assumption, I disagree with the leap that there couldn't possibly be a parallel to the show's NK within the books--that just as GRRM's WWs are meant to be beautiful and nuanced in a way that the show's WWs are not, GRRM might have his own WW 'leader' that is nuanced in a way that the show's WW leader is not.
_______________

As an aside, and I don't even mean this as an argument or a criticism, but I do like what the dark lord discussion reveals about people as readers, and what they think constitutes a 'good' or 'bad' story.

The Others behave like absolute evil, but they're still well written if their master is some human or CotF hidden behind the scenes.
The Others behave like absolute evil, but they're still well written so long as they have no leader among their ranks, if they have no master at all.

The latter I find especially curious, because it suggests that GRRM has avoided the cliché on a technicality: the Others all individually behave like Dark Lords, but it's fine, because none of them dishes out the orders; they're Dark Egalitarians.

I still seem to be the only one who don't see the Others action in the book as evil.The show hell yeah ,but they took some licence with how a lot of those scenes went down.Again it seems a matter of perception.

1.Waymar issued a challange it was answered.

2.Paul decided to come after Ser Crackles with an axe;Crackles responded.Ser Crackles left his back open to two opponents(I don't know who thought him to do that) a fat man stabbed him in the back.

3.If you believe they are Crasters sons they are  rescued babies dumped by their human parent.

How are they evil?

6 hours ago, LynnS said:

Well, what is dead can never die; doesn't seem to be entirely true in Beric's case.  I'm not quite sure how it is that he is killed over and over again, requiring repeated resurrections.  Or why Coldhands appears to be more concerned about meeting up with white walkers than wights.

Wights can't be killed in the manner of Beric even if you cut off their appendages. Only fire will do the trick.

So if we compare Beric to a White Walker; both can be vanquished if you stick them with the appropriate weapon. As Syrio Forell says, men are made of water; if you poke them, the water spills out as in the case of WW.  With Beric, a castle forged sword will do; but he is clearly not made of water...  he's more like a blow-up doll that deflates when poked; if you will excuse the clumsy comparison.

I think what is foreshadowed is that Lady Stoneheart can also be dispatched in the same manner as Beric. 

In either case; it's the firey or icy breath that resurrects.  The killing cold has the advantage, since ice preserves while fire consumes so I doubt we'll see an army of fire wights to match the ice wights. 

I do see similarities between Beric and Coldhands.  I doubt either has any kind of blood running through their veins like Melisandre or the White Walkers.

What is distinct about Melisandre is that she has an unbroken connection to the cup of fire through her ruby and she doesn't seem to be fully transformed.  She gets tired and thirsty and she tolerates the pain of 'swallowing' the fire. 

I think it curious that she tells Jon that there is power in him and in the Wall if only he would use it.  I would also hazard a guess that Mel's firey sacrifices have more to do with keeping her alive or increasing her power than they do with honoring R'hllor.      

Beric wouldn't be the same as a white walker though.White walkers aren't dead.They are the no product of  enchanting ice and snow.

Beric is as you say more along the Coldhands route.

4 hours ago, Feather Crystal said:

In that latest interview with GRRM he referred to Beric as a wight animated by fire:

And Jon Snow, too, is drained by the experience of coming back from the dead on the show. 

Right. And poor Beric Dondarrion, who was set up as the foreshadowing of all this, every time he’s a little less Beric. His memories are fading, he’s got all these scars, he’s becoming more and more physically hideous, because he’s not a living human being anymore. His heart isn’t beating, his blood isn’t flowing in his veins, he’s a wight, but a wight animated by fire instead of by ice, now we’re getting back to the whole fire and ice thing.

In case you missed it, I understood GRRM as saying Beric is foreshadowing for Jon.

And Catelyn:

In my version of the story, Catelyn Stark is re-imbued with a kind of life and becomes this vengeful wight who galvanizes a group of people around her and is trying to exact her revenge on the riverlands.

So why didn't Othor and Jafer speak like Beric or communicate like Lady Stoneheart? They didn't seem to have as much control, but they do fit the descriptions as "vengeful".

Is he speaking show wise? Its what I get .Big spoiler calling Beric a eight raised through fire medium.I would love it to be so because it adds more credence to there being just a two faced want to be god.

1 hour ago, JNR said:

The best case for this IMO is the wights from AGOT.  They were clearly (going by eye color) wighted prior to being taken south, they played dead to get there, and 

None of the Watch, to this day, have a faint clue about any of that, despite having ranged the North for thousands of years.  Do the Popsicles know more?  It's hard to say.

The Watch doesn't seem to know much about anything do they.One of the silliest contradictions.They know to blow the horn (3) times when they see "Others" but completely forgot what kills them.

What were they going to use had Jon not found Obsidian which Sam could use later...Harsh language?

How do you forget a thing like that.An Obsidian dagger should be hanging in the hall with a caption

"One eyed Willy killed Popsicle in The Great War for the Dawn."

As for intelligence of the Wights.I pointed this out as part of my greater The Cold entity theory.In instances where wights were close and personal we get a telling description about some of their eyes "They see" as if someone was behind them looking.

Still say the intelligence we are looking at is an uber Skinchanger.

1 hour ago, JNR said:

Well said.  It's been my opinion all along that this is the uber-trope GRRM wanted to dismantle more than any other, and that he took some pains to fool his reading audience into thinking he was, so far from dismantling it, implementing it.

I suspected Jon would be such a hidden prince almost immediately in AGOT.  It was perfectly obvious that he was the classic teen male who was in an awkward social situation (raised a bastard) with the mysterious background.  And when Ned and Bob had their crypts heart-to-heart, it was also obvious how Jon could turn out to be a hidden prince.  

So the whole idea that R+L=J is somehow subtle did not work for me, and I don't think it would work for anyone familiar with pre-ASOIAF fantasy (which much of GRRM's audience is not, because he's taken such a godawful amount of time to finish up).  I think GRRM confidently expected his audience to seek out such a hidden prince and, through an unholy brew of bloodyminded determination and cognitive dissonance, find a way to make him work in their theories despite all the weighty problems.

Well the tune about r+l=j being subtle is no longer the case.When its lack in subtly has been pointed out;the  new rebuttal is its not about the lack of subtly but about what happened.

I agree with you though.You know who I blame for this...lol.We are preprogrammed to look at a story that seems to have all the elements to form a pattern done a hundred times.

And I get it, I could understand the conclusion.But to go back to the scene in the crypt.That was the moment I believe GRRM laid two bricks.

One brick was the beginning of "Red Herring Highway". The other was "Answer Hidden in Plainsight Avenue."

[Black Crow]

2 hours ago, The Fattest Leech said:

I saw that interview. I read this as show only info, otherwise, George is spoiling his own books because Jon has only just been stabbed and we are supposed to still wonder what is happening (bookwise). And the show only has Mel there. No other options and no answers for the wights besides show Night King raising them. I guess I am now curious if other people think George was talking book info here. 

I would say that certainly is. The interview was about the mummers show and mostly it was taken up with his assertions that there is a dirty big wall between the show and the books, but in this case the statement that Beric's resurrection and subsequent deterioration was a foreshadowing of Jon's fate is [inadvertently or not] a clear reference to the books since it long predates the arrival of the mummers