Heresy 200 The bicentennial edition

[Black Crow]

Yes if we go back to GRRM's remarks about film proposals: 

I had all these meetings saying, “There’s too many characters, it’s too big — Jon Snow is the central character. We’ll eliminate all the other characters and we’ll make it about Jon Snow.” Or “Daenerys is the central character. We’ll eliminate everyone else and make the movie about Daenerys.” And I turned down all those deals.

I would say that pretty well rules out the fan-based notion that Jon Snow is the son of Rhaegar Targaryen, the true heir to the Iron Throne who will ride a dragon to victory and thus save the world. Some of those statements may turn out to be true or partially true, but the story isn't about Jon Snow or him saving the world. It's an ensemble piece.

[MaesterSam]

6 hours ago, Black Crow said:

It do, but while Cotter Pike's letter does offer a caveat, we don't know whether the vision is necessarily in real time or something yet to come or might never be

Good point. And it goes with the overall point I was making: that the books are just ambiguous enough to allow for the possibility that the Others aren't what they seem. 

 

Re: The NK as dark lord, I think what defines him as such in the show is this statement by D&D:

Quote

 

Benioff & Weiss: We don’t think of The Night King as a villain as much as Death. He is not someone who’s like Joffrey or Ramsay. He’s not really human anymore. Evil comes when you have a choice between that and good, and you choose the wrong way. The Night King doesn’t have a choice; he was created in that way, and that’s what he is. In some ways, he’s just Death, coming for everyone in the story, and for all of us.

In some ways, it’s appropriate he doesn’t speak. What’s Death going to say? Anything would diminish him. He’s just a force of destruction. I don’t think we’ve ever been tempted to write dialogue for The Night King. Anything he said would be anticlimactic.

 

This description, IMO, is what makes him a one-dimensional "dark lord". They don't even want to write dialogue for him, as he has nothing to say. He just wants to kill everyone, b/c that's what he is- death. 

[Frey family reunion]

2 hours ago, Black Crow said:

I think that particular prophecy needs some care and once again question whether Azor Ahai [reborn amidst smoke and salt] and the Prince that was Promised really are one and the same, or whether one [the Prince] is to dish the other.

Smoke and salt need a bit of twisting to fit Jon as Azor Ahai, especially when we already do have Danaerys the Dragonlord, born on the smoking island in the salt sea and currently possessed of three large dragons woken from stone. Conversely, although Bran isn't registering much in the way of smoke and salt, he is repeatedly referred to as a prince, and is the winged wolf awakened from stone chains.

You don't have a single event for Bran, but you do have him being "reborn" when he emerges from the crypts to the smoking ruins of Winterfell. And reborn again when he enters the baptismal well in the Nightfort "kitchen", and emerges on the other side, after having been baptized by a salty "tear".

And don't forget Tyrion and Davos, who both come back from near death experiences from the Battle of the Blackwater, where the salty bay was consumed by Wildfire.  Tyrion has that out of body experience, while a disembodied voice seems to speak to Davos.

[JNR]

2 hours ago, Black Crow said:

Yes if we go back to GRRM's remarks about film proposals: 

I had all these meetings saying, “There’s too many characters, it’s too big — Jon Snow is the central character. We’ll eliminate all the other characters and we’ll make it about Jon Snow.” Or “Daenerys is the central character. We’ll eliminate everyone else and make the movie about Daenerys.” And I turned down all those deals.

Yep, this is exactly why I quoted that passage.  

Those who feel that a protagonist is not the central, leading character in a work of literature should perhaps acquaint themselves not just with GRRM's interviews, but a few novels.    And perhaps a dictionary.

2 hours ago, Black Crow said:

I would say that pretty well rules out the fan-based notion that Jon Snow is the son of Rhaegar Targaryen, the true heir to the Iron Throne who will ride a dragon to victory and thus save the world.

Well, that's certainly always been an area where we agree.  Just ludicrous.

I think it was your Hand, Tyryan, who once predicted that Jon would never in the course of the series even go south of the Neck!  That looks like a pretty fair bet to me. 

The canonical Jon will certainly never do anything as preposterous as dedicate months of his life to travel all the way to Dragonstone and back, in order to talk to and/or make out with Aunt Dany... 

It's always been a curious thing that so many fans not only think all the above (or something similar) will happen, but want it to happen, because that would make it a good story.  For them I would recommend Wheel of Time or other, similar pre-ASOIAF works.

[Matthew.]

1 hour ago, MaesterSam said:

This description, IMO, is what makes him a one-dimensional "dark lord". They don't even want to write dialogue for him, as he has nothing to say. He just wants to kill everyone, b/c that's what he is- death. 

If anything, that's why comparisons to a Sauron-like figure don't really apply--to repeat the comparison I made a few pages ago, he's a sword without a hilt, a personification of winter and death. He's not a tyrant who has seized power and is unveiling his grand plan, he's just fulfilling his programming. Put another way, it might be more fair to compare him to the dragons than a human villain; he's one of the show's threats of Ice and Fire that's looming over Westeros.

Which also causes me to suspect that the important question here remains the same: why are the Others back now?

[JNR]

17 minutes ago, JNR said:

It's always been a curious thing that so many fans not only think all the above (or something similar) will happen, but want it to happen, because that would make it a good story. 

A bit more about this.  

Snowfyre pointed me to an ASOIAF passage a while ago and asked me what I thought of it.  The passage was this:

Quote

Spotted Pate the pig boy was the hero of a thousand ribald stories: a good-hearted, empty-headed lout who always managed to best the fat lordlings, haughty knights, and pompous septons who beset him. Somehow his stupidity would turn out to have been a sort of uncouth cunning; the tales always ended with Spotted Pate sitting on a lord's high seat or bedding some knight's daughter. But those were stories. In the real world pig boys never fared so well. 

Just a few notes...

1. The Chronicles of Prydain, a post-Tolkien fantasy series from the sixties, features as its protagonist a teen boy who is an "assistant pig-keeper."

2. The series ends like this: And thus did an Assistant Pig-Keeper become High King of Prydain. 

3. GRRM not only says pig boys never fare so well, but by the end of that chapter, his character Pate is dead, murdered by a Faceless Man.

If you want to read the above as GRRM's in-canon mockery of those who expect ASOIAF to turn out like the Prydain books, I certainly won't tell you you're wrong.    

[JNR]

17 minutes ago, Matthew. said:

If anything, that's why comparisons to a Sauron-like figure don't really apply--to repeat the comparison I made a few pages ago, he's a sword without a hilt, a personification of winter and death. He's not a tyrant who has seized power and is unveiling his grand plan, he's just fulfilling his programming.

If he's just a personification of winter and fulfilling his programming, aren't you implying a programmer who programmed him, to serve as a tool of some overarching strategy to conquer Westeros?

And if so, wouldn't that programmer still be a Dark Lord?  And wouldn't you still run into the same contradiction with GRRM, who says we don't need any more?

[Frey family reunion]

40 minutes ago, JNR said:

A bit more about this.  

Snowfyre pointed me to an ASOIAF passage a while ago and asked me what I thought of it.  The passage was this:

Just a few notes...

1. The Chronicles of Prydain, a post-Tolkien fantasy series from the sixties, features as its protagonist a teen boy who is an "assistant pig-keeper."

2. The series ends like this: And thus did an Assistant Pig-Keeper become High King of Prydain. 

3. GRRM not only says pig boys never fare so well, but by the end of that chapter, his character Pate is dead, murdered by a Faceless Man.

If you want to read the above as GRRM's in-canon mockery of those who expect ASOIAF to turn out like the Prydain books, I certainly won't tell you you're wrong.    

Yet GRRM does create a bit of a Pydain himself with Duncan the Tall.

[LordBlakeney]

What's ludicrous is the idea that GRRM is mocking his fanbase and the vast majority of his readership by 1) somehow writing a story that mocks every mainstay of literature and the common elements of fantasy writing (because he's oh-so-smart and nerds are lazy and need to be taught a lesson about the real world), and 2), took the time to disguise that story and plant numerous false flags so the stupid readers would root for the wrong characters.

I'm sorry but this idea of GRRM as some cackling troll who wrote a series to prove how dumb the fantasy genre is (which is the basic argument people who keep using the word "trope" are making) is way off base. He loves fantasy writing. He loves nerds. He wants readers to like his books. And his writing is much more traditional than these self-proclaimed literary critics will admit.

But, simplistic thinking like the notion that a protagonist has to be a hero, or must take up the most pages is about what you'd expect from people whose only literary exposures are comic books and wikipedia pages.

Will there be a character, or characters, whose fate matters most in these books? Absolutely. There's your protagonist(s). What a silly thing about which to argue.

46 minutes ago, JNR said:

If you want to read the above as GRRM's in-canon mockery of those who expect ASOIAF to turn out like the Prydain books, I certainly won't tell you you're wrong.  

Reading the above says more about you than it does about GRRM. 

[LordBlakeney]

2 hours ago, MaesterSam said:

This description, IMO, is what makes him a one-dimensional "dark lord". They don't even want to write dialogue for him, as he has nothing to say. He just wants to kill everyone, b/c that's what he is- death. 

Just because he does not speak does not mean there isn't more to his backstory. Ilyn Payne has no dialogue, yet he has a rich backstory. Once again we are in the middle of the story! Obviously there is more to be revealed about the White Walkers/Night King. What created him? What made him that way? What is his goal? The show isn't going to ruin suspense by having the creators tell you all the details in a post-show interview. 

Again, you are assuming that we know as much about the Night King in the show as we're going to find out. Even in-show they've left hints that isn't true, like when Bran goes back to the weirwood where he saw the Night's King created. It's dead. Looks like it's been split by something like a lightning strike. No explanation given. There is much more still to come, let's hold off on burning our straw man NK in effigy.

3 hours ago, Black Crow said:

I had all these meetings saying, “There’s too many characters, it’s too big — Jon Snow is the central character. We’ll eliminate all the other characters and we’ll make it about Jon Snow.” Or “Daenerys is the central character. We’ll eliminate everyone else and make the movie about Daenerys.” And I turned down all those deals.

I would say that pretty well rules out the fan-based notion that Jon Snow is the son of Rhaegar Targaryen, the true heir to the Iron Throne who will ride a dragon to victory and thus save the world. Some of those statements may turn out to be true or partially true, but the story isn't about Jon Snow or him saving the world. It's an ensemble piece.

I'm not sure how you're making that jump. Jon Snow can still be Jon Targaryen without having to be the central character. Aragorn wasn't the main character of LOTR, but he still was the true heir who rode to victory. Prince Caspian wasn't the protagonist of The Silver Chair, but he was still the hidden prince who became King. (Silver Chair is another story with multiple protagonists:  Eustace and Jill). 

Despite what some on here seem to desire, this moral of this story will not be "nobody exists on purpose, nobody belongs anywhere, everybody's gonna die."

[LynnS]

30 minutes ago, LordBlakeney said:

What's ludicrous is the idea that GRRM is mocking his fanbase and the vast majority of his readership by 1) somehow writing a story that mocks every mainstay of literature and the common elements of fantasy writing (because he's oh-so-smart and nerds are lazy and need to be taught a lesson about the real world), and 2), took the time to disguise that story and plant numerous false flags so the stupid readers would root for the wrong characters.

 

 

I have to take issue with this statement.  Martin has told us that his mother could always figure out what was going to happen in any story and that he took it as challenge to write a story that nobody figure out so easily.  That certainly seems the case with ASOIAF since we're still discussing the various possibilities.  Something that he finds amusing rather than mocking when he says there are thousands of fan theories out there missing the mark. 

[LordBlakeney]

1 minute ago, LordBlakeney said:

Despite what some on here seem to desire, this moral of this story will not be "nobody exists on purpose, nobody belongs anywhere, everybody's gonna die."

It's not even the moral of the story this quote comes from! 

[JNR]

28 minutes ago, Frey family reunion said:

Yet GRRM does create a bit of a Pydain himself with Duncan the Tall.

You mean in that he starts out low and winds up high?  That much is definitely true.  From Flea Bottom to LC of the Kingsguard is quite a leap.

Still, LC of the Kingsguard isn't the High King.  And Dunk doesn't save the world in an epic battle of good and evil in any sense (as Taran did in the Prydain books)... he never fought any kind of Dark Lord (such as Arawn, from the Prydain books)... he isn't revealed as the prophesied hero who was destined to do all the above (as Taran was).

So I don't really see Dunk as the archetypical hidden prince type, the way Jon is so frequently stated to be as a matter of unwritten canon (though never by you, or most Heretics, of course).  

I think Dunk is just one of a variety of characters who wind up higher in life than they began, other instances including Ser Davos in the books, or in our world, people like Thomas Cromwell (born the son of a smith, became the all-powerful chief minister to King Hank VIII.

[Matthew.]

1 hour ago, JNR said:

If he's just a personification of winter and fulfilling his programming, aren't you implying a programmer who programmed him, to serve as a tool of some overarching strategy to conquer Westeros?

As regards that specific motive, I would say not--that implies that their function is conquest. Leaving aside concerns of what's true within the books, within the show, the Others were seemingly designed to kill the First Men (or perhaps, just to kill in general) and to protect the weirwood, and it may be that they pursue those ends with a scale and efficiency their creators did not envision. 

Using the example of the Hammer of the Waters, such magic would surely have had widespread unintended consequences, yet the CotF were desperate enough to go down that road...so how far would they go to protect their 'gods,' their culture, the spirits of their ancestors?

Unless I'm greatly misremembering some of the ideas that you yourself have explored in the past, how about the shadow assassins as a comparison point: their 'programmers' are not necessarily dark lords, but what they unleash is horrifying, and we might wonder what would happen if a shadowbinder lost control of magical beings that seem to exist only for the purpose of killing. 

For example, Melisandre promises us in her thoughts that such shadows as she brings forth at the Wall will be "terrible," which I'm inclined to view as GRRM hammering me over the head with foreshadowing.

____

In any case, my argument here is not to insist that the NK exists in the text, only to argue that I think it's presumptuous to dismiss all such conversations outright--that there couldn't possibly exist some plot point from which the idea of "human, turned into white walker leader" was adapted. For example, the show's Sand Snakes are a very badly written, but they weren't invented--they are still an adaptation of real characters...though, to be frank, I don't find the writing of the book versions to be so great either.

In particular, I'm keeping in mind that there was a Night's King in the text, a man who lost his soul, and later bound his brothers with sorcery and sacrificed to the Others--perhaps D&D have invented pure show-only fan fiction from that tale, or perhaps that tale is in the text in the first place because it contains important hints.

[LordBlakeney]

1 minute ago, LynnS said:

I have to take issue with this statement.  Martin has told us that his mother could always figure out what was going to happen in any story and that he took it as challenge to write a story that nobody figure out so easily.  That certainly seems the case with ASOIAF since we're still discussing the various possibilities.  Something that he finds amusing rather than mocking when he says there are thousands of fan theories out there missing the mark.

That's exactly his criticism - the stories are too easy, the character's don't earn their triumphs, the human element gets overshadowed by the magic. 

He could have written a story set in the real world, with just humans, but he chose to write in the fantasy genre.

I read someone else on here say this, and it has made every GRRM interview I've seen make sense to me: he doesn't want to dismantle these tropes; he wants his characters to earn their tropes. The story is a masterpiece because he decided to take the time and effort to write an engaging story to reinvigorate the fantasy genre. To do it right. That means taking a little extra time and effort to build a world and backstory so are heroes are actually tested, our villians are more sympathetic, and the emotional payoff is off the charts.

I've read plenty of fan theories I think are way off base. Remember, he's writing this for an extremely broad audience. Sure, out of the millions who've read it those of us who care enough to post on a fan forum probably can discern some main points, like RLJ. But the average reader doesn't obsessively re-read and write essays. He's not trying to trick audiences, he's using foreshadowing and breadcrumbs to build suspense so the reveal is worth it when it happens, like any good mystery writer would.

[Black Crow]

19 minutes ago, LordBlakeney said:

 

I'm not sure how you're making that jump. Jon Snow can still be Jon Targaryen without having to be the central character.

I don't have a problem with Jon Snow turning out to be Jon Targaryen [although I still remain convinced its going to be more complicated] but I do have a problem with assertions that he will thereby become the central character as so many fans have been arguing for years.

[LynnS]

2 minutes ago, LordBlakeney said:

That's exactly his criticism - the stories are too easy, the character's don't earn their triumphs, the human element gets overshadowed by the magic. 

He could have written a story set in the real world, with just humans, but he chose to write in the fantasy genre.

I read someone else on here say this, and it has made every GRRM interview I've seen make sense to me: he doesn't want to dismantle these tropes; he wants his characters to earn their tropes. The story is a masterpiece because he decided to take the time and effort to write an engaging story to reinvigorate the fantasy genre. To do it right. That means taking a little extra time and effort to build a world and backstory so are heroes are actually tested, our villians are more sympathetic, and the emotional payoff is off the charts.

I've read plenty of fan theories I think are way off base. Remember, he's writing this for an extremely broad audience. Sure, out of the millions who've read it those of us who care enough to post on a fan forum probably can discern some main points, like RLJ. But the average reader doesn't obsessively re-read and write essays. He's not trying to trick audiences, he's using foreshadowing and breadcrumbs to build suspense so the reveal is worth it when it happens, like any good mystery writer would.

This isn't about tricking the audience; it's about challenging assumptions and logic fallacies.  I always keep that in mind when I think that I have something figured out.  

[LordBlakeney]

2 minutes ago, Black Crow said:

I don't have a problem with Jon Snow turning out to be Jon Targaryen [although I still remain convinced its going to be more complicated] but I do have a problem with assertions that he will thereby become the central character as so many fans have been arguing for years

I agree that he can be Jon Targaryen without being the central character.

[ravenous reader]

3 hours ago, Frey family reunion said:

You don't have a single event for Bran, but you do have him being "reborn" when he emerges from the crypts to the smoking ruins of Winterfell. And reborn again when he enters the baptismal well in the Nightfort "kitchen", and emerges on the other side, after having been baptized by a salty "tear".

And don't forget Tyrion and Davos, who both come back from near death experiences from the Battle of the Blackwater, where the salty bay was consumed by Wildfire.  Tyrion has that out of body experience, while a disembodied voice seems to speak to Davos.

RE: Bran --  there's also the event of being 'reborn' from his coma, in which his wolf Summer who 'is silver and smoke' was instrumental in nursing Bran back to life, resuscitating his heart with the healing wolf song chorus led by him, in addition to intervening to save Bran's life in the assassination attempt.

1 hour ago, LordBlakeney said:

And his writing is much more traditional than these self-proclaimed literary critics will admit.

Quote

I asked him about who Jon Snow's real parents were, and he told me. I can't say who, but I can tell you that it involves a bit of a Luke Skywalker situation.  

(Alfie Allen on the chat he had with GRRM about Jon's parentage)

What could be more traditional and less 'trope-shattering' appealing to the same format that made Star Wars so compelling to generations?  The 'Luke Skywalker situation' also involved a 'dark lord' as nemesis, which GRRM is unlikely to succeed in resisting.

[LynnS]

21 minutes ago, Matthew. said:

In particular, I'm keeping in mind that there was a Night's King in the text, a man who lost his soul, and later bound his brothers with sorcery and sacrificed to the Others--perhaps D&D have invented pure show-only fan fiction from that tale, or perhaps that tale is in the text in the first place because it contains important hints.

Indeed.  I expect that Sam's broken horn, of a type used by the Night's Watch, presented to Jon by the weirwood dog, along with the (hundred pieces of) dragonglass, has some consequence, especially if it is a binding horn.