Heresy 201 and onward we go...

[Faint]

41 minutes ago, LynnS said:

Where can I read about these first hand accounts?

Interviews with director Alan Taylor. 

[LynnS]

17 minutes ago, Faint said:

Interviews with director Alan Taylor. 

You mean this?

http://www.businessinsider.com/game-of-thrones-alan-taylor-interview-dany-jon-love-2017-8

 

[The Fattest Leech]

58 minutes ago, LynnS said:

Where can I read about these first hand accounts?

It is a bunch of silly "shipping" that is being spread as truth. The article and such is under the spoiler tag just in case.

Spoiler

http://deadline.com/2017/08/game-of-thrones-spoilers-recap-kit-harington-emilia-clarke-alan-taylor-beyond-the-wall-season-7-hbo-1202152264/

The forum "shippers" are trying to claim that George willingly gave away the ending to his story to someone back when they were filming season 1. They are basing this ship on Taylor's use of the word converge as meaning "have sex", when in fact, Taylor uses the word twice in the same interview, but for some reason the other converge is ignored, and of course nevermind that in the books it is going to be a convergence in battle on the Trident as Dany dreams. . Maybe the show ends with a huge orgy???

DEADLINE: Along with the growing professional and personal relationship Emilia Clarke’s Dany character has with Kit Harington’s Jon Snow — literally coming to his rescue and losing one of her children, as you say. In the process, there is an inevitable rising storm of consequence, it seems…

TAYLOR: Part of my episode was doing the job of braiding stories together that’ve been separate for a long time, braiding characters that’ve been separate for a long time, and that will only continue into Season 8. Now everything’s converging, and that’s going to get only more so in Season 8 when really, all the storylines come together.

DEADLINE: About Jon and Dany or Game Of Thrones in general?

TAYLOR: Bit of both, but it was early days and nobody was paying attention to the show. We didn’t really know what a phenomenon it was going to be, and I think he was being less guarded than we’ve become since then. Anyways, he alluded to the fact that Jon and Dany were the point, kind of. That, at the time, there was a huge, vast array of characters, and Jon was a lowly, you know, bastard son. So it wasn’t clear to us at the time, but he did sort of say things that made it clear that the meeting and the convergence of Jon and Dany were sort of the point of the series.

 

But at least some other articles sorta seem to realize converge =/= sex.

https://www.dailydot.com/parsec/game-thrones-alan-taylor-jon-daenerys/

What’s less certain—and Taylor is holding off on divulging certain things because of what may happen in season 8—is if Martin also meant that Jon and Dany’s convergence would also be a romantic one;

And then Taylor jokes about incest not working out:

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/21/arts/television/alan-taylor-director-game-of-thrones.html

So we’re just hoping everybody’s cool with the incest thing?

Oh, you know, it’s worked for Cersei and Jaime. [Laughs.] Nothing went wrong there.

 

So, nope, no book spoilers so far this season because the show did the typical play Plotzee! and mix everything in the book up just to see how it rolls on the show. For much of the season, Jon and Dany played book Arianne TWOW/2 and Aegon (respectively) landing and meeting in the Stormlands (Dragonstone on the show because Storm's End doesn't really exist). And Jon even plays the part of Rolland Storm that Stannis leaves behind to mine for dragonglass on Dragonstone. Then after that arc was done, the Plotzee! dice were rolled again and Dany became Val with her long braid, white cloak, baby talk, seeing to Jon and his wounds, bending of the knee stuff. It was all just really nonsensical gibberish.

 

[LynnS]

23 minutes ago, The Fattest Leech said:

It is a bunch of silly "shipping" that is being spread as truth. The article and such is under the spoiler tag just in case.

LOL! I see.

[JNR]

5 hours ago, Black Crow said:

I agree, while I haven't watched this season the synopsis clearly indicates that it was nothing more than a badly written exercise in fan-fiction of the worst kind

Well... it could have been even worse than it was.  

Cowboys, Klingons, ninjas, Ferris wheels, chariots, gunfire, lightsabers, and Ford Mustangs.  That sort of thing.  Perhaps the last season will feature these elements as selling points.

4 hours ago, Faint said:

Finally, all these refrains about the show no longer being the same story told two ways, or no longer having the same conclusion, are refuted by Martin himself.

Actually, they're confirmed by Martin himself, and have been, repeatedly, for years and years now.  Example quotes:

Quote

There have been differences between the novels and the television show since the first episode of season one. And for just as long, I have been talking about the butterfly effect. Small changes lead to larger changes lead to huge changes.

Quote

So when you ask me, "will the show spoil the books," all I can do is say, "yes and no," and mumble once again about the butterfly effect. Those pretty little butterflies have grown into mighty dragons. Some of the 'spoilers' you may encounter in season six may not be spoilers at all.

Exactly as he predicted, the changes are now huge -- spectacular, irrefutable, and to those of us familiar with the canon, unforgivable.  

Also note that he was talking from a point in time before season six!  Well, we are two seasons down the road from there, and the delta between books and show is now so huge that I watch most episodes laughing out loud at what seems to have been inadvertent comedy on the part of D&D.

I'm not going to do a point-by-point analysis of this stuff, since that would break site rules, but since others have elsewhere on the Web, I will cheerfully link to such articles on request.   Heh.

I'll just say that in many, many cases the stupendous changes literally cannot happen in the books because it's far too late in the story, entire canonical plotlines have been deleted, major characters have been deleted and others invented from scratch, and core truths about the canonical world have gone... uh.... undiscovered by D&D (as by most of the fandom).   GRRM said in interviews that they only knew "some things" about future books, and that's turned out to be hilariously true.

1 hour ago, Matthew. said:

there's also the ambiguity of Eddard reacting within the vision, as though he has truly heard something.

Well, Bran's desperate for such a sign and if Bran ignores all the moments in which Eddard didn't react, and then instantly seizes on a moment in which he appeared to, I'm not too surprised.  

This reminds me of the kind of confirmation bias fake mystics depend on in doing a cold reading of a customer; they can get eight things wrong, but if they stumble onto one truth, that truth is going to be seen as all-important.

1 hour ago, Matthew. said:

I take this as more of an indictment of GRRM as a writer than an indication of how the weirwood perceives the world.

There might be a compromise here, in that Bran's mind can only comprehend the information coming from the weirwood in a linear fashion, because that's the only way a human mind can function.  So it seems that way to him, as it would to anyone.

[JNR]

54 minutes ago, The Fattest Leech said:

It was all just really nonsensical gibberish.

[Faint]

I guess that's one of Martin's better points. His procrastination doubles as long term safe harbor from undesirable truths.

[Black Crow]

6 hours ago, Matthew. said:

Perhaps, but there's also the ambiguity of Eddard reacting within the vision, as though he has truly heard something. This could just be coincidental timing, but it puts me in mind of this moment: 

When the leaves rustled in the vision of Eddard, do you suppose he might have thought he heard "father" whispered in the wind, in the leaves?

Again, perhaps not, but I think there's enough within the story (eg, the moment in ACOK where Jon has a vision of greenseer Bran) that I understand why many readers believe that Bran might interact with the past. That many of these moments can individually be explained away does not necessarily mean that the "explaining away" interpretation is correct.
 

Wrenching the thread back to the book, I would say once again that the world is as it is.

What has happened in the story has happened with or without intervention. The leaves have rustled and Eddard has heard them as, later, has Theon, but nothing has been changed as a result of those interventions. We may see characters being guided but we read about it in real time. Everything that has gone before has still happened. Bran may well reach back to influence on-going events, but not those which have already happened.

[LynnS]

3 hours ago, Black Crow said:

Wrenching the thread back to the book, I would say once again that the world is as it is.

What has happened in the story has happened with or without intervention. The leaves have rustled and Eddard has heard them as, later, has Theon, but nothing has been changed as a result of those interventions. We may see characters being guided but we read about it in real time. Everything that has gone before has still happened. Bran may well reach back to influence on-going events, but not those which have already happened.

I see it the same way.  I would include Jon as well although he has not yet come into his full power.

Quote

A Dance with Dragons - Jon VI

Jon frowned in disbelief. "That's … queer."

"You think so?" She knelt and scratched Ghost behind his ear. "Your Wall is a queer place, but there is power here, if you will use it. Power in you, and in this beast. You resist it, and that is your mistake. Embrace it. Use it."

 

The notion that the holly and oak kings are twin souls or that one can't exist without the other is intriguing.

Quote

A Storm of Swords - Bran I

"Bran the boy and Summer the wolf. You are two, then?"

"Two," he sighed, "and one." He hated Jojen when he got stupid like this. At Winterfell he wanted me to dream my wolf dreams, and now that I know how he's always calling me back.

 

I can't help thinking that the boy within Jon's soul is Bran and together they represent the broken sword until they become one or The One.

Quote

A Storm of Swords - Tyrion IV

"There is one." The armorer bent over the table and unfolded the bundle of oilcloth, to reveal a second longsword.

Tyrion put down Joffrey's sword and took up the other. If not twins, the two were at least close cousins. This one was thicker and heavier, a half-inch wider and three inches longer, but they shared the same fine clean lines and the same distinctive color, the ripples of blood and night. Three fullers, deeply incised, ran down the second blade from hilt to point; the king's sword had only two. Joff's hilt was a good deal more ornate, the arms of its crossguard done as lions' paws with ruby claws unsheathed, but both swords had grips of finely tooled red leather and gold lions' heads for pommels. 

"Magnificent." Even in hands as unskilled as Tyrion's, the blade felt alive. "I have never felt better balance."

 

 

 

[Melifeather]

4 hours ago, Black Crow said:

Bran may well reach back to influence on-going events, but not those which have already happened.

If Bloodraven speaks truth, then the past truly is the past and  cannot be changed, however if you recognize a recycling of situations you could affect the future by changing the players, or rather who it happens to.

[LynnS]

3 hours ago, Feather Crystal said:

If Bloodraven speaks truth, then the past truly is the past and  cannot be changed, however if you recognize a recycling of situations you could affect the future by changing the players, or rather who it happens to.

I find this description of Ned interesting:

Quote

A Game of Thrones - Jon VIII
"Then Lord Eddard is a man in ten thousand. Most of us are not so strong

Both Winterfell and perhaps Starfall have both been around for 10,000 years as well.

Quote

A Game of Thrones - Catelyn I

The gods of Winterfell kept a different sort of wood. It was a dark, primal place, three acres of old forest untouched for ten thousand years as the gloomy castle rose around it. It smelled of moist earth and decay. No redwoods grew here. This was a wood of stubborn sentinel trees armored in grey-green needles, of mighty oaks, of ironwoods as old as the realm itself. Here thick black trunks crowded close together while twisted branches wove a dense canopy overhead and misshapen roots wrestled beneath the soil. This was a place of deep silence and brooding shadows, and the gods who lived here had no names.

A Feast for Crows - The Queenmaker

As she led the princess to the fire, Arianne found Ser Gerold behind her. "My House goes back ten thousand years, unto the dawn of days," he complained. "Why is it that my cousin is the only Dayne that anyone remembers?

 

Is it possible that the ToJ marks the place where the original Stark fell and the sword made from the heart tree was taken from him?  I wonder if Rhaegar tied the prophecies of the PwiP with the battle for the dawn as Aemon suggests and this is why Rhaegar named it so.  Only the second time around the morningstar fell instead of a Stark.   Is it possible that Rhaegar stationed himself there because he still thought he had a part to play as a warrior in a replay of that legend? If Aerys had died first, he would have been in command of all the KG and if he died second; Aegon would be the pwip to wake dragons from stone.

Quote

A Dance with Dragons - Jon I

Burning dead children had ceased to trouble Jon Snow; live ones were another matter. Two kings to wake the dragon. The father first and then the son, so both die kings.

 

He was either sacrificing himself or if he prevailed; winter would be slain. 

[The Fattest Leech]

5 hours ago, Feather Crystal said:

If Bloodraven speaks truth, then the past truly is the past and  cannot be changed, however if you recognize a recycling of situations you could affect the future by changing the players, or rather who it happens to.

If we have any time travel that impacts the future in the story, then I think this might be the way it ends up working out. Looking to the past to help make "better" future decisions.

But how many times does this happen? Is there a desired end goal in mind that has to happen before the repetition stops?

[Melifeather]

1 hour ago, The Fattest Leech said:

If we have any time travel that impacts the future in the story, then I think this might be the way it ends up working out. Looking to the past to help make "better" future decisions.

But how many times does this happen? Is there a desired end goal in mind that has to happen before the repetition stops?

This is my inversion theory in a nutshell: that the greenseers know what happened in the past, that there are certain patterns of situations that reoccur on the wheel of time, and that they have manipulated the wheel so that it happens to someone else. How many times have we read that so and so is someone reborn? How many times have we read similar stories that seem like a repeat? I went over some of this stuff in Heresy 192 The Wheel of Time - Eating the Dragon's Tail . The most current turn of the wheel has all the major events happening in reverse and to different families. For example the Greyjoys are experiencing and doing things that previously happened to the Blackfyres and Targaryens. 

We know the Children have an agenda that they haven't been entirely clear about, but they did mention the deaths of various houses and peoples, even themselves with the wolves last of all. What comes after that? What is the bittersweet ending? Is it a return to nature and Westeros righted again? The seasons rebalanced and magic destroyed?

[LynnS]

21 hours ago, Black Crow said:

Given the centrality of the Wall I would venture to suggest that in reality its fall will not be episodic but climactic and it will be the fall of the Wall which will allow our characters to dream of spring.

Yes, I think this is it.  The Wall seems to be Martin's version of the one ring.  An object of immense power that grows and shrinks on it's own accord, the source of power for the dark lord on his dark throne. So it's destruction would come at the end.   

[Matthew.]

13 hours ago, Black Crow said:

Wrenching the thread back to the book, I would say once again that the world is as it is.

What has happened in the story has happened with or without intervention. The leaves have rustled and Eddard has heard them as, later, has Theon, but nothing has been changed as a result of those interventions. We may see characters being guided but we read about it in real time. Everything that has gone before has still happened. Bran may well reach back to influence on-going events, but not those which have already happened.

Well, that's the thing. If GRRM is introducing causal loops, then GRRM the Sci-Fi author might believe he's avoiding changing the past on a technicality; Bran is not changing the past, but he is, in some instances, discovering that he caused the past--Bran is witnessing the past exactly as it happened, and the past "exactly as it happened," was that Bran was watching Eddard in the weirwood, to use a speculative example. Bran spoke through the leaves because he has always lived in a timeline where he spoke through the leaves.
 

17 hours ago, JNR said:

Well, Bran's desperate for such a sign and if Bran ignores all the moments in which Eddard didn't react, and then instantly seizes on a moment in which he appeared to, I'm not too surprised.  

How many moments were there where Eddard didn't react? As it stands, we have a very limited sample size, two different visions of Eddard at two different ages, in which this happened:

Quote

Lord Eddard Stark sat upon a rock beside the deep black pool in the godswood, the pale roots of the heart tree twisting around him like an old man's gnarled arms. The greatsword Ice lay across Lord Eddard's lap, and he was cleaning the blade with an oilcloth.

"Winterfell," Bran whispered.

His father looked up. "Who's there?" he asked, turning …

… and Bran, frightened, pulled away. His father and the black pool and the godswood faded and were gone and he was back in the cavern, the pale thick roots of his weirwood throne cradling his limbs as a mother does a child. A torch flared to life before him.

And later...

Quote

… but then somehow he was back at Winterfell again, in the godswood looking down upon his father. Lord Eddard seemed much younger this time. His hair was brown, with no hint of grey in it, his head bowed. "… let them grow up close as brothers, with only love between them," he prayed, "and let my lady wife find it in her heart to forgive …"

"Father." Bran's voice was a whisper in the wind, a rustle in the leaves. "Father, it's me. It's Bran. Brandon."

Eddard Stark lifted his head and looked long at the weirwood, frowning, but he did not speak. 

Two times he whispers, and two times Eddard reacts, the second of which includes him looking directly at the weirwood, much as Theon does later when he has a similar experience. I don't dismiss that this could be coincidental timing, but I'm still not thrilled by even the ambiguity of these events, much less the possibility that they may foreshadow more consequential greenseer nonsense.

 

[Matthew.]

16 hours ago, JNR said:

There might be a compromise here, in that Bran's mind can only comprehend the information coming from the weirwood in a linear fashion, because that's the only way a human mind can function.  So it seems that way to him, as it would to anyone.

There's not really any compromise necessary, GRRM has a built in excuse for the clarity of the vision: Bran is not the narrator. All of ASOIAF is written with third-person limited narration, though the narrator has occasional bouts of omniscience; eg "The Others made no sound," that moment where the narrator doesn't follow Victarion during Moqorro's ritual, and (I'm kicking myself for forgetting this back when we were discussing it) during Dany's HOTU visions, where the narrator is telling us what Dany sees, rather than what Dany thinks she sees.

In that sense, GRRM is being stylistically consistent, but that's low praise, as the style he's being consistent with is unambitious. Given an opportunity to do something interesting with his prose, he chose instead to favor accessibility--he created worse literature to tell a more comprehensible story.

A better author wouldn't merely write about a strange idea, and hope that the reader finds it strange, they would evoke strangeness through their style. 

[Brad Stark]

I want to distinguish between ability to change the past and ability to cause past events.

The Back to the Future movie is an example of changing past events.  The past at the end of the movie is different than it was at the start.

A possible spoiler from the mummers' version about Hodor is an example of the 2nd

Spoiler

Hodor is mentally damaged in the past by Bran's actions in the future.  This is different from 'Back to the Future' as we never see an alternate version of Hodor were the alteration took place.

Regardless of if the book follows the same story as the movie,  this is an example of the sort of interaction with the past I believe Bran is capable of.   Bran can cause leaves to russle, as that already happened.  Bran cannot prevent his father's death as his father died.  Similarly,  Bran could build the Wall, Winterfell or create the White Walkers,  but cannot prevent them from ever having existed.  This creates problems with whether or not Bran really has free will, but GRRM can avoid that problem simply by not writing about it. 

[Melifeather]

6 minutes ago, Brad Stark said:

I want to distinguish between ability to change the past and ability to cause past events.

The Back to the Future movie is an example of changing past events.  The past at the end of the movie is different than it was at the start.

A possible spoiler from the mummers' version about Hodor is an example of the 2nd

  Hide contents

Hodor is mentally damaged in the past by Bran's actions in the future.  This is different from 'Back to the Future' as we never see an alternate version of Hodor were the alteration took place.

Regardless of if the book follows the same story as the movie,  this is an example of the sort of interaction with the past I believe Bran is capable of.   Bran can cause leaves to russle, as that already happened.  Bran cannot prevent his father's death as his father died.  Similarly,  Bran could build the Wall, Winterfell or create the White Walkers,  but cannot prevent them from ever having existed.  This creates problems with whether or not Bran really has free will, but GRRM can avoid that problem simply by not writing about it. 

I would be careful in assuming that the book will have the same explanation for Hodor as the show. And hearing leaves rustle and preventing the death of his father are two completely different things. But Pretty Pig shed some light on a possible explanation for Bran by comparing him to another Marvel character, Kang the Conqueror. Kang is a time traveler and he leaves splinters of himself throughout time. There are many alternate Kangs, so it is possible that there are many alternate Brandons.

[Black Crow]

1 hour ago, Matthew. said:

Well, that's the thing. If GRRM is introducing causal loops, then GRRM the Sci-Fi author might believe he's avoiding changing the past on a technicality; Bran is not changing the past, but he is, in some instances, discovering that he caused the past--Bran is witnessing the past exactly as it happened, and the past "exactly as it happened," was that Bran was watching Eddard in the weirwood, to use a speculative example. Bran spoke through the leaves because he has always lived in a timeline where he spoke through the leaves.
 

The way I tend to see it, as I say, is that the world is as it is. Nothing is changed but certain events which have happened may be the result of intervention.

To use the examples which you cited earlier, Bran looked back to Winterfell and his father and learned something which may be useful at a later date. Lord Eddard heard a rustling of leaves. It happened, but the story we are reading was not altered in any way by his hearing those leaves.

Theon in the present heard the leaves and we, also in the present are seeing the consequences of him hearing them.

Everything which Bran may do in the past has happened. If he influenced anything in the land of way back when, the story we know is happening because he did influence it - or failed to influence it.

 

[Black Crow]

Just an observation on this business of Bran being warned not to speak to the dead; I don't think it requires anything clever.

There are two ways of looking at this.

Bran might time-travel through the weirnet and he may hear things spoken by people now dead, which may be of advantage or may have been best left unheard, but what has happened has happened and it may simply therefore be a warning that try as he might he can't alter the past.

The other is the entirely conventional folk tradition warning against raising the dead, because you don't get the living person you fondly remember but the corpse it is now cf Bran's mother.