Jon Fossoway

I think Mirri's magic healing works as Moqorro's. Give something, take something back. If this is the case, we've yet to see what Vic is about to lose: he got the superhuman burned arm already.

"Wanted him to?". C'mon, Bloodrave was gone like 20 years before the Bobellion even started.

Theodosius abandoned war altogether?

And what does "honor" mean in this context? Jon Arryn may as well have orchestrated the rebellion that deposed the Targaryens and, also, provoked the death of thousands. Were his motives honorable? Perhaps yes or no, but he had a purpose. Tywin Lannister saw his own House on the brink of crumbling under the poor leadership of his father, took it up to his own responsibility and went all the way, making an example of the Tarbecks and Reynes, so hard and cruelly his family regained fear and respect in his region and overall southern Westeros. Did he have a purpose? Yeah, he did. Point is, I don't think "honor" is correctly used to compare both Jon and Tywin. And, moreso, Tywin had more reasons (or at least jurisdiction) to do as he saw fit in a feudal system; Jon Arryn broke the rules & rebelled against the crown. Assuming he had part on the rebellion's schemes, of course.

If facing a member of royalty, I guess they wouldn't aim for the head, as the Snail did. Jousts are not death matches. But I also guess that, in the end, it is a matter of personal choice. If a Kingsguard don't want to joust a Targaryen (or whoever is in charge), fine. Rhaegar was an excellent jouster and Selmy and Dayne presumably played by the rules. Fair game, fair win or lose.

I'm not usually keen on knitting intrincate theories on ASOIAF because I don't think George is that complex in his knitting, but that figure of the hammer falling on a dragon fits quite nicely on Robert and Rhaegar. Another reading is that the hammer (as in old first men Hammer of Justice Mudd king) means justice. At the time of Hugh and at the time of Bob I don't think the Targaryen were much loved by the smallfolk, considering Aerys downward spiral into his mental problems and the Targaryens during the Dance, in general, organizing battles that were more like butcheries, that chiefly befell on damaging the smallfolk levies, population and families.

Qarth has some Constantinople vibes, having the triple walls and being a passageway between the free cities and Slaver's Bay & the far east.

I don't think it's controversial, just silly.

I doubt George had the means at the time (nor cared) to know how many times he repeated one word or another... Except for the "water marks" he attributes to each POV. For example 'if I look back" (Daenerys).

Logical explanation is that it was a volcano that suddenly broke up with mild to none prior signs of it happening. It left the town in shambles, so venturing pirates and slavers that probably saw the huge eruption, eventually came closer and took whatever people were alive to slavery and plundered whatever was left. Screaming caves could just be the winds in these cave systems the inhabitants used as part of the town. My only convoluted theory is (unlikely, of course) is that they dug too deep (being cave dwellers) and woke a Balrog.

To mount is a way the dothraki refers to sex (very few quotes you would find on that). Also to dominate (the stallion who will mount the world). But mostly it is used in-text for horses and transportation. Why would the Undying talk in 'dothraki' slang associating mounts with sex or marriage? No sense in that.

Eldest son with unstable father; kingdom needed a reliable warrior commander that represented the Crown.

Her marriage to Drogo failed very quickly in its political objectives, so it could be considered a waste of time. Her meddlings in Astapor failed horribly, and could cost her most trusted advisor, Barry, his life. This could be some plot advancement, but fundamentally she wasted time in Astapor. The fugitive part I agree, that will be a hard pill to swallow, but Daenerys has been making people swallow hard pills since the beginning of her arc.

I've maintained the notion that Daenerys will arrive Westeros fleeing from Essos. The mantra If I look back I'm lost is not there to just signal an aesthetic water mark of her POVs, they do signal her entire arc. He is constantly leaving stuff and people behind, and sometimes undeliberately producing damage, like in Astapor. She is breaking the established equilibrium in Slaver's Bay and she isn't working out durable solutions. I don't think other dothraki khalassars will join her, and the few still loyal to her will either fade or die. There'll come a point she runs out of allies and escapes Essos, all her essosi enterprises having failed, with a handful of followers. Westeros is the arena in where things will decide for good, Essos was a knot kept around for too long. To be honest, dothrakis in Westeros has no sense. They looked silly in the show already.

Frodo is 50 something years old when LotR begins. How do we feel about it? For me, it's fine. George is building this world with his rules. Kids are required to take adult responsabilities earlier; younglings charge into battle in early adolescence and brothers have sex with sisters. So what? Deal with it, or just drop the books, if you find it unbearable. I really find very cheap to produce a judgement on the writer from this.

It was probably thought and planned to be the seat of a King of a large swarth of land, not a feudal lord who owes allegiance to a monarch.

I was meaning the Robellion, actually. He broke his vows (way before he killed Aerys, to be fair) and waited for whoever came into the throne hall. To me it's kinda weird because he seems to be standing in a surrendering stance yet still defiant.

Are you a native english speaker? I was also slow to realize how dumb Victarion is, but that's because of translation. The spanish translation makes him sound more taciturn, solemn and stubborn than stupid. The english translation is much more evident on this: the phrasings of his talks, of his memories and in general his views of his circumstances. To me, it was chiefly because on what was lost in translation.

I don't think GRRM made a parallel to Ramsay deliberately. Ramsay is Ramsay, a sick fuck. But... Jon Snow is, to me, a character that shares some of Ramsay's feats, although the development of the plot made both very different on the surface. I mean, basically Jon is a good willed dude; Ramsay is a sick fuck ill intentioned dude. Both born out of wedlock; both adopted and taken into the family household by the alledged father. Then there's someinversed feats: Jon Snow has Ghost, a good natured, kinda shy direwolf, that Jon keeps at his side; Ramsay has a pack of hunting dogs (who are cousins to wolves), that he takes care of. Feral, murdering dogs. Ghost mirrors Jon's character; those feral dogs are very much like Ramsay's personality. Ramsay rose to a position of power (lord of Winterfell); Jon rose to a position of power (Lord Commander of the Night's Watch). Both are facing problems in each station. Ramsay has an ongoing coup inside Winterfell; Jon was actually stabbed [probably] to death by his subordinates in Castle Black. Ramsay got legitimized by a crown's decree, so he is now a Bolton. We are yet to see this happening to Jon Snow and in which circumstances. Ramsay and Jon are initially both impulsive. Jon nearly broke his vows (well, he actually did) for good; Ramsay... well, in a way even good ol' Roose acknowledges Ramsay is not a very trustable leader because he is reckless. Jon and Ramsay are actually very transparent characters in this way: you KNOW Ramsay is an evil mfker and people around him also know because Ramsay does grotesque sh*t; Jon behaves naively and sometimes a bit pedantic (at the start of his duties as a recruit at least) and he just can't hide that, people around him notice it.

Does Jaime Lannister counts amongst those who surrendered?

I also like the Umber sigil in the show. I think chains in a shield are easier to mass produce than a detailed giant, lest it be a giant drawn like a 5 year old would. A tall, stick figure.

Well, think as you may, you will not deny my people's coat of arms is splendid, upfront and unmistakable: a shield wall of apples charging at you will always be Fossoways. And easy to mass produce.

On a later season we see him get beaten by a prime Arthur Dayne, though. If not for Howland Reed. And the TV show fight with Jaime was, at best, inconclusive. When the single fight began, Jaime had Ned sorrounded by the Lannister guard, giving the fight not a very leveled start. In the end, both were castle trained swordsmen. Even if Jaime was a far superior swordsman than Eddard, the fight would not be decided in three or four blows. Consider professional sports, like tennis. A top 10 would not beat 6-0 6-0 a player ranked, say, 80º in the world. Differences in the elite (and players ranked between 1 to 100 are elite) are not that big. Same with Jaime and Eddard. Both castle trained and experienced in combat.

Well, you gotta consider that George is not a big novel writer, nor a saga writer until the one saga that made him worldwide famous. His 1000 worlds, which took most of his writing career, is a loosely connected set of short stories to short novels. Tuf Voyaging is a pretty standard peripatetic independent stories that revolve around a chief protagonist. I think Dyring of the Light is his biggest novel until A Game of Thrones and it's got a lot action packed fillers. His strength does not lie on producing a varied set of characters, but taking ideas and working and reworking on 'em, kinda obsessively. In 'Starlady' there is a proto-Targaryen minor character; there is the theme of collective consciousness on several of his stories. But I consider it actually a strong feat of his as a writer. Given he develops these themes over and over, he becomes very good at writing them. Varys is not a clone of Larys. I think he intentionally made them sound and look similar (both lacking physically...) but in terms of character development, even though they perform the same job, they are far away on the dining table from each other. About Lyonel and Robert's similarities, that is yet to be seen, since we've got Lyonel's bit on the D&E stories, but we'll really see how he fares as Storm King and then we could be more precise on a comparison. Right now, they both share the typical Baratheon physical treats and the mercurial personalities, to be sure.

The Dying Earth series by Jack Vance. A big influence on George, too. It is not a saga itself, but a series of stories interconnected set in an Earth far away in the future, when the sun is dying. Planet is filled with magic stuff, parallel dimensions and science is apparently forgotten or twisted througout the eons. It's got a lot of stuff, to be honest, to dig around. I remember trying to read Mazirian the Mage years ago, before I got into ASOIAF, and thought 'what the fuck, this is not the fantasy I was looking for'. Years later, I re-read it again to give it another chance, but this time with a huge hangover and dramatizing it while reading it out loud and it is funny as hell. For example, and recurring to my memory of it since it was years ago, there is a spell that in english would be like 'the black angry could' that mages can conjure to transport themselves quickly to far away places. And it is what it says it is: a furious cloud that comes to you, lifts you up like a piece of cloth and carries you quickly to your chosen location, while beating you around furiously against the ground, trees and other objects. Reading that part was tough without giggling. I think it was the first tale, named Turjan.