The Fattest Leech

Hey, I know this quote quite well.

Well, while avoiding the confusion between abomination and the canon series, the 'weirwood net' is the largest, living, historic library in that world, and that is a pretty frickin' amazing story

Do you mean an Other-other, or an other an in another that is opposite to ‘X’ one?

Good questions! A small crackpot I have is that ‘dragonsteel’ is more along the lines of a prophetic idea of a person rather than an actual blade. @Lady Blizzardborn has a great thread (closed) where she discussed this in the past. I don’t have too much time to answer more now, but here is a link if anyone wants a peek.

Don’t forget #FreyFamilyValues. Lol at people that think GRRM writes characters all to the same shade of grey, something he says he doesn’t do.

Right. Also, there is a difference between what the ice-dragon-Other is doing with dead people and what Coldhands is operating as. Superficialities there are many characters or plot details that appear the same, but a little more exploring shows they are actually different in their mechanics and plot necessity.

Seems some need to reread the books. Even Daenerys knows her father lost the throne. The Targaryens lost the throne, the overwhelming Ozymandias symbol of oppression they killed each other for generation after generation. The throne is not something that is in anyway a good thing in this story. This is why Daenerys thinks she has to reconquer Westeros, to become the next Aegon the Dragon & Conquerer, because it isn’t “hers” or Targaryen “property”. You can’t own the land.

I think this sounds familiar, but I am questioning myself and wondering if this is something Sansa does for Dontos at Joffery's name day? Basically Sansa saving Dontos at the time.

He isn't going to change a major detail like this for his series. He is still set to write the story he started in 91. Back then he wasn't even going to have animal dragons. Instead the "dragons" were going to be Dragons which was the Targaryens and their pyrokenisis fire powers and Dany (still has) the ability to "bend people to her will" as GRRM planned. This was always planned as a magical/mental battle, a Game of Mind as it is called in Martinworld. When he added animal dragons, he upped the out of balance firepower game: Question by Adam Pasick of Vulture.com: When civilizations clash in your books, instead of Guns, Germs, and Steel, maybe it’s more like Dragons, Magic, and Steel (and also Germs). GRRM: There is magic in my universe, but it’s pretty low magic compared to other fantasies. Dragons are the nuclear deterrent, and only Dany has them, which in some ways makes her the most powerful person in the world. But is that sufficient? These are the kind of issues I’m trying to explore. The United States right now has the ability to destroy the world with our nuclear arsenal, but that doesn’t mean we can achieve specific geopolitical goals. Power is more subtle than that. You can have the power to destroy, but it doesn’t give you the power to reform, or improve, or build. Source. *** “I have tried to make it explicit in the novels that the dragons are destructive forces, and Dany (Daenerys Targaryen) has found that out as she tried to rule the city of Meereen and be queen there. She has the power to destroy, she can wipe out entire cities, and we certainly see that in Fire and Blood, we see the dragons wiping out entire armies, wiping out towns and cities, destroying them, but that doesn’t necessarily enable you to rule — it just enables you to destroy.” George R.R. Martin, November 21, 2018. Source. *** Q: That seems to apply as well to your fantasy or magic elements: If there’s a God of Light, he seems awful. Are the walking dead out of the north beyond any reclaim? And then there’s Daenerys’s dragons: They seem kind of promising, like they could be a force of justice or good. GRRM: Yes, that’s the way they seem. I hope. [Laughs] I don’t necessarily want to tell you what I’m thinking but to return to what I pointed at earlier, I like people that ask these questions, not necessarily provide them with the answers. So as the books unfold, there will be more and more to think about in these regards. George R.R. Martin, 2014. Source.

The dragons are not that witty. I don't have every variation of GRRM discussing this at hand, but here is one, and it is fun to watch regardless. https://youtu.be/kAR8H7x8wac Adding text: Martin recalled a recent email about an online argument over whether Drogon, one of Daenerys Targaryen’s dragons, could beat Smaug, the beast from J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit, in a fight, and offered a highly rational answer: “Basically, no. Drogon is a very young dragon and still barely large enough to get Dany into the sky… Smaug is gigantic, not to mention that Smaug talks and would probably have an intellectual advantage. But Balerion could give Smaug some trouble; they’re more equivalent in the size and ferocity department.”

Drogon eating Hazzea in Dany's first ADWD chapter, an event that she thinks about even until her last chapter (the one where she accepts she is a dragon and accepts the Targ words of fire & blood) is just as that, it is a constant and growing reminder who Dany is- a dragon. This is the whisperjewel scenario of GRRM's body of works that he as (minorly) reworked for ASOIAF. GRRM has pretty much confirmed/stated that dragons aren't quite that *smart witty. They act on basic animal behaviors (such as shown in Dany X). Drogon did what he did because he's a dragon. Editing to clarify that GRRM used the term *witty. I confused the terms in memory, but found and pasted the source below.

That's the thing, it was the right thing to do as we readers know, and as GRRM tends to favor: not just sitting by and "following orders". That is a place where (unfortunately) Barristan Selmy fails. Also, not sure what you mean by "off screen" because this dilemma and debate happens a lot on page, to me it reads as it's building quite a lot between both the ADWD Jon chapters and Theon's chapters. Heck, I'd go so far myself to say all the way back to earlier books like AGOT when Ramsay is introduced off-page as that existential threat of the monster who is always scariest before seen. However, what Jon has to deal with in his own arc on page is something he struggles with for the reasons listed above. Sometimes it's a very thin fifth wall GRRM is constructing.

Nope. Many things have changed along the way. Jon and any clan-sibling incest is not endgame. There is a chance that Jon and Dany do hook up, but it will not be a romance and such, but rather much more complicated a situation, and it would be a flash in the pan encounter with a dire outcome if it happens at all. He was pretty clear that Jon and Arya are not endgame. Even that outline never gave the ending to the story, but rather details to the first book (of the then planned three). Many changes were made, but more specifically, many things were shifted to another character because of the outcome GRRM wanted and whom he wanted those results associated with. I won't go through all of the changes here (but I have done this before), and one of the shifts in storytelling was adding Ramsay (a character fromm GRRM's writing past) and then giving her a fake Arya. That is all part of the "lesson" that GRRM is avoiding with the Starks and somewhere along the way he decided to scrap it all together for them and gave it to Cercei and Jaime, Targ incest, Ramsay and Jeyne Poole (gene pool), etc.

Prophecy is a powerful drug.

It was a hard test for Jon because it was about a lot more than just "killing Ramsay". This is even part of his questioning to himself when he asks his brothers for help. What Jon is doing is actually tapping back in to what the vows actually mean, saving humanity in any "realm", and the decision to make a preemptive strike to stop Ramsay (killed or captured then trialed), is about Jon acting out a larger duty. It wasn't an easy choice because of him being caught between trying to appease "Kings", Melisandre's tricky words, and stopping an incoming threat from the Others and Ramsay about to add to the wight population if Jon doesn't act. Jon chose the more altruistic act of thwarting these vows, supposed rules of conformity, accepting the stigma, and he acted in a manner that he postulates will do the most good in the immediate situation (not that it will solve everything, but that this battle will be over before THE war begins).