The Fattest Leech

Hey, I know this quote quite well.

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.

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).

Is this the only mention of Daenerys getting or using/wearing this feathered cloak? I searched a bit more but there's always that chance my search terms are off. Thanks A Game of Thrones - Daenerys VI Dany smiled shyly. It was sweet to laugh. She felt half a girl again. They wandered for half the morning. She saw a beautiful feathered cloak from the Summer Isles, and took it for a gift. In return, she gave the merchant a silver medallion from her belt. That was how it was done among the Dothraki. A birdseller taught a green-and-red parrot to say her name, and Dany laughed again, yet still refused to take him. What would she do with a green-and-red parrot in a khalasar? She did take a dozen flasks of scented oils, the perfumes of her childhood; she had only to close her eyes and sniff them and she could see the big house with the red door once more. When Doreah looked longingly at a fertility charm at a magician's booth, Dany took that too and gave it to the handmaid, thinking that now she should find something for Irri and Jhiqui as well.

From his own admissions, the only things that he has changed are the things that didn't fit the story trajectory the way it needed to. There was the whole Tyrion chapter he omitted and a few changes another Tyrion chapter, and changes to a Dany chapter when she has an interaction with Quaithe and who Quaithe warns her about, and then of course the slew of changes he made after the first ~150 pages and outline. He seems make more shifts rather than any real changes to the plot or characters. He can't use the show as a litmus for his book ending because that would render the 2 million+ words already written as null and void. By the way, I love your sig line.

I say this in a friendly way... And? He has also said this after the show ended, even as recent as one of his 4-5 interviews last fall 2019 when he was in the Chicago/DC areas at talks. But that's the thing, he has been saying this at each juncture along the way, that he has no intention of changing the ending (which major plot points set up along the way) he has been working towards for ~twentywhatever years. I believe him. He has said that he used to read the forums but stopped, and later that his wife would read them but eventually she stopped. I dunno, could have been all the Daario=Everyone Faceless theories turned them off? Again, I believe him when he says he used to read forums, but stopped a while ago. This is an honest question, but have you ever watched any of the other handful of GRRM stories that made it to tv/movies? ALLLLLL of them were majorly majorly changed. Sometimes he was even part of the team that made such huge changes. I think he knows the difference between books and screen and the necessary changes that come with adaptations. There are currently a few stories of his that are in current screen adaption. Fingers and toes tightly crossed they do some justice as I would like to watch a good adaption of GRRM's work at least once before I die. Where I think the D7D show failed was they took his bulletpoint notes and decided among themselves what to disregard and what to "keep" and how the kept was going to be adapted (changed). However, both the showrunners and GRRM have been making the point that the show and books are two different stories. Even GRRM's blog post about the show end says it was "an" ending, not the ending. The show left out so dang many elements (magic, characters, locations, history, internal thoughts/character development) that it's easy to see why GRRM made this statement. The misfiring has been happening since literally the cold opening of the show. The D's twisted around the AGOT prologue for what reason? It's only that last two seasons (especially the final two episodes) that made viewers so upset because of the supposed shock of it all. That happened because Dany was NEVER adapted accurately, and the showrunners invented their own twists along the way (Arya's kill).

“There is a temptation to change it — ‘Oh my god, it’s screwed up, I have to come up with something different,’” he explained. "But that’s wrong. Because you’ve been planning for a certain ending and if you suddenly change direction just because somebody figured it out, or because they don’t like it, then it screws up the whole structure… I don’t read the fan sites. I want to write the book I’ve always intended to write all along. And when it comes out they can like it or they can not like it.”--GRRM I highly doubt he's going to change the story he set out to tell. That would undo 2million+++ words and world-building of foreshadowing and character setup's.

Happy one year enderversary

Quick question for anyone who follows book to show Plotzee! The world famous game of chopping up the books, scrambling them in a blender, then rearranging the pieces to create something... more brokener What do you think are the chances that the letter Jon wrote in AFFC/ADWD to Cersei in King's Landing asking for help with the common foe (the Others), that was then discussed by Cersei in her AFFC 4 chapter where she ignores his pleas and instead conspires to kill him was remade into the wight hunt idea? Is it possible this was a D&D Plotzee! rework for that 'wight in a box", err, event? I was just discussing this scene elsewhere on the forum when this possibility inhabited my brain. I am kind of thinking it is a "rework" and that it adds to the mounting list of reasons we won't see a wight hunt in the books. A Feast for Crows - Cersei IV Cersei gave him a sharp look. "What are you saying?" "This," Qyburn said. "For years now, the Night's Watch has begged for men. Lord Stannis has answered their plea. Can King Tommen do less? His Grace should send the Wall a hundred men. To take the black, ostensibly, but in truth . . ." ". . . to remove Jon Snow from the command," Cersei finished, delighted. I knew I was right to want him on my council. "That is just what we shall do." She laughed. If this bastard boy is truly his father's son, he will not suspect a thing. Perhaps he will even thank me, before the blade slides between his ribs. "It will need to be done carefully, to be sure. Leave the rest to me, my lords." This was how an enemy should be dealt with: with a dagger, not a declaration. "We have done good work today, my lords. I thank you. Is there aught else?"

This is true. If I can interject a few examples of the Jon+Val pairing GRRM uses in his other stories (Fevre Dream, The Skin Trade, Nightflyers, And Seven Times Never Kill Man, plus a few tidbit others) GRRM has to have these two archetypes meet and flirt heavily (no sexual action yet), then they part- the 'Jon' has to have his own awakening/journey, and only after this journey (both have one with a common cause, just separately), they rejoin for the finale or just shortly thereafter. I am anticipating this will happen to Jon and Val as well after he wakes from his wolf-coma dream state. I do believe that Val, along with Morna, Tormund, and Borroq, will play a part in his healing-remanning of himself, and it is then that Jon takes off to meet Stannis, the false skinchanger Ramsay, and the other issues south. Plus, GRRM heavily implied there is more to Jon and Val in the upcoming books, no details, but he said he wasn't done with them In general as I think on it: Daenerys isn't planned to invade Westeros until the end of TWOW and I don't see she and Jon meeting right away. Dany is going to meet with those in the south/Kings Landing area first, people like Euron and Aegon 6, and maybe Cersei, etc. Chances are that Jon and Dany won't meet until the very last in TWOW, or maybe not even until ADOS? IF they have a fling, it will be about as romantic as Stannis and his fiery woman Melisandre... which is to say it won't be and there will be a good bit of compulsion going on (as what happens to those who stand to close to a pyramid god). GRRM once said that he didn't hang a giant wolfpack on the wall and not plan to use them, and it could be that same for both the centuries of Targ incest opposed against the northern/free folk way of "gatherings" (orgies) and not marrying kin to kin (no, the Starks never practiced incest and the history of the past Sansa and her sister was a power grab attempt, an example of what not to do, nothing more). Which brings it back to this current Sansa. The purpose of marriage in Westeros among the lords was to increase and expand the family and holdings (the green way) and not to keep it all to oneself in a greedy way (fire is a hungry god, always consuming to feed itself). Sansa and Jon are clan kin whether brother and sister or cousins. Even Rickard and Lyarra were second cousins (once removed) with other bloodlines mixed in there. I guess that is the closest it comes in the north, but still a huge difference than the crazy incest that the Targs practice, that "mad" Lysa encourages, and even the grasping Arianne who thinks she deserves to be queeen. So in actuality, the incest angle is not reserved for the Valyrians and Targaryens specifically, but anyone who is represented as a fiery "mad" element. I do not see either Jon or Sansa claiming they deserve to be king or queen over Westeros or Winterfell. So again, on that narrative level, the two being romantically linked as opposed to rebuilding after the long night-linked just doesn't seem to fit.

*whispers* (I wouldn't say this out loud ) I was thinking near the same thing.