BlackLightning

YG has been a part of the story since A Clash of Kings...at the absolute latest. The YG story probably looked very different at that time but it was there. Jon Connington? You might have a point there but remember that he is really just a vehicle for both YG the character and YG the plotline...and possibly even a vehicle for the big R+L=J revelation. What would be JonCon's reaction to the fact that Rhaegar had a son named Jon? Who knows? It'll likely be juicy. In any case, Jon Connington is not a main character in the sense that Theon is, much less any of the Big Six. But I think he will shape out to be a major POV character by the end of the series. And, in a way, this is also irrelevant as his character and his backstory was first introduced in A Storm of Swords. As far as nobodies in the glossary? Fair point. But it's a chicken vs. egg argument: there's no way of knowing if certain characters were originally intended to be nobodies that GRRM decided to turn into secondary characters or if GRRM had been planning something all along. No, they didn't.

Not necessarily. You probably are right to say that as the likelihood that Arya never left Winterfell with her father, sister and the royal party is high. She always felt like a tag-a-long anyways. ...or you could be wrong in that Arya left with her father and the royal party only to escape the city and successfully make it back to Winterfell (thanks to Yoren) It might have well been the case for Arya to make it back to Riverrun after Catelyn returned from Storm's End (if Catelyn ever left Riverrun at all) and then the two of them made it to Winterfell either just after it had been sacked, right before it had been sacked* or before it had been taken to begin with Oh, and in the original outline, Winterfell wasn't to have been burned by Theon; it was burned by Tyrion. She was But I assume that she probably would have been the only survivors of Jaime's genocidal coup because she has nothing to do with the Baratheon-Lannister line of succession.

I'm not calling you a liar, but this entire post is patently dishonest. Arianne Martell and Euron Greyjoy were mentioned as early as A Game of Thrones and name-dropped on several different occasions in A Clash of Kings. Euron's cameos and mentions in A Clash of Kings (i.e. "What happened to Uncle Euron?"/"We don't speak of it.") are clear foreshadowing that the character will pop up in a big way. Euron is the subject of more than one prophecy in A Storm of Swords and he actually indirectly contributes to the downfall of Robb Stark in the same novel. Arianne Martell was name-dropped repeatedly in A Storm of Swords; in her case, these were minor name-drops but it's not like she came out of nowhere. How is YG not an important part of Dany's journey when, at first, he tried to marry her and now he is setting himself up as her rival? Between A Clash of Kings and A Dance with Dragons, he is the subject of at least three different prophecies all pertaining to Dany. Moreover, Arya overhears Varys and Illyrio making plans in regard to one Targaryen or another (either Viserys or YG or both in a way) in A Game of Thrones. The fact that it is revealed to be YG later on in the story is not an example of a last-minute creation; what is an example of is that of a mystery revealed.

I agree. I don't think Cersei and Euron will meet and coordinate their alliance until after she gets back to the Rock and starts raising another army. By that point, Tommen at the very least will be dead.

I do not blame him for not knowing (or, alternatively, debating) whether or not Casterly Rock will appear in The Winds of Winter. If he has approximately 500 pages left to go, then Casterly Rock is a clearly setting that will either only appear in the last one or two chapters of a single POV...or it will appear in the prologue/epilogue. Maybe both. In any case, Cersei is the only full-fledged POV character who this makes sense for. Yes, it makes sense for Jaime but...he's a very distant second. Unless GRRM is going to do what I think he is going to do with Jaime, it actually makes more sense for Sybell Westerling to have a prologue POV chapter at Casterly Rock than it does for Jaime. But back to Cersei...I am 99% certain that Cersei will not die (or otherwise cease to be a POV character) in Winds. Outside of being a prisoner of Team fAegon in King's Landing (which would be dreadfully boring...there will be too many POVs there), Cersei's only course of action is to leave King's Landing and the only place she can go -- apart from taking her chances in the Free Cities -- is Casterly Rock. @Lord Varys and I have been going back and forth over the past few years about if Cersei will ally herself with Euron before or after she gets to Castery Rock; I personally think that the Greyjoy-Lannister alliance won't happen until after Cersei makes it back to Casterly Rock in A Dream of Spring. However, if Lord Varys' predictions are more in line with what's going to happen, then the book would end with Cersei either leaving King's Landing or encountering Euron at sea. Apart from that, I agree. It's time to start buckling down to edit and revise

Actually, I think the opposite. I think the new, deadlier love triangle that is going to ensue is the one between Jon, Tyrion and Dany. There might be another triangular situation between Jon (or rather Arya and/or Bran), Tyrion and Sansa but I think it won't be a matter of Jon and Tyrion becoming rivals for Sansa's affections; instead, I think it will be a matter of Tyrion will want Sansa for Winterfell and Jon will want to preserve Winterfell for the Starks.

Thank you for doing this

Ummm I remember hearing a lot of criticism about bits and pieces of season 6. Particularly the first half of the season And then there is the infamous Arya/Waif chase scene in the eighth episode. Who can forget how annoyed people were at that?

Whoa. So, we really are looking at a book approaching 90 chapters. Not necessarily If you've been diligent and did a good job, writing the end of something is much easier and much faster than writing the beginning and the middle. It doesn't matter if it's a doctoral thesis, a novel, a speech or an e-mail. Things move quicker and get a little easier when you are at the end. Starting something takes a lot and the middle is always the hardest part. Barring rewrites of course...

I think he means that the slaves are like the wights and that the White Walkers are like the slavers. The connection seems tenuous at best right now, but I think it will be made clear in this next book when we really get to see how the White Walkers are organized and how they originated. Was Paddy Considine put forward? Was competition super stiff?

I don't know if anyone remembers but in the original outline plan... there was supposed to have been a love triangle between Jon, Tyrion and Arya Bran was supposed to develop a hatred towards Jon A lot of the ideas from the original outline were never discarded, only changed. Like for example: Catelyn had gone back to Winterfell and had escaped the castle with her sons and their direwolves...only to be turned away at the Wall, killed by traitors and then being resurrected by the Others as some sort of vengeful ghost. The Lannisters win the War of the Five Kings with a bunch of espionage, subterfuge, treachery and dumb luck...but not without destroying most of their own family members. Jaime, the big bad, was to be the last Lannister standing and the King of Westeros...up until Daenerys Targaryen shows back up. Sound familiar? The point I'm trying to make is that a lot of the original elements - no matter how crazy they are - have reappeared or been alluded to in some shape or form in the books. The Jon/Tyrion/Arya love triangle that shows up might be one between Jon/Dany/Tyrion with Bran believing that Jon stole his crown or something.

True. However, D&D didn't establish that it was a GRRM ending or not...which is something that they regularly did. They explicitly stated that Bran becoming the endgame King of All Westeros™ (and thereby, the ultimate winner in the game of thrones) was from GRRM (it was the last of the three WTF moments they talked about) and then they also explicitly stated that Arya killing the Night King and single-handedly ending the Long Night was an idea that they had personally conceived during the writing process for season 6. Their lack of differentiating there makes me think that -- at some point -- King's Landing is completely destroyed and, after the problem with the Others, fAegon/Varys/Arianne/JonCon, Littlefinger, Euron, and Cersei is (mostly) resolved, Jon will be crowned with Daenerys as his queen consort... BUT there will be a lot of bad blood between Dany, the Starks and Tyrion. There is going to be some sort of fallout between the heroes/survivors and Bran will assume control of the continent thereafter. I think that the tempo and temperature of the fallout between the Big 6 that sees the kingship moved from Jon to Bran is just so wildly different between D&D's version and GRRM's version that they kept silent about it. That said, I also don't think King's Landing will be destroyed by Daenerys...at least not like that; not at the very end of the series. I think it will be Euron or JonCon who will destroy the city: Euron by magic because he is a psycho who wants to use magic to try to turn himself into a god or JonCon by wildfire as part of a deranged attempt to spite his enemies...

There would still be war. By the time we get to the point where Robert is dying, the War of the Five Kings was unavoidable. Balon was always going to rebel. Renly too, especially where Stannis is concerned. Even if Ned told Robert the truth and Robert was consumed with rage and ordered their deaths, Ned had very few swords to his name in the city whereas Cersei had over a thousand. The Red Keep would become a slaughterhouse. Tywin has even more of a reason to raze the continent and he already had multiple armies in the field. Plus, Littlefinger was never Ned's ally and had always been plotting to betray him at some point. And even if Robert denounced Cersei and Jaime as guilty of high treason and their children illegitimate, there's no guarantee that he would even pass the throne to Stannis. Robert is still Robert - a depressed, bumbling oaf. Endearing...but nonetheless a bumbling oaf suffering from major depressive disorder. For all we know, he could pull another Aegon IV and legitimize all his bastards, thereby naming Edric Storm as the heir. Which puts at right back at the idea that the War of the Five Kings was inevitable because there's no way in hell the Lannisters would allow that to happen. If something were to happen to Ned and his daughters (which is very likely given Littlefinger and the numerical advantage Cersei has over Ned), then Robb would rise in rebellion as well with Greatjon and the others hailing him as King in the North. If Mace would have a problem with marrying Margaery to Edric, then we'd be looking at a War of Six Kings. It'd be more ambiguous as to who are the good guys and the bad guys this time around.

Exactly It's part of the reason why I think Jon killing Daenerys is actually a GRRM ending.

But Lucerys was already betrothed.

And then there is Victarion who beat his most recent wife to death Sansa did not have Joffrey killed. She's not in any way culpable...granted, she might take credit for it further down the line when it proves advantageous to do so. But you can't say that she had Joffrey killed. Who? You mean Aegon the Unlikely?

Borros Baratheon's daughters were all young women in their late teens. Joffrey, Aegon and Viserys - at that point - were all under the age of 12. Maybe you could've squeezed an arrangement between Joffrey and the youngest Baratheon girl. But the boys were far too young to be considered good matches for nubile maidens such as them. Don't forget the childbearing clock; it was a lot more imperative that the childbearing clock be abided by back in those days. A woman of 40 giving birth is in terrible danger compared to another woman who is giving birth at age 24. Because our culture (or at least, American culture) pathologically despises any form of sexual perversion, especially when it comes to rapists. Exactly It's yet another reason why there should've been an episode placed in between "We Light the Way" and "The Princess and the Queen." We needed an episode dedicated to the Royce family accusing Daemon of murdering his wife...who actually was one of the more powerful women in the realm. It is a big deal.

Borros Baratheon's daughters were all young women in their late teens. Joffrey, Aegon and Viserys - at that point - were all under the age of 12. Maybe you could've squeezed an arrangement between Joffrey and the youngest Baratheon girl. But the boys were far too young to be considered good matches for nubile maidens such as them. Don't forget the childbearing clock; it was a lot more imperative that the childbearing clock be abided by back in those days. A woman of 40 giving birth is in terrible danger compared to another woman who is giving birth at age 24. Because our culture (or at least, American culture) pathologically despises any form of sexual perversion, especially when it comes to rapists. Exactly It's yet another reason why there should've been an episode placed in between "We Light the Way" and "The Princess and the Queen." We needed an episode dedicated to the Royce family accusing Daemon of murdering his wife...who actually was one of the more powerful women in the realm. It is a big deal.

I think we will. But I think that it will be very few. Three, four tops.

A couple is not necessarily two. I don't know where you are from, but Americans use the terms "a couple" and "a few" interchangeably. In fact, "a couple" is suggestive of more than just "a few" for some people. Basically, for GRRM to say that he has finished "a couple" of POVs in the same breath of saying that he is about 75% done with the book, it communicates not much but more than just two. So, either he has more than 2 (probably 6) POVs done or he has 2 POVs done and a buttload of other POV chapters done.

That's the gag though...your forecast doesn't quite align with his words. If only 2 PoVs are completed and he kept reiterating that he's about 75% done, then those 2 PoVs would essentially have to be somewhere in between 40%-60% of the book...and that's being conservative. And given that the book is already slated to be bigger than both Dance and Storm, then we are looking at almost 90 chapters. Between those 2 PoVs, that's a range of 36-50 chapters. Or about 18-27 chapters per POV. That's insane. Just because GRRM says that he is close to finishing 2 PoVs doesn't mean that he has finished only 2 PoVs. It is ludicrous to suggest that. What's more likely is that GRRM has finished close to 10 PoVs with these past 2 being the latest.

It would be interesting. There'd be no lack of material by the time that HOTD gets to the end of the Dance. The Dance has just begun and season 2 isn't coming out until early 2024. Volume 2 of Fire and Blood probably will come out before 2027: which would around the time HOTD ends.

I think the second volume of Fire and Blood will climax with the Blackfyre Rebellion just like how the first volume climaxed with the Dance of the Dragons

Athaliah was a usurper though. She was never in line for the throne. Even if you would make the argument that she was a part of the succession, she murdered everyone before her in the line of succession...which makes her unfit and unworthy. I know you said that there were differences but it's apples and oranges. If anyone would be parallel to Athaliah in this case, it'd be to Aegon II or TV Cersei

I was not at all happy about the death of Lucerys and Arrax being an accident and how Aemond was shocked and somewhat unhappy about it. It could've very well been an accident but Aemond should've been pleasantly surprised or amused by it. Too much of what is going on is either an accident or a misunderstanding. Don't like it. Some things need to be completely intentional. However, I did like their decision to show that dragons are semi-sentient beings that can and do defy their riders to act on their own accord. It is something that is not only present but critical to the plot in the books (especially in A Dance with Dragons). The showrunners of GoT effed it up but it's always been there.