Mithras

1 hour ago, Tyrosh Lannister said:

GRRM literally says Euron has gone to valyria

Euron literally says he has gone to Valyria in AFfC. GRRM doesn't say anything beyond what is written in the text.

That is not confirmation.

16 hours ago, James Arryn said:

Tangential, and quite likely impossible even for George to answer with certainty, but book 1 at least seems to still be ~ heading us towards some of the conclusions from the original submitted draft, and I was wondering if we knew even roughly when the choices to deviate took hold. Like when exactly was Jon & Arya dropped? Was book 1/betrayal of Ned etc. still laying the tracks for Sansa to be the family villain, or had he already decided that she would be heading down a slightly different path? King Jaime? Etc. Again, I realize this is probably unknowable, unless it’s something categorical like ‘he’d scrapped all those ideas before page 1’ or similar. 

By the time of that 1993 November outline, GRRM had written at least 13 chapters, which were attached to the outline and sent along with it (as it says in the outline).

Those 13 chapters are the first 13 chapters in the published book and they are pretty much the same, except minor differences.

19 hours ago, Sandy Clegg said:

I came across a subreddit called pureASOIAF

That is where you err, my lord.

1 hour ago, butterweedstrover said:

Doesn’t sound that different from ruling Winterfell. Either could work but the books have alluded to Winterfell.

I don't think there is anything alluding to Sansa and Winterfell. Even if there was, the first 13 chapters of AGoT still brazenly foreshadow evil King Jaime and Jon-Arya romance.

Catnapping was a later addition (and a contrived coincidence). Originally Cat was supposed to return to Winterfell. Maybe GRRM had not come up with this when he wrote the council scene.

12 hours ago, butterweedstrover said:

Bran has to become king or else the magical powers will become irrelevant.

Among the original major plans, this I think is the most likely to change. That is simply because GRRM is realizing that he can't have too much magic in the story or the he risks losing what sets ASOIAF apart from the other fantasy series. That is why he is trying to feature high fantasy elements in the original drafts and consistently toning them down in the published version.

12 hours ago, butterweedstrover said:

And Sansa has to rule Winterfell or else her political accumulation would be a dead end. 

Back to basics. Sansa marries a Lannister and has a baby as in the 1993 outline and ends up ruling Casterly Rock. Problem solved.

When GRRM wrote this sequence in ACoK, the series was supposed to be 6 books and GRRM was planning to make a 5 year jump after ASoS. Neither AFfC nor Blackfyres existed at that point. We know for a fact that in the earliest drafts, Euron was travelling to Meereen with Victarion and promised him Dany's hand, while having Aeron under his deck just like in the Forsaken. That means Aeron was most probably the original "corpse smiling sadly" in the visions but GRRM changed the plans and now he might find another candidate for this "corpse" or drop it entirely. We also know another bit of trivia according to which GRRM originally wanted to have a similar spooky dream sequence for Tyrion while writing ADwD (the infamous Shrouded Lord chapter) which was supposed to cointain omnious "portents" for his future story. But GRRM decided against that. All this means that the guesses based on such dreams and visions, even if GRRM wanted to foreshadow certain things when he wrote them, might not be as strong. Fat man's ever changing plans and all that.

8 hours ago, divica said:

I think winds will be a mess. grrm thought he would realease it for sure several years ago and even made a promise at some sf convention.

However, upon seeing the reaction to the end of the show and how his ending didn't work grrm probably decided to change the book so that people become more receptive of his ending. Or he realized that his ending didn't work and decided to change the book so that it fits his new ending.

The point is that whatever grrm spent years writing was certainly changed into something new as a reaction to GoT.

It turns out Bran the Broken has the worst story.

On 4/19/2023 at 12:27 PM, kissdbyfire said:

Jon’s not dead. The “amount of blood” is exactly what you’d expect from a head wound, as any kid who’s ever tripped and got a cut to their forehead would tell you. 
Kevan is very dead. 

Agreed. There are a lot of characters that survived far worse than Jon's condition. Mance and the shadowcat for example. Or Aegon II. Or Sandor. Even Bran should not have survived if not for his direwolf.

10 hours ago, BlackLightning said:

Six months to one year sounds about right. Two years is unfathomable to me as a time skip between Winds and Dream

Once all the stones are set in place at the end of TWoW, 3-5 years of time jump is perfectly doable. GRRM has all the tools he needs. Winter might bring everything to a halt. On top of that, a plague that comes in several waves assure that nothing important can take place during this time jump. ADoS might start just as winter giving some break (perhaps another false spring) and the plague finally running its course. This is how things can start happening again.

BTW, A Dream of Spring starting with a false spring sounds like a cool idea.

When Viserys died in AGOT, the Golden Company did not exist yet. What plan? 

This can only work if a full feature movie about the 1st Blackfyre Rebellion is made as a prologue and then the rest of them is absorbed into this D&E series. But still, yet another series about GRRM's unfinished material. With 2 years of wait between seasons, only to see a handful of episodes, I am not looking forward to it. In fact, since these long waits became the norm, I don't start watching any new series.

A time jump between TWoW and ADoS is a must. To do that, GRRM should end TWoW in a concluding manner, just like ASoS. To do that, GRRM should decide where the story is going. To do that, GRRM should write a hard outline and stick to it. To do that, GRRM should stop being stubborn.

Hopefully it is not Bran from the future 

I think this chapter was originally written from another POV (probably Tyrion) in one of the many iterations of the Meereenese Knot. Therefore, it was this other POV observing everything from the deck. When GRRM retold this chapter from Victarion's POV, he needed to hide the details of the magic.

Depends on what GRRM wants to do with it. And I don't think he knows what he wants. At one point, he wanted the RLJ reveal for a Jon-Arya romance.

If this was always in the plans, then it is bad writing because GRRM failed to build that up in the books so far.

If this is a retcon (which it is btw), then it is a bad retcon.

Not all retcons should necesarily be bad but this particular one is even worse than Maggy's Prophecy.

GRRM needs to see that he has a third alternative. Instead of choosing his poison as bad writing or bad retcon, he could well do nothing.

If GRRM proceeds with this idea, it will be worse than the catspaw failure.

1 hour ago, The Bard of Banefort said:

What was the reaction to Feast and Dance when they were first released? By the time I came around, they were being held up as masterpieces, but I don’t think that was how they were initially received.

Their current perception is like how it was when they were released, i.e. disappointment. Something along the lines of "We've waited 5-6 years for this?"

This can only mean that GRRM is serious about that awful prophecy retcon. It seems there is no person in his circle telling him why it is such a bad idea.

Not only them but the Northerners are doomed as well. I think they will all flee to Riverlands. The North will turn into a wilderness.

On 3/30/2023 at 8:44 AM, SeanF said:

3.  Dany is *way* more popular than in 2011.   No discussion about her was complete without Apple Martini and Tze weighing in about her being the child of Satan.

And they were right lol.

No. Essos was a huge mistake.