Mithras

2 hours ago, Black Crow said:

I'm inclined to disagree.

There's no alternative candidate so far and I think that Mel is simply warning Jon that if he does go ranging, she will go too

She doesn't have the authority to command Jon though. If he says no to her (and considering that he is even more distrustful of her in this draft compared to the published version, he will say no to her), then she will stay back. Besides, this was a proper vision and if the red woman in the vision was herself, Mel would know it and tell it. Like the grey girl on a dying horse, GRRM might have planned Mel as the misdirection in this case.

2 hours ago, LongRider said:

Morna was sent to Queensgate which seems fairly close to Castle Black.  Also, Val may have some healing skills that can aid Jon, perhaps until Morna arrives.

I think Val will take Jon's body to Queensgate.

1 hour ago, Black Crow said:

Might be, but I'm not convinced that they are "hunting" rather than hunted

Well, they might have come across the tracks of the great elk they were riding and followed them. Initially they were the hunters but they ended up being prey.

1 hour ago, Black Crow said:

But who are the "living men" ?  Ghost seems to sense that all three are working together. 

The mutineers from Crasters.

Quote

“The fires show me much and more,” murmured Melisandre. “faces and shapes, the morrow and the day after, the path ahead and the path not taken. I have seen your rangers riding through the storm, Jon Snow, with pale shadows all around them. It is you who leads the riders, with your beast beside you. Behind come twenty men in black… and one woman all in red.”

At this moment, Jon was thinking of leading a ranging party to deal with the mutineers at Crasters and at the same time, find out what happened to the rest of wildlings scattered to the Haunted Forest after Stannis defeated Mance.

This woman is obviously not Mel. But who else might she be? I think I know the answer.

Quote

 

A Storm of Swords - Jon I

“One day on a ranging we brought down a fine big elk. We were skinning it when the smell of blood drew a shadow-cat out of its lair. I drove it off, but not before it shredded my cloak to ribbons. Do you see? Here, here, and here?” He chuckled. “It shredded my arm and back as well, and I bled worse than the elk. My brothers feared I might die before they got me back to Maester Mullin at the Shadow Tower, so they carried me to a wildling village where we knew an old wisewoman did some healing. She was dead, as it happened, but her daughter saw to me. Cleaned my wounds, sewed me up, and fed me porridge and potions until I was strong enough to ride again. And she sewed up the rents in my cloak as well, with some scarlet silk from Asshai that her grandmother had pulled from the wreck of a cog washed up on the Frozen Shore. It was the greatest treasure she had, and her gift to me.”

 

> Grandmother, found the scarlet silk from Asshai, dead

>> her daughter, old wisewoman, dead

>>> her daughter, healed Mance and patched up his cloak with scarlet silk, unknown status

I think the woman all in red is either the one who healed Mance or an unrevealed daughter of her (i.e. >>>>). I am leaning towards the unrevealed daughter being the one. But I don’t think we will see her in TWoW. I believe GRRM introduced a replacement for her in ADwD and she is none other than Morna White Mask, who is a warrior witch wearing a weirwood mask.

The daughter of the old wisewoman healed Mance from a fatal wound before he bled to death. The last we saw Jon, he was bleeding to death just like Mance after getting shredded by the shadowcat. This connection is not a coincidence IMO. Morna White Mask will somehow be instrumental in Jon’s healing/resurrection (whichever case you believe).

11 hours ago, Takiedevushkikakzvezdy said:

I don't think they were identical, because by Eddard II, which is the twelfth chapter of AGoT if you don't count the prologue, Arya has already departed for King's Landing with the royal party, whereas in the 1993 outline she was supposed to go north of the Wall with Catelyn. GRRM said that he submitted 13 chapters along with that outline.

Arya would return to Winterfell after Ned's death and from there they would go north of the Wall with her mother after losing Winterfell.

26 minutes ago, Takiedevushkikakzvezdy said:

True, which is why we can’t prove that she existed in the story at that point. But if she did, I wonder what role she would have had, given that Jaime was the one doing all the villain stuff. Maybe she just would have been Robert’s wife.

Not true. That 1993 outline included the first 13 chapters that were almost identical to the published version.

Osha should be dead in this draft. GRRM said that he decided to expand Osha's role in the books after being impressed by Natalia Tena's performance in the show.

And Rickon turned into a feral child.

31 minutes ago, Takiedevushkikakzvezdy said:

But both Varys and Illyrio get a lot of page time in AGoT, and are even seen conspiring together. What would their purpose in the story be without Aegon? Escpecially Varys, since he already has a powerful position in Westeros, and has had it for a very long time. 

The Aegon storyline is confusing no matter which way you look at it.

Varys and Illyrio should have a totally different agenda back when GRRM wrote AGoT but we don't have enough clues to figure out what. As mentioned above, based on the Qarth episode, a fake Aegon seemed to have been in the plans before anything Blackfyre existed. Maybe it was a descendant of Aerion Brightflame. But we don't have anything else on that front.

I have a fringe theory that while restoring this or that Targaryen pretender was in Illyrio's plans, Varys had a secret agenda even Illyrio was oblivious to. I believe that the original Varys in AGoT was a sorcerer in league with the Others. He was trying to create destability in the Realm while looking for the perfect vessel for the "Night King" to claim when the time was right.

"New" material at last

Quote

On the other side the wind was colder still, the wolf sensed. That was where his brother had gone, the grey brother who smelled of summer. With the cliff between them, he could not sense his brother, but sometimes when he padded down the long cold burrow under the ice and poked his nose through the hard black bars, he could feel him. The snow was falling where his brother was, covering all the woods in white. And there were hunters near, living men and dead men, and the ones who wore the shapes of men but smelled only of cold.

From an earlier draft of the Jon chapter dating to 2003-2004 AFfC manuscripts. Full thread at the bottom.

1. I always disliked the idea of the Wall blocking skinchanging but the above quote contains very solid evidence. Ghost could sense Summer beyond the Wall only when he poked his nose through the bars. In these drafts, Ghost wanted to range beyond the Wall so bad that I think Jon's refusal to seal the gates contrary to Marsh's suggestion was rooted in this feeling. 

2. The "ones who wore the shapes of men but smelled only of cold" are the Others.

There was no Golden Company or anything Blackfyre until after AGoT, ACoK and the Hedge Knight was published.

Will?

In her last chapter she was having hallucinations and talking to grass 

8 hours ago, Cas Stark said:

I don't want to derail or relitigate this stuff, so I'll just say the 'Meereen knot' was kind of like how when I don't want to exercise and I find all kinds of made up reasons why I can't do it or fill in the blank for any task that I procrastinate on, using excuses that don't really withstand much scrutiny.  That's my opinion.  

"Kicking the can down the road" is what GRRM did with AFfC and ADwD. He simply avoided facing the hard problems related to having the plot advance and converge.

This is how HBO is thinking of "fixing" GoT's ending. It wasn't Dany who burned King's Landing, it was Drogon 

1 hour ago, Takiedevushkikakzvezdy said:

I mean, I have some issues with HotD, but it is a faithful adaptation for the most part.

And so is GoT but the double standard in the fandom is hilarious.

This Episode so far was the most brazen, undeniable example of ruining the existing material and preferring stupid spectacles over logic/storytelling, something for which the book-purist fandom (which by the way mostly shills for Hot D because they are led to believe that this show is a GRRM-approved faithful adaptation) hated the last seasons of GoT and blamed it all on D&D. Well, they are not here and we are still getting the same stuff. Perhaps it is time to start figuring out the responsibility of Sapochnik or even HBO governors in the GoT's final seasons.

In Season 2 or 3 of Hot D, I can see the fandom saying that D&D did nothing wrong.

That dragon-dais starefest was dumber than Jon screaming at unViserion but here we are.

19 minutes ago, Ingelheim said:

Yeah it seems to me they are going to make Cole-Alicent a thing in Season 2. They are heavily hinting at Cole being in love with her. And IIRC in one of the Inside Episodes or interviews of the first part of the season they said young Alicent had a crush on him.

The writers seem to have misunderstood what "Kingmaker" stands for in the book 

9th episode so far and we have had more than 9 different characters which the writers want us to believe to be Alicent 

The idea of Targaryen/Valyrian blood supremacy is a bad jape.

I have this special blood that ... pretty much half of Westeros and all of Essos populations have.

1 hour ago, The Bard of Banefort said:

Rhaenyra vs. Alicent battle-of-the-bitches

That is Condal's idea of writing strong female characters.

Wasn't this episode supposed to be where we see piles of dragon shit?

Women are so 20th century. We live in the age of gays now. You can't kill your gay characters, especially if they are black. How the show handled Rhea and Laena would have caused a feminist outrage (and deservedly so) if we still lived in the 20th century.

Blood purists are on suicide watch 

edit:

... as are the sworn enemies of polygamy  

1 minute ago, Takiedevushkikakzvezdy said:

I can't really tell, but some have pointed out that the window where Aegon did his thing is the same one that Tommen jumped out of in GoT.  Which makes everything even more awkward.

D&D missed a golden opportunity to foreshadow Tommen's suicide. They should have written a sex scene for Jaime&Cersei in the first season at the same room in which Jaime would finish from the same spot.