Am I The Only One Around Here Who V.2

[Annara Snow]

5 hours ago, RhaenysB said:

Umm, no, obviously everybody sees things differently once they have more information and become familiar with context and reasons. Having said that, it doesn't make a whole lot of difference in terms of the relationship between Jaime and Ned. yes, Ned might have had a stroke of empathy for Jaime but it wouldn't have changed the fact that they are sworn enemies and don't like each other. But if we are at Jaime, a better question is: 

 

am I the only one around here who is now a little confused about how all the moral dilemmas of betraying his king, killing his own father, letting the king burn the whole city, having his father slaughter the whole city, watching the king burn people and go mad and be abusive to his wife show in the shape of a smug smirk while perching on the iron throne? I mean this young man has seen so much and had to make such difficult decisions (among which was NOT telling the new rulers of king's landing to get rid of vast stashes of explosive under the city) and he smirks? What is anybody supposed to think?

I don't know, there may be others who have problems with Jaime's characterization and development and specifically with smirking. I would say that it's far more confusing why he hasn't told anyone about the wildfire. I have no problem with his smirking, which seems to be his default reaction when he thinks he's being unfairly judged, because he's proud (pride is something he has in common with his father and siblings) and the proud and defiant streak in him uses smirking and "I don't care" attitude as a front.

Um, actually it does make a lot of difference in terms of the relationship between Jaime and Ned, since they weren't actually "sworn enemies", most definitely not at that point, and that moment when Ned entered the city and found Jaime after the latter had killed Aerys was probably one of the only times they ever interacted up to that point or possibly the last time they genuinely interacted one on one up to that point and in the next 14 years. Ned disliked the Lannisters - Tywin and Jaime mostly - exactly because of the things that happened that day. There's absolutely no reason to think that Ned had already disliked Jaime, or vice versa, before the sack of KL. They probably barely had even talked to each other before. And for that matter, even though Ned disliked the Lannisters from that point on, Ned only started seeing them as enemies 14 years later, once Lysa's letter implied that had murdered Jon Arrryn (which he was all the more likely to believe because of his dislike and distrust of the Lannisters), while Jaime started seeing Ned as enemy when Catelyn kidnapped Tyrion, and he reacted by immediately attacking Ned and his men on the street. Which was probably the only time they had any substantial interaction during the last 14 years of Ned's life.

Unless you mean "it doesn't make any difference since the plot demanded them to become enemies in AGOT", but that's prioritizing the Doylist perspective - and if you do that, it doesn't make sense to analyze character behavior at all, we can explain everything by "the plot demanded it". (Although that's probably the only way to explain a lot of character actions in the show.)

Speaking of AGOT...  Am I the only one around here who finds Ned figuring out the twincest to be pretty contrived and unconvincing, the way it happened? He didn't really know the people at court and their relations very well, and failed to figure out a bunch of other things, but he jumps to the conclusion that Cersei's children must have been fathered by her twin brother because... they have blond hair and look like Cersei rather than Robert?! What a shock, children who look just like their mother. Let's say he could have realized that Cersei's children weren't Robert's because that would have been a secret worth murdering Jon Arryn over, and Jon Arryn had been investigating Baratheon bloodlines so that would fit... why didn't he assume Cersei's lover was any other guy? Why jump immediately to "it must be her brother"? The only reason we can easily figure it out during AGOT is because we already know Jaime and Cersei have been boinking. People at court, like Littlefinger and Varys, and people who were close to Cersei and Jaime like their brother Tyrion or uncle Kevan, knew that or suspected it, because they've actually been around Cersei and Jaime. But Ned had never spent any real time around them and didn't have the chance to observe their interactions. Why would he even think that they were having an incestuous relationship?

[Lady Blizzardborn]

No, you're probably not. But by adding magic genetics and the book that proves all Baratheon + Lannister children inherit the black hair and not the gold, GRRM technically covered his bases. Then when you add in LF's getting Lysa to say the Lannisters killed Jon to the fact that he had been reading that specific book...it's actually set up well enough to be plausible in a fantasy series. 

 

AITOOAHW wonders why it is Catelyn knows Stannis and his shadow so well if she and Ned pretty much stayed at Winterfell all the time?

[Annara Snow]

Well, I've never seen anyone wonder about that. She may not have known Stannis well, but she had talked to him just a few hours earlier, so it would have been fresh in her mind what he looked like.

I still think Ned figuring out the twincest is far less plausible. I don't think that GRRM technically covered his bases with the book and the magic genetics, because all that would suggest is that Robert was not the father of Cersei's children. But why would Ned immediately jump to the conclusion that Jaime is the father? There could have been plenty of other men Cersei could have slept with and had a child/children with. Ned wouldn't even know all the men that were at court and around Cersei 8, 10 or 13 years earlier. Most people would first assume a woman's lover was someone who wasn't her close relative. It would be different if Littlefinger or Varys or someone had dropped a hint about Cersei's and Jaime's unusual relationship, or if Ned had observed Cersei and Jaime together and noticed something odd, but none of that had happened. It just seems like GRRM forgot that what the readers knew and what Ned knew were two different things.

AITOOAH who thinks that when GRRM said he regretted not having given Robb a POV, he didn't mean that any of Catelyn's POV should have been Robb's or that he regretted focusing on Catelyn - he just meant that he should have given Robb more pagetime in A Clash of Kings and shown his Westerlands campaign and how he married Jeyne, instead of having him do all these things off-page while he and Cat were apart? 

 

 

[RhaenysBee]

No, I always got the impression that GRRM like Catelyn as a character.

@Annara Snow I'm not trying to say that we shouldn't think about these options and dismiss all the questions on account of plot demand. Of course it's fun to think through a couple what if scenarios. However, I think that overanalyzing characters and relationships (and plot lines and context and etc) to the point where we try to dig down to the root cause of something and say that if this something didn't happen the character or the relationship would have turned out entirely differently is pointless and takes away from enjoying the book. I mean this isn't maths, in literature you can take anything and analyze it until you turn it into the exact opposite of what it was. What's the point? Additionally, I believe in fate enough to believe that two people who dislike each other for whatever reasons would still dislike each other if those reasons never happened, because some other reasons would have made them dislike each other then. They are simply not a match in personality, they are not compatible. 

As for how Ned jumped to the conclusion that Jaime was the father of Cersei's children, I have no idea. I don't even remember that scene from the book, it's kinda a blurred mix of the show and book version. Did Ned reach that conclusion himself or it turned out  while he was confronting Cersei? The evidence he found in the book covers the basic steps of a tenth grade biology genetics homework (if I remember correctly he checks baratheonXany other house match including another baratheonXlannister match so he sorta confirms that the Baratheon hair is a dominant phenotype), for medieval standards that's pretty solid. How Jaime comes in this picture is a big stretch. 

 

Am I the only one around here who thinks GRRM didn't make the best decision when have focused attention on genetics in Ned's bastard-discovery quest because later in the story he became pretty inconsistent and liberal about genetics? Like how did rhaegar have a silver haired child with Elia, etc? It kinda becomes messy. 

[Annara Snow]

Well, you\re probably not the only one who thinks that, I bet there's quite a few people. Me, however - I'm in the camp that thinks that he should not have focused on that not because of what he did later in the series, but because his version of how genetics work in AGOT made zero sense,. That's not " the basic steps of a tenth grade biology genetics homework", unless one really failed to pay attention in class, LMAO.  When Ned starts going on about how Baratheons and Lannisters ALWAYS produce a black haired child, I'm thinking: "That's not how genetics work, George!" Even assuming it's magical genetics or something, it still doesn't make sense. Like, that's not how dominant and recessive genes work, at all, and there's no logical way to explain how genetics could  ever work like that, if they are based on dominant and recessive genes (rather than, I don't know, people being clones of one of their parents). There's no reason why Rhaegar wouldn't have a silver haired child with Elia. But there's simply no logical way that Baratheons would keep having black haired children all the time even after centuries of having kids with Lannisters and a bunch of other non-Baratheon/non-black haired people, unless those pairings broke the rule of genetics and resulted in the offspring being a genetical clone of the Baratheon parent, every time. (Which is clearly not the case, since some of Robert's bastards are female, for starters...)

Another example of GRRM not getting basic genetics is that he stresses the incredible similarity between Jaime and Cersei. Ok, that's theoretically possible, but non-identical twins (which they obviously are, since one is female and the other is male) normally don't look any more similar than any other full siblings..

AITOOAH who thinks that AGOT is the weakest book in the series (though I still love it)? Not just due to the above plot holes, there are a bunch of things that GRRM did not develop that well at that point, both in terms of world-building and in terms of characterization. 

[Count Balerion]

I don't know ... the world may be less developed, but the story is tauter and less digressive than some of the later books IMO. That said, I think all my favourite parts are in later books (I keep coming back to Theon in Winterfell).

(In the book, Ned picks up on the incest first when Sansa comments that Joffrey "doesn't look anything like that fat old king", or words to that effect. I don't recall that in the show.)

Am I ... who would like another Melisandre POV chapter? Also a Margaery chapter or three would have been good, because I have no idea how much reason, iff any, Cersei had for her paranoia. In the show, on the other hand, they made Margaery a tad too transparent. (Although there are probably too many POV charactrs in the books, some of them might not be the best choices.)

[RhaenysBee]

Maybe. I don't think we need any more povs, I think we have way too may as it is. 

Re Genetics - I am 100% sure that's not how genetics work when you graduate med school,  but that's more or less how genetics work when you are an amateur and I don't think anybody should expect GRRM or the audience or anybody other than a doctor to be an expert in genetics. GRRM and I probably got the same crappy biology education to which we paid no attention because on a laic level his reasoning makes sense to me. As far as I remember there was only one Lannister-Baratheon union before Robert and Cersei which produced black haired children. 

Re GoT, I think GoT was the best book. Maybe COK was as good as GoT or better in a couple aspects, and AFFC had a couple highlights I loved too. ASOS was way too much, and adwd was obviously the bottom. 

Am I the only one around here who wishes D&D didn't split the last season in half and would just go with an 11-12 episode season 7 and it would finally be OVER? 

[Lady Blizzardborn]

No, you're not. A lot of us would prefer a final, long season. It would be a nice parallel to the seven books that will hopefully comprise the entirety of the series. But money talks. HBO wouldn't mind going even longer. They had to talk D&D into an eighth season.

Really Ned and the twincest is pretty easy.  Ned thought of Jaime because the likelihood of anybody else getting close enough to the queen to father her children is extremely low. Jaime can visit the queen at any time and nobody thinks anything of it. He's the only person in the KG who would do so, and that gives him opportunities that no other man in Westeros except Robert has. Unless we think Ned should have immediately accused her of sleeping with Pycelle... When Lysa said "the Lannisters" killed Jon, she was talking about Cersei and Jaime. Tywin wasn't in the capital at that point. Why would Jaime be in on it unless he knows that his sister's children aren't Robert's, and why would he know that unless he knows for sure whose they are (you know, like his)? And why on earth would Cersei admit, even to her twin brother, that she'd been committing treason by sleeping with someone other than her husband?  Then of course there's the fact that all three kids look like Lannisters when odds are at least one should have looked like a non-Lannister parent. Royal bastards happen and usually nobody dies over it. For Ned to believe the Lannisters murdered Jon, he has to believe it's bigger than just bastardy. He has to believe it's twincest. The interesting part is that he reached the right conclusion working from the wrong premise. But that's hardly without precedent in literature or life.

AITOOAHW almost hopes some of the small side-mysteries are not resolved so that we can keep clinging to the really good crackpot theories?

[RhaenysBee]

I'm certain they won't be resolved but I would definitely prefer to see them resolved. I don't think I will around that long but the thought of people theorizing in2037 whether Bran ate Jojen or not gives me a headache. 

 

Am I the only one around here who kinda feels sorry for D&D and some cast members that they have  to go on with it for another year? D&D have obviously been sick of the show since season 5 and some of the actors appear to feel the same way. And it really really sucks to do work that you hate every single day. But. At least GoT pays well. 

[Annara Snow]

You probably are. I feel sorry for cast members for the bad writing they've stuck with, but I don't see any reasons to feel sorry for D&D. They get lots of money and awards they don't deserve, and they don't even get criticized widely enough for their failings. If they are tired, why couldn't they have either stepped down as show runners or brought in more writers and delegated more responsibilities? What's there to feel sorry for?

re: royal bastards - Royal bastards are a normal thing when it's the man/king who has them. Sure as hell not when a queen consort has them. Cersei even being caught cheating on Robert would be considered high treason and would get her arrested, possibly executed. That's exactly the charge that Margaery is framed and arrested for in AFFC. Cersei having bastard children by anyone and people knowing about it would definitely get her executed for treason, and all her family would suffer a massive blow in power, influence and reputation.(IRL no queen was executed for treason for adultery before Henry VIII, but in the one earlier example I'm aware of of royal consorts being charged with adultery - the daughters-in-law of king Philip IV le Bel, the women were imprisoned for life, while their lovers were castrated and executed in gruesome ways. Before Henry VIII, it was generally not a practice to execute noblewomen.) Noblewomen, particularly royal consorts committing adultery, was considered a crime - because preserving the royal bloodlines and succession was of utmost importance. Actually trying to pass your bastard as a lawful heir, in that society? Oh, the horror.

Of course the Lannisters would do anything to cover it up. Why would Cersei tell Jaime about it? Uh, because he's her brother? Why wouldn't she tell her family that they're all in danger of losing so much of their power and being dishonored and that they need to cover up things so Robert wouldn't find out?

ETA: And it's not like Ned thought just Jaime and Cersei were in on it. In fact, he did not know that Jaime pushed Bran out of the window, but Catelyn thought Tyrion had then sent an assassin to murder Bran, and told so to Ned. Does that mean Ned should have assumed Cersei was also sleeping with Tyrion? They both naturally assumed that the entire family was involved.

The "Jaime is the only man who could have come near her without suspicion" argument doesn't explain why none of the RL royal consorts charged with adultery or rumored to have had their children fathered by someone other than their husbands were accused of sleeping with their brothers - other than Anne Boleyn, who was simultaneously accused of sleeping with a whole bunch of other men (of course in her case the accusations were bullshit, but it's not like they only accused her of sleeping with her brother because they couldn't accuse her of sleeping with other men - since, in fact, they did.). Specific men were executed for sleeping with Catherine Howard / the daughters-in-law of Philip le Bel, and none of them were related to those women.

(Also, statistical probabilities are just that, and don't mean that Cersei had to have any children who had black hair even if she had had three children by Robert. Catelyn herself notes in ACOK that this doesn't prove anything, and that her 4 out of 5 of her own children look like her and have auburn hair, and just one looks like her husband and has brown hair. Basically, she thinks, people who hate the Lannisters will choose to believe the twincest, people who support them will choose to not believe, and you can't prove anything.)

ETA2: It just occured to me, I can actually think about a decent explanation what made Ned think of twincest. We need just to assume that Catelyn and Ned had an off-page conversation where she told him of her suspicions that Bran was pushed from the tower in order to shut him up because he had seen something, and that Jaime was the one man who did not go to the hunt with Robert at the time when it happened. So then Ned would have had the suspicion that Bran had seen something that involved Jaime.

@RhaenysB No, I was actually talking about the basic, laymen-level rules of genetics. I'm not a geneticist, I don't have a medical degree, and I'm not an expert in it. I'm aware that genetics are actually more complicated than what I know from school - for instance, that many traits aren't determined by a simple Dominant/Recessive pair of genes, that things like skin tone or hair color are actually determined by multiple sets of genes and it's supposed to be quite complicated (from what I've read, red hair is recessive, but none of the other genes that determine hair color is), that there's actually two sets of genes that determine eye color, that there are sometimes genetic mutations and that things we were told in school were impossible (like two blue eyed parents having a brown eyed baby) are actually possible, just less likely. But I don't know the details.

But GRRM's explanation does not work even in terms of basic, most simplified rules of genetics they teach in high school. If people think that genetics work like that (a black-haired person will always have black haired children under assumption that black hair is a dominant trait?!) that can only be because they totally misunderstood the basic rules of genetics and did not think things through. 

The basic, simplified rules of genetics they teach in school: you have a dominant gene (e.g. brown eyes - that's often used as example) and a recessive gene (e.g. blue eyes). That means that a person who has blue eyes has two recessive genes, but a person who has brown eyes may have two dominant genes or they may have one dominant and one recessive gene (which you can't know by just looking at them.) So:

BROWN + BROWN = brown eyes

BROWN + blue = brown eyes

blue + blue = blue eyes

So, if a person with brown eyes has two dominant brown eye genes, they should indeed be always having brown eyed children. However, a person who has brown eyes but has one dominant and one recessive gene has a strong chance of having children who are not brown eyed. For instance, let's say, I have brown eyes, but I have a recessive blue eye gene I got from one of my parents/ I hook up with a guy with blue eyes and we have a baby. Since he's got two recessive blue eye genes, we have a 50% probability of having a blue eyed child. Or, maybe I hook up with a brown eyed guy, but he has a recessive blue eye gene just like me. We have a 25% probability of having a blue eyed child, even though we're both brown eyed. In other words, there's nothing at all unusual in a person with a dominant trait having a child with a recessive trait.

So, the world of ASOAIF, let's assume that, unlike in real life, the Baratheon black hair and blue eyes are dominant traits (IRL neither dark nor blond hair is dominant or recessive, and green eyes are actually a dominant trait compared to blue eyes). If Robert has two dominant black hair genes, all his kids should, generally, have black hair. So, that part works.

However, when we get to the "every time Baratheons and Lannisters had children together, the child was black haired" argument, that's where things stop making sense. It's virtually impossible for all people in the Baratheon bloodline throughout centuries to all have a set of two dominant black hair genes. The very fact that they were marrying the Lannisters and other non-black haired people makes that impossible. Every time a Baratheon married a Lannister, or someone else who did not have the Baratheon black hair, there would be an influx of recessive genes into the bloodline.

Say (I'm making up these names), a Stevron Baratheon marries an Alysanne Lannister. Stevron is black haired and he has two dominant black haired genes, like Robert presumably. Alysanne has blond hair, and two recessive genes, let's say they are both for blond hair. All their children are black haired, but all their children have one recessive gene from their mother. 

Let's say they have two sons, Jon Baratheon and Harrold Baratheon. Jon Baratheon marries Jeyne Tully. Jeyne Tully has an auburn hair gene and a blond hair gene. Their children can have the following combinations: BLACK auburn = black hair, BLACK blond = black hair, blond blond = blond hair, or blond auburn = depending on which is dominant over the other, blond or auburn, or maybe something in between if neither is, but in any case, not black hair. Harrold Baratheon marries his cousin, Jonelle Lannister, who has blond hair and two blond hair genes. Their children can either have the BLACK blond combination = black hair, or the blond blond combination = blond hair. So, in this example, it took just two generations to get Baratheon descendants who don't have black hair.

The only way I can see that all Baratheons constantly could have only black hair for generations, or would be sure to have black haired children when paired up with Lannisters, would be if there was some eugenics project going on, with the Baratheons trying intentionally to cultivate the black hair trait, and fostering inbreeding, and/or only allowing their children to marry black haired people - say, Blackwoods - who did not have any non-black haired parents in any of the recent generations, etc. Which is clearly not going on.

Not that it's impossible that all Baratheons who married Lannisters happened to have only black haired children - but if that happened, it was just a coincidence. So Ned and Jon Arryn came to the right conclusion, but for completely wrong reasons.

 

Speaking of parentage, AITOOAH who absolutely hates the "Tyrion Targ" (Tyrion as Aerys' bastard) theory?

 

[RhaenysBee]

No you are not, I hate it too.

re genetics, yes that's all great, I, too, remember the pictures and graphs in biology books. Parents, grand parents, great grandparents, physical traits can turn upside down in five generations with the right spouses. But for crying out loud this is fiction. And it is set in medieval times. On this basis you could argue that it's impossible for the Lannisters to have preserved the signature golden hair or that it's impossible for all the Tully children to have red hair. That's why I hate this level of overanalysis, you can deconstruct anything and argue that it's impossible. This is literature. It is a fictional story set in medieval ages. WHY should it align with 21st century science/law/knowledge? I don't think GRRM can be expected to make his novels science textbook accurate and even less can Ned as a medieval nobleman expected to run a 21st century genetics accurate train of thought. 

Besides, if we are really going to be so scientific and authentic, we should be calculating with the probability of all three children of a Lannister-Baratheon marriage  ending up with recessive phenotypes. Is that more or less likely than every children of a Lannister-Baratheon marriage having dominant black hair? 

GRRM established that Baratheon black hair is a dominant trait, he matched it with another example of a Baratheon-Lannister marriage and he also matched it with other children of Robert's from various mothers. I'm not sure what else he (or Ned) was expected to do in this context. Run a computer program with Robert and Cersei's family's trees genetics to determine the exact mathematical probability of each child's being blond and black haired? Come on, get real. 

I do agree that it was a very very bad idea from GRRM to go down the slippery slope of genetics, even if the intention (being realistic) was good. He is the author, if he says A, it's A, even if a quantum physics professor could prove that A is impossible and realistically it should be B. That's how fiction works. 

Am I the only one around here who cannot wait for the show and the books and the whole story to finally end? I know I should be way less invested in this, and in that case I would find it so annoying. 

[Lady Blizzardborn]

No. A lot of people cannot wait. I can though. I've got a lot of practice. Introduced my sister to the books a couple years ago and I'm still waiting for her to finish them so that we can discuss plot points and where the story might go. If the whole works is done and all the mysteries solved before she gets a move on, the opportunity will be lost.

 

AITOOAHW is starting to think a prequel show (Robert's Rebellion in particular) might actually be a possibility?

[Queen of Procrastination]

No, I think it's a possibility and I would actually be interested in it (depending on how it's done). I know  many people are against it, because we know already so much about Robert's Rebellion, but I'm really interested in Lyanna, Rhaegar, Ashara Dayne and a few other characters from that time period. 

Regarding the wait: I'm patient. For me it doesn't matter how long GRRM is gonna take. Of course I would prefer to get TWOW tommorow, but if I have to wait another year or two. I actually don't care that much about getting ending as soon as possible. For me the journey is nearly more interesting than the end. I can pretty much accept every ending as long as it fits the journey. Of course I want an ending to the story, but I can wait and enjoy the story in the meantime. 

I hate the Tyrion is Aerys's son theory as well .

Am I the only one around here who would like to know more about the history of Essos?

[Raisin' Bran]

I am certain you are not alone. However, I always like my history to have a personal level. The reason I do not quite care about the Ghiscari wars is because it is just the Valyrian Freehold against the Old Empire fought by a bunch of no names. Everything I have learned so far about that history has made me turn my attention to something else.

AITOOAHW has felt the rage that Arya shows in her chapters (not that you expressed your anger in the same way)?

[RhaenysBee]

I'm not sure what you mean. I'm sure a lot of people sympathize with the feelings of (original and cute and popular) pov characters, so no, you aren't alone, I guess. 

 

Am I the only one around here who doesn't particularly like some actors and actresses (obviously I don't know them as people, I can only form my opinion based on what I see of them at events and/or in cast interviews)? 

 

[Queen of Procrastination]

No you're not. Some of them come off a bit unsympathetic to me in their interviews, but maybe they are completely different privately.

Am I the only one around here who wants to learn more about Joanna Lannister?

[1000th Lord Commander]

No, I think she was a great sounding charecter. Pity she's dead.

 

Am I the only one around here who wants to see more Dunk and Egg?

[RhaenysBee]

Yes. 

 

Am I the only one around here who wonders what people had instead of chocolate and vodka in Westeros? Was it lemon cakes and summer wine all the time? 

[Joy Hill]

Well, there are many many many descriptions in the books of tarts, pies, fruits, fruits with cream, honeycombs, spun sugar, sherbets, ale, cider. . . but I agree that a world without chocolate sounds depressing.

 

Lord Commander, no you're not, I want to see more Dunk and Egg too (though after Winds and ADOS. So never?).

 

AITOOAHW is sad that we'll probably never get the Dunk and Egg about Summerhall?

 

 

[Queen of Procrastination]

No you are not alone with that.

@1000th Lord Commander : I would like to see more Dunk and Egg stories as well.

Am I the only one around here who liked show's version of the wights in Season 1 better than the one we see from Season 4 onwards? I'm really not a fan of those skeletons.