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Heresy 222 vindication


Black Crow

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32 minutes ago, Matthew. said:

I'm repeating things stated in the prior thread, but I'm really torn between an impulse to read Show Bran as a low key villain--and an equally strong impulse to dismiss that notion, because it's predicated on the idea that anything D&D did could have been "low key." More likely, all of that is just a coincidence, and if D&D had actually wanted Bran to read as a villain, there would have been some over-the-top Kaiser Soze style scene at the end.

Although i have not watched the last season, homeless Bran has broken me inside. It wasn't that he became king, it was the independent North in combination of a crippled boy living in the ruins of King's Landing that broke me. So he has no more home in Winterfell. He lost his brother, Hodor, Meera, Summer just to live crippled in a city ruin. I honestly don`t know what he did to get that level of punishment. That is literally the character of Bran: constant punishment, in the end they just leave him in his wheelchair in the ruis. And this guy becomes king. This is a recipe for disaster. 

If Bran would have emotions, he would be an emotional wreck. He prob. can't even get into the throne room without someone carrying him there. What a sadistic joke. And if this is one of GRRM's "broader strokes" I am seriously done with this story. I don't enjoy reading about punishing crippled people for sadistic reasons. 

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3 hours ago, JNR said:

What they say is "this."  

As in: "When George told us about this..."

At the time, that was immediately defined by some, such as the admin of this site, to mean: "Stannis burns Shireen." 

Well, we'll see... but I really doubt it.  Shireen is hundreds of miles away from Stannis at this time in the books, and so is Selyse, and so is Melisandre.

In ADWD he refuses to burn people for R'hllor at that same point in the story.  And in the TWOW sample chapter he specifically tells Justin Massey this:

That guy is not gonna burn his daughter alive, in my strong opinion.

Not yet (bwahaha) Stannis the Mannis refusing to burn people for R'hllor now doesn't mean he won't later--and it would be a grotesque & horribly entertaining thing to watch him go through mental gymnastics to justify it. He's already losing pieces of himself for the sake of driving prophecies, plus he is very good at what he does so his actions end up leading to victories that are informed by a R'hlloristic worldview. Steeping himself more and more in a shadow king kind of way wouldn't be opposite of someone roasting their daughter for gain along the same prophecy-fueled victories he's been having. If Stannis needs to physically meet with Daenerys on the field due to her being considered the slayer of lies, then it might line up with Shireen's dragon dreams as well as Stannis potentially cooking her for good fortune against the dragonqueen who comes to usurp his personal Azor Ahai beliefs.

I'm of a mind that Stannis is linked to Agamemnon, who was told by a priestess that he must sacrifice is daughter Iphigenia in order to gain Artemis' favor and sail on for Troy. He does so, sails on, and goes to war. If Stannis makes this horrible religiously significant sacrifice, he is maybe going to have the final tempering of whatever Lightbringer is with Shireen being his Nissa Nissa on his mind, therefore feeding into his own AA obsession and beliefs about himself. JNSP but I am starting my own re-read and I am thrilled to comb back through these events...

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5 minutes ago, SirArthur said:

Although i have not watched the last season, homeless Bran has broken me inside. It wasn't that he became king, it was the independent North in combination of a crippled boy living in the ruins of King's Landing that broke me. So he has no more home in Winterfell. He lost his brother, Hodor, Meera, Summer just to live crippled in a city ruin. I honestly don`t know what he did to get that level of punishment. That is literally the character of Bran: constant punishment, in the end they just leave him in his wheelchair in the ruis. And this guy becomes king. This is a recipe for disaster. 

If Bran would have emotions, he would be an emotional wreck. He prob. can't even get into the throne room without someone carrying him there. What a sadistic joke. And if this is one of GRRM's "broader strokes" I am seriously done with this story. I don't enjoy reading about punishing crippled people for sadistic reasons. 

I really don't see it as sadistic--it's tied pretty tightly with the olde tyme beliefs of the Fisher King being inextricably tied with the land, being wounded near fatally yet healed magically, and becoming a holy mage king of the folks. There was such a fantastic read on this forum that might make you at least feel a little better about it maybe going that route. It gives Bran a much bigger role than just being a crippled empty boy.

 It's here!

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4 minutes ago, SirArthur said:

Although i have not watched the last season, homeless Bran has broken me inside. It wasn't that he became king, it was the independent North in combination of a crippled boy living in the ruins of King's Landing that broke me. So he has no more home in Winterfell. He lost his brother, Hodor, Meera, Summer just to live crippled in a city ruin. I honestly don`t know what he did to get that level of punishment. That is literally the character of Bran: constant punishment, in the end they just leave him in his wheelchair in the ruins. And this guy becomes king. This is a recipe for disaster. 

If Bran would have emotions, he would be an emotional wreck. He prob. can't even get into the throne room without someone carrying him there. What a sadistic joke. And if this is one of GRRM's "broader strokes" I am seriously done with this story. I don't enjoy reading about punishing crippled people for sadistic reasons. 

Ah, but its wrong to regard Bran as a helpless cripple, because he is Bendigeidfran/Bran the Blessed - the sacred Crow. In the Mabinogion he was crippled and fatally wounded, so had his head cut off, though he continued talking to them for the next seven years before being buried under the white hill/Tower Hill in London [corresponding with the Red Keep in King's Landing] to watch over the Island of Britain

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46 minutes ago, Black Crow said:

An interesting thought, although as you know I don't believe that the white walkers came from anywhere. I mentioned earlier that in the history of Westeros the Targaryens are just a 300 year blip. Viewing it from that perspective and tossing your coins we can see the Targaryens as a move in the Song of Ice and Fire. 

Valyria gets Doomed - a clear victory by Ice even if it might have been accomplished by proxy

The Dragons riposte with an invasion of Westeros.

Torrhen Stark kneels... why?

Is it to ensure that Aegon the Conqueror doesn't go all the way to the Wall?

We know that the Wall is an effective  barrier against dragons so is it hiding something, ie; the raising of the white walkers and the old Heretic joke that it is not going to be a question of the Dragons saving Westeros from the Others, but of the Others saving Westeros from the Dragons. In that context Danaerys is the last toss of the coin.

 

As you've probably read by now, my thoughts about this coin analogy is morphing as I logically think through it. I'm not denying the things you're saying aren't true, but I am attempting to explain why and how these things have been "allowed" to happen.

I don't know if Torrhen had any special knowledge or was defending the Wall per se, but I believe he kneeled simply to protect the people north of the Neck from being bathed in dragon fire. He put the safety of his people first.

My point is that dragons and white walkers can only exist if magic is released. The hinge on the Wall ensures that this release can be controlled by giving it to one side or the other, but only one side is supposed to have it at any given time. The dragons aren't supposed to exist at the same time as white walkers, but magic is leaking from the Wall due to the fraying wards. If the Wall was made with blood sacrifice, perhaps the Children think there's not enough blood to fix the repairs or that it couldn't be fixed quickly enough?

I understand that you see dragons as a threat to the races living north of the Wall, but I don't believe that is the case, because the Wall obviously blocks them. 

Where did magic, dragons, and white walkers come from and for what purpose? I believe the Children are the source of all magic, and they made possible and allowed their human allies to create dragons and white walkers to defend the Children and their weirwoods from dangerous invaders.

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3 hours ago, Lady Rhodes said:

It may not be Stannis but Selyse that does it though, that I will grant you. 

In that case we don't disagree at all.  The concept that Shireen may, under some circumstances, burn is certainly possible.

The concept that the show got it right -- that Stannis is the author of her fate, and her death happens at that time, in that place, for that reason -- is an extremely doubtful matter.

That's really my point in saying simply that GRRM told D&D "something about Shireen."   We don't know what he said, we don't know what D&D decided he meant or whether they decided to do the same thing on the show... and when we look at the show, we can see many clear reasons to believe what they did choose to do will not be the same in the books. 

I think that's the case with all of the moments GRRM told them about, actually.

Just as with Shireen, it's very easy to demonstrate the Hodor revelation just isn't going to happen in the books in anything resembling the same way.  I wouldn't be the least surprised if GRRM simply said "Hodor's name derives from the phrase hold the door" and they took that and ran with it... in directions wiser analysts would not have gone.

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6 hours ago, Direwolf Blitzer said:

The Wall is a funny thing. Heretics may disagree, but GRRM himself has told us that "more than ice" went into its raising, and certainly the Wildlings seem to agree. Blood, Ygritte says. But in a time of rising magic, wouldn't the magical wall be keeping Westeros even safer? Something doesn't add up, there.

I'd think about it like this:

• Suppose you're right, and the Wall's magic ward is getting stronger, not weaker

• Notice also Silverwing wouldn't even fly over the Wall (never mind going through it, as Coldhands refused to do)

• Thus, it certainly seems like for the Wall to fall to the Popsicles and wights... that magic ward is going to have to fail

So if we think the Wall is going to fall, we should consider how that last bullet point might happen.  This is a very interesting area, rarely discussed in Heresy.

One way it's not going to take place, IMO, is for a wighted dragon to somehow knock the Wall down with its icy breath that somehow acts like an invisible wrecking ball the size of the Death Star.

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3 hours ago, Feather Crystal said:

Utilizing the coin analogy and applying it to the Wall...

If the Wall is a hinge holding a "coin" door, it is currently sitting on it's edge. Westeros isn't currently "experiencing" "heads" nor "tails" just now. Dany's dragons have not arrived to invade Westeros, but neither have the white walkers, yet both exist. The door is closed to both sides, but magic is seeping out, creating an unnatural situation where the two sides of the coin might meet each other.

I realize that this doesn't explain how dragons were able to exist for a time from when Aegon first arrived until the last dragon died in year 153. If Aegon's arrival was year zero, then dragons only lasted 153 years before dying out. Was their extinction due to their containment in the dragon pit or by poison as many have suggested? Or was it perhaps due to a closing of the hinge upon the Wall?

I wonder if it was open to "heads" to allow the dragons to come, but closed again once the threat to the Children and their weirwoods was eliminated? The closing of the door (flipping the coin back on it's side) slowly extinguished the dragons by depriving them of magic.

I theorize that the reason why Aegon and his sisters came to Westeros is because they were  summoned conjured. Recall that prior to their arrival Harren the Black had just completed Harrenhal. It had taken forty years to build and huge forests of trees. 3000 year old stands of weirwoods were cut down and used for rafters and beams. The Children must have been horrified. I theorize that the Children decided to open the Hinge to allow for fire magic to bring the dragons, but once Harren was burned and order restored, the Hinge was reclosed into the upright position.

Speaking of hinges...consider these three short passages from A Feast for Crows, chapter one, The Prophet:

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The sound came softly, the scream of a rusted hinge. "Urri," he muttered, and woke, fearful. There is no hinge here, no door, no Urri. A flying axe took off half of Urri's hand when he was ten-and-four, playing at the finger dance whilst his father and his elder brothers were away at war. Lord Quellon's third wife had been a Piper of Pinkmaiden Castle, a girl with big soft breasts and brown doe's eyes. Instead of healing Urri's hand the Old Way, with fire and seawater, she gave him to her green land maester, who swore that he could sew back the missing fingers. He did that, and later he used potions and poltices and herbs, but the hand mortified and Urri took a fever. By the time the maester sawed his arm off, it was too late.

 
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That man is dead. Aeron had drowned and been reborn from the sea, the god's own prophet. No mortal man could frighten him, no more than the darkness could . . . nor memories, the bones of the soul. The sound of a door opening, the scream of a rusted iron hinge. Euron has come again. It did not matter. He was the Damphair priest, beloved of the god.

 

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And gaunt and pale and shivering, Aeron Damphair struggled back to the shore, a wiser man than he had been when he stepped into the sea. For he had found the answer in his bones, and the way was plain before him. The night was so cold that his body seemed to steam as he stalked back toward his shelter, but there was a fire burning in his heart, and sleep came easily for once, unbroken by the scream of iron hinges.

Damphair has a recurring nightmare about Euron and a squeaky iron hinge. I believe this is symbolic of the Wall's hinge which is old, and the iron indicates that it is warded. Either Euron removed a ward and allowed the Hinge to crack open, or it's an inverted parallel meant to connect these manipulations to Bloodraven, who is Euron's parallel.

"Hinges" are also used to describe old doors opening in other chapters:

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AFFC Jaime I 

At midnight the hinges on the Father's Doors gave a groan as several hundred septons filed in for their devotions. Some were clad in the cloth-of-silver vestments and crystal coronals that marked the Most Devout; their humbler brethren wore their crystals on thongs about their necks and cinched white robes with seven-stranded belts, each plait a different color. Through the Mother's Doors marched white septas from their cloister, seven abreast and singing softly, while the silent sisters came single file down the Stranger's Steps. Death's handmaidens were garbed in soft grey, their faces hooded and shawled so only their eyes could be seen. A host of brothers appeared as well, in robes of brown and butternut and dun and even undyed roughspun, belted with lengths of hempen rope. Some hung the iron hammer of the Smith about their necks, whilst others carried begging bowls.

In Jaime's passage, the septons seem to echo the Children as devout worshippers, and called the silent sisters’s "death's handmaidens".

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AFFC Brienne II

She led her mare through the rubble to the keep's main entrance. Of the door only rusted iron hinges remained, but the roof was still sound, and it was dry within. Brienne tied her mare to a wall sconce, took off her helm, and shook out her hair. She was searching for some dry wood to light a fire when she heard the sound of another horse, coming closer. Some instinct made her step back into the shadows, where she could not be seen from the road. This was the very road where she and Ser Jaime had been captured. She did not intend to suffer that again.

In Brienne's passage, it sounds like a reference to the condition of the Wall.

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AFFC The Drowned Man

He had run before the Crow's Eye as if he were still the weak thing he had been, but when the waves broke over his head they reminded once more that that man was dead. I was reborn from the sea, a harder man and stronger. No mortal man could frighten him, no more than the darkness could, nor the bones of his soul, the grey and grisly bones of his soul. The sound of a door opening, the scream of a rusted iron hinge.

Back with Damphair again...the "sea" of course is the north. He's trying to alleviate his fears over this hinge opening by clinging to his religion.

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AFFC The Drowned Man

Even a priest may doubt. Even a prophet may know terror. Aeron Damphair reached within himself for his god and discovered only silence. As a thousand voices shouted out his brother's name, all he could hear was the scream of a rusted iron hinge.

This short passage - if it is an inversion to Bloodraven - indicates that whatever measures Bloodraven took, he meant for them to be "protective". Damphair is still trying to find solace in his faith, but his fear cannot be silenced. Heh, "silenced" - Euron's ship is called Silence and his entire crew are mutes.

I'm working on an essay about lightning strikes and how the author is using any mention of lightning as symbolic references to when the hinge was opened or shut, or for when the wheel of time was stopped or reversed, or even allowed to move forward again. Interestingly while I was searching for text about hinges I found this:

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AFFC Alayne I

"There is no need. It is plain that he has won." Bronze Yohn's grey eyes considered Petyr Baelish. "I like it not, but it would seem you have your year. Best use it well, my lord. Not all of us are fooled." He opened the door so forcefully that he all but wrenched it off its hinges.

I suspect that the bit about opening the door so forcefully that it is all but wrenched it off its hinges, was due to a "lightning strike" during the Harrenhal Tourney, which I believe was ground zero for when the wheel of time was reset to replay winter all over again. The False Spring lasting only two months is evidence that this is when it occurred. The Alayne passage is relevant, because Sansa is retracing Ashara's role on the wheel of time. When lightning struck, Lyanna and Ashara traded places. Ashara got Lyanna's destiny, and Lyanna got Ashara's. 

We should suspect Bloodraven for resetting the wheel and causing a replay of winter. The inverted parallels to Euron is our cryptic evidence. Whatever he did nearly wrenched the hinge from the Wall. This is why magic leaked out and both dragons and white walkers returned to the world.

The lightning essay that I mentioned...I have a suspicion that Beric is being inhabited by Bloodraven, and that is why they call him the "lightning lord". I understand this is the Dondarrion sigil, but it's more than that when it's in conjunction with a dead man being resurrected seven times, and being constantly referred to as the lighting lord. I believe it's a reference to Bloodraven.

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1 hour ago, SirArthur said:

Although i have not watched the last season, homeless Bran has broken me inside. It wasn't that he became king, it was the independent North in combination of a crippled boy living in the ruins of King's Landing that broke me. So he has no more home in Winterfell. He lost his brother, Hodor, Meera, Summer just to live crippled in a city ruin. I honestly don`t know what he did to get that level of punishment. That is literally the character of Bran: constant punishment, in the end they just leave him in his wheelchair in the ruis. And this guy becomes king. This is a recipe for disaster. 

If Bran would have emotions, he would be an emotional wreck. He prob. can't even get into the throne room without someone carrying him there. What a sadistic joke. And if this is one of GRRM's "broader strokes" I am seriously done with this story. I don't enjoy reading about punishing crippled people for sadistic reasons. 

The show gave us almost nothing on Bran's POV after BRs cave.  Show Bran might have been happy or miserable,  good or evil, we really don't know. 

We do have the original excerpt from GRRM before the first book.   Bran originally seeks magic to walk again but then becomes interested in magic for it's own sake,  basically Dr. Strange.   Together with what we are told in adwd of Bran's power and importance, I'd assume he ends up neither helpless nor unhappy. 

My theory is future Bran, not Bloodraven, is the 3 eyed crow in his dreams.   Future Bran deliberately causes Bran's fall - he literally chooses this path for himself. 

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15 minutes ago, Brad Stark said:

My theory is future Bran, not Bloodraven, is the 3 eyed crow in his dreams.   Future Bran deliberately causes Bran's fall - he literally chooses this path for himself. 

Yeah. The reason why i don't believe in timetravelling Bran is simply that timetravel is a very complex matter. Take future Bran and falling Bran. Who was first, egg or chicken ? Is the chicken travelling back to lay the egg ? 

This works better if Bran is a skinchanged Baby. So that the consciousness of baby Bran grows together with the skinchanger, they merge into each other. And then the skinchanger is the "old friend". 

I don't know if anyone has ever thought about Craster's babys and how they grow or how that entire hinted "mystery" may play out, if it is true. 

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11 minutes ago, SirArthur said:

Yeah. The reason why i don't believe in timetravelling Bran is simply that timetravel is a very complex matter. Take future Bran and falling Bran. Who was first, egg or chicken ? Is the chicken travelling back to lay the egg ? 

Exactly 

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Don't let Bloodraven's condition fool you. I don't think he's quite ready to go yet. He just needed a better Brandon.

Speaking of needing a better Brandon, Bloodraven traded in Beric for Lady Stoneheart. Beric had been riding around defending Robert's realm and protecting the common folk from the abusive Lannister throne. But I guess he felt the need to take it up a notch and get somebody a little more ruthless. Beric gave people a trial by combat to determine guilt or innocence before killing them, but Lady Stoneheart will speed things up by being more decisive.

If the white walkers and wights are being controlled by Bloodraven and the Children, why are they even bothering with Beric and Lady Stoneheart in the Riverlands? I think the white walkers were made by the wildlings, but I haven't figured out why Bloodraven felt the need to judge and execute specific people? 

The Riverlands seem to be important in resolving the problem with the Hinge. Maybe it's because the area still contains some residual magic?

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2 hours ago, Feather Crystal said:

As you've probably read by now, my thoughts about this coin analogy is morphing as I logically think through it. I'm not denying the things you're saying aren't true, but I am attempting to explain why and how these things have been "allowed" to happen.

I don't know if Torrhen had any special knowledge or was defending the Wall per se, but I believe he kneeled simply to protect the people north of the Neck from being bathed in dragon fire. He put the safety of his people first.

My point is that dragons and white walkers can only exist if magic is released. The hinge on the Wall ensures that this release can be controlled by giving it to one side or the other, but only one side is supposed to have it at any given time. The dragons aren't supposed to exist at the same time as white walkers, but magic is leaking from the Wall due to the fraying wards. If the Wall was made with blood sacrifice, perhaps the Children think there's not enough blood to fix the repairs or that it couldn't be fixed quickly enough?

I understand that you see dragons as a threat to the races living north of the Wall, but I don't believe that is the case, because the Wall obviously blocks them. 

Where did magic, dragons, and white walkers come from and for what purpose? I believe the Children are the source of all magic, and they made possible and allowed their human allies to create dragons and white walkers to defend the Children and their weirwoods from dangerous invaders.

Ah, well as you know I believe that the white walkers are Starks, so in that sense they don't come from anywhere else. They belong in the North, but the point that I'm trying to make, and I don't think its too far removed from yours, is that their appearance is very directly linked with the dragons and that's why both are returning at the same time.

But with that, to bed. Good night all

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Still rather striking, given the way it deviates from the position he's had for years now, as reiterated this very week in the immediately prior blog post:

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THE WINDS OF WINTER is very late, I know, I know, but it will be done.  I won’t say when, I’ve tried that before, only to burn you all and jinx myself

Whereas now we get:

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if I don’t have THE WINDS OF WINTER in hand when I arrive in New Zealand for worldcon, you have here my formal written permission to imprison me in a small cabin on White Island, overlooking that lake of sulfuric acid, until I’m done

Hard not to feel a little encouraged by that. 

Even if he pulls a Douglas Adams  -- "I love the whooshing noise deadlines make as they blow by" -- he'll know fans will give him grief about it all convention long.  

"Are you a secret Targ, George?  'Cause this is getting a little... insane."

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5 hours ago, Black Crow said:

Ah, well as you know I believe that the white walkers are Starks, so in that sense they don't come from anywhere else. They belong in the North, but the point that I'm trying to make, and I don't think its too far removed from yours, is that their appearance is very directly linked with the dragons and that's why both are returning at the same time.

But with that, to bed. Good night all

We probably covered this, but the Others returned in the first prequel, before Daenerys hatched the dragons.   So we can say something caused magic to return and was responsible for both.   But I don't think we can say the dragons caused the Others, even though everyone around Daenerys seems to attribute the return of magic to the dragons. 

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Two kings to wake the dragon. The father first and then the son, so both die kings

I think Brandon and Rickard's death brought the Others back.   Some part of the Starks seems to control the weather, tied to their emotions.  The intense hatred and pain they must have felt when they died triggered something.   And their death is similar to the 2 Kings prophesy. 

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I think Lyanna’s abduction is tied to winter’s return, and that her death coincided with spring.

i also think that latest interview seemed promising. By golly we may get Winds by or before Aug 2020!

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3 hours ago, JNR said:

Hard not to feel a little encouraged by that. 

I don't actually feel encouraged.  I've become cynical about these statements from George.  He also says he doesn't like to make a commitment because it sets up expectations and then disappointment.  Well, he's got that right.   Even now, he's working on a video game and then he'll be working on something else, none of which will be tWoW.  He's just not engaged with it.  It's hard to stay engaged with him at this point. 

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3 hours ago, Brad Stark said:

We probably covered this, but the Others returned in the first prequel, before Daenerys hatched the dragons.   So we can say something caused magic to return and was responsible for both.   But I don't think we can say the dragons caused the Others, even though everyone around Daenerys seems to attribute the return of magic to the dragons. 

I think Brandon and Rickard's death brought the Others back.   Some part of the Starks seems to control the weather, tied to their emotions.  The intense hatred and pain they must have felt when they died triggered something.   And their death is similar to the 2 Kings prophesy. 

I wonder whether it may be a mistake to look for specific actors/players in this struggle. GRRM after all specifically stated that we won't see any Gods walking [and fighting] on Westeros' green and pleasant land. Earlier I laid out a possible pattern for the conflict and I really won't be surprised if at the end of all this the conflict is not resolved and that we're left with the dodgy seasons, because all of this is about how people live with a conflict which they can neither control nor materially influence

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