Heresy 224 Whitey Snow and the Winter Hill Gang

[JNR]

9 hours ago, Black Crow said:

Being a special it included pieces to camera by GRRM himself and in one of them he stated straight out that when Sam pinked the white walker with his dragonglass dagger "it broke the spell holding him together". It was explicit and unambiguous.

Yes, and he's said essentially the same thing before -- for instance:

Quote

Shaw: I wasn't sure if you had added something to obsidian for the fantasy.

Martin: I've given it magical characteristics that of course real obsidian doesn't necessarily have. After all, we live in a world that has no magic. My world does have magic, so it's a little bit different.

And we can add to this the direct testimony we've already had in canon re the Watch annals:

Quote

Fire will dismay them, though, and they are vulnerable to obsidian.

It's the obsidian.

[JNR]

8 hours ago, Direwolf Blitzer said:

I wonder if what's hiding here is another baby swap. If Jon and Dany, one or both, had a Dayne parent, or were at least both present at Starfall. Did Ned arrange to send Dany into exile, to save her life? We know Ned is uncomfortable with killing children, etc. And it would make the Jon Snow baby swap at the Wall more interesting. Could even make Dany the illegitimate child of Ned and Ashara, but IMO that's a bridge too far. 

Interesting ideas!  However, I really just meant that we should bear in mind they are literally two different scenes.  We have:

1. The conscious memory Ned had of Lyanna's death -- "Promise me, Ned" -- drawn from his very first chapter, early in AGOT.  No dream aspect whatever.

2. The fever dream of the TOJ and everything in it, that happens much later in AGOT, some of which is verified in the same chapter to have been real.

Many of the arguments one reads in General somehow mix these scenes up.

For instance, you might see it argued that since we know Lyanna said "Promise me, Ned," at the TOJ, you can put yourself in her shoes, and see that Lyanna would have named her baby Aegon.  

(It's kooky-sounding, boiled down to a sentence like that, but that's basically the gist.)

[Lord Aegon The Compromiser]

7 hours ago, Feather Crystal said:

Bloodraven claims the past cannot be changed, so if a greenseer has any power over the people of Westeros it has to do with manipulating the future by trying to bring about a different outcome. History repeats itself so knowing what happened is necessary before attempting to change the future.

Or Bloodraven himself isn't strong enough to change the past.

[Black Crow]

8 hours ago, LynnS said:

I've been looking.  It seems to be buried in one of the Thronecasts but I haven't had time to go through the all.

I looked at this one:

 

I've been looking as well. The post below was written [in my excitement] while the programme was actually showing, so the date is absolutely accurate. The trouble is that it doesn't appear on the wikipedia list of Thronecast episodes, presumably because it was a special aired just before the season began, rather than after the episodes.