Heresy 227 and the Great Turtle

[Lord Aegon The Compromiser]

1 hour ago, Black Crow said:

Well as we're discussed before, The infamous Santa Fe conference gave them the endings of certain character story arcs. But quite obviously although those may be the endings revealed by the Mummers, GRRM clearly didn't tell them how those endings came about. Its obviously significant that although they themselves bought into the R+L=J fanfiction, that wasn't the outcome GRRM gave them.

I'm not convinced GRRM even gave them any character arc endings. I'm not convinced anything we saw on screen will be Book Canon that isn't already Book Canon. Even if GRRM did give them character arc endings I feel D&D ignored it for their own ideas to rush the end of GOT for Star Wars...which they ended up being dropped from so it was all for nothing.

[Lord Aegon The Compromiser]

It appears that House of the Dragon is moving forward.

 

https://www.theverge.com/2019/10/29/20939230/game-of-thrones-spinofff-series-house-of-the-dragons-ordered-hbo-max

[Black Crow]

10 hours ago, Lord Aegon The Compromiser said:

I'm not convinced GRRM even gave them any character arc endings. 

I don't have the quote to hand but their story was that they realised they were getting way ahead of him and insisted on the meeting to pin him down on character arcs. One of them turned out to be Bran and I can vividly remember the astonishment in these here parts that they lacked such important information. 

Turning back to those outcomes, if GRRM didn't lay down at least some of the arcs, their reliance on fan-fiction as we saw in "their" series would have seen Jon Snow sitting on the Iron Throne, but much to the anguish and bewilderment of the R+L=J crowd, he didn't. Instead Bran became High King, despite being crippled. This made absolutely no sense in the context of the show but is perfectly consistent with the Mabbinogion

[LynnS]

I seem to be having problems posting.  I can't clear all of this space.

[LynnS]

High King of the Weirwood Throne?  I don't see Bran ever leaving the cave.  A High King implies that there are lesser kings and kingdoms.  Perhaps this tells us something about the original pact and explains why there are weirwood groves located within each of the significant houses.  What power could Bran hold over them?  There were once a hundred or so kingdoms? 100 pieces of obsidian a symbolic gesture to contain certain powers? .  

[LynnS]

How does House Stark fit in with the power of the High King?  Where they enforcers of justice acting on behalf of the high king?  This brings to mind the oath that Jojen and Meera give to Bran, which may be the older version of the oath.

Earth and  Water - the land

Bronze and Iron - the crown of the kings of winter

Fire and Ice - the swords of justice

[JNR]

15 hours ago, Black Crow said:

The infamous Santa Fe conference gave them the endings of certain character story arcs. But quite obviously although those may be the endings revealed by the Mummers

I don't believe they were, actually... unless in the broadest possible sense.

For instance, Hodor's and Shireen's deaths cannot have been "revealed" on the show because the story and world of the book simply do not permit such deaths.  

There is literally no nearby back door in Bloodraven's cave for Hodor to hold (there isn't one at all except a sinkhole, miles away), and Stannis and Shireen are separated by hundreds of miles in the books, not together as on the show.

So at most, we might conclude that those two characters die... somehow... and that's it. Not much of a revelation, and they are both minor characters.

About the major characters, there is no evidence D&D ever got so much as a whiff of the truth.  The very best anyone has ever turned up would be vague phrases from interviews such GRRM's "They know certain things" -- which are so ambiguous as to be meaningless. 

What's beyond debate is the butterfly effect GRRM's been talking about since season one, in which the difference between show and books gets gigantic over time, affecting major characters and their outcomes in fundamental ways.  Subtract the show's Dark Lord from the books, for instance, and ask yourself how many characters' future stories and outcomes will be wildly different.

[JNR]

14 hours ago, Lord Aegon The Compromiser said:

It appears that House of the Dragon is moving forward.

Yes, which I find amusing and revealing about how Hollywood typically makes decisions.

The Long Night show was more promising, but I imagine they thought it was just too structurally similar to GOT.  Well... it was, but even so it could have been interesting and well done if it aligned with GRRM's actual future books and revealed truths that D&D fucked up.

Instead, Hollywood went with the soap opera -- the prequel that was directly inspired by Fire and Blood, which even GRRM calls "fake history" in a semi-derisive tone.

The Targs are just boring IMO -- a cliched family of dark lords from an author who claims to loathe them. I couldn't imagine trying to write that kind of dialogue with a straight face.  ("All shall kneel before me and weep! Thus speaks Maegor the Cruel!!")

4 hours ago, Black Crow said:

if GRRM didn't lay down at least some of the arcs, their reliance on fan-fiction as we saw in "their" series would have seen Jon Snow sitting on the Iron Throne, but much to the anguish and bewilderment of the R+L=J crowd, he didn't.

This is just your guess.  They could also have thought R+L=J was inevitable, but that they would create a twist in not making Jon king because he'd killed Dany, which would make him unpopular.

(This in itself was a hilarious failure of continuity, of course.  Jon could simply have claimed Dany hopped on Drogon and flew away, and nobody would ever have been able to deny it because Drogon really was gone, taking Dany, and Jon certainly would not have been able to make that happen.  So there was no need for Jon to announce he'd killed her.  Which D&D, typically, did not realize.)

And premise of Bran becoming king is frankly just silly to me, and has no foundation in the world of the books.  Westeros is not going to have a king because "he has a great story," of being "broken."  It will instead need someone with either the right lineage, or whose military power commands respect (whether people want to give it or not), or both. 

It's amazing to me that D&D could have done eight seasons of a show they considered to be about "power" without realizing that.  But they did.

[Lord Aegon The Compromiser]

44 minutes ago, JNR said:

I don't believe they were, actually... unless in the broadest possible sense.

For instance, Hodor's and Shireen's deaths cannot have been "revealed" on the show because the story and world of the book simply do not permit such deaths.  

There is literally no nearby back door in Bloodraven's cave for Hodor to hold (there isn't one at all except a sinkhole, miles away), and Stannis and Shireen are separated by hundreds of miles in the books, not together as on the show.

So at most, we might conclude that those two characters die... somehow... and that's it. Not much of a revelation, and they are both minor characters.

About the major characters, there is no evidence D&D ever got so much as a whiff of the truth.  The very best anyone has ever turned up would be vague phrases from interviews such GRRM's "They know certain things" -- which are so ambiguous as to be meaningless. 

What's beyond debate is the butterfly effect GRRM's been talking about since season one, in which the difference between show and books gets gigantic over time, affecting major characters and their outcomes in fundamental ways.  Subtract the show's Dark Lord from the books, for instance, and ask yourself how many characters' future stories and outcomes will be wildly different.

In Book I haven't seen any evidence that the white walkers move nearly as fast as in the show. Nor do I imagine nearly 100% of them will have weapons as use them with the coordination of a living human. If they do invade, especially without any leader, it would obviously play out quite differently.

[Black Crow]

The point about the character arc outcomes is that if they didn't know what was to happen to Bran, then the likes of Stannis smd Shireen are way down on the list of priorities and with no guidance at all the Deadly Duo were free to indulge themselves unless Shireen's ending was indeed a holy shit moment.

Come to that Bran, the cute but hopelessly crippled kid becoming king may well have been the third holy shit moment. After all, unless Jon Snow NOT parking his arse on the Iron Throne gave rise to a chorus of HOLY SHIT! [in block capitals and multiple exclamation marks] what better candidate can you offer for number 3 ?

Nevertheless, as I've been saying, if you know your Mabinogion [and D&D obviously don't] it makes perfect sense.

[Black Crow]

1 hour ago, Lord Aegon The Compromiser said:

In Book I haven't seen any evidence that the white walkers move nearly as fast as in the show. Nor do I imagine nearly 100% of them will have weapons as use them with the coordination of a living human. If they do invade, especially without any leader, it would obviously play out quite differently.

I think that there may be a little confusion here between Wights and White Walkers.

In the books Craster's boys are indeed swift and graceful - a good deal more so than the Mummers' take.

However in the Mummers' version the Wights on the other hand  mysteriously changed from the shambling walking dead of the books to a bizarre cross between spiders and a reboot of the skeletons grown from dragons teeth of the 1960s' Jason and the Argonauts 

[Black Crow]

3 hours ago, LynnS said:

High King of the Weirwood Throne?  I don't see Bran ever leaving the cave.  A

In the context of the show, Bran becoming High King makes absolutely no sense at all. 

Book Bran on the other hand is a different matter entirely. In the Mabinogion Bran was left crippled and dying, so ordered his men to cut off his head and place it in a cave under a white hill where he [still talking] could watch over the Island of Britain. The White hill is Winterfell and in a cave beneath it Bran will watch over Westeros as Bloodraven has done - but more powerful

That is probably the high king that GRRM is leading us to, which does make sense, unlike the Mummers' one

[JNR]

50 minutes ago, Black Crow said:

The point about the character arc outcomes is that if they didn't know what was to happen to Bran, then the likes of Stannis smd Shireen are way down on the list of priorities and with no guidance at all the Deadly Duo were free to indulge themselves unless Shireen's ending was indeed a holy shit moment.

I'm sure GRRM told D&D something about Shireen. 

But what it was, we don't know, because we weren't there.  It's a notoriously bad idea to try to interpret GRRM through other people... without knowing his exact language and the context in which he said it. He's far too tricksy for secondhand accounts.

For instance, suppose he told D&D "Shireen is burned alive" and provided zero context whatever. 

Suppose they then took that simple sentence, puzzled over it, and turned it into what we got on HBO (which can't happen in the books).   That would explain everything, and yet would not be much of a spoiler.  The same is likely true of Hodor (who similarly can't die as he did on the show).

Now, as to "way down on the list of priorities," I agree!  It's clear to me that GRRM only ever threw D&D table scraps.  He never told them anything worth a damn, and that's exactly why the last two seasons were as nonsensical as they were.

D&D were forced to guess about the important stuff, and IMO, they got almost all of it wrong except for extremely obvious things like "the Wall falls, but the Popsicles don't overrun and destroy all human beings worldwide."  And all of us knew those things the first time we read AGOT.

29 minutes ago, Black Crow said:

In the context of the show, Bran becoming High King makes absolutely no sense at all. 

True.

29 minutes ago, Black Crow said:

Book Bran on the other hand is a different matter entirely. In the Mabinogion Bran was left crippled and dying, so ordered his men to cut off his head and place it in a cave under a white hill where he [still talking] could watch over the Island of Britain. The White hill is Winterfell and in a cave beneath it Bran will watch over Westeros

Well, if by this you mean "Bran never sits the Iron Throne or is recognized by the public as king of Westeros, but he becomes a sort of king, eventually, in that he succeeds Bloodraven as a greenseer," then yes, that's certainly plausible and even likely (in time).

However, and I admit this is just a guess, I do not think it will happen inside the pages of ASOIAF.  I have an idea Bran has a few important fish to fry first before pulling a Bloodraven and permanently retiring to a cave (which I think may happen long after the last page of ASOIAF).

[JNR]

Quote

I am not taking on any scripts (of HOUSE OF THE DRAGON) until I have finished and delivered WINDS OF WINTER. Winter is still coming, and WINDS remains my priority

-- GRRM

Sounds good, but we'll see. Reminds me of his extremely similar prediction that he would never attend F/SF conventions until WINDS was done.

[Lord Aegon The Compromiser]

7 hours ago, Black Crow said:

The point about the character arc outcomes is that if they didn't know what was to happen to Bran, then the likes of Stannis smd Shireen are way down on the list of priorities and with no guidance at all the Deadly Duo were free to indulge themselves unless Shireen's ending was indeed a holy shit moment.

Come to that Bran, the cute but hopelessly crippled kid becoming king may well have been the third holy shit moment. After all, unless Jon Snow NOT parking his arse on the Iron Throne gave rise to a chorus of HOLY SHIT! [in block capitals and multiple exclamation marks] what better candidate can you offer for number 3 ?

Nevertheless, as I've been saying, if you know your Mabinogion [and D&D obviously don't] it makes perfect sense.

A better candidate would be Benjen showing up alive...and not as Coldhands.

[Lord Aegon The Compromiser]

7 hours ago, Black Crow said:

I think that there may be a little confusion here between Wights and White Walkers.

In the books Craster's boys are indeed swift and graceful - a good deal more so than the Mummers' take.

However in the Mummers' version the Wights on the other hand  mysteriously changed from the shambling walking dead of the books to a bizarre cross between spiders and a reboot of the skeletons grown from dragons teeth of the 1960s' Jason and the Argonauts 

Yes I mean wights. I'm on ASOS on my 6th Book read, but just finished binging the Mummer's version over the last few weeks.

[Lord Aegon The Compromiser]

6 hours ago, JNR said:

-- GRRM

Sounds good, but we'll see. Reminds me of his extremely similar prediction that he would never attend F/SF conventions until WINDS was done.

Dozens of attended cons ago. Lol. 

[alienarea]

If you still believe the books will be finished, you have not been paying attention, sweet summer child.

[Lord Aegon The Compromiser]

14 hours ago, JNR said:

I'm sure GRRM told D&D something about Shireen. 

But what it was, we don't know, because we weren't there.  It's a notoriously bad idea to try to interpret GRRM through other people... without knowing his exact language and the context in which he said it. He's far too tricksy for secondhand accounts.

For instance, suppose he told D&D "Shireen is burned alive" and provided zero context whatever. 

Suppose they then took that simple sentence, puzzled over it, and turned it into what we got on HBO (which can't happen in the books).   That would explain everything, and yet would not be much of a spoiler.  The same is likely true of Hodor (who similarly can't die as he did on the show).

Now, as to "way down on the list of priorities," I agree!  It's clear to me that GRRM only ever threw D&D table scraps.  He never told them anything worth a damn, and that's exactly why the last two seasons were as nonsensical as they were.

D&D were forced to guess about the important stuff, and IMO, they got almost all of it wrong except for extremely obvious things like "the Wall falls, but the Popsicles don't overrun and destroy all human beings worldwide."  And all of us knew those things the first time we read AGOT.

True.

Well, if by this you mean "Bran never sits the Iron Throne or is recognized by the public as king of Westeros, but he becomes a sort of king, eventually, in that he succeeds Bloodraven as a greenseer," then yes, that's certainly plausible and even likely (in time).

However, and I admit this is just a guess, I do not think it will happen inside the pages of ASOIAF.  I have an idea Bran has a few important fish to fry first before pulling a Bloodraven and permanently retiring to a cave (which I think may happen long after the last page of ASOIAF).

What fish do you think Bran will be frying?

[Black Crow]

50 minutes ago, Lord Aegon The Compromiser said:

What fish do you think Bran will be frying?

I'll let JNR speak for himself, but to my mind I think that Bran will play a key role in the return of House Stark. He's already communicating and perhaps even manipulating Jon and will certainly be doing so in future, and then there's the potential consequences of Sansa and the snowflake communion. Arya too has the craft of course and in short I can see Bran knitting them all together again.

Something to bear in mind is a recent comment by the Mummers that they deliberately cut out the fantasy - other than obvious things like dragons - and this absence is something we've discussed in these here parts before because a great big gaping hole in their version is the failure to address the Musgrave Ritual, and what's going on with the children of Winterfell. Perfectly understandable in choosing to concentrate on the game of thrones, but GRRM isn't writing that story. Its only one played out facet of The Song of Ice and Fire, which is a fundamentally different story.