Heresy 227 and the Great Turtle

[Lord Aegon The Compromiser]

46 minutes ago, JNR said:

This was just brought to my attention:

Try Googling who are jon snow's parents?

I'll leave it to you guys to decide if Google nailed all three of Jon's parents.

 

That's a swing and a miss on at least two of them.

[Lord Aegon The Compromiser]

Nerdotic talks about the cancelled prequel and again mentions that GRRM had said he wouldn't write any TWOW in October because it was awards season:

 

He talks about House of the Dragon and the D&D Q&A where they admitted they had no idea what they were doing:

 

[redriver]

Any of you read Fire and Blood? I'm trying to do so at the moment. Kind of out of a sense of duty and in the forlorn hope that there may be some pertinent stuff in there.

There isn't. And it's a very tedious read.I could not tell my Aemons from my Aemonds or my Daemons nor did I particularly want to.

A slightly embroidered family tree of a not very interesting family.

[Lord Aegon The Compromiser]

21 minutes ago, redriver said:

Any of you read Fire and Blood? I'm trying to do so at the moment. Kind of out of a sense of duty and in the forlorn hope that there may be some pertinent stuff in there.

There isn't. And it's a very tedious read.I could not tell my Aemons from my Aemonds or my Daemons nor did I particularly want to.

A slightly embroidered family tree of a not very interesting family.

I've been wanting to as a break from ASOIAF. Is it literally only about the Targaryens? I can't imagine the need for two volumes.

I was thinking it was more like another World Book where we get stories from other places as well.

[Lord Aegon The Compromiser]

Did the ending of the Mummers version kill the RLJ thread? Their current thread has been open since March...

[redriver]

1 hour ago, Lord Aegon The Compromiser said:

I've been wanting to as a break from ASOIAF. Is it literally only about the Targaryens? I can't imagine the need for two volumes.

I was thinking it was more like another World Book where we get stories from other places as well.

Yes it is.Some minor embellishments.Someone steals some dragon eggs and sails off into the Sunset Sea.

 

1 hour ago, Lord Aegon The Compromiser said:

Did the ending of the Mummers version kill the RLJ thread? Their current thread has been open since March...

Probably.RLJ should be dead since it's been accepted canon by any one who hasn't got huge denial issues since 1996.

[Black Crow]

9 hours ago, JNR said:

It's true the Long Night show is gone.  Don't know if all the stuff in the link is true.  This did catch my eye:

OK, well, speaking as a hardcore fan...

1. Lesbianism is in the books already and is no big deal.  Where it occurs, it's primarily mocked by the fans not for the subject matter, but for GRRM's ludicrous phrase "Myrish swamp," which is rivaled only by "fat pink mast" as a phrase badly in need of rewriting.

2. Black characters are already in canon too.  No big deal.

3. One of Ned Stark's ancestors in the books is already a crannogman and hence, Book Ned already arguably descends in part from a different "race"

4. However, Westeros had no widely established indigenous human population before the First Men -- certainly not one that was exploited or abused by an empire that colonized the land -- so this:

...makes zero sense to me if true.  It would have amounted to abandoning the canonical tale of the Dawn Age, and would probably have been about as thrilling as a textbook of moral philosophy.  

But I still don't know if that was the real plan... or if it was, why GRRM would have wanted anything to do with it.

Agreed; after all most of this is what Maester Lewin told us. I think the simple problem with Bloodmoon was two-fold; first its too remote from the AGoT show, requires a fantasy element deliberately cut from that show and will revolve around the Musgrave ritual not yet revealed in the book; and the secondly the Targaryen Show with sex, drugs and dragons is a no-brainer for non-readers

[Lord Aegon The Compromiser]

58 minutes ago, redriver said:

Yes it is.Some minor embellishments.Someone steals some dragon eggs and sails off into the Sunset Sea.

 

Probably.RLJ should be dead since it's been accepted canon by any one who hasn't got huge denial issues since 1996.

Yet an argument for RLJ can't even be logically made with canon text. Rhaegar and Lyanna can't even be placed on the same continent together during the required time frame.

[Black Crow]

4 hours ago, Lord Aegon The Compromiser said:

Yet an argument for RLJ can't even be logically made with canon text. Rhaegar and Lyanna can't even be placed on the same continent together during the required time frame.

It all depends of course on how you define canon. So far as the text goes it certainly isn't canon. There is a very well established theory spilling into an article of faith, that it is canon, and the Mummers' "made it so" in their show, but their show, as GRRM has made very clear of late isn't his story, and while it doesn't rule out R+L=J the ending of the mummers' farce argues against it being canon, since it turned out to be such a damp squib.

Now of course there is a middle way in that R+L=J may turn out to be true, but of no consequence in the end, ie; despite being predicted with such vehemence, Jon Snow is not Azor Ahai and nor does he lead the Royal Targaryen Airforce to victory before parking himself of the Iron Throne.

In that sense R+L=J might literally be true and therefore canon, but all the baggage which came with the theory isn't. Certainly to judge by some comments posted on that dead horse, there is an inkling over there that things are not going to turn out as proclaimed.

[JNR]

14 hours ago, Lord Aegon The Compromiser said:

That's a swing and a miss on at least two of them.

Unless, of course, Jon really has got three parents, and thus he is a Marvel-style mutant -- all his trillions of cells contain 150% of the normal genome.  And the extra 50% makes him the song of ice and fire and the PtwP and AAR and the future king of Westeros.

This is the sort of thing many fans would actually believe, but something tells me it's not the case.

All the same, credit to Google for coming up with a truly novel theory of Jon's parents. R+L+E=J is not one I'd ever run across before.

[JNR]

7 hours ago, redriver said:

it's a very tedious read.I could not tell my Aemons from my Aemonds or my Daemons nor did I particularly want to.

I just believed GRRM when he said it was fake history. I'm sure it's fun for him to make up a bunch of stuff about those wacky power-hungry, dark-lordy Targs, but that stuff clearly wasn't in his mind in the nineties when he wrote the first three books, because it didn't exist yet.

[JNR]

42 minutes ago, Black Crow said:

In that sense R+L=J might literally be true and therefore canon, but all the baggage which came with the theory isn't.

It's not even true in that sense.  GRRM simply pulled off a magician's trick -- an illusion effective enough to fool a crowd, but that was never the truth. 

He knew his audience would look for such a thing, so he created one and made it easy to find and easy to believe.

But when will the truth come out?  That's the rub.

If ASOIAF only has two more books, I would expect us to get that particular revelation in the next book.   There would be quite simply no better way for GRRM to make a statement -- "My story really is not D&D's story, at a basic level" -- than that. 

I would expect him to relish the mushroom cloud from the bomb he had just dropped, and possibly roast marshmallows and make s'mores.

But suppose GRRM pushes ASOIAF to eight books, because he loses control of his wordcount (again).

In this scenario, I really have no idea when... or if... we would ever get the solution either to that mystery, or any of the others. I can easily imagine him writing an entire sixth book full of minor battles like Meereen and Winterfell and pitstops like the ones in the TWOW Arianne sample chapters, and then deciding not to edit any of it.

[JNR]

6 hours ago, Black Crow said:

I think the simple problem with Bloodmoon was two-fold; first its too remote from the AGoT show, requires a fantasy element deliberately cut from that show and will revolve around the Musgrave ritual not yet revealed in the book;

Well, I haven't read the script or seen the pilot, so I just don't know.

But if as that article stated, the main theme of the show was colonialism, that is totally incompatible with the canonical account of the Long Night. Which is this:

Quote

So long as the kingdoms of the First Men held sway, the Pact endured, all through the Age of Heroes and the Long Night and the birth of the Seven Kingdoms

Ain't nothin' colonial about that.  There is no powerful civilization outside Westeros that creates colonies in Westeros and exploits Westeros for its own benefit by using its superior military and technological advantages, as augmented by diseases like smallpox that eradicate the indigenous population.  All of which is what colonialism is all about, as demonstrated repeatedly starting about 500 years ago.

It's just some Bronze Age people wandering into and settling in a new area.  They didn't get along with the COTF very well, but eventually formed a Pact.  And then long after that, the Long Night happened.

[Black Crow]

1 minute ago, JNR said:

Well, I haven't read the script or seen the pilot, so I just don't know.

But if as that article stated, the main theme of the show was colonialism, that is totally incompatible with the canonical account of the Long Night. Which is this:

Ain't nothin' colonial about that.  There is no powerful civilization outside Westeros that creates colonies in Westeros and exploits Westeros for its own benefit by using its superior military and technological advantages, as augmented by diseases like smallpox that eradicate the indigenous population.  All of which is what colonialism is all about, as demonstrated repeatedly starting about 500 years ago.

It's just some Bronze Age people wandering into and settling in a new area.  They didn't get along with the COTF very well, but eventually formed a Pact.  And then long after that, the Long Night happened.

I took what we've been told as simply the First Men tooling up and using their bronze swords and their horses to conquer the place and shove the indigenous tree-huggers into the reservation

[JNR]

8 minutes ago, Black Crow said:

I took what we've been told as simply the First Men tooling up and using their bronze swords and their horses to conquer the place and shove the indigenous tree-huggers into the reservation

Colonialism is far more specific than Group A fighting and eventually forming a pact with Group B.  See above.

I wouldn't be surprised if Jane Goldman tried to take the Celts-in-Bronze-age concept GRRM had in mind and turn it into colonialism, but it's a grotesque anachronism and really doesn't work. 

There was just no civilization in Essos that created colonies in Westeros and exploited Westeros... exactly like the real Celts did not in fact exploit Britain for an imaginary Celtic mother country, three thousand years ago.

[JNR]

Thinking about that a bit more, I would guess it means Goldman was going with the noncanonical, Benioff/Weiss timeline (as opposed to the canonical one).  That is, she was going with this:

1. First Men show up

2. They fight the CotF

3. The CotF create the Popsicles and Long Night as a defensive reaction to the First Men

4. Somehow the First Men win anyway

Meanwhile, the canonical timeline is radically different:

1. First Men show up

2. They fight the CotF

3. Pact

4. Many centuries roll by, in which the petty kingdoms of the First Men fight each other

5. Then, finally, the Long Night happens

The D&D timeline sorta-kinda works for a colonialist story... although Goldman would still have to invent a FirstManistan  -- a civilization in Essos, and then have it colonize Westeros.   And that just doesn't exist in either GRRM's books or D&D's bullshit.

The canonical timeline doesn't work at all, because the Long Night happens long after the First Men and CotF settle their differences.

However, it is faintly possible that the canonical timeline is wrong at that very basic level... so we'll have to wait and see.

[Matthew.]

3 hours ago, Black Crow said:

I took what we've been told as simply the First Men tooling up and using their bronze swords and their horses to conquer the place and shove the indigenous tree-huggers into the reservation

This is how I interpreted it as well--particularly keeping in mind that "themes of colonialism" might not be Goldman's words or intent, but the subjective, inaccurate interpretation of someone at HBO (or the article's author).

My assumption is that it would have been exploring CotF/human relations in a post-Pact, pre-Andal Westeros in which (as you say) the CotF are living on their reservations, while the humans live on land stolen from the CotF, worshiping the CotF's gods and utilizing the CotF's magic.

Alternately, the show might have been largely ignoring the context of Book World, and telling a story in which the First Men were being invaded and colonized by some outside human faction that doesn't exist in the books; the teaser synopsis for the show promised that it was going to explore "the mysteries of the East," so perhaps there was going to be an Essosi faction or nation involved.

 

[JNR]

1 hour ago, Matthew. said:

"themes of colonialism" might not be Goldman's words or intent, but the subjective, inaccurate interpretation of someone at HBO (or the article's author)

Quite possible.   Maybe she'll eventually do an interview and clarify this.

1 hour ago, Matthew. said:

the CotF are living on their reservations, while the humans live on land stolen from the CotF, worshiping the CotF's gods

In this scenario, there is no apparent reason for conquerors to abandon their own religion and, as you say, worship the CotF's gods.  (I'm struggling to think of any instance of that from world history.)

For that matter, I would expect the First Men, if unbeatable conquerors, to just go ahead and grab the entire continent.  Why settle?  Take it all.

If on the other hand the canonical account applies:

Quote

Finally the wise of both races prevailed, and the chiefs and heroes of the First Men met the greenseers and wood dancers amidst the weirwood groves of a small island in the great lake called Gods Eye. There they forged the Pact.

...the CotF don't really sound conquered.  And the First Men, awed by the Hammer, might have thought their own gods were totally outclassed, hence upgrading.

1 hour ago, Matthew. said:

the show might have been largely ignoring the context of Book World

Yeah, this is my assumption.  Which is why I wondered what GRRM's motive would be to play ball, since I'm pretty sure he thinks highly of Book World.

[Lord Aegon The Compromiser]

With D&D admitting they didn't even study the books and had no idea what they were doing, it baffles me that GRRM would let them make the show. I suppose he knew they'd mostly use his dialogue and figured he'd be done with the books in time for them to use his books (their 1st meeting was in 2006 I believe), but still, people that actually knew what they were doing could have done a far better job. Plus they could have handled the seasons after ADWD much better.

[JNR]

13 hours ago, Lord Aegon The Compromiser said:

I suppose he knew they'd mostly use his dialogue and figured he'd be done with the books in time for them to use his books

Bingo.  That, and they did pass his test question of serious readership by identifying Jon's mother, and apparently there was generally a great conversation that went on for hours on that occasion.  He probably figured he could just shore up whatever conceptual shortfalls they had as the show went along.

And they certainly didn't admit to GRRM at that time that they didn't know what they were doing.  They can admit it now because the show is done, the millions of dollars are banked, the Netflix deal is signed, etc., and they can claim they learned so much that they're competent now, etc.

But are they?  The primary lesson of GOT is that in the second half of the show's run, when they supposedly had learned stuff, they were incompetent storytellers.   So much so that millions of fans wanted a complete remake. 

One day they may get it, too, based on the actual books. Reboots aren't going out of fashion any time soon.