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Fire Cannot Kill a Dragon Book


Jon Mark Selmy

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2 minutes ago, bluntt said:

https://i.imgur.com/iI8gkka.jpg
 

Hello James.

  1. From what you know, how much of the show's ending for the major characters (Jon, Dany, Arya, Tyrion, Bran, Sansa) aligns with what George is planning?

Sounds interesting especially in the context of the question that is the main heroes.

I think it's likely that the climax of the book tale is the War for the Dawn, rather than the fight for Kings Landing.

If Kings Landing burns, I'd expect there to be a reason for it (eg a botched surrender, or vicious street-fighting).

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1 minute ago, SeanF said:

I think it's likely that the climax of the book tale is the War for the Dawn, rather than the fight for Kings Landing.

If Kings Landing burns, I'd expect there to be a reason for it (eg a botched surrender, or vicious street-fighting).

Oh yeah i do not question that the burning of KL will make sense in the books(if it happens). I am just not able to understand the DRASTIC shift in the show that happened in 3 stages (1-4 seasons same quality - good -> 5-6 seasons same quality - much worse story wise with some cool episodes in s.6->s7 bad in general with good visuals-> s8 - complete disaster in writing)

This just does not make much sense to me and i think there is a nasty story behind it.

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1 hour ago, bluntt said:

Oh yeah i do not question that the burning of KL will make sense in the books(if it happens). I am just not able to understand the DRASTIC shift in the show that happened in 3 stages (1-4 seasons same quality - good -> 5-6 seasons same quality - much worse story wise with some cool episodes in s.6->s7 bad in general with good visuals-> s8 - complete disaster in writing)

This just does not make much sense to me and i think there is a nasty story behind it.

Yeah, I just want to hear that story too. In the early seasons, they shifted from the books too, although not in that extent as after Season 4. But up until then, they were decent if not to say great writers and storytellers. Some of the best dialogues from Season 1-4 werent even in the books. Which shows that they are able to write and develop Storys. Whatever happend after Season 6 is definitely interesting to hear. 

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13 hours ago, Cas Stark said:

It is kind of odd that GRRM says the scene he hated the most wasn't, oh, maybe, Jon stabbing Dany, or Sansa feeding Ramsay to the dogs, or Sansa standing in for Jeyne, or Arya and the Hound announcing their identities in the Vale and being let go or any of the other dozens of incredibly dumb scenes in the show...but the scene he says he hated the most is Robert's hunting trip from season 1.

Much as I loath the Ds and their arrogance and incompetence, this somewhat shines a light on how GRRM might have been a somewhat unreasonable partner who lacks a bit of perspective.  At the time they had no money to stage a huge, realistic royal hunt......

I note the one he liked most was the Battle of the Blackwater, which he wrote, and that was undeniably very good.  It's one of the best battle sequences I've every watched.

And yet, the battle sequences just got sillier.  It should not have been hard to have a military historian on hand to point out how things worked.

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25 minutes ago, SeanF said:

I note the one he liked most was the Battle of the Blackwater, which he wrote, and that was undeniably very good.  It's one of the best battle sequences I've every watched.

And yet, the battle sequences just got sillier.  It should not have been hard to have a military historian on hand to point out how things worked.

Well the Battle of the Blackwater sequence... if you follow it its actually about the characters - there is dialogue, emotion, acting... etc. While the later battles are about showing off special effects and pointless slaughter and slashing. If you compare the costs of the blackwater episode with BOB or the "short night" im sure its a fraction of it and its still much better.

 

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What I find more astounding is how no one (not the directors, not the actors) had any clue about where their characters were going. It's particularly lame that even in the latest seasons, Emilia Clarke and Alex Graves were filming Dany's scenes completely out-of-synch from the writers.

2 hours ago, SeanF said:

I see D & D wanted to have Ser Davos perving on Missandei, when he arrived at Dragonstone, but Liam Cunningham put his foot down.

Yeah they're complete creeps. Disgusting people.

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7 minutes ago, bluntt said:

Well the Battle of the Blackwater sequence... if you follow it its actually about the characters - there is dialogue, emotion, acting... etc. While the later battles are about showing off special effects and pointless slaughter and slashing. If you compare the costs of the blackwater episode with BOB or the "short night" im sure its a fraction of it and its still much better.

 

To be fair to D & D (not something you'll often hear me say) I did think the battle on the Goldroad was done well.  Given that they were being torn apart from dragonfire, I though the Lannister soldiers mounted a credible defence.  The BOB was silly in many respects.  Jon - a very experienced soldier - just abandoned his strategy and tried to fight the enemy cavalry single-handed. Ramsay ordered his archers to shoot down his own men along with Jon's because he's that evil.  Sansa never told Jon about the presence of the Vale Knights, and Jon wasn't bothered. As @OldGimletEyeput it at the time, any other commander than Jon would have hanged Sansa for her behaviour. 

The Battle against the Dead has been analysed to death, and I won't repeat it.

As for Kings Landing, a commander like Harry Strickland would never have led his men out of the city.  He'd have embedded them among the civilian population, and drawn the attackers into dreadful street fighting.

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14 hours ago, Lord Varys said:

The difference with Renly is that Renly wasn't innocent in all that. He didn't want to work with Stannis, either, and presumed to be the leader of that movement. Of course, the black magic thing as well as the fact that Stannis deliberately chose to ally with Mel because Selyse promised him that her magics could deliver Renly's men to Stannis shows that Stannis has no problems using deplorable methods to get what he wants.

But it is still a difference to murder your traitor brother and to murder an innocent child, much less your only child and future. Considering to sacrifice Edric was bad enough already - because Edric, too, was an innocent boy. But Shireen is a whole lot worse.

That never made much sense since it would not make the best of that plot. It has to be the father who does it, not the 'evil witch'. And certainly not as a poor plot device to resurrect some other character.

That indicates we won't see the Shireen sacrifice soon. If Stannis is still hellbent that his daughter should succeed him if he were to die in battle, then something has to happen for him to reconsider that.

And that essentially has to mean the Others. Only if Stannis has to choose between all humanity/Westeros and his daughter will he decide to sacrifice her. And we are nowhere near that point ... which is why I asked above when you guys think this Shireen thing can happen. Do we believe the Others can already be a huge threat half-way through TWoW when they didn't even show up in ADwD? Can the Wall fall or be really under threat when Dany's gang is still stuck in Essos?

I don't think so ... meaning I'm not holding my breath for Shireen dying in the next book. Things might start to get dire in TWoW but not that dire.

Even more so in light of the fact that Shireen's greyscale plot has to come into play before they will consider sacrificing her.

Stannis is a false savior, a lie to be slain. He and Aegon and the shadow beast thing will make things worse, not better. Thus everything they do, even if they are well-intentioned, will play directly or indirectly into the hands of the Others.

I could see George play this thing so that the sacrifice as such is seen as the right thing ... but only if the savior/chosen one were the one doing it. Which Stannis won't be, so the thing is going to make things worse.

But then, I don't think that a child sacrifice is going to be depicted in a 'sympathetic light' in this series, especially not when the father commands it. People might understand why Stannis thinks he has to do this, but I don't think anybody is going to tell him that he is doing the right thing. And neither will he himself.

George set the character up to break ... and he will break himself when he does that. And I think that's also going to be the end of the rope for Mel in the books, since we do have other red priests in the story. George won't need her to side with Jon or Dany or whoever else.

 

I may need to re-read ACOK (In fact I plan to in a few months) but Stannis offered Renly the fairest terms possible, and what did Renly offer Stannis exactly? Stannis did what he had to because Renly refused to do the right thing and support his older brother.

 

 

And exactly. I mean, if Stannis gets what he wants. He kills the Freys and Boltons, and then takes Kings Landing too and sends thousands of men to the Wall for the real battle, or even if he returns to the Wall just after saving the North and it comes down to something like, the Others blow the Horn of Winter but Melisandre promises Stannis that sacrificing Shireen will undo the damage caused by the horn blowing and stop the Others from getting through the Wall, resulting in a far better chance of stopping the Others if they people of Westeros effectively rain fire on the Others while remaining safer than if the Others got through, but the Others can never get through the Wall due to the sacrifice, then that would make sense. It would be a horrible choice and be devastating to see but it would make a lot of sense for the story.

How B&W had Stannis do it to clear a storm just to win on battle was horrible. There's no way it will be like that in the book.

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7 minutes ago, The hairy bear said:

What I find more astounding is how no one (not the directors, not the actors) had any clue about where their characters were going. It's particularly lame that even in the latest seasons, Emilia Clarke and Alex Graves were filming Dany's scenes completely out-of-synch from the writers.

Yeah they're complete creeps. Disgusting people.

I wish I could say I'm surprised, but I'm not.

I'm quite certain that if there hadn't been such a backlash over Sansa's rape, they'd have had the Dothraki rape Daenerys, rather than just threaten it.

Emilia Clarke, Alex Graves, and Ramin Djawadi were all interpreting Daenerys completely differently to D & D and Bryan Cogman.

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1 hour ago, Ghostlydragon said:

I may need to re-read ACOK (In fact I plan to in a few months) but Stannis offered Renly the fairest terms possible, and what did Renly offer Stannis exactly? Stannis did what he had to because Renly refused to do the right thing and support his older brother.

Renly had no obligation nor reason to believe Stannis' story about the twincest in light of the fact that Stannis had no proof. From Renly's POV Stannis is just as much a usurper as he is. They both want to be kings despite the fact that neither is the chosen or anointed heir, and neither has the moral highground there.

But the depravity of Stannis is hinted at in the Prologue of ACoK. Take a look at the moment when Stannis first considers to ally with Mel and R'hllor. He complains about the conventional means of letter-writing and envoy-sending and marriage contracts ... and then Selyse promises him that Melisandre's means can bring about Renly's death and deliver Renly's men to Stannis. This is the moment Stannis starts to listen to Selyse and Melisandre.

And the entire campaign in ACoK afterwards hinges on a plan to kill Renly and steal his troops to then crush the Lannisters. That is why Stannis goes to Storm's End in the first place. He knows Renly won't back down in light of his pathetic force ... and why should he? Stannis is the aggressor there. He besieges Storm's End. Renly didn't send out a naval force to attack Dragonstone before marching against KL.

And Renly clearly had no intention to remove Stannis from the board or kill him despite the fact that he was his elder brother prior to Stannis attacking him.

1 hour ago, Ghostlydragon said:

And exactly. I mean, if Stannis gets what he wants. He kills the Freys and Boltons, and then takes Kings Landing too and sends thousands of men to the Wall for the real battle, or even if he returns to the Wall just after saving the North and it comes down to something like, the Others blow the Horn of Winter but Melisandre promises Stannis that sacrificing Shireen will undo the damage caused by the horn blowing and stop the Others from getting through the Wall, resulting in a far better chance of stopping the Others if they people of Westeros effectively rain fire on the Others while remaining safer than if the Others got through, but the Others can never get through the Wall due to the sacrifice, then that would make sense. It would be a horrible choice and be devastating to see but it would make a lot of sense for the story.

We have yet to wait and see what the point of the Shireen sacrifice will be in the books. A change in weather would be a ludicrous motivation to do that. But one should go back to ASoS and consider that Stannis was seriously considering the sacrifice of his own nephew for the vague promise of 'dragons'. Mel and Selyse just pushed Stannis to sacrifice the boy, they were not explaining in great detail what the benefits of that sacrifice would be.

One possibility is that George is continuing the Lightbringer plot. Stannis has a fake Lightbringer and he must know that. If push comes to shove they might want him to have a real magical sword ... and there might be a reason why Salladhor Saan told Davos the story of Azor Ahai and Nissa Nissa.

But again - I'm not counting on them reaching that point quickly. First George has to get to his Nightfort plot with Mel and Stannis. He alluded to that in ASoS when it was revealed that the castle would be Stannis' seat, but ADwD didn't get to that yet, so we can expect a victorious Stannis to make the Nightfort his royal seat and most of the Wall action to take place there. Especially the chapters from Mel's POV.

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4 hours ago, bluntt said:

https://i.imgur.com/iI8gkka.jpg
 

Hello James.

  1. From what you know, how much of the show's ending for the major characters (Jon, Dany, Arya, Tyrion, Bran, Sansa) aligns with what George is planning?

Sounds interesting especially in the context of the question that is the main heroes.

Considering that Bran does not end on the Iron Throne I'm not sure they actually used that one...

But this essentially means that all of the other stuff is likely not stuff from George.

I mean, even if we go with Bran as a 'mundane king' - which I really can't see - then this would only work if he was one of the main leaders in the War for the Dawn - which clearly is his story. The greenseer is going to coordinate the fighting and provide the mobile heroes with the necessary information to understand who the enemy is, what they want, and how they might be defeated.

That alone would indicate that the climax of ASoIaF is the War for the Dawn ... and we didn't get that in the GoT show. Jon and Dany are ultimately heroes in the War for the Dawn, too, not stupid politicians who want some iron chair. That isn't the story of ASoIaF.

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4 hours ago, SeanF said:

I see D & D wanted to have Ser Davos perving on Missandei, when he arrived at Dragonstone, but Liam Cunningham put his foot down.

That says it all really about the Ds mentality.  Not only the ick factor of the age difference,  but the desire to turn Missy into a sex object, to throw in a totally, completely pointless 'romantic' angle that would have wasted countless minutes of screen time for no pay off other than to turn Davos into a dirty old man.  

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18 minutes ago, Lord Varys said:

Considering that Bran does not end on the Iron Throne I'm not sure they actually used that one...

But this essentially means that all of the other stuff is likely not stuff from George.

I mean, even if we go with Bran as a 'mundane king' - which I really can't see - then this would only work if he was one of the main leaders in the War for the Dawn - which clearly is his story. The greenseer is going to coordinate the fighting and provide the mobile heroes with the necessary information to understand who the enemy is, what they want, and how they might be defeated.

That alone would indicate that the climax of ASoIaF is the War for the Dawn ... and we didn't get that in the GoT show. Jon and Dany are ultimately heroes in the War for the Dawn, too, not stupid politicians who want some iron chair. That isn't the story of ASoIaF.

Hm, what do you mean. He says the chance of Bran not being the king is very low(he first says 100% and after that says its 99%).
And in general those are the 3 "WTF moments" coming out of George. I dont see this story ending with the typical king/queen, meaning i dont see it as Daenerys or Jon ruling in the end.

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25 minutes ago, Cas Stark said:

That says it all really about the Ds mentality.  Not only the ick factor of the age difference,  but the desire to turn Missy into a sex object, to throw in a totally, completely pointless 'romantic' angle that would have wasted countless minutes of screen time for no pay off other than to turn Davos into a dirty old man.  

The excerpt that @The hairy bear linked to is even worse.  

I'm surprised they didn't insist on a faux lesbian scene between Missandei and Daenerys.

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12 minutes ago, SeanF said:

The excerpt that @The hairy bear linked to is even worse.  

I'm surprised they didn't insist on a faux lesbian scene between Missandei and Daenerys.

Yeah, me too.  Given their propensities and that such a scene w/Dany exists in the books, I expected they would do something lesbian-ish  with Dany as well.

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4 hours ago, Lord Varys said:

Mel and Selyse just pushed Stannis to sacrifice the boy, they were not explaining in great detail what the benefits of that sacrifice would be.

They were saying that the sacrifice was necessary in order to "wake the stone dragon". It is clear that they all believe the sacrifice would give them a dragon.

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1 hour ago, Mithras said:

They were saying that the sacrifice was necessary in order to "wake the stone dragon". It is clear that they all believe the sacrifice would give them a dragon.

But what dragon exactly? How large would it be? How ferocious a weapon in war?

There is nothing of that sort in ASoS. Stannis ponders murdering his nephew on the basis of ridiculous lunacy. And that could indicate the man might burn more people for more lunacy before he reaches the end of the rope and kills his daughter. Prior to that he has a lot of people with king's blood to torch first.

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