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In what ways do you think/hope Martin will significantly subvert expectations?


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23 hours ago, Jaenara Belarys said:

He also said something about Aragorn's tax policy and how he handled the orcs......IMO, the story is over and even if Tolkien had goe into the realms of "tax policy" I probably wouldn't have read it. If I wanted taxes, I'd talk to accountants. 

Well ,this is awkward....I'm an accountant.

But on that note, I, too, read fantasy to avoid thinking about accounting. So there's that :D

 

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  • 4 weeks later...
On 10/6/2021 at 9:56 PM, Groo said:

I'm not sure we'll see either a clear cut victory or defeat of the Others. The Long Night lasted a generation. The Night's King seemingly married an Other and he was the thirteenth Lord Commander, which would mean the Others were around for a long time after the founding of the Nights Watch. The Wall itself was supposedly built by Brandon the Builder and the Nights Watch so the Nights Watch was fighting the Others for some time before the Wall even existed. Standard fantasy expectations would be that there is some sort of decisive "final" victory over the Others. It would subvert expectations if we didn't get that. We could get something like the Others overrun the North but Danny and dragons hold a new line at the Neck and a prolonged truce or stalemate sets in. We'd end up with a new realignment where the North belongs to the Others and the south belongs to men. 

I've thought about this possibility about the North too. If not belonging to the Others, then to the Children/direwolfs/giants.

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On 10/7/2021 at 5:07 PM, Megorova said:

In my opinion GRRM will subvert expactations by killing all the Others, not like it was during the First Long Night, when half of them was left alive. The final battle will be a clean cut.

Whose opinion would he be subverting? Is there even one person out there who thinks GRRM will end his series with the WW army defeated but allowed to retreat?

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11 minutes ago, Ivashanko said:

Whose opinion would he be subverting? Is there even one person out there who thinks GRRM will end his series with the WW army defeated but allowed to retreat?

Actually on this forum there's more than a few people who believe that the Others aren't really evil, so instead of all out fight against them and the Heroes, there will be a truce.

I'm not one of those people, I think the opposite - that this time it will be a total annihilation of one of the sides, and the winning side will be humans, not the Others, so all the Others this time will be offed.

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2 minutes ago, Megorova said:

Actually on this forum there's more than a few people who believe that the Others aren't really evil, so instead of all out fight against them and the Heroes, there will be a truce.

I'm not one of those people, I think the opposite - that this time it will be a total annihilation of one of the sides, and the winning side will be humans, not the Others, so all the Others this time will be offed.

 

In that case the WW army probably won't have been defeated. They might have fought to a draw, or everyone might have realised the truth mid-way, or whatever. But actually straight out defeated after a genocidal war and then be allowed to live? That would subvert my expectations.

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I think the Others and/or their zombies will not only overrun all of Westeros (regardless of if they win or loose) but that they will make appearances in Essos.

On 10/14/2021 at 7:19 PM, Jaenara Belarys said:

He also said something about Aragorn's tax policy and how he handled the orcs......IMO, the story is over and even if Tolkien had goe into the realms of "tax policy" I probably wouldn't have read it. If I wanted taxes, I'd talk to accountants. 

So probably what will happen is that the war between the Others and mankind will end but there will be a lot of loose ends to tie up--both mystical and political.

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Coming late to this. I think that the endgame battle between ice and fire is very likely, but there are ways for GRRM to do it without it being the big, dumb fantasy battle that it seems to be.

For instance, consider that dragons don't seem to want to travel north of the Wall, and also that the firewyrm creatures in Aerea Targaryen died screaming after she was immersed in ice water.

What if Dany learns that she must use dragonfire to destroy the Heart of Winter, but that doing so will almost certainly kill her dragons and probably herself? On one level, that creates a scenario of Dany's aspects of herself (Leader vs Protector, Mother of Dragons vs Mhysa) tugging in multiple directions. On the other, Dany making that sacrifice would provide the author with a way for Dany to play the hero while also canceling out the major sources of dominance and magical instability in the world: the dragons as well as the Others. In my headcanon, it may also include a need to destroy all of the weirwoods as well, to rid the world of magic, even the ones revered as gods.

Not to say it will play out like this necessarily. Just to give a possible ending that fits the genre skeleton while nevertheless holding on to the questions and themes that make GRRM's work stand out from the more standard fantasy stories.

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