The winds of winter predictions 2.0

[Melifeather]

19 hours ago, Gilbert Green said:

That's true of Gregor.  If any of it is true of Hotah, it is news to me.

I apologize. I cannot locate where I found that description. The only thing I can offer in support of Areo's size is his choice of weapon: a six-foot longaxe.

[Brother Seamus]

On 12/13/2022 at 2:10 PM, BlackLightning said:

That's the thing; it's not really a detour. It's a dangling plotline from Game of Thrones and Clash of Kings. Quaithe has told her (more than once) that she has to go back in order to move forward.

And why would they follow later? Why wouldn't they just take her now? Because of Drogon? Khal Jhaqo has archers with him and they are right in front of her. Even if Drogon could survive the barrage of arrows at such close range, Dany wouldn't.

Even if they follow later, they are going to try to take her back to Vaes Dothrak.

And the city is no condition to withstand a fresh Dothraki khalasar.

A coma?

Jon has not only been stabbed at least 20 times, but his throat has been cut. Castle Black has no maester and the other people who stand any chance of helping him (Melisandre and that one drunken septon) are completely busy elsewhere.

There's no way he is going to survive something like that without magical intervention.

We literally had Melisandre see a human male transform into a wolf and then back into a human in the flames. Not only that but Melisandre also saw Bran as a boy with the face of a wolf.

Melisandre can show up at the last minute and find a way to magically preserve and heal his body (someone mentioned that the spell that Mirri Maz Duur cast to save Drogo's body can be feasibly pulled off by Melisandre) but...that's going to take just as much time as resurrecting his body. Jon can warg into Ghost while he is in a coma or after death; it doesn't matter.

Why would the whole Darkstar thing be a sideshow?

I don't get why there are fans who think that everything that doesn't have to anything do with the Stark-Lannister feud and the invasion of the Others is a sideshow. It's annoying and ignorant.

Darkstar is a member of House Dayne and House Dayne has been pretty interesting part of the story since the midpoint of A Game of Thrones. All the stuff pertaining to Ned Stark, Jon Snow, the Tower of Joy and whatever the hell there happened depends on House Dayne. Why?

I don't know but it's strange that Ned went straight for Starfall (the seat of House Dayne) immediately after leaving the Tower of Joy? Why would he go there? The Martells are the rulers of Dorne and they are based in Sunspear. Why go to Starfall?

And then there's all this stuff with Howland Reed (who is the only living witness for whatever happened at the Tower of Joy and at Starfall) and Edric Dayne (who was trying to tell Arya something about Jon). Even Barristan Selmy and Catelyn Stark (yeah, she's undead but she clearly hasn't forgotten) are invested in the Daynes, particularly Ashara. A lot of people in the realm think that Ashara Dayne is Jon's real mother...but when Ned hears the rumors, he gets super angry?

That's part of the reason why the "R+L=J" thing went nowhere and the show sucked in the final two seasons...because there was no House Dayne.

I'm not just talking about you...but this whole "sideshow subplot" stuff just basically proves that a lot of the fandom is almost as shallow as D&D.

No need to deal with Qarth?

I think you have forgotten their armada. Qarth only has a few ships at Meereen. The armada that they all possess (which we saw in Clash) is massive.

Even if it's just a case of Dany flying over to Qarth and burning them out, it's still going to take a POV chapter to do so.

Abandoning Qarth means allowing slavery to continue. Why would Dany do that?

The story has advanced quite a bit.

Not as much as it would have if Dance had been a full-length novel. But it has definitely advanced.

Take Stannis. At the end of Storm, he is sauntering around Castle Black complaining about the Watch and trying to legitimize Jon Snow. By the end of Dance, his army (although on the brink of starvation) has gotten significantly larger, he's eliminated a major Ironborn outpost in the west, he has tasked Melisandre and Davos with separate missions and he's basically staring down the walls of Winterfell.

The King's Landing story has gone from Cersei Lannister being the supreme authority in the Seven Kingdoms with Tywin and Tyrion gone to...

• Cersei under house arrest
• Kevan dead
• Varys entering the final stage of his schemes
• the Faith Militant becoming a new power bloc with the ability and willingness to control the Iron Throne
• the Tyrells overstretching themselves now that they have effectively taken over the government.

Tyrion? Yes, this dragged quite a bit (and it was painful to read) but Storm ended with Tyrion - more or less - becoming what everyone had accused him of being. Where has he gone now? Well, outside of the fact that Tyrion has now embraced wanton acts of cruelty to spite others who mock him, he's a recently emancipated slave (who freed himself) just outside the gates of Meereen, scheming to seize control of the Second Sons.

None of what you suggest is implausible based on the plot so far, it's just unnecessary and too much, and/or can be dealt with in a few paragraphs. we don't need five chapters dealing with darkstar; we need one, at most. he can be dealt with off-screen, and then whatever role he and house Dayne play in the culminating events can come in dos.

 

yes, quaithe's prophecies have to end up meaning something, and it could be going back to Qarth, or it could be going to Vaes Dothrak, but it could be something else. and Qarth's fleet could be dealt with at Mereen. GRRM just needs to have them show up in time to get burned by the dragons. don't you think Qarth is going to throw its more or less full military weight behind the Yunkai now, i.e. at the battle of mereen? If we're arguing internal plot logic, Qarth failing to go all in when they think Dany/Merreen are on the back foot doesn't make sense. from the slavers' perspective, she needs to be crushed, and the rebellious former slaves of Mereen punished. I predict the slave world - Yunkai, Qarth, Volantis - goes all in, to maximize their chances of success. concentrating forces to establish overwhelming odds ion your favor is basic military doctrine.

i don't remember 20 stab wounds or the cut throat for Jon (but maybe it's in there)  but even if so, this is fiction, and if GRRM wants to make it survivable, it's survivable. obviously, i don't know that the jon-wargs-into-ghost-and-then-is raised-from-the-dead-by- mel thing won't happen, any more than you know it will, I just hope it won't. it's too goofy. too fan-ficky. too comic-booky. I concede that in some ways it looks like it's been set up, by the revival of Dondarrion and LS. But i think GRRM sees asoiaf as his magnum opus and will be conscious of avoiding cheap plot devices, like bringing a main hero character back to life by magic. but maybe i'm wrong.

but my broader point is not in the plot details, it's in the practical considerations bearing on whether GRRM can finish the story. GRRM says two more volumes, and at the rate he writes, if he really wants to finish it, he has to make good on that, and he needs to get the F*** on with it. GRRM is 74. with apologies, he doesn't have another 20-25 years to do 3-4 books.

and I am confident he can resolve all of the dangling sub plots, solve all the outstanding mysteries, and get to the climax[es] of the story in two DWD-sized books, but not if he pisses away 20-30-40 chapters taking us on extended tours of the dothraki sea, qarth, asshai, Darkstar's Dornish lair, Arianne's vagina, etc etc. Most of the plot points leading us off in those directions can be resolved in a chapter here and a chapter there, or off-stage, or in a few pages in another POV chapter.

 

he needs to focus, not continue expanding the story. GRRM must realize this.

don't get me wrong. I'd love to see this go on indefinitely, in all the ways you suggest; a new book every 2-3 years for the next two decades, going off in in all kinds of directions. it's just not an option, if GRRM is going to write all the books. he doesn't write that fast and he's not going to be writing that long. I hope he's lives to 120 and writes until his last breath, but actuarial considerations weigh heavily against that.

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Gilbert Green]

7 hours ago, Melifeather said:

I apologize. I cannot locate where I found that description. The only thing I can offer in support of Areo's size is his choice of weapon: a six-foot longaxe.

No problem.  You wrote your theory years ago.  GRRM's fault for leaving us hanging so long.