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The history nerd argument earlier involved GRRM’s deep time. The Greek Dark Age was only 3 or 4 hundred years, but when the classical Greeks thought Homeric epics were set at basically the beginning of time. The last time the Night King tried an incursion it literally could knocked the literacy out of society for a couple hundred years. I think the maesters as a cultural institution may be a reaction to such a loss.
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Nov 13, 2022 01:29
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Mameluke posted:No because Varys is obviously a Blackfyre and Illyrio's brother-in-law Look I just don't see why those are mutually exclusive with being a merman, everyone says he's a eunuch but maybe he's just a blackfyre who's got fish junk, grrm is always going on about weird incest birth defects, it's one of his things
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Nov 13, 2022 01:36
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Man, including Young Griff would have solved so many problems in GoT Instead we got Dorne 
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Nov 13, 2022 01:43
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PostNouveau posted:Man, including Young Griff would have solved so many problems in GoT Dorne must still be a mystery county in HotD, other wise Loras would be down there in open toed sandal paradise.
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Nov 13, 2022 02:07
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PostNouveau posted:There's a fun theory that Bran is warging back into his past self over and over again and he's been "Groundhog Day"ing his whole life and has gotten crippled so he could drag Hodor along with him North simply so he could hold the door at the crucial moment where the ice zombies always kill him. Also he gave Jojen those dreams so Meera would be there to help him climb out (in the book there is a big pit where Bloodraven lives). And this theory isn't necessarily as insane as it sounds when you initially read it. As early as the second book Jon is "dreaming" of being Ghost (all the Stark kids warg into their wolves at night, it's only Bran who can control the dreams though), and he is wandering around in one of the giant Weirwood forests North of the Wall. During the dream "Ghost" see's his brother's face in one of the trees and has a conversation with him. When you're reading this you initially think Ghost is talking to one of the other wolves, but many books later you realize that Bran can watch history unfold by Warging with the trees and it flat out is implying that Bran can send information backwards through time via the trees.
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Nov 13, 2022 05:47
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So I'm reading the book and finally reaching where the show picks up. I'll spoiler it since it isn't mentioned in the show and maybe people thinking of reading want any new info left for them to find out by reading. It's from the very beginning with the great council and a surprising difference. I was kinda surprised when Rhaenys was actually one of the earlier claims eliminated, "on account of (her) sex". The real final vote was between Viserys and Laenor Velaryon. Though it does have the same effective conclusion that many thought it set a precedent that the iron throne could not pass to a woman or through a woman to her male descendants.
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Nov 13, 2022 06:28
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Punkin Spunkin posted:I like the idea that the cons of having Stark blood include having to die like 4 or 5 times in quick succession until you're finally just a cockroach and it's over
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Nov 13, 2022 07:28
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guys we already have buddhism you don't have to work it out from first principles
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Nov 13, 2022 07:40
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No, we need to figure out how Tyrion's read of the Orange Catholic Bible influenced his time travel. This is important.
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Nov 13, 2022 09:03
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I AM GRANDO posted:Why has Westeros been in medieval times for like 10,000 years? Their history is like three times as long as human recorded history, but there has been like zero innovation or cultural development. There's a book called Hard to be a God where scientists discovers a planet that has been forever stuck in medieval times. One of the scientists comes up with a theory that every time their society is on the cusp on evolving some idiot rear end in a top hat comes along and ruins it. quote:Unless we’re meant to imagine that they have a poor understanding of their own history and just imagine that people 1,000 years earlier dressed just like them and were exactly the same, like medieval images of Caesar dressed in a suit of armor and poo poo. 
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Nov 13, 2022 13:20
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Renfaire is a memetic virus that overuns any society over a long enough timescale
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Nov 13, 2022 13:24
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Xiahou Dun posted:Every death in the whole series was Ned warging into things. Later he tries to kill Arthur Dent
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Nov 13, 2022 15:35
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Marsupial Ape posted:The history nerd argument earlier involved GRRM’s deep time. The Greek Dark Age was only 3 or 4 hundred years, but when the classical Greeks thought Homeric epics were set at basically the beginning of time. This goes back to a theory I had when the other show was running -- people in Westeros are all kinda stupid. Remember how it took Tyrion coming to town before anyone thought to rig some extra straps onto a saddle so Bran could ride a horse? Or how Littlefinger was a political genius who gave Sansa to the Boltons for safekeeping? Even if you're an Einstein-level genius, you're gonna be grubbing in the dirt all your life until some rear end in a top hat soldiers come through and kill you and steal all your stuff. Unless you're part of like a couple dozen families who spend all their time fighting and being assholes and selecting for being even bigger assholes. There could have been a dozen steam engines over the course of a hundred years in Westeros, but the inventors keep getting killed or tortured to death for entirely unrelated reasons.
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Nov 13, 2022 15:47
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Every generation or so a winter comes along that's so long it kills half of society. Probably hampers progress a bit.
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Nov 13, 2022 15:57
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I watched this show in reverse order once all the episodes were out (don't ask why, there isn't really a good answer) and I have to say episode 1 contains a great plot twist if you watch it that way. All the times people talk about how the king's old wife died in childbirth and how wonderful she was and how much he misses her, and then you get to the event itself and it turns out he had her gutted while she was lucid and begging him not to. That's some harrowing poo poo! God what a fuckup Viserys was. Episode 8 is one of the best episodes of television I've seen in a long time. The Velaryon succession stuff is a cool tangled situation in itself, but the racial choices in the casting made it really interesting. Obviously it's not a 1:1 analogue for real life, we are talking about branches of a royal family and all, but what's happening on screen is still a black man being asked to just shut up and accept that his bloodline is going to be ruled by white people from now on. Then the dinner and Viserys attempting to reconcile everyone was quite sweet and you can see a glimmer of hope buried beneath it all. Then Viserys himself quietly destroys everything with his final breath. Oops! God what a fuckup! I wonder if that's the whole reason they wrote in the prophecy, which i gather wasn't a thing in the books. It doesn't really work as a motivator for everyone's actions, everyone would pretty much be doing what they're doing without it (which of course is another possible reason for its presence, to show how even a plausible prophecy of doom can't keep these freaks in line) but it works great as a way for Viserys to mean "Rhaenyra it is extremely important that you take the throne" but for what he says to be interpreted as "it is extremely important that the disgusting rapist who everyone hates take the throne" Anyway I skipped Game Of Thrones when it was on but I might check it out, this show has given me a taste for it
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Nov 13, 2022 15:58
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I have a sinking feeling that the prophecy stuff is meant to be a hook for the Jon Snow series, like somebody in HOT D learns something about how the white walkers will only stay dead forever if the hero goes north and slays the other night king, or white walker will come back if they’re merely defeated by the hero’s younger sister doing a sick trampoline jump to stab the night king, and that information is somehow transmitted to Jon Snow in his series.
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Nov 13, 2022 16:10
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Ok now you have to watch GOT in reverse order. There is a youtube channel of a dude started watching Got from s6? and just made up the previous plot himself. It's a very entertaining channel to book readers.
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Nov 13, 2022 16:13
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Westeros unfortunately doesn’t have any domesticable beasts of burden. The best they can do is alpacas.
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Nov 13, 2022 16:14
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Man, the early versions of the Ferengi were problematic.
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Nov 13, 2022 16:22
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Phenotype posted:This goes back to a theory I had when the other show was running -- people in Westeros are all kinda stupid. Remember how it took Tyrion coming to town before anyone thought to rig some extra straps onto a saddle so Bran could ride a horse? Or how Littlefinger was a political genius who gave Sansa to the Boltons for safekeeping? You've stumbled upon the tragedy of feudalism as a concept, which may be one of the major plot points behind the intellectual property, "Game of Thrones", when all is said and done. And even Einsten was a patent clerk trying to make ends meet with too much time on his hands, society as a rule simply does not select for great innovators.
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Nov 13, 2022 16:25
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Imagine where society would be today if Elon Musk had been free to truly invent and innovate instead of being tied down by companies unable to be managed by someone of near intellect, social pressure to lead humanity culturally and a political necessity to return us to a time of unrestricted speech in the public domain.
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Nov 13, 2022 16:31
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does westeros have fossil fuels in any quantity? are there references to coal mines or do they only use charcoal?
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Nov 13, 2022 16:45
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thats not candy posted:does westeros have fossil fuels in any quantity? are there references to coal mines or do they only use charcoal? Related question: Can dragons be repurposed into lamp oil?
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Nov 13, 2022 17:27
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"cleopatra wasn't actually hot" camp, explain yourselves
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Nov 13, 2022 17:56
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2house2fly posted:I watched this show in reverse order once all the episodes were out (don't ask why, there isn't really a good answer) and I have to say episode 1 contains a great plot twist if you watch it that way. All the times people talk about how the king's old wife died in childbirth and how wonderful she was and how much he misses her, and then you get to the event itself and it turns out he had her gutted while she was lucid and begging him not to. That's some harrowing poo poo! God what a fuckup Viserys was.
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Nov 13, 2022 18:31
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Vegetable posted:She was going to die anyway. That event keeps getting misread as “King chooses son over wife” but it’s not quite what’s happening. It's more about the guilt for Viserys, not that he could have made a different choice with a different outcome.
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Nov 13, 2022 18:45
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That DICK! posted:"cleopatra wasn't actually hot" camp, explain yourselves She literally had huge tracts of land
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Nov 13, 2022 19:12
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Vegetable posted:She was going to die anyway. That event keeps getting misread as “King chooses son over wife” but it’s not quite what’s happening. But it is. And that is why Matt Daemon's reaction to the same scenario later on pays off. We don't know how advanced Westerosi medicine is (it's not) when it comes to child bearing, but even in layman's terms, you're cutting up a major part of what the lady needs to live, vs. you're chopping up a kid into constituent bits and hoping that what the lady is doing either way (making GBS threads out the stuff from her uterus) won't kill the lady. It's a chance that she will die anyway, but the point is, king Goon made a choice then and there, and the Cronenbergian scene that ensues just emphasizes for us, the viewers, that yes, king Goon just did a Bad Thing.
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Nov 13, 2022 19:57
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I thought the aemma decision was just: A) do nothing and both definitely die B) perform primitive c section killing aemma and maybe save the son The downside of b is that aemma's last moments would be horrible but she wasn't making it out of that bed regardless. Baby might've, and kind of did, but died later that day.
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Nov 13, 2022 20:01
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I AM GRANDO posted:Why has Westeros been in medieval times for like 10,000 years? Their history is like three times as long as human recorded history, but there has been like zero innovation or cultural development. Unless we’re meant to imagine that they have a poor understanding of their own history and just imagine that people 1,000 years earlier dressed just like them and were exactly the same, like medieval images of Caesar dressed in a suit of armor and poo poo. grrm just isnt good with numbers
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Nov 13, 2022 20:09
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i read the aemma & laena stuff as a pro-choice commentary thing. viserys' sin was not letting aemma in on the choice, and even if daemon was going the other way with it it didn't seem like he was going to consult laena either. if that's the case it's a bit muddled, since in both cases they signal very strongly the mother is doomed either way, and im not convinced its moral or practical to give a terrified person in unimaginable pain a complex moral quandary to navigate on the verge of their death from blood loss.
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Nov 13, 2022 21:07
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10,000 years of history and no one's tried on a tough birth to just reach in there and pull 'em out. Just gotta grab 'em and yank.
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Nov 13, 2022 21:12
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Oh, they're coming out feet first? Even better, much easier to grab a leg
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Nov 13, 2022 21:12
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That DICK! posted:i read the aemma & laena stuff as a pro-choice commentary thing. viserys' sin was not letting aemma in on the choice, and even if daemon was going the other way with it it didn't seem like he was going to consult laena either. if that's the case it's a bit muddled, since in both cases they signal very strongly the mother is doomed either way, and im not convinced its moral or practical to give a terrified person in unimaginable pain a complex moral quandary to navigate on the verge of their death from blood loss. She did walk up to the dragon and yell at it for a merciful death, though Matt Daemon signaled that he was not going to follow King Goon, and we all love Matt Daemon, but the message is clear
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Nov 13, 2022 21:13
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OctaMurk posted:grrm just isnt good with numbers It's a magic xylophone.
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Nov 13, 2022 21:36
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even dune wouldn't have worked because the science behind the moisture condensers is that we have large bodies of water on earth that are filling the air with moisture to suck out
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Nov 13, 2022 21:42
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roomtone posted:I thought the aemma decision was just: Even if Viserys is pretty laid back about his daughter taking the throne he knows the rest of Westeros isn't. Being asked to choose between the life of your wife and your child is something we should all be very glad we no longer really have to do. Having to make that decision knowing bearing a son will massively reduce the likelihood of a civil war in which thousands of people will die (assuming you care, which Viserys gives every indication that he does), even if you haven't promised your wife this is your last child, knowing if you choose your wife over the child there's a good chance the procedure leaves her unable to bear any more it's a massive shitshow. While what Viserys did was definitely wrong, but I don't think he had any right choices.
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Nov 14, 2022 13:03
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you seem to be assuming there was any chance of aemma surviving which isn't what i was saying. i might be misremembering but i thought aemma dying was unavoidable, it was just a matter of doing the traumatic procedure beforehand vs not and just letting them both die. so if she was definitely going to die anyway, the choice becomes a lot less difficult. still difficult, but it's not the same as life of aemma vs life of baby. there was never an option to save aemma. unless i'm wrong.
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Nov 14, 2022 14:17
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I think the actual line was something like "We either need to cut her open to get the baby out, or leave it the hands of the gods." I think the maester was presenting the only option as saving the baby or letting them both die.
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Nov 14, 2022 14:36
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Yeah, I remember at the time thinking the choice was "definitely kill your wife and potentially save the baby, or do nothing and most likely lose both." It was an awful situation to be put in, and while Viserys should have consulted Aemma, she was pretty much doomed in either scenario. As others have mentioned, this wasn't just him being selfish and "wanting a boy" above the health of his wife, the implications for realm stability make it a "good of the many" sort of situation. If that boy lived, the civil war probably doesn't happen.
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Nov 14, 2022 18:18
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