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Arya walks by the Cult of the Starry Wisdom in Braavos. The noble on the Sister Island have webbed hand. The Iron island king who raised under Bloodraven handship was named Dagon. 
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Aug 1, 2011 20:57
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Just finished reading it, and my thoughts go to "oh boy how much longer must I wait now". I'll try to collect the strongest impressions here. At least the book contained the three words I didn't expect to read anywhere. They were "Roose Bolton shouted". I also didn't expect to read desciptions about Dany's poo poo, kind of funny after those passages about the most beautiful woman in the world... Melisandre's chapters were a surprise and a pretty good one. Her character received more depth now and became something more than a scary red witch woman. Also speaking of Melisandre, HOLY FUCKSHIT PATCHFACE! The description of his vision in Melisandre's flames was easily the most terrifying thing in the book. Like what, who, why, how? He's a fool that lost his mind after getting nearly drowned, for what reason's he so evil? Or so dangerous? Patchface has always been a disturbing character in a sad kind of way, but he looks completely harmless. I guess that's why that vision struck me so strong. I hated Theon as much as anyone since ASoS, but GRRM took the sweet taste of revenge away from me. I can't bring myself to hate him after what Ramsay's done. Theon's a character with truly none or very little future. Even if the impossible happened and he somehow got the Seastone Chair from the Crow's Eye, he still has a broken body and ruined health and can't probably even live that long. Selfless death - some kind of sacrifice - is probably the best outcome for him. Tyrion. Yay, Tyrion! And is it just me or does GRRM hate singer and performing artists? Marillion was an rear end in a top hat who was put to death because of false accusations, Blue Bard was tortured till he went mad, the Singer's Stew... And Penny and Groat were named after the smallest of coins. And Groat was killed for no reason. And Penny's and Groat's dog and pig were most probably killed. I believe that Jon didn't die - he was the only POV character on the Wall after all. Of course Melisandre is still there, but I doubt GRRM can tell much about the Night's Watch through her and the Night's Watch is important. Unless they'll choose her the Lady Commander or something.
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Aug 1, 2011 21:03
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Calef posted:Alright everybody. Get ready for this. The author has said not to expect a logical, hard SF explanation for the variable seasons. withak fucked around with this message at 21:11 on Aug 1, 2011 |
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Aug 1, 2011 21:05
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I believe the quote is something like "I didn't write science fiction, I wrote fantasy. It's magic, deal with it."
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Aug 1, 2011 21:12
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TTBF posted:I believe the quote is something like "I didn't write science fiction, I wrote fantasy. It's magic, deal with it."
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Aug 1, 2011 21:14
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Calef posted:Alright everybody. Get ready for this. Westeros is roughly the size of South America. The further south you go in Westeros, the closer you approach the tropics. I haven't read anything that suggests that if they went even further south, south beyond the Summer Isles, that they wouldn't find a cold south pole. Sometimes I think that the ASOIAF world is flat, just for fun.
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Aug 1, 2011 21:15
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If seasons last multiple years, how and why was a "year" even defined to begin with? I mean they could use astronomical periods, but those would seem quite unimportant without correlation to seasons. Dammit, Gurm, I demand scientific consistency in my midget rape dragon making GBS threads food descriptions book!
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Aug 1, 2011 21:22
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Ecco the Dolphin posted:If seasons last multiple years, how and why was a "year" even defined to begin with? I mean they could use astronomical periods, but those would seem quite unimportant without correlation to seasons. Lunar calendar. edit: wait, that's not what you're saying. Uhhhh, fantasy analogue! Fantasy analogue!
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Aug 1, 2011 21:24
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The biggest thing that bugs me about the world of ASoIaF is that Westeros's shape is impossibly rectangular. Eighty percent of the coastline lies at approximately the same longitude, on either side, and the Southern coastline is practically a parallel as well. Every time I see a map it's screaming "yes, I was drawn to fit as much land as possible on a single page".
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Aug 1, 2011 21:25
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Essos doesn't have the magic seasons, I don't think, and the current inhabitants of Westeros came from Essos, didn't they? At least their religion and culture did. So they might have brought their calendar with them and stuck to it.
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Aug 1, 2011 21:27
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hailthefish posted:Essos doesn't have the magic seasons, I don't think, and the current inhabitants of Westeros came from Essos, didn't they? At least their religion and culture did. So they might have brought their calendar with them and stuck to it. I don't think this has really been addressed either way, actually. But that would mean they probably do have the same seasons, otherwise it would have been mentioned. I think it's just that most of the major Essos locations are pretty far south.
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Aug 1, 2011 21:36
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Caufman posted:Westeros is roughly the size of South America. The further south you go in Westeros, the closer you approach the tropics. I haven't read anything that suggests that if they went even further south, south beyond the Summer Isles, that they wouldn't find a cold south pole. I like this too. The intro to the TV show with the sun floating around the animated map made me wonder if something was being hinted at. I didn't know he had spoiled my fun by explaining it.
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Aug 1, 2011 21:49
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The bowl shape of the map during the HBO series' opening credits had me entertaining thoughts that I&F took place inside a hollow world. Also, the year thing bothers me a bit, buy not enough to really care. It's no worse than the many fantasy settings with seven day weeks.
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Aug 1, 2011 22:02
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Ecco the Dolphin posted:If seasons last multiple years, how and why was a "year" even defined to begin with? I mean they could use astronomical periods, but those would seem quite unimportant without correlation to seasons. Years are probably just something to group months as it obviously takes about 28 of them to get around the sun and coming up enough names for 96 months would be a fucker to remember.
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Aug 1, 2011 22:06
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What was the exact quote/prophecy about raising dragons from ash and stone? I wonder if Jon Connington turning into "stone" and Quentyn into "ash" will tie those two/three threads together?
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Aug 1, 2011 22:11
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I really hope all the prophecies given to or about Dany turn out to just be horseshit, every single one. Have any of them actually provably come true?
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Aug 1, 2011 22:23
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Calef posted:I like this too. The intro to the TV show with the sun floating around the animated map made me wonder if something was being hinted at. I thought the "sun" was the red comet.. with all the events of GOT revolving around those events. re: Gods ... I hadn't really thought much about the gods being "real" or not.. but I guess I assumed there really were gods, that may or maynot be fighting. I assume it would always stay unclear whether they are "real" or not.. I mean there isn't much difference between magic that people interpret as gods v.s. divine favor that people interpret as magic. edit: spellinz kcroy fucked around with this message at 00:15 on Aug 2, 2011 |
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Aug 1, 2011 22:43
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hellbastard posted:Years are probably just something to group months as it obviously takes about 28 of them to get around the sun and coming up enough names for 96 months would be a fucker to remember. Of course, making the world slightly more consistent is absolutely not worth having readers stop and do arithmetics every other page.
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Aug 1, 2011 22:48
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In Ramsay's letter he refers to the Night's Watch as 'crows'. I can only remember people north of the wall call them that. Maybe a hint that Mance had something to do with the letter.
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Aug 1, 2011 23:03
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I thought that, at some point in its history, the world had had regular seasons and some enormous cataclysm had shifted everything to the way it is now. That would explain why they have standard years, as a holdover from the old, pre-shift days.
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Aug 1, 2011 23:14
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Phylodox posted:I thought that, at some point in its history, the world had had regular seasons and some enormous cataclysm had shifted everything to the way it is now. That would explain why they have standard years, as a holdover from the old, pre-shift days. Don't think so - The stories of "the long night" and stuff are thousands of years old
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Aug 1, 2011 23:18
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lapse posted:Don't think so - The stories of "the long night" and stuff are thousands of years old That doesn't mean that they couldn't have had regular seasons even further back than that. The world Westeros is in seems to have a much longer recorded history than ours. Then again, given that most of it is passed on through stories and word-of-mouth, it's probably a lot less reliable.
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Aug 1, 2011 23:26
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The earliest dwellers in Westeros were the Children of the Forest and they had to deal with long winters and the Others. This poo poo has been going on since time immemorial. It's magic. Just go with it.
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Aug 2, 2011 00:26
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PeterWeller posted:The bowl shape of the map during the HBO series' opening credits had me entertaining thoughts that I&F took place inside a hollow world. Oh I didn't even notice that. That would be a neat idea for another world. Looking back at the intro, I figure they did that so that you wouldn't see anything besides the map. The bowl shape means you'd never see the room the map was in, even when the camera tilted to extreme angles.
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Aug 2, 2011 00:26
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Caufman posted:Oh I didn't even notice that. That would be a neat idea for another world. Oh for sure. I don't think there's any support for my hollow world theory. I just like hollow world theories and D&D's Hollow World campaign setting, and they're what the opening credits remind me of. I wonder about the accuracy (as if that's a thing that really matters) of the HBO maps. Their location for Vaes Dothrak doesn't look like it jives with the maps in Dragons. Speaking of maps, someone post some more cool maps of Westeros and Essos. I loving love maps.
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Aug 2, 2011 00:29
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Rurik posted:And is it just me or does GRRM hate singer and performing artists? Marillion was an rear end in a top hat who was put to death because of false accusations, Blue Bard was tortured till he went mad, the Singer's Stew... And Penny and Groat were named after the smallest of coins. And Groat was killed for no reason. And Penny's and Groat's dog and pig were most probably killed. Is it bad that I don't even remember who Groat was?
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Aug 2, 2011 00:42
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VaultAggie posted:Is it bad that I don't even remember who Groat was? No, but you probably should have been able to surmise it from his post... Penny's dead mummer partner.
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Aug 2, 2011 00:47
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Rurik posted:And is it just me or does GRRM hate singer and performing artists? Marillion was an rear end in a top hat who was put to death because of false accusations, Blue Bard was tortured till he went mad, the Singer's Stew... And Penny and Groat were named after the smallest of coins. And Groat was killed for no reason. And Penny's and Groat's dog and pig were most probably killed. Mance Rayder and Tom of Sevenstrings have some quality time with your womenfolk and beg to differ.
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Aug 2, 2011 01:31
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Keep in mind that the majority of formal calendars aren't based on the seasons (which vary in length even IRL) but on the motions of the Sun and Moon. I don't see any particular reason why the Westerosi or Essosi wouldn't use something as regular as the solar or lunar year to keep time. Now, the 365-day calendar, on the other hand... 
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Aug 2, 2011 01:32
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Effectronica posted:Keep in mind that the majority of formal calendars aren't based on the seasons (which vary in length even IRL) but on the motions of the Sun and Moon. I don't see any particular reason why the Westerosi or Essosi wouldn't use something as regular as the solar or lunar year to keep time. Now, the 365-day calendar, on the other hand... Well, yeah, but the original motivation for tracking the solar year was because it has a rough correspondence with seasons. If the seasons and the stars aren't correlated then what medieval dude gives a poo poo about the solar year? 
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Aug 2, 2011 01:50
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Ecco the Dolphin posted:Well, yeah, but the original motivation for tracking the solar year was because it has a rough correspondence with seasons. If the seasons and the stars aren't correlated then what medieval dude gives a poo poo about the solar year? As a convenient division of time between a month and a season, it would be pretty useful, much like the week is a division between a month and a day that's even less useful, comparatively. And it's pretty easy to keep track of, too. :goonsayx2:
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Aug 2, 2011 02:05
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Wouldn't it be impossible to base the calendar around seasons anyway, since the seasons in ASOIAF-World are of constantly differing lengths?
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Aug 2, 2011 02:24
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They probably use a lamprey-pie based calendar system, where a new year begins every 10,000th pie baked.
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Aug 2, 2011 02:27
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Ego-bot posted:In Ramsay's letter he refers to the Night's Watch as 'crows'. I can only remember people north of the wall call them that. Maybe a hint that Mance had something to do with the letter. Ok can we talk about this further instead of discussing geography of a fantasy world that has been answered directly by GRRM? I don't know how or why would Mance would have sent that letter.
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Aug 2, 2011 02:28
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Mr.Brinks posted:Ok can we talk about this further instead of discussing geography of a fantasy world that has been answered directly by GRRM? Honestly, the main evidence for Mance is that there are odd discrepancies. No seal on the wax, knowledge of Lightbringer, calling the Night's Watch "crows", the question of how Arya and Theon escaped Stannis' supposed defeat, no skin samples from Mance or the spearwives. But there are odd discrepancies if it's Mance, too. As for motivations, the only one I can think of is Mance trying to get Jon to break his oath, by forcing him to choose between a perceived threat to family and the letter of his vow. Which seems a bit out there. Either way, the important thing is that Stannis almost certainly won. At the very least, Bolton the elder is dead or seriously injured, since he wouldn't have let Ramsay send the letter and he'd have to be incapacitated for Mance to send it too. I guess that their sortie against Stannis failed, at a minimum.
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Aug 2, 2011 02:43
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Jakabite posted:Wouldn't it be impossible to base the calendar around seasons anyway, since the seasons in ASOIAF-World are of constantly differing lengths? I had kind of assumed that a year was a full orbit around ASOIAF's sun, but that their planet was perhaps rotating on two axes instead of Earth's one. If their world was perhaps, very slowly, rotating "vertically" as well as horizontally through the poles (apologies, I don't know the proper terminology) then every now and then the major landmasses would be pointed at 90 degree angles to the sun... Imagine our south or north pole pointing directly at the sun... it'd be cold as gently caress on all earth's populated land masses.
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Aug 2, 2011 02:44
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Substar posted:I had kind of assumed that a year was a full orbit around ASOIAF's sun, but that their planet was perhaps rotating on two axes instead of Earth's one. If their world was perhaps, very slowly, rotating "vertically" as well as horizontally through the poles (apologies, I don't know the proper terminology) then every now and then the major landmasses would be pointed at 90 degree angles to the sun... I get that it's fun to discuss this form an academic standpoint but, seriously, it's magic. As far as what a "year" is I always figured the maesters at some point decided a certain number of lunar cycles was a year so they could keep records of things.
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Aug 2, 2011 02:53
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NihilCredo posted:I think the 'immersive' choice would be for Westerosi not to have years at all, and just use months as the general unit for long-term time measurement. "Bran was a boy of a hundred months", "Robert had ruled for two hundred months", and so on. Well the way I see it, the whole things being translated into english anyway. Westerosi wouldn't be English, and a lot of things they say have roots in French and German, but we are meant to just take for granted that everything is translated into recognisable terms and periods. Going into the beyond the detail of just illustrating that someone is 10 years old by describing them as 120 months or so get tedious, confusing, and annoying. I just assumed that "year" and "month" is a translated version of some calander grouping of some manner of celestial observation. That westorosi "years" are to full seasonal rotations as yards are to miles. Either that or their planet suffered some ecological catasrophy that resulted in seasons lasting several rotations. Perhaps it takes several rotations to engage a proper polar realignment and some lucky contintent on the other side of the globe is surfing it up for their oncomming 7 year summer.
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Aug 2, 2011 03:09
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I finished DWD a few weeks ago but wanted some time to digest and to read this entire thread before responding. Most people have already said what I would have regarding both the good and bad of the book. However one thing not really touched on were the literary "shortcuts" or "cheats" present in this book that weren't in previous books. I think the best example of this is Wex. If you were to look at Arya's escape from King's Landing and attempt to get north, while frustrating as a reader, made sense in that world. If anyone doesn't know who she is, she's the lowest of the low for a peasant (a little girl) and is just fodder in the war. For anyone that recognizes her, she's a target for anything and everything. It made perfect sense that it would next to impossible to cross half a continent in the middle of a war while travelling with a bunch of criminals who have no desire to get where they're going. The same goes for Tyrion - it makes sense that it would be so tough for him to actually get to Dany. Now contrast that with Wex. So he survives the fight at Winterfell, manages to both stay there afterwards and be exactly where Bran and all show up. He then manages to follow Rickon (in the middle of a war) and Shaggydog who for some reason doesn't sniff out someone following them. And figures out where they ultimately end up. Then he manages to make it to the Manderlys (again.. a little boy with nothing in the middle of a war) who is the exact right person the story needs him to run into and tell the story to. That's not realistic (within the realm of the story) and is a complete copout of a way to have Rickon's location be known. And what follows is another example of DWD taking so far unheard of shortcuts - Manderly tells Davos his intentions, his motives, the full reveal and further plots through one conversation. In previous books, the writing and reveals of that nature would've come out of the characters' actions and movement of plot. Not by one character just sitting there and describing what is happening to move the plot forward.
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Aug 2, 2011 03:24
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Linguica posted:He also said "they're on Earth, but it's, like, a different Earth." Maybe this is all a cautionary tale about a future earth ravaged by global warming (wacky climate) and nuclear war (Valyrian Doom). What a twist!
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Aug 2, 2011 03:41
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