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Anybody else catch that the boat off which Tyrion, Penny and Jorah were taken by the slavers was called something which basically translates to Perfumed Seneschal?
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Jul 15, 2011 23:12
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I loved it. There are themes I picked out that I haven't seen mentioned, and the first is the repetition of the word "monster" in nearly every POV. Mance's child is a named Monster. Tyrion has started to play the role of a monster, starting the book off by creepily leering at a sex slave, and constantly reminding himself and everyone he meets that he murdered his father. The dragons are referred to as monsters several times. Our new monster Robert Strong is introduced. Bran is becoming something a bit less human ... I was getting really creeped out by some of his behavior regarding Hodor. Also, the Children turned out creepy as hell, nothing like cute elves. By far the greatest monster in the book is Ramsay Bolton. Most of these monsters either are manifestations of power or were created by power. Power is probably the single biggest theme in ASoIaF. The whole series is a meditation on how a civilization build around a single throne is inherently destructive and prone to tyranny. The next thing I noticed was the repetition of some variation of the phrase "He was not wrong." This also appears in nearly every POV. Characters frequently don't feel comfortable with the advice or jusifications they are hearing, but they can't say exactly what's wrong with it. Barristan gets talked into taking some borderline dishonorable actions because he can't figure out where exactly they violate his code of ethics, but they still feel wrong to him. I expect this to bite him in the rear end later. Same with Jon - people keep asking him for things that aren't quite wrong but also don't feel right, and look what happens to him. Arya is talked into killing a dude because the Kindly Man's dogma is convincing and not technically wrong, but it's also not really justice. Quentyn - I think this may be the whole point of Quentyn. His whole story is tragic because he keeps having to do bad things for shaky reasons. He joins and betrays two different groups of cutthroat mercenaries and fights in battles that absolutely aren't his. He loses friends. Ultimately he is driven to the most foolhardy thing ever in trying to kidnap a dragon. Why? His sense of shame, really, his fear of coming back emptyhanded and facing his father's disappointment and his aunts' ridicule. There are no "right" options available to Quentyn. He can't win. Calef fucked around with this message at 04:54 on Jul 18, 2011 |
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Jul 18, 2011 04:51
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Correct me if I'm wrong here. Tyrion picks out the redhead whore because he wanted to see some red bush. Then later he berated himself for picking a whore who looked like his wife. I assume he means Tysha. Is this the first clue as to Tysha's appearance? Don't we know another Red Woman who had a troubled past? Maybe Asshai is where whores go. Another thing I noticed: The Second Sons are my new favorite candidate for the valonqar, or at least make an excellent red herring.
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Jul 19, 2011 14:56
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Tony Danza Claus posted:I don't know. Going from a gangbang to becoming the world's bestest whore sounds rather GRRMy. Now that we know for a certainty that the Doom of Valyria was a massive volcanic event, I suspect there will be another such eruption, and whatever mountain that ends up being will blow in the wind.
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Jul 19, 2011 16:44
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Thoguh posted:Robert just said "gently caress it, I'm not good at this" and got other people to do the hard stuff for him though. Comparing him to Dany is like comparing a housefire with a raging wildfire. Neither are good rulers, but Dany is miles worse than any ruler we've seen or heard about other than Aegon. Even Jeoffrey was at least somewhat checked by Tyrion and others. The best line in the series is when some old peasant man says, "Things were way better under the old king," and Arya says, "You mean Robert?" and the old man goes, "No, Aerys." The populace just wants stability. Even if society is horribly unfair. Anyone else think that the "point" of the Penny and slavery stuff is to teach Tyrion some humility? His pridefulness is one of his bigger flaws. He's unable to let any insult go unanswered, ever, even when he is going to be whipped if he speaks. Penny was right that he reacted poorly to Joffrey's mockery. He has always projected this whole, "You have to embrace what you are," philosophy, but he actually still hasn't done so. I think it's quite intentional that he spends the first couple of chapters lounging around drinking and stuffing himself to the point of practically becoming diabetic and then for the rest of the book his circumstances get steadily shittier. The decay starts the instant he stops using the name Lannister. Then we see how much he has been relying on his name, when people start treating him like Yollo the Dwarf instead of Tyrion of House Lannister. Where this is going and why is less clear.
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Jul 20, 2011 21:11
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furushotakeru posted:I would also like to know why GRRM has such a loving hard on for the word "Serjeant" in this book. He uses it all the goddamn time, like he was trying to say "LOOK AT ME I AM SPECIAL BECAUSE I MADE UP A NEW SPELLING FOR THIS WORD, LET'S USE IT OVER AND OVER AGAIN!". If there's a reason for this, it's that 99% of the military characters with speaking roles in previous books were Westerosi knights. Now suddenly we have sellsword companies who don't give a poo poo about "ser" but do have ranks.
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Jul 21, 2011 00:28
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Caufman posted:
This reminded me how Tyrion, I think, in this book pointed out the mystery that the Valyrians certainly knew that Westeros was there, and ruled an empire extending over most of the world for thousands of years, and they had dragons this entire time, but no Valyrians attempted to invade Westeros at any point. Then after te Doom, the Targaryens are pretty much the only remaining Valyrians we know about, and they finally invade. It is implied in the text that there must be some kind of mysterious explanation for this. My guess is that the Valyrians knew that the Great Other was on Westeros and were keeping away.
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Jul 22, 2011 14:54
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People still think that he ever planned on having Dany actually get to Westeros?
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Jul 25, 2011 19:04
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I think that Mance is playing the long con. Ramsay captured him, so he told Ramsay exactly what he needed to tell him to avoid flaying, and helped Ramsay craft a plan that would get both of them what they wanted. In other words, the letter was written by both of them. Mance demands his wife and son; Ramsay demands his wife and his Reek. Mance has been consistently characterized as the craftiest fucker in Westeros. He may have even manipulated Ramsay into including his own demands, and he's probably just tricking Ramsay into writing his own death warrant, because he can really paint whatever picture he wants regarding the military capabilities of the Night's Watch. It's very unlikely that Ramsay would know about the allied wildling forces, and Mance would probably not inform him of them. Stannis is probably fine, especially because I interpreted various prophesies as indicating that he would at least survive long enough to clash directly with Dany.
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Jul 27, 2011 22:39
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Alright everybody. Get ready for this. ASoIaF Planet has seasons of unpredictable length. It doesn't seem to have a cold south pole as far as I am aware, because things just seem to get hotter the further south the characters go. It has a north pole which is dominated by the northern part of the Westeros continent which is always frozen. My unsupported hypothesis is that Asshai-by-the-Shadow is the south pole of ASoIaF planet. My next unsupported hypothesis is that the Shadow is the hottest part of the world. My subsequent even crazier suggestion is that the Shadow is literally a shadow cast on the surface of the planet by a heavenly body. You say, none of this makes and sense physically. I say, if this were a typical solar system you'd be right. But what if the sun is in fact orbiting another much more massive body, and the orbit of ASoIaF Planet circumscribes the mass centroid of the sun plus this other body, which will be located somewhere between the sun and that body? That would cause whichever end of the planet was most sun-wards to be consistently hot and the other end of the planet to be consistently cold, and perturbations to the procession of its revolution caused by OR related to passing COMETS or other high-mass stellar bodies would cause the length of effective seasons to shift. If the other massive body in this case is a supermassive black hole which the planet's star is orbiting, then time and space itself are somewhat plastic. Before someone asks, it's perfectly possible to orbit a black hole. Furthermore, the only thing this theory actually has going for it is a star/black hole versus ice/fire synergy. Boring alternative, the planet orbits a normal star but is somewhat tidally locked and has a sharply tilted axis and a crowded planetary neighborhood which alters its axial tilt to cause the seasonal shifts. Or, the seasons are "magical" or some poo poo like that.
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Aug 1, 2011 20:49
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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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oogyboogs posted:Well, in the AFFC chapter called The Reaver, Victarion and Euron are talking in that room and Euron says: That's very interesting. I feel Euron is the most mysterious important character at this point, now that Melisandre is explained. I've had a suspicion that wargs and possibly other sorcerer-types become more powerful after sacrificing something, such as Bloodraven's eye and Bran's legs. As far as I'm concerned the mystery I'm most interested in is what's up with this "smiling eye" business. He has surrounded himself with sorcery.
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Aug 5, 2011 17:25
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The first thing Ned does is execute a terrified dehydrated dude. Jon beheads a guy partially out of revenge and partially to make a point. Barristan breaks into a king's chambers and murders the king's personal guard who was just trying to do his job. Tyrion strangles a hooker for telling lies which did not actually put him any worse off than he already was. Bran mindrapes a mentally handicapped man. Arya murders several people on loose pretenses. There are no good guys in this book series. I think discussions about whether Theon can be redeemed are based on a false premise, namely that the author and/or the universe thinks redemption is a meaningful concept. Likewise the question of whether he deserves what he got. No one deserves what Theon got. No character in this story has deserved anything that has happened to them. The universe isn't fair. At least the real world is just ambivalent, this book features a universe where a man is rewarded by divinity for burning alive a boatful of little girls. Recall what everyone in the TV thread was expecting to happen right up until around episode 8. Ned is gonna take the black and go join Jon on the wall for some ranger adventures! Robb is gonna capture King's Landing! Predictions which probably would have been borne out in any other fantasy series. Who among us predicted that Jon would be assassinated by the Watch in this book? Why do we assume that the "obvious" course of events will follow from this, when the very reason we (secretly) like GURM is that the obvious thing never happens? I guess I'm weird because I'm similarly annoyed by complaints that Sansa is stupid. She's a fictional character. She's exactly what she needs to be. Make her anything but naive and stupid at the beginning and there's nowhere to grow. If she is protected from the consequences of her actions, there is no drama. Do we want this to be The Sword of Truth?
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Aug 5, 2011 23:44
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Telling someone with a predisposition toward paranoid insanity that they should beware and expect betrayal from a long list of ambiguous codewords seems like the opposite of helpful. What has Quaithe done for Dany that was unambiguously helpful? What are her motives?
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Aug 6, 2011 18:46
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Quentyn's plot is a complete story with a cohesive beginning and end. It serves the themes of the book well and provides several good dramatic points. Quentyn's arc could almost stand alone as a short story. It was a good addition to the book.
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Aug 8, 2011 17:23
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Her crazy comes mostly from wanting to protect her children. When Myrcella comes back missing an ear, she'll go back to normal.
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Aug 9, 2011 00:36
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I want Robert Strong to be a reference to Schwartzenegger's old stage name Arnold Strong. Did anyone notice that Varys' voice "seemed to become deeper" as he was monologuing to Kevan? GRRM seldom adds details like this without a reason. Is this a hint that the whole eunuch thing is just an angle? Why not, really? The point of Varys is that he's a mummer, not that he's a magic-hating eunuch. In fact, since he is pro-Targ I would guess that the magic-hating is just a schtick. Varys may have initially portrayed himself as a eunuch to get in good with the crazy Aerys. If the eunuch thing is an act, that makes Varys the most disciplined game-player by far. Though I just recalled that Littlefinger is also allegedly celibate.
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Aug 17, 2011 22:14
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Habibi posted:In an era when medical technology isn't at its finest and minor infections can gently caress you up real good, not to mention the fact that there's a war going on, that eunuches are an acceptable thing, cutting out tongues/body parts is appropriate punishment, etc... - this seems a fairly paltry list. Agreed. Infant mortality should also be much higher, we don't hear about Catelyn's other nine children who died before their first nameday. People also live too long. I had actually assumed until late in the series that one of the Fantasy aspects of the series would be that disease was nearly nonexistent, because the average life expectancy seems quite high. But I guess "Maesters." Who cares, we like this series for the insanity, not the rigorous historical accuracy.
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Aug 19, 2011 21:11
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Jon Connington is in fact a fictional character and does not possess an empirically verifiable sexual orientation. The author of the novel titled A Dance with Dragons may or may not have intended to create the impression in the minds of his readers that, within the fictional world of the novel, the character Jon Connington has evinced sexual attraction to another male character. Various in- and out-of-context pieces of data lend weight to the hypothesis that George R.R. Martin intended to create this impression. However, there exist arguments suggesting that this data is not sufficient to support the hypothesis with sufficient certainty to rely on it as "fact," primarily due to the credibility of competing hypotheses which are fronted within the text itself, e.g., Connington and Rhaegar were dear friends. Either way, it does not seem particularly relevant, whereas the relationship between the fictional characters Renly and Loras did have significant ramifications to the plot.
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Aug 22, 2011 18:13
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Quantify! posted:
I think this is the thing. You see Martin's take on religion as "logical" and "normal." A really religious person would see Martin's portrayal of the Church of the Seven and the barbarism of the followers of R'hlorr as direct imprecations against established religion. I suppose it's possible that Martin is actually a devout Christian but is just a psychologically elastic writer. Maybe he can temporarily become someone who thinks the "logical" response of humans to supernatural phenomena is to create oppressive institutions and otherwise make a horrible nightmare world for themselves. And then he goes to church and prays to his crucified sacrificed crown-of-thorns wearing god. I don't really care to argue the point, I just think in this case Martin is communicating an honestly held view of reality through his works. If you can point me to evidence that he actually doesn't hold these views, I'd be interested to be proven wrong.
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Sep 14, 2011 22:45
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I'm about to see gurm speak. And season 3 episode 1 advanced screening. Trip report after.
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Mar 23, 2013 00:21
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Gurm gave a speech about his modest upbringing, and how books have shaped his life. There was then a "moderated" Q and A session in which pre-selected questions were pitched to him. The sixth book did not come up. New episode was good. The end was kind of really cheesy--Barristan makes his return by saving Dany from a scorpion thing. It just felt really forced and the creepy assassin child involved was not at all convincing. Other than that, good.
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Mar 23, 2013 04:53
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No, it was pretty terrible actually. Daeneyeyrys sees this little girl smiling at her, so she proceeds to sort of follow the little girl up to this dock, at which the little girl rolls this ball to Daenerysys. Right as she opens the sphere-box, Barristan knocks it out of her hands, but this sort of opens it and a crazy alien scorpion creature comes out. Which Barristan stabs with a knife. And then Barristan chases the creepy assassin girl, but then it looks like she jumps in the water but she really teleports like 100 yards onto a rooftop, and glares at them menacingly. And then she disappears (also she has black teeth or something).
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Mar 23, 2013 05:05
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