HBO's adaptation of Game of Thrones - Thread 2. There are a lot of nerds.

Most of that stuff is happening in isolation ... either in secrecy or in faraway places.

all of this magic is occurring in far flung locations OR has been witnessed by very few people. The prophecies or whatever, I mean they could be real. I don't know. Melisandre is 2 for 3 with her curse on the prospective rulers. That witch is 2 for 3 with Jaime and cersei's kids.

What poly said basically yeah

Wow, Ask the Maester stumped a lot. Fun watch, though.

Oh, wait, there's a column, too? I just saw his 10 minute live riff.

The old column was in Grantland... it looks like its moved for S6

http://us12.campaign-archive1.com/?u=9a393473748185dce76bf8339&id=00119d1332

(This should be the Ask the Maester column, weird Url aside)

DN is display name, by the way. Your "Josh in Chicago."

Ha, ok, I get it now. Anyway, this is funny, from the Maester column:

The Dothraki believe that a great khal (hm) will appear at Vaes Dothrak (hmm) to unite the khalasars (hmmm) under his (HMMMM) banner and go on to conquer the world.

Cool, love ask the maester, thanks!

post Well, in Kings Landing they brought the Mountain back from the dead. In that other place there were those magic monks who tried to capture the Mother of Dragons. Wasn't Karl Drogo demonized by a demon? Arya Start has been magically blinded by magic people who were mentoring her. Red Witch was doing magic stuff with Stannis, a few people (like Cersai) have heard prophecies. Up north there is all sorts of magic shit, from White Walkers to Wargs to whatever is going on in that ... magic tree? Don't remember that part. And then of course there is the return of dragons, born of fire that did not kill the Mother of Dragons. And so on. More than enough to go around.

I think it's been 150 years since dragons terrorized the land when the first book begins. So it's been some time, but not really that long, especially as far as this world go, when it's even unclear how old people are.

― Josh in Chicago, Wednesday, April 27, 2016 7:24 PM (27 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

bro -_-

they dont have twitter

Are all the ravens dead? There seems to be a lack of raven communication.

I recall someone being handed, and reading, a scroll at one point. Presumably raven-delivered?

There was a lot of wholesale raven slaughter last season, iirc. What annoyed me this episode (and which hasn't been mentioned); I really don't get why ice cold Roose Bolton is so into making his unreliable annoying nutjob son his heir. Obv he has no other sons but come on, the dude couldn't be relied on to make coffee and Roose just got his young new wife pregnant, so why not wait? It'd be cold and rational to do so.

imho it's quite a leap to say roose is "into" making ramsay his heir. but he knows the kid is desperate for legitimacy and willing to do any amount of dirty work to make it happen, so why not dangle it for now and see how things play out?

I don't know. Besides letting Sansa escape he's been doing a pretty good job as far as Roose is concerned.

Roose invoked his new Frey wife bearing him a son so I assume Ramsey is the only male in the line of succession.

Playing crusader kings 2 helps figure out who is in play for these inheritance shenanigans.

xp - yeah, he currently has no male heirs outside of Ramsey, which is why he made Ramsey a Bolton in the first place

CC is something that many/most predict will do bad things, but those bad things are as yet subtle, or abstract.

This is a pretty good analogy, in that climate change's effects aren't either of those things, but as long as they're far away and/or deniable...

I think it's been 150 years since dragons terrorized the land when the first book begins. So it's been some time, but not really that long, especially as far as this world go, when it's even unclear how old people are.

No one doesn't believe in dragons! Recieved wisdom is that they are extinct, though it seems like the existence of Dani's dragons is pretty widely accepted in both continents at this stage.

Somebody has mentioned there being no twitter, I was going to say there was no mass media. Not sure there is any organised media or postal service. So news presumably spreads by word of mouth and is probably not the most reliable or widespreadly known. Probably some degree of chinese whispers through populace too.
In the real world prior to postal service being established letters would be passed along between people going in the general direction. It could take 7 years for one to get to its destination though I think that specific one was Europe to Asia.
I assume they're using specific messengers in this and most things are on one landmass. I need to see a map.

There's two landmasses.

Ravens are the postal service. But you don't necessarily believe every Raven you receive, considering that everyone is basically trying to undermine everyone else.

xxxp

http://i.imgur.com/zaH5JF1.jpg

Raven post has several apparent drawbacks doesn't it?
Primarily being that it could only take place along a single route surely. No matter how intelligent a korvid is, trying to get it to go anywhere other than the destination location it already knows would be tricky.

But maybe these are magic ravens.

in that climate change's effects aren't either of those things

It's a different/sidetracked debated, but come on, saying the ocean is on track to gain a degree or two every 50 years or that a certain percentage of the permafrost is melting or that weather patterns have shifted to make weather models more erratic and the likelihood of violent or dramatic shifts greater is huge, cataclysmic! But it is indeed pretty subtle and abstract imo - thinking about things that might happen many years down the line, possibly or likely well after we are dead - which is one reason so many seem resistant to the idea of fixing (somehow) a problem that will likely, sometime, be destructive, in any number of some ways. In the battle of concrete threats, even in terms of analogy, a vast unkillable army of ice zombies massing on the north border is pretty hard to argue against.

Unless one is citing them in this make-believe world as a possible effect of Winter-is-Coming climate change - maybe winter is coming, maybe there will be ice zombies - in which case, sure. The people are the north are bellwethers akin to the Maldives or something. I guess it is worth conceding, at least by narrative omission, that the vast majority of unseen masses on GoT world has no idea what is going on at all beyond the next meal. And even as far as Winter is Coming, it's been brought up once or twice as more than just a Stark catchphrase, right? It's been at least mentioned in King's Landing, as the impetus for grain/food stockpiling?

But the point is very few people believe the extent of the WW threat! The Night's Watch arseholes clearly think Jon was mistaken, or lying or at least massively exaggerating for his own political agenda, as some climate change deniers think its advocates are.

It's an imperfect analogy cos obviously an army of snow zombies and a gradual but catastrophic change in weather systems are very different things. But the White Walkers are, like climate change, a slow moving but profoundly existential threat, whereas the Wildlings, like Isis, are the enemies du jour perceived as probably a far greater danger than they actually are. Jon Snow's murder is the equivalent of a modern politician being suspended from office for colaborating with Islamic State scientists on sustainable energy strategies.

Fair enough.

Maybe I don't remember, but I can't recall what's motivating the Wildlings, either. At this point do they just want to be left alone? I assume they're preparing for the White Walkers, too, perhaps more than most. Though I don't know how one prepares for that. Or why the White Walkers haven't already killed and conscripted the entirety of the Wildling population.

Or why the White Walkers haven't already killed and conscripted the entirety of the Wildling population.

Yeah this is something that hasn't been explained/thought through.

When Jon Snow prepares to kill Ygritte, she is scared that he wouldn't burn her body afterwards. There were hints that the wildlings had been rising as zombies lately, and that that was what the White Walkers did: Mainly waited for some of them to die, and kill others, and so on and so on. The show has changed that with Hardholme and the mystical Night King and all that, and as with nearly all their changes, it probably wasn't thought through.

Wrt magic, there are two things to remember: 1) Magic mostly happens away from the center of Westeros, so most educated elites dislike it. Essos is much more magical, and the Targaryans also rode their dragons from over there. The other thing, which is probably much more in the book as well, is that 2) Magic is intertwined with power in this world. Melisandre does not just do magic. She does the will of the fire god R'hollor, and was claiming that Stannis was that God's rightful king. The Starks aren't just warging. They're demonstrating their connection to the animal of their vigil, and their power as descendants of 'the first men' (who inhabited Westeros before the southerners came, kinda like the celts in Britain), their connection to the Old Gods, etc. The White Walkers are also intertwined with this myth, and with the Children of the Forrest (whom Bran are now with), so to people in the south, it's a bit suspicious that a Stark bastard keeps talking about them. And of course, there are the Targaryans and their dragons. And basically, for the followers of the Seven, of the New Gods, mainly the Lannister family who has not a single speck of magic connected to them, every admission of magic is an admission that other families are stronger than them, and therefore, by implication, probably more skilled at ruling the kingdom. So it's not just that people don't believe tales of magic, there are powerful vested interests in not believing them.

The show changed what now?

My theory is that the last thing keeping the Whites from full on attack was Craster exposing all those baby boys.

At this rate, 2200 seems an awful long way away. I'm pretty worried about 2013 or 2014.

― Josh in Chicago, Thursday, 10 January 2013 22:38 (3 years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

(from Global Warming's Terrifying New Math which Josh has apparently forgot about - I'll leave it as my last word in the diversion)

I totally agree with ... me. But in the show, the ice zombie army and dragons are 2013 or 2014. It'd be one thing if the grumpy pants characters in Game of Thrones were saying "Winter is Coming ... in 150 Years." Maybe they have been, and we're just sort of watching en medias rex. "Ugh, shut up about the zombies, dude, I'll be dead in 150 years, and besides, people are dropping like flies around me on a daily basis anyway. Now, here's my plan to get free refills of mead even though I only paid for one flagon!"

But anyway, yeah, I liked FB's bit on willful ignorance as a different sort of power.

I should also stress that I'm not totally obtuse, I get that "Winter" (et al.) is like global warming. I guess my take is just that it is not something that is predicted to happen in the future, but something (in the show) that is actually happening now, a prediction come to pass. But you (all) are right, not a lot of people seem to know about the White Walkers or even the return of dragons, at least not outside (some) of the elites the show focuses on. As of yet in the show I still have no idea what the population of these lands actually is.

Nobody but those who have seen them believe white walkers/zombies exist or still exist. They do however know that winter is coming. They don't realize that winter will bring the white walkers with it.

As of yet in the show I still have no idea what the population of these lands actually is.

yeah i've generally found it odd that winterfell seems to have maybe 100 people living in it, and not even the metropolitan centres seem particularly sprawling

iirc there have been many Winters since the last time the Whites were a threat

I'm pretty sure that way back in season 1, Ned mentions that Arya was born during the last winter. He also mentions that since it's been a longer than usual time since the last winter, the next winter is likely to be much worse than usual.

can i just mention yet again that i will never understand why they don't release the episodes in the late fall/winter so that they can use "WINTER IS COMING" in the ad campaigns? i should be an advertising bigwig, these ideas are solid gold!!

maybe HBO Australia uses "WINTER IS COMING" in its ad campaigns?

(I don't know if HBO Australia exists)

See, that's another thing not clear to me. Obviously people believe in dragons, they just don't know they're back. But Winter (writ large) is a real thing, too, that people have experienced and planned for and dealt with, so it's not like some fiction. And is the same true for the White Walkers? Stuff of fairy tales, or ancient history?

white walkers hadn't been around for thousands of years, and they possibly were the stuff of legends and not real.

I totally agree with ... me. But in the show, the ice zombie army and dragons are 2013 or 2014.

Andrew's point is that climate change is 2013 (or in fact most of the 2000s). That is, the effects of climate change are already here -- it's not some purely notional consequence anymore.

There are legends about the Whites but they much more distant than dragons

Are

Fair enough.

Maybe I don't remember, but I can't recall what's motivating the Wildlings, either. At this point do they just want to be left alone? I assume they're preparing for the White Walkers, too, perhaps more than most. Though I don't know how one prepares for that. Or why the White Walkers haven't already killed and conscripted the entirety of the Wildling population.

― Josh in Chicago, Thursday, April 28, 2016 1:13 PM (4 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

isnt the entire hardhome episode the white walkers coming to fucking kill all the wildlings (or at least sack their capital)? and they all ran off on boats to escape.

Maybe they'll bump into this guy:
https://31.media.tumblr.com/3676e4ba7ff8b2291d53ee67e2931f63/tumblr_n7fcf4dBkJ1qbqzawo1_250.gif