/asoiaf/ General

After Viserys died Dany just kind of went along with whatever Drogo did. He planned to attack Westeros eventually because of the attempted assassination on Dany.

It wasnt until Drogo died and she lost her child she actually got some ambition

Viserys wan't an important part of it anyway, it was all about Egg 2.0 and Dany, hence Illyrio basically placating Vyseris constantly and letting him in on almost nothing at all of it.

But their plan was basically too convolutioned and fell apart, not the least of which because Dany grew a spine and hatched some dragons.
Dany's been ruining EVERYONE'S long-held plans just by doing that.

Her messianic delusions might be false, but she IS correct in that she's changing the world dramatically; she just is mostly unaware of how she's doing it and she's not really directing the change at all.

That's what he's planning, but I think it's far too early for him to become that powerful

He's been sailing around the darkest most mystical corners of the world for his entire life friend.

Narratively, late in the penultimate act is definitely when you want to start pulling out all the most extreme shit.

Well yeah, but if he gods out at the start of the book every character will have him hanging over them and will undoubtetly drag down the plot

>He's been sailing around the darkest most mystical corners of the world for his entire life friend.
Didn't he only get exiled 3 years before AGOT begins?

That's a considerable chunk of time to go globe-trotting

Even earlier, only one year, according to the wiki
The guy claimed that he's been sailing " around the darkest most mystical corners of the world for his entire life" when it's literally just 2 years

Naw. He won't god out the first time he does super mega-black Magic. But he might be at some point. Still, he's gonna super mega-black Magic the shit out of Oldtown now.

Long enough for men from Ib to Assai to prey when they see his sails. Realistically, one year is barely enough time to get from Ib to Assai. So what then?

>Euron has been sailing all over the world picking up mystical secrets (and artifacts) from the ruins of Valyria, Yi Ti, Asshai and more
>Hightower has spent decades locked in at the top of his literal wizard tower built ontop of a labyrinth from a pre-human civilization pouring over every piece of material he can find on the arcane

Fuck, if those two fight it's going to tear a hole open into the Warp.

GRRM has admitted to being shit with numbers, most likely that

Hasn't he only spent the last few weeks up there?

nah he's spent a decade locked up inside the Hightower. there's a reason but i can't remember why

I exaggerated, but according to the wiki he's been up there at least a decade.

Although actually locking himself in with his daughter was more recent and in response to the Ironborn attacks.

Ah. Alright. I remember the locking himself up there being recent, but forgot that he's spent a good deal of time alone up there before. The high towers are an outrageously important house with very little fleshing out.

Betcha twenty bucks he doesn't.
Oh he's got magic of SOME kind, that's for sure, but he's crazy as fuck and doesn't really know what he's doing with it.

Also, I'm starting to doubt that he ever actually went to Valyria himself.
Literally the ONLY thing that seems to shake is otherwise unflappable craziness is mentioning that, and he sort of acts like someone who knows he's lying and gets crazy angry when people call him out on it.

i could see the Hightowers and the Velaryons making their way back into relevance again after the wars are all done and the former Great Houses are weakened

He has the Valyrian steel armor. He also hasn't verifiably lied through the entire story.

Lied about Balon's death

But user, No One pushed Balon off the bridge.

Honestly it was a joke on my part.
I think Euron will do the same thing the Ironborn have done since second book; cause a lot of damage collaterally with raiding and violence, but ultimately accomplish very little in the long run.

They'll just do the damage more efficiently with Euron because he seems to be better at giving them a real target then Balon's ridiculous whole "just raid everywhere I guess" strategy.

>man who's literally sending shockwaves through space and time
>accomplish very little
The bleeding star bespoke the end

Ultimately I think Euron and the Greyjoys as a whole have shown up far too late in the story to actually be narratively important. At least compared to characters like Jon, Daenerys, Cersei, and the like.

>Second Greyjoy Rebellion
>Not Greyjoy Rebellion 2: The Squidenning Edition

Not "Grejoy Rebellion 2: Even stupider this time"

Some people love the Ironborn so much they want them to succeed even if it makes no sense and runs contrary to all logic.
These people have been dissappointed since the second book and will continue to be disappointed.
They also kind of were aimless initially.
The Ironborn are FANTASTIC at causing damage to things, but seemingly their very culture rails against taking steps that would consolidate their kingdoms. The one Ironborn lord who WAS good at that, Harren the Black, was actually hated by his own people for being such a tyrant despite giving them greater successes that they've ever had as a culture, though the World book also claims that he might have been religiously tolerant which would piss a lot of them off.

It seems a LOT of Iroborn history is "progressive ruler shows up and then the Drowned Priests start acting shitty and help a more conservative ruler who raids like crazy and then gets his shit packed in is kinda the recurring cycle they go through.

>Not Greyjoy Rebellion 2: Drowned God Boogaloo

Ultimately, as much as I agree that they won't have much place in the world by the end of the story, Euron has already sent shockwaves through the psychosphere of the setting. Much the same as the Red Wedding did.

Ironfag here.

I have no problems with the Ironborn losing all the time. What appeals to me is their authentic dedication to what honestly is a fun (as in fun to read about, fun to talk about, fun to laugh about) culture. They're scrappy underdogs going up against guys who'll always beat them, and who would have a much better time if they just compromised their ideals.

Which they won't. And that kind of stubbornness is appealing even if laughably stupid.

Honestly, in some ways the Ironborn are more like the Mongols then the Dothraki.
They're a highly skilled warrior culture of idiot savants at mobile fighting (sailing rather then horseback) who previously under a visionary ruler established large kingdoms that fell apart into a smaller areas because while they love conquering they aren't really very good at the work of ruling it afterward and don't WANT to get better at it either.

Ditto. It's like reading about orcs, complete with the stupidity.
Asha's just the one orc who recognizes how stupid everyone else is being.

Technically this is like the forth Greyjoy Rebellion. The Lord Greyjoy at the time of the Dance of Dragons took advantage of the chaos from that conflict to start shit only to get slaughtered as soon as the kingdom was reunited, and another Greyjoy went reave-happy at some point between that the DoD and Balon's first rebellion and got his shit kicked in as well.

Then you have characters like Victarion who's so far down the kraken hole it's like reading about a fucking alien. From his cursing monkeys as demonic creatures to his conclusion he should worship R'hllor because double the gods means double the power.

These guys are fucking great.

Is it bad that I REALLY want a Koei-made Dynasty Warriors-style game using ASoIaF characters?
Like, complete with the shitty English voice acting and massively incorrect plotline and turning every character into an overblown animeized version of themselves and just butchering the shit out of the entire plot?

I just think it'd be fucking hilarious to play and a lot of the characters in the novels would fit really well into the Dynasty Warriors character mold.

I think Young Griff was meant to do shit. I doubt anyone besides Viserys & Dany saw Viserys as anything but a little shit.

>"Demonic creatures!"
>"Treacherous as a woman!"

God he's such a fucking idiot.
I actually really respect Gurm for managing to so convincingly write a character who's so stupid that it doesn't even occur to him how stupid he is.

Hell, I still want my aSoIaF fightin' game.

I would have no problems playing as Eddard Ice-in-hand button-mashing my way through Targaryens on the Trident

>aSoIaF fighting game
I pick Strong Belwas.

If he doesn't shit on defeated enemies they shouldn't even put him in, though.

>implying that won't be his victory animation
BlazBlue had Terumi kick the shit out of some of his opponents if he won.

It fits RIDICULOUSLY well.

>North
>Jon is Brooding Pretty Boy Hero, like Edward the Black Prince in Bladestorm
>Robb is Sun Ce
>Arya is Sun Shang Xiang
>Ned is Sun Jiang; important at the beginning, dies early on.
>Caitlyn is....I dunno, someone. She probably cries all over everything as her weapons.
>Greatjon is Zhou Tai/Taishi Ce

>Lannisters
>Joffery is "leader"
>Tywin is real leader, a Cao Cao-type character.
>Cersei is Zhenji; hot sexy seductress.
>Jaime is Cao Pe, looses literally ALL character subtly to just be Edgelord Swordmaster Douche.
>The Hound is Xiahou Dun

>Tyrells led by Renly
>Loras is Flaming Gay, like Zhang He level
>Brienne is taller then the other female characters, but insanely hot. No explanation
>Oleanna Tyrell shoots Laser Thorns.

>"Neutral" Faction
>Varys shooter Spiderwebs and shit. Kinda Zuo Ci-ish, mysterious appearing and disappearing.
>Petyr Baelish literally throws coins at people and talks about CHAOS a lot like Kotaro Fuma in Samurai Warriors.
>Khal Drogo is that one annoying third faction guy who shows up every other mission and ruins everything.
>Dany is Diao Chan

Gregor Clegane is Lu Bu.

>ASTRAL FINIIIISH!
>Belwas drops trow and shits on your corpse.

More Planetos-turned Dynasty Warriors knockoffs.

>Barristan Selmy is Huang Zhong, ancient as fuck looking but still an awesome character who never actually gets killed. Bonus points if he even says "THERE'S STILL LIFE IN ME YET!" when he does is Musou.
>Oberyn Martell is a character who switches factions a lot during his storyline. The Dorne faction is almost entirely his family.
>Tyrion first is with the Lannisters, then is with the King's Landing faction, then joins Dany's faction. His weapon is, of course, a crossbow. Every time he gets done using a Musou attack he takes a drink from a bottle of wine and breaks it on the ground.

The Dothraki are more Great Plains Indians, just with horses instead of buffalo. High and mighty assholes who are a holy terror to the locals, smaller civilizations, and passing travelers. But more of a pain in the side than an actual threat to larger more stable groups.

Can you imagine the butthurt when Syrio isn't in it?

I'd be more butthurt if they exclude Ser Arthur Dayne or Barristan Selmy.

>They include Dayne
>but he dual wields

...

Mongols held their conquests for a while tho. Mostly because they were not idiots, unlike the iron fags.

I love how little Cao cao's fucking design has changed over the entire series

The only verified lie we have from him doesn't show him getting mad about it, he just carelessly denies it, knowing that everybody knows he did it but they won't do anything about it

>Dayne
>Dual wielding

no seriously WHY IS THIS A THING?

D&D thought it'd look cool.

They never managed to hold what they had as an entire army or nation though, partially because they didn't really want to; the Mongol Horde broke up into the Yuan Dynasty, the Golden Horde, the Chagatai Khanate and the Illkhanate.

Because HBO is literally for Plebs, the lowest common denominator, the mouth-breathers, the rubes, the common man, the peasantry, the proletarian, the working man.

The Lowest Common Denominator.

As my friend once so eloquently put it: "It's HBO! It's for people who don't read!"

Not enough wanking to his sword in the series so they needed a shorthand for him being awesome.

Would have been much cooler if he did it all with one blade and no shield.

Fairly accurate these days.

They also either have the single most horseshit fight coregrapher on TV or D&D literally decide to never listen to him even a little, so any attempts at "cool" sword fighting would just look fucking dumb as hell.

Even one of my fairly moronic and non-reading friends thought the Jon vs FOOKING LEGEND fight looked like two retards slapping their dicks around when all one had to do was use his longer goddamn sword.

Or even better if they'd given him the proper two-handed space sword he actually used.

They didn't give it enough development for viewers to be all like "Holy shit, that's motherfucking Dawn! Dudes gonna fuck shit up!"

Really they should have given Valyrian Steel a visual cue, like a blue sheen or something, to help mark the swords out from normal blades.

Well I mean, I don't think it would have mattered. It really is one of those things that only people who read the books would really appreciate.

Like, Maisie Williams opted to learn left-handed sword-fighting because she knew bookfags would sperg over right-handed Arya.

Bull, it's because left-handed water dancing>right-handed water dancing.

Source: I do both.
My form is an absolute mess right-handed, but I just can't win lefty.

Is it just me or are these threads rather active of late?

I find left easier for attacking and right easier for defending, it's kind of weird

I kind of want to see what Randall Flagg would do in ASOIAF, but honestly, I'm pretty sure he'd look around and go "fuck it".

>"You know what? You guys don't need a Satan analogy. You're shitting things up enough by yourselves."

You could say the same of Ramsey Bolton and Roose Bolton only really turning evil at the end of a Clash of Kings. Due to a theory on here, I think the books have a three arc structure;

>Game of Thrones, Storm of Swords, a Clash of Kings
The titles refer to materialistic objects and the covers focus on items to be fought over; thrones, crowns and swords. Mostly politics based. Main badguy was Tywein for these books. He got axed by Tyrion. Both were excellent at politics and both were worthy foils and opposites to each other.

>A Feast of Crows, A Dance of Dragons
Both of these refer to extremely bloody, violent events. These books talk about human good and evil. The broken men speech. Lots of references to the horrors and costs of war. The main antagonists for this part (or those who tended to dominate that role) were the Boltons and Cersei. All three are absolute evil cunts who are feeding off the corpse of Westeros and use their power to enable their desires. For Ramsay Snow and Roose Bolton, Jon Snow is the perfect foil and spends the whole book trying to do humanitarian shit, fulfill his duty and obligations and protect the realm. Parts of what were planned for these two books were put into TWoW so we'll likely see this plot line wrapped up real fucking quick.

>The Winds of Winter, A Dream of Spring
These refer to the seasons and may have a spiritual bent, what with the return of magic, arrival of the Others, the usage of dragons and the summoning of Krakens. So far, Dany hasn't really affected Westeros much so when she comes in, she's going to need a fitting antagonist. Another person who uses and abuses magic, is the focus of prophecy and is shown to be as unnaturally evil, greedy and selfish as she is shown to be unnaturally good, charitable and selfless. Euron fills all of these goals quite well and, right now, he seems about as likely to conquer Westeros as Dany does with all the shit they are dealing with.

Wish I had the image.

You know, I'm not positive but I think I've figured out the seasons thing, at least for Westeros anyway, which so far seems most affected by changing seasons of only because Essos is so much farther south comparatively.

>implying this wasn't actually the best way to show his skill
>implying the message wasn't "he's such a great fighter he can handicap himself by dual wielding and still kill motherfuckers left and right"
>implying it wasn't a show of arrogance on his part, trying to mock the lesser known Stark boy

>implying Daenarys isn't the antagonist.

A couple threads ago one user rather brilliantly analysed how Dany very well could be a Sauron-style Dark Lord in the making.

Given what we know about Dayne a "display of arrogance" sounds out of character

Is there a single more Neutral Good character than Ser Garlan Tyrell currently alive in the books?
The guy is the broest of bros.

They have been, and I'm enjoying it. My major gripe was that a week ago, people were posting on here like once an hour, but now people are posting every few minutes. I hope it sticks like this, I really don't want to go back to /tv/ to discuss the cancerous show

I mean this is a neat theory but I don't really buy it that much. It seems to rely too heavily on what GRRM may have described the original outline of being like, rather than what the series actually grew to be. It was supposed to be a three part arc, but really the series developed into a long chaotic history book, with plotlines entering and leaving without any clear structure, no central focus besides the North, Kings Landing, the Riverlands, the Wall and Daenerys always getting special attention, and also due to "three main villains and three main heroes" doesn't really sound like something GRRM is writing (at least now, anyway. He's always saying how all of his characters have big parts to play and how this is a sprawling cast. Maybe it was different in the outline)

I do like some things the theory proposes- such as politics having a more central role in the first few books, the "feast for crows" having important in the next few to show the aftermath of war, and that the last few are about magic returning, darkness and death. But I don't think it was structured completely this way, since the first few books do use a decent bit of magic (Wights, Melisandre, House of the Undying, Bran's dreams), and the next few books also use a lot of political story (Jon, Daenerys, Cersei and Stannis more than anyone else)

I want to stat up my favorite House for a campaign. Do you think it's feasible to (a) create it using the standard system, adjusting things to suit canon or (b) ignore the rules and just build it to suit what I'm after?

Do you guys ever talk about the tabletop too? I just started a campaign and was curious about character creation/ good fundamentals. My guy is a dual wielder who uses a braavosi blade

The books have very much followed a three act structure and Martin's always tried to keep it that way. It's grown certainly but you can still see that the narrative has a very clear sequence. When Joffery and Tywein both die, that results in a massive power shift and the end of act one; after that fact, the entire narrative has changed and all of the characters that aren't dead have undergone at least some kind of shift in views.

Seeing as how AFfC and ADoD had to bleed into WoW we see this change has only mostly occurred but once Stannis has beaten Roose and Ramsay, we will again see a complete change in situation for most of the characters and the story reaching its climatic point.

I mean, once Roose and Ramsay are dead, who becomes the main antagonist? Aegon? Dany, who is clearly a protag? Cersei, who's lost nearly all her power? The High Sparrow, who has no real capability of threatening Stannis' armies or even the Tyrells armies? The Tyrells? The Others, who won't fully appear until the last book?

Also, you do make a fair point about how there has been a bleeding through of effects but the Wights, Melisandre, House of the Undying and Bran's dreams have all really only hinted at things to come. We don't start getting POV views of magic itself until the later parts of those and A Dance of Dragons. And while politics does still play an important role in the book, it lacks master-strokes like Tyrion's revealing of the spy or the Red Wedding; instead, it looks at the application of power for positive and negative ends.

GRRM has always had a concrete vision of what he wanted and has allowed bloat to obscure that; but that's only because he wanted to explore the full passage of time rather than rely on timeskips (like how we've been forced to deal with Bran for ages even though the payoff has only begun now.)

GRRM has always looked at ASoIaF as a fairy tale, a fantasy story. This implies he always had a vision for how things would turn out.

>GRRM has always looked at ASoIaF as a fairy tale, a fantasy story.
Could I have a source for this? It sounds interesting. From all I've heard in interviews etc, ASOIAF is more the love child between High Fantasy and Historical Fiction.

...

>Do you think it's feasible to (a) create it using the standard system
Why not, though the more older the House get the more you'll have to fluff it with realistic details.

>ignore the rules and just build it to suit what I'm after?
Just remember to give them flaws so they don't feel game breaking OP

I can't explain why, but somehow Koei has figured out how to apply the Dynasty Warriors formulae to EVERYTHING.
ASoIaF is just weirdly suited to it already.

Yeah well, you don't got a willy you don't get the silly.

This, honesty. Throughout A Game of Thrones and A Clash of Kings, we REPEATEDLY got imagery of a banquet of corpses, a feast for the dead. We saw corpses of northmen, and a man with a wolf for a head sitting at the end of the table. This was all cosmic foreshadowing for one of the bloodiest events in the series so far, I imagine Walder Frey may have inadvertently activated some blood magic.

Now, we're beginning to see a LOT of cosmic foreshadowing again. This time, it involves a mass of swirling tentacles, a monster with a great black eye and ten long black legs, and already two mentions of a red sea of blood. This means Euron is no red herring.

What Euron does in the next book will legit be terrifying.

Asha still has her own problems, namely her unapologetically demanding sexual appetite

>Tricks her brother into fondling her- while he's totally unaware but she's enjoying it
>"lol it's just a prank bro ;)"

>Keoi Berserk in development
Can't fucking wait.

Really the Greyjoys are one of my favorite houses. Every single named member taking part in the narrative has at least one insane hangup.

Man, he's probably going to turn out to have been a student of Marwyn as well and the binding of the dragons will accelerate the return of magic. Shit will get weird, capital W.

Victarion's chapters are some of the most fun in the entire series. The Greyjoys, outside of Asha, are real entertaining to read about.

I keep hearing this, but in the books her appetite seems to pretty much revolve around that one guy and JUST him.
Like, she's into sex and enjoys it the way any other person does but she isn't exactly not picky; that Harlaw kid was described as pretty good looking and she literally displayed zero sexual interest in him at all, and seemed honestly to kind of look down on him.

Asha's primary problem is that she has a vagina and thus this behavior is kind of controversial amongst the Ironborn.
Also, that she's actually a rational human being amongst a culture of complete idiots.

I feel like I'm one of the only people in these threads who genuinely enjoys Asha's character. Mainly because she's a warrior girl who's so authentic in who she is and what she likes. I dunno, for me she's a more interesting Brienne.