George RR Martin, his fanboys, and former fanbase

[Lobster Cult High Priest]

ep3 of dunk and egg was the best one so far

even though it still had to have a random gay af moment thrown in with the song about the girl who was the best at fisting man ass in all the seven kingdoms or whatever

the interplay between dunk and egg in this ep was fun, egg just wants to be one of the boys and this dunk knows how to have fun more than short stories dunk does

Loved the Conspiracy Theorist Rymun Fossoway.

Also wished I had some Fossoway Cider/

 

[LORD IMPERATOR]

Loved the Conspiracy Theorist Rymun Fossoway.

Is it conspiracy to speak common sense? Is it conspiracy to say that the sky is blue, or that grass is green?

Everything he said was the fucking truth. The Valyrians are aliens to both the Andals and the First Men. Targaryen civil wars were fought without the welfare of the nobles and peasants they ruled over in mind. And the quality of Targaryen kings were slowly slipping, with more than one making decisions that don't make sense.

Fossoway will probably end up dead, though. This is the Dunk and Egg period, which means Bloodraven is lurking about, probably building up his surveillance state. If his birds hear someone say shit about the Targaryen dynasty, their head is going up on a spike. Brynden didn't give a shit when even priests spoke out against him. Someone speaking against the family in general will not escape his wrath.

 

[Dragged Into Sunlight]

Vlad was running a terror campaign against the Turkish invaders. The forests were the deus vulting.

Just going to show that there's really no excuse for the Boltons not getting put down like the mad dogs they obviously are.

This is actually my problem with the Iron Born. There's no reason for the Lannisters in the Westerlands to have not wiped them off the map yet and taken the islands. They obviously see everyone else on the continent as their slaves for the taking so I dont know how they haven't been smack down for good. All you do is take all their main continent land and then blockade their little collection of islands until they starve and run out of material. Even with fishing they're not going to be able to grow enough food on those island chains to support themselves or repair their ships.

 

[Pentex]

Their occupation of the Three Sisters (islands between the North and Vale) was so legendarily brutal it was dubbed the 'Rape of the Three Sisters' and forced the Sistermen (who still seethe at the North about it in the present day, 2000 years removed) to become Arryn vassals for protection, for example.

The Sistermen are Innsmouth-tier mutants and the Starks should have done to them what they did to House Frost.

 

[Foltest]

I have just started to watch Seven kingdom and I am enjoying it so far.
They got Dunk right so well.
I don't know who the actor is, but he capture who Dunk is very well.
Dunk is an awkward Dude.

 

[Chuckwagon]

The Sistermen are Innsmouth-tier mutants and the Starks should have done to them what they did to House Frost.

This is also true, however the Northmen aren't exactly the best-positioned to exterminate them for being subhuman niggers on account of their own proud tradition of human sacrifice (just in a different way - the Sistermen chuck their sacrifices into the sea, the Northmen butcher them at heart trees to appease the weirwood network/time-traveling Bloodraven & Bran), their continued practice of the first night rights despite most other Westerosi having banned it for being too grimdark even by their planet's standards (it's emphatically stressed that it's not just the Boltons who are guilty of this), the continued existence of houses like the Boltons, etc. Bit of a 'catapulting boulders from inside glass houses' thing there, only the Arryns/Vale Andals could have cleansed the Sistermen from a clear moral high ground.

Actually now that I think about it, pretty much all the non-Andal peoples of Westeros (Northmen, Sistermen, Ironborn, Dornish) have got seriously degenerate turbo-gaynigger aspects well in excess of the 'realistic' or historical medieval norms. Though the Ironborn still have everyone else beat in that regard, on top of being the dumbest culture in the setting with the fewest excuses for not already being rendered extinct well before the main story starts (they're tied with the Dothraki on that count).

 

[Krokodil Overdose]

This is actually my problem with the Iron Born. There's no reason for the Lannisters in the Westerlands to have not wiped them off the map yet and taken the islands. They obviously see everyone else on the continent as their slaves for the taking so I dont know how they haven't been smack down for good. All you do is take all their main continent land and then blockade their little collection of islands until they starve and run out of material. Even with fishing they're not going to be able to grow enough food on those island chains to support themselves or repair their ships.

Dont they have some "we do not plant" or some other edgelord shit as their motto? Because as we all know, realistic medieval societies turn up their noses at perfectly acceptable food sources (if marginal) for no reason. Given that the Vikings (who they were based off of) were quite good at both farming and ranching this is just more Gurm stupidity.

 

[Tasty Tatty]

I don't know who the actor is, but he capture who Dunk is very well.
Dunk is an awkward Dude.

The actor is indeed very Dunkish himself. You can see his interviews, it's like he belongs somewhere else.

Egg actor is also very much like Egg.

 

[LORD IMPERATOR]

This is actually my problem with the Iron Born. There's no reason for the Lannisters in the Westerlands to have not wiped them off the map yet and taken the islands. They obviously see everyone else on the continent as their slaves for the taking so I dont know how they haven't been smack down for good. All you do is take all their main continent land and then blockade their little collection of islands until they starve and run out of material. Even with fishing they're not going to be able to grow enough food on those island chains to support themselves or repair their ships.

Back before the dragons, the Lannisters had more than enough cash to sponsor a fleet to invade and eradicate the Ironborn from the Iron Islands. There is also no use for Aegon and the Targaryens to have spared them; the fact that they do not sow means everything they have is stolen, which would be anathema to his plans to create an orderly, united Westeros, since they would be stealing things from HIS SUBJECTS. And he'd eventually have control of the Reach and the Westerlands, so between them and the Velaryons, they'd have more than enough ships to invade and burn those shit-stained rocks for good.

Shit, Aegon and his sisters could've probably burned the islands out of some drunk joke. Or threatened to, and forced the Ironborn to sow and grow their own crops instead of stealing shit.

Dont they have some "we do not plant" or some other edgelord shit as their motto? Because as we all know, realistic medieval societies turn up their noses at perfectly acceptable food sources (if marginal) for no reason. Given that the Vikings (who they were based off of) were quite good at both farming and ranching this is just more Gurm stupidity.

The actual Vikings not only were farmers, but were also great travelers and absorbed religions and ideas from other cultures. Some became Orthodox Christians who played the role of bodyguards in Constantinople, as the Varangian Guard. Others were Catholicized by the friars they captured as slaves. Some became entangled with early Russian politics. Some of the most powerful Viking kings practiced Christianity and tried to force it down on other Vikings.

The Ironborn not only refusing to sow, but also rejecting religious ideas from their neighbors, it all makes no sense, if they're supposed to be a realistic Viking allegory. Because if they were, not only would you see Ironborn adopting the Seven or the old gods, but you'd also see them milling about in King's Landing as bodyguards for the king or something. Maybe have it so that part of the City Watch is Ironborn.

Like say, Aegon spares the Ironborn, but they don't want to sow, so they sell their services to the Targs as warriors, sailors, and bodyguards for the city watch in exchange for money, so they just buy food and trees from the Reach or elsewhere, and this replaces their old custom of stealing everything they didn't make.

Actually now that I think about it, pretty much all the non-Andal peoples of Westeros (Northmen, Sistermen, Ironborn, Dornish) have got seriously degenerate turbo-gaynigger aspects well in excess of the 'realistic' or historical medieval norms. Though the Ironborn still have everyone else beat in that regard, on top of being the dumbest culture in the setting with the fewest excuses for not already being rendered extinct well before the main story starts (they're tied with the Dothraki on that count).

It's ironic. The Andals and their Faith of the Seven are the only people without magic powers or liberal reforms. The First Men in the North have their old gods, the Targs and Valyrians have dragons, blood magic, and the red god, the Dornish Rhoynar are more sexually free and respectful of women, the Ironborn captains vote for their king, it's the Andals and their pseudo-Catholic Faith of the Seven who are the picture of regressive, patriarchal, religious feudalism, and yet they're the most functional. They're everything Martin hates about the Medieval world, and he constantly bitches about their way of life, yet he accidentally made them the most stable.

They're not sexual degenerates like the Dornish, they're not brutes worshiping a Weirwood hive mind like the Northerners, they're not incestuous blood-magickers like the Valyrians, nor do they practice human sacrifice like the disciples of the red god do. They also don't steal damn near everything like the Ironborn. They maintain several kingdoms in the warmer, more prosperous part of Westeros, and despite some wars between these kingdoms, they had a distinct balance of power that kept them all in check before the Targaryens showed up. And even the Targs adopted their religions and customs to fit in, knowing that it's more stable and orderly than what the North, the Ironborn, or the Dornish were doing.

 

[PyrrhicRustle]

Everything he said was the fucking truth. The Valyrians are aliens to both the Andals and the First Men. Targaryen civil wars were fought without the welfare of the nobles and peasants they ruled over in mind. And the quality of Targaryen kings were slowly slipping, with more than one making decisions that don't make sense.

Though he did pick one of the least incestuous and insane batch of Targs to complain about, I don’t think any of the current ones are married to an immediate relative, and several are outright good people and rulers.

 

[LORD IMPERATOR]

Though he did pick one of the least incestuous and insane batch of Targs to complain about, I don’t think any of the current ones are married to an immediate relative, and several are outright good people and rulers.

They have to be. At this point, the Targs had lost a lot of power. You also have Maekar acting like a diva (he hadn't undergone his character change yet) and Aerion Brightflame acting as the posterboy for bad Targs. Fossoway was also talking about Targs like Rhaenyra, Aegon IV, and Daemon Blackfyre causing wars by their actions, which tore up the realm.

 

[Tasty Tatty]

What an episode. Sneaked to watch it while at work...

 

[Chuckwagon]

Back before the dragons, the Lannisters had more than enough cash to sponsor a fleet to invade and eradicate the Ironborn from the Iron Islands.

One among many of the dumbest & silliest parts of the lorebooks about shit that happened centuries/millennia before Aegon's Conquest was that this exact thing HAD happened already. The rundown is that the Hoares once produced three miraculously non-turbonigger kings in a row, all named Harmund, who tried to curb the most violently retarded and pestilential aspects of Ironborn culture (they promoted trade & peaceful relations abroad, discouraged reaving and slaving, were not rabidly anti-intellectual and eventually tried to convert the Ironborn away from the Drowned God to the Seven). Naturally, the third & last of them was overthrown, mutilated and tortured almost to death by the Ironniggers, who really want to keep their barbaric crab bucket going. They also mutilated his mother...a Lannister princess, and aunt of the King of the Rock at the time, to whom she was sent back minus most of her facial features.

So the Lannisters invaded the Iron Isles in retaliation, and actually won! They butcher the last good Iron King Harmund's brother, who betrayed him & their mother to the Ironborn fanatics, and occupy the Iron Isles. At this point they have the Ironborn 99% buckbroken and pretty much totally at their mercy, or lack thereof. But then their general goes rogue, declares himself the new King of the Iron Isles, and in response...the Lannisters don't just fire & replace him but instead pull out of the Iron Isles altogether. This Crakehall character obviously couldn't have had much support among the Westerman soldiery, because the vast majority of the army followed the Lannister king's orders and left him to get drowned by the Ironborn. Adding further insult to injury, they didn't even kill the guy responsible for starting the anti-sanity rebellion and torturing both Harmund & Lelia Lannister before, this 'Shrike' survives to be the one to drown Crakehall. The Ironborn pretty much get away with this atrocity as they did many others which should realistically have been kingdom-enders, they recover later and in fact the peak of their power comes centuries after this debacle.

Meanwhile IRL, in response to the butchering of his envoys by the Shah of Khwarezm & his governors, Genghis Khan famously killed 90% of the Iranian population in his vengeful rampage and turbofucked that region so hard it wouldn't reach the pre-Mongol population level again until the fucking 20th century. Imagine how much harsher he would have been if they'd mutilated & tortured his sister, his aunt, his niece or his daughter instead! Not even the bugs & other vermin would've been allowed to live when he was done with the place. And the same is true of pretty much every other famous king from the Middle Ages, even the nicest and most humane among them couldn't have allowed the sort of shit the Shrike pulled go, if not because they really wanted to avenge their kinswoman then at least because it'd make them look cripplingly weak.

Even if we were to entertain the argument that maybe a Ned-like King in the North or the Gardeners of the Reach (who have a reputation as generally kindly, benign & diplomatic rulers) might have gone easier on the Ironborn, which they probably wouldn't have because of what I just said above, the Ironborn pulled this shit on the Lannisters no less - a house with a historical reputation for being pretty damn cutthroat. (The fact that the Lannister king at the time invaded the Iron Isles in the first place also already goes to show he wasn't a pussy that could've just been walked over like Tytos, Tywin's dad.) Tywin destroyed the Reynes & Tarbecks, and also plotted the Red Wedding, for waaaaay less than what the ancient Hoares & Drowned Priests had done. This bit of lore and the lack of a 'Rains of the Iron Isles' song from centuries or millennia before the Conquest, like the Boltons still being around, is a fantastic example of how there absolutely is plot armor in Gurm's works, it's just mostly worn by the villains (whether individuals or entire houses/cultures).

It's ironic. The Andals and their Faith of the Seven are the only people without magic powers or liberal reforms. The First Men in the North have their old gods, the Targs and Valyrians have dragons, blood magic, and the red god, the Dornish Rhoynar are more sexually free and respectful of women, the Ironborn captains vote for their king, it's the Andals and their pseudo-Catholic Faith of the Seven who are the picture of regressive, patriarchal, religious feudalism, and yet they're the most functional. They're everything Martin hates about the Medieval world, and he constantly bitches about their way of life, yet he accidentally made them the most stable.

They're not sexual degenerates like the Dornish, they're not brutes worshiping a Weirwood hive mind like the Northerners, they're not incestuous blood-magickers like the Valyrians, nor do they practice human sacrifice like the disciples of the red god do. They also don't steal damn near everything like the Ironborn. They maintain several kingdoms in the warmer, more prosperous part of Westeros, and despite some wars between these kingdoms, they had a distinct balance of power that kept them all in check before the Targaryens showed up. And even the Targs adopted their religions and customs to fit in, knowing that it's more stable and orderly than what the North, the Ironborn, or the Dornish were doing.

The FO7 gets a ton of shit from fans for being the only religion without obvious superpowers - and thus, undeniable proof that their God or gods are real - in the setting, but maybe we've been looking at it all wrong. Maybe the Faith's true superpower, in fact, is in the friends stable & functioning societies it made along the way (of thousands of years), and unlike the rest it doesn't need boatloads of human sacrifices to deliver that result.

A running theme in Martin's work is that the smallfolk are basically apolitical normies who just want to grill, and give infinitely less of a shit about the intrigues of their overlords or weird ass magic tricks than they do about living to see another peaceful sunrise with their friends & family, exemplified with quotes like this (from Jorah to Dany):

The common people pray for rain, healthy children, and a summer that never ends. It is no matter to them if the high lords play their game of thrones, so long as they are left in peace. They never are.

Well, for all the flashier powers of the other religions on Planetos, the Faith's the only one that can even come close to granting that wish of the masses, and so what it has to offer is valuable in its own way. 'Not all that is gold glitters,' etc.

 

[PyrrhicRustle]

What an episode. Sneaked to watch it while at work...

The ending was great, they saved the music for the perfect time.

 

[Foundinglaunderer]

Any good series like game of thrones without a shit ending or books like a song of ice and fire that the author actually finished the ending for ?

 

[Hugbox Kommissar]

Any good series like game of thrones without a shit ending or books like a song of ice and fire that the author actually finished the ending for ?

The Black Company series and the First Law series are going to be your standard answers here I think. Going to also shill for a personal favorite that's a bit more obscure: the Swan's War trilogy by Sean Russell. Also published in the late 90s so its not as grimdark edgy as some of the modern imitators and it has a lot of similarities to GoT: civil war between rival families for the throne, the awakening of previously legendary magic, and common folk getting caught up in important events.

 

[draggs]

Re the Starks

Gurm made them different so the reader would admire and like them. Their house words are different from any others! They always stick to their word! They can be harsh and even cruel but they're never unfair etc. They never betray their honor. Look what happened to the gud boi Stark who went back on his word. Betrayed and slaughtered at his own wedding. Starks who slip up on muh principles, even gud bois like Robb, face the consequences. It's hinted that that has consistently happened for thousands of years

To a lesser degree all the north is portrayed as Different to the "southrons." Sure there are shitheels like the Boltons, there are thieves and rapers, but most of the north, nobles and peasants, are portrayed as plain better than everyone else in ways intended to appeal to the reader. Jon Snow constantly makes excuses for why the north doesnt join up with Stannis after the red wedding. The mormonts and fat manderly and others make it clear the north is still good and will rise up for the right if only they have a true stark to put their hopes on

The north is gud bois and the Starks are gudest bois. live human sacrifices to trees? You dont understand, this is the north, that just makes them even more badass. You will like the north, you will like the Starks, Southron child. Enjoy guts hanging off heart trees

 

[Pentex]

This is also true, however the Northmen aren't exactly the best-positioned to exterminate them for being subhuman niggers on account of their own proud tradition of human sacrifice (just in a different way - the Sistermen chuck their sacrifices into the sea, the Northmen butcher them at heart trees to appease the weirwood network/time-traveling Bloodraven & Bran),

The northmen only 'raped' the Three Sisters because they were fed up with their piracy and shipwrecking.

The Arryns should have thanked the Starks for handing over the Sistermen already buck-broken. Archmaester Pereston (well after the fact) asserted that the Starks realized that the Three Sisters were nearly as worthless as the 'people' who lived there and let the Arryns have it.

Also, human sacrifice is a beautiful and diverse part of many of the cultures of GURM's world. Only the bigoted Andals and Seven-Faced god reject the need to feed their god(s) with blood.

their continued practice of the first night rights despite most other Westerosi having banned it for being too grimdark even by their planet's standards (it's emphatically stressed that it's not just the Boltons who are guilty of this), the continued existence of houses like the Boltons, etc. Bit of a 'catapulting boulders from inside glass houses' thing there, only the Arryns/Vale Andals could have cleansed the Sistermen from a clear moral high ground.

Again with this Andal bigotry.
Peasants should be honored to sit in the cuck chair for their lords with the blood of ancient heroes of the Dawn Age and raise their bastards.
/sneed
The first night was 'officially' banned by Jaehaerys thanks to the women's council (women repeating gossip they heard). As a practical matter, a lord raping his smallfolk's wives, or worse, his bannermen's wives, is far down the list of ways to maintain their loyalty.

The only person in the books who admits to this act Roose Bolton, for whatever weight you give his character.

Actually now that I think about it, pretty much all the non-Andal peoples of Westeros (Northmen, Sistermen, Ironborn, Dornish) have got seriously degenerate turbo-gaynigger aspects well in excess of the 'realistic' or historical medieval norms.

In the Northmen and Dornish's respective defenses, at least they weren't dumb enough to fight an open war against King Sister-fucker the First and his flying flamethrowers, unlike the Andals. Torrhen Stark bent his knee and the Dornish just spammed guerrilla warfare until "The Conqueror" quit and consoled himself with a sister threesome.

The Ironborn not only refusing to sow, but also rejecting religious ideas from their neighbors, it all makes no sense, if they're supposed to be a realistic Viking allegory.

GRRM is a cynical boomer bitch and sees all things through his lens of frustrated liberal utopianism. The good must actually be bad or stupid, and the bad must be worse than they actually were.

The Vikings through Martin's lens get turned into the Ironborn sea orcs who just rob and enslave everyone around them and were just tolerated in doing so until King Aegon the Sister-fucker put a stop to their worst behavior by roasting their king at Harrenhal and installing an agreeable client ruler (the Greyjoys). But, three centuries later, the Ironborn revert to type and elect the most violent, psychopathic, and sadistic member of their species to rule, on the promise that they'll get to rape and pillage again.

Cersei was right when she thought that Robert should have made a new island out of the Ironborns' collective skulls when they rebelled against him.

 

[Gay Sex Enjoyer]

Dunk and Egg has some amazing casting all around. Half the cast feel like they walked right off the page.

Also Dunk is so retarded, I love him.

 

[draggs]

We do not sow. We are Ironborn. We’re not subjects. We’re not slaves. We do not plow the field or toil in the mine. We take what is ours.​

There is farming on the Iron islands, but it's thralls who do it. The islands couldn't support a population or an army or a fleet large enough to mean anything to anybody if they literally got everything from raiding