u/Beautiful_Common_940

So I was thinking about why the senator at the end of the last episode asked if they wanted to save humanity and how that tied into the nature of the silos.

The silos are a multi-generational project that seems to be trying to create a perfect population for compliance. It’s possible that this is to engineer some perfect population for a post apocalyptic world that won’t screw it up again, but if the world beyond the hills is mostly fine, then why confine people like this?

I propose that it’s to prepare for generational arc ships to colonize other planets because Earth is doomed in some way. Whether that’s resource shortages or something else.
The population that would emerge out of the Silos are one well suited to space travel, less likely to rebel, able to maintain technical mastery over their environment, and capable of making hard sacrifices.

This would allow for the world outside to be mostly normal, if degraded in quality, while having a plausible reason to have the silos at all.

Something I think that people are really missing when talking about prophecies in ASOIAF is that they don’t necessarily have to come true. Destiny isn’t actually set in stone.

It’s not just that prophecy is ambiguous and open to interpretation which people may get wrong. This happens when Daemon II Blackfyre for example misinterpreted his vision of a dragon egg hatching at Lord Butterwell’s wedding. It was really Egg hatching as a Tagaryen Prince.

But we see a prophecy literally fail with the Dosh Khaleen’s prophecy that Rhaego would be the Stallion that Mounts the World failing. In part it’s his destiny that was sacrificed to bring back a catatonic Drogo.

It may be that destiny in Planetos is much more like being a ta'veren in the Wheel of Time series, where there’s a magnetic pull towards certain futures, but free will nonetheless plays a decisive role precisely for those individuals with destiny. Or maybe destiny is open ended and after it fails, reality twists to realize it in a different way so as to reconcile with free will.

Perhaps Rhaegar actually was the Prince that was Promised and Planetos is a doomed world. Choosing the love of Lyanna over duty may have cost more than his family. Maybe some other destiny must fill the role of the failed chosen one. It’s especially noteworthy that Rheago was named for a failed chosen one and is himself a failed chosen one.

So when it comes to stuff like Dany is going to bring ruin, Jon appearing in Mel’s visions as Azor Ahai, or even Patchface’s visions from the Drowned God (presumably), there’s no actual guarantee that they will be realized. They may just be possible futures that have a stronger pull than others.

At the end of The Sworn Sword, I got kinda sad thinking about how when Ser Eustace Osgrey dies, the Chequy Lion will die out.

It’s true that both Ser Eustace and Lady Rohanne get something they want. Osgrey gets to die in his ancestral castle waiving his banner, and Lady Rohanne gets to fulfill her father’s will and rule in her own right when her new husband dies. Dunk also gets to feel satisfied in his honor. But I feel like there was an option to go further here.

House Osgrey could have continued like how Corlys Velaryon sought to keep his house name alive through Jace and Luke. It would be a win win for everyone involved. Not only would the banner of the Chequy Lion go on, but the men bearing it would be tall and strong warriors. Plus Ser Eustace basically wished Dunk could have been his son. Lady Rohanne fancied Dunk in the first place and clearly wishes to be a mother. It would also secure her place without requiring her to remarry or whelp a (publicly recognized) bastard after Ser Eustace dies. And Dunk would obv benefit in the short term.

It’s already canonical that Dunk got it on all over the Seven Kingdoms, so it really feels like a missed opportunity unless GRRM retcons it in in Dunk’s internal monologue in a later novella.

Okay to start off: no I did not cheat on my husband. All of our children were conceived by the two of us having sex.

About two years ago our daughter was having some bloodwork done and my husband noticed that her blood type didn’t match his or mine. This led to accusations of cheating, which while hurtful, were understandable from his position. Our daughter also has some features that likely come from my dad’s side and none of us ever knew him. But to settle the matter I insisted we get a paternity test.

It turned out that the “father” was essentially a close DNA relative, over 50% matching DNA. My husband was an only child and his father had been dead for many years. After a lot of questions, my MiL tells us that my husband absorbed his twin brother in the womb. And so I guess my husband’s testes are his twin brothers.

My husband has been really upset by this and keeps claiming that our kids aren’t “really his” and recently even cried in my lap about how he was never going to have a “real legacy”. I was fairly supportive, even in spite of his initial accusations about my faithfulness, but at this point I started to feel like he should just realize it doesn’t actually change anything about our family.

After an argument last night where I told him he was blowing it out of proportion and needed to move on and just focus on what we’ve built together, he took off to stay with his mom for a few days. Now I’ve got my own mom calling me and telling me I should be more sensitive to his feelings. Am I the asshole?

Reposted from r/amitheasshole

Update:. We had a conversation since I posted the original post and he wants to get tested to see if one of his testicles has his own dna, or look into other options and try for another child. I’m not sure if I am ready to have another child with him, but I am also not sure if our relationship will last if I refuse.

He has also insisted that it’s “easy for me” because our daughter has my dna. But I would love her even if she was adopted….

It’s fairly well known that Ford was a Nazi sympathizing antisemite. He even received a medal from Hitler. Of course he enormously supported the US war effort against Germany, but that didn’t change his general sympathies with Nazi ideology.

However, he was very similar to earlier Utopian Socialists like Robert Owen, with a lot of concern for the conditions of his workers. This took some unhealthy turns to surveilling their personal lives to ensure moral behavior, but also involved providing a lot of amenities and better working conditions than competitors.

It’s less well known that the USSR under Lenin and Stalin practically worshipped Ford and similar industrialist figures. They hired Ford to build an auto factory in 1929 and there’s tons of Communist literature from the era praising Ford, Frank and Lilian Gilbreth and Frederick Taylor. Stalin is quoted saying “The combination of the Russian revolutionary sweep with American efficiency is the essence of Leninism.” Lenin was infatuated with Ford’s innovations in the assembly line and scientific transformation of work. Trotsky and others deeply admired it. Even some anarchist thinkers at the time were critically inspired by the general principles he represented.

This wasn’t just inside the USSR, Diego Rivera said “Marx made theory... Lenin applied it with his sense of large-scale social organization... And Henry Ford made the work of the socialist state possible.”

So what happens if this one sided love affair was actually reciprocated? If Ford embraces his portrayal as a Historically Progressive Bourgeois and adopts a form of communist ideology (that leaves room for “great men of vision” like himself of course)?

How differently would Britain and the British empire have developed?

Forgive me if this is considered off topic, but I feel like a really good way to demonstrate our commitment to Canada and show that even though we weren’t born on the soil we care about our country is to do something as a wider community of Canadians by descent to help victims of the big wildfires that are happening.

Seeing how devastating they are in the news is completely heartbreaking and shocking. These are our fellow countrymen who are being driven from homes and livelihoods because of a problem created by the whole world. I’m not saying that we need to earn acceptance or anything, but these are our countrymen and future neighbors who need solidarity now more than ever.

I’ve never set up a fundraiser before so I feel like it would be a team effort. Maybe it could be posted in the various Facebook groups and the other subreddits?

Something I’ve found a little concerning that Hayer has said on recent discussions is that in principle even 10 years down the road, a hostile government could reinterpret the citizenship act as amended by c3 to exclude groups that are eligible for recognition under the current interpretation. This may include those with the alleged “1947 gap” reading for instance.

Are there any protections in place for people who’ve made their lives in Canada? That seems like a very unreasonable sword of Damocles to hang over someone’s head?

It is commonly cited “Bran will be King” is a plot point D&D got from GRRM so it has to happen even if it happens differently. But it’s unclear what being “king” actually means, and it’s very unlikely that Bran will be King of the Seven/Six kingdoms as a legal entity descended from Aegon’s conquest.

Other possibilities include:

Bran becomes King of an independent North.

Bran becomes the Night’s King and possibly wins

Jon becomes King as a thrall of tree-wizard Bran warging into him

Bran succeeds Dany and Jon after her natural death or assassination and Jon’s death or disappearance as his next male of kin.

Bran becomes King of the surviving remnant after an apocalypse and begins rebuilding Westeros (a homage to Bran the Builder)

Bran does become a creepy tree wizard king and sets up an elective monarchy as a form of human sacrifice so he can transfer between bodies forever.

Bran becomes some kind of Solstice King figure and is himself a sacrifice at the end of the series like the Pentoshi Princes.

Some of these are sort of similar to the show ending, but there’s really no way to know what GRRM originally intended, if he does end up going through with it. Especially since in the original pitch for the story it wasn’t a part of it at all, and was just something emerging from the garden.

If Rickon is successfully saved by Davos and declares for Stannis as lord of Winterfell, it would be interesting if he embraces the Red God. We really don’t know much about his personality beyond the fact that he’s wild. That may bias him toward the old gods or impiety, but the red faith seems pretty chill with Wargs if Mel is anything to go by. He’s also somewhat of a redhead, so it would be interesting if he had a nickname like the above.

I’m curious what people think Rickon will be like if he is found alive and brought back? Will he be a savage cannibal? Or a feral brute with little facility with human speech? Or maybe just super aggressive and volatile?

One of Ned’s concerns with Jon is what to do with him when he leaves for King’s Landing. The Wall was of course what was decided, but I don’t think it was the only option. He couldn’t take Jon to KL because of the risk of Robert discovering his true identity, plus the mistreatment he would likely face from the Lannisters. It would have meant him having a whole second job trying to figure out a way to give Jon something to do there that keeps him out of the way on top of running the realm. And of course Cat wasn’t going to tolerate him in Winterfell without Ned.

But why couldn’t he have sent Jon to squire for the Manderly’s? Sure Jon followed the old gods, but so did Jorah presumably. There’s no reason Jon couldn’t keep both sets of gods. It would have allowed Jon a chance at valor and potentially earning his own minor lordship through good service to Wyman, eventually Robb or some other suitable lord. He may have gone off to earn his fortune with the Second Sons, or still gone to the Watch if he felt so inclined.

This would have made everyone but Lord Commander Mormont (Man needed every able bodied male he could get) happy.

So this is kind of silly, but since we don’t actually know how King’s blood works, there’s a lot of possibilities. Does Mance have it just because the free folk follow him? Is Craster a King?

It’s said that among the Ironborn, every captain is a king aboard his own ship. Does it go that far? It seems absurd, but maybe king’s blood is about those who have the obedience and belief of others without themselves owing it to another above them? A lot of magic systems are in part based on collective will. Maybe Moqorro is sitting on top of a veritable arsenal of sacrifice victims in the iron fleet?

People rightly criticize Rhaegar for wrecking his family and for the fact Lyanna was way too young when they ran off in the most charitable interpretation possible. But even if he did kidnap her, Robert was trying to do the same thing, he wanted to take Lyanna by force and essentially force her into sexual slavery through a non consensual marriage, and he committed many more serious sex crimes. Yet people fondly talk about him because they read him through Ned’s rose tinted PoV.

For one, Robert sired a bastard on a child so young it made Ned deeply uncomfortable. This is a society where 15 is considered an adult for the purpose of marriage. He’s a pedophile who kept an Epstein-tier whoremonger in his small council and very likely indulged in even more.

He sired tons of bastards which opened up a huge succession issue. Including a recognized male bastard he kept at Storms End. This represents a huge threat to the stability of the realm, its only happenstance that Renly was vain and stupid enough to try to make himself king instead of pressing Eric Storm’s claim and ruling through him.

He raped Cersei multiple times, and beat her. He lied to Ned when he implies that when he hit her in front of him it was the first time, as we learn from Cersei’s PoV later. Robert is a sexual monster and wife beater.

He was also enormously corrupt and is responsible for essentially destroying the seven kingdoms’ finances right before a major multi year winter for good measure.

Reading another thread here where people were discussing how GRRM could have handled Cersei with the time skip, by having her sent to Casterly Rock in favor of Kevan as hand and regent where she becomes even more bitter and paranoid. Someone also mentioned how Stoneheart and the BWOB could have just stretched out their hangings of Freys and Lannisters because there’s so many.

I think that these two changes would dovetail very nicely. The Brotherhood could expand into the Westerlands and target families like the Westerlings and Spicers, potentially wiping them out and doing a second destruction of Castamere since they got it as blood payment for betraying Robb. Cersei could become increasingly unhinged as the Brotherhood closes in on her, and Nightfires start dotting the hills of the West. It would turn the Brotherhood into something like a larger beachhead for Dany’s return, since the red faith has endorsed her, and for it to be a darker reign of terror, given the direction LSH has taken them.

They might have also taken up activity in the Vale to go after Littlefinger for his betrayal of Ned if LSH suspected it, or at least Lysa for her betrayal of her family by refusing to help Robb. This would have spread the red faith even further. We know it’s spreading in the North with Stannis converting wildlings and allied northern nobles, and likely has a presence in the Stormlands thanks to Stannis. We also have mention of it being present in Dorne. Couple this with the Faith of the Seven militarizing, we could have a growing low grade religious civil war destabilizing the 7 kingdoms more and explaining a lot of minor character deaths.

Tbh, I feel like GRRM could still do a time skip halfway through TWOW if he ties some key threads up in the first half.

I’m curious if others have thoughts about what might have been given room to grow with the time skip?