The above table contains pointers to my original predictions as well
as any updated prediction based on new evidence as it rolls out
during the new season. Explanation for the different fields:
Character
Name and link to original prediction
Will survive?
Current guess and link to updated prediction (if any)
Alive?
Is the character still alive as of the current episode
Will win?
Current guess and link to updated prediction (if any)
Won?
Final outcome
The Will win? entry needs a little explanation, as I have
overloaded its meaning. For some characters, winning means winning
the Game of Thrones, and as Cersei Lannister says, "when
you play the game of thrones, you win or you die." However, not
everyone is playing the same game. My
early take is that Jon Snow is not playing, even though it
kinda looks like he is as he's fiddling around on the edges, so as
gamers might say different players have different victory
conditions. Many of the characters "game" is just making it through
the winter (they may not know of the Army of the Dead — yet!), so I
won't call them out.
The table order is oldest post descending to the most recent
which roughly corresponds to descending order of importance
to the story as I intuit it. Not too much should be read into that,
however, since some of the characters are grouped due to some
association in the show.
Jon is the most traditional hero of all of the characters
in GoT: noble youth separated from family, goes on quest,
gets a mentor, receives a boon (Longclaw), dies, comes back, yadda,
yadda, yadda, right out of
the Joseph
Campbell playbook. Moreover, it will be widely revealed in
Westeros that Jon Snow is really Aegon Targaryen the lawful son of
Rhaegar Targaryen and Lyanna Targaryen neé Stark, which would put
him in the front of the line for the Iron Throne if that's the way
you want to see the situation (e.g., Robert Baratheon would not
have, and Daenerys might not either). Certainly the neatest way to
wrap it all up is just to follow
the Campbellian
Hero's Path leading to a restored Aegon Targaryen on the Iron
Throne married to his aunt Daenerys (because that's what Targaryens
do) and we are back where we started.
Back where started, here we go 'round again…
Problem is, it's too pat, and as much as fans love Game of
Thrones, I don't think the GoTeratti would be cool
with aunt marries nephew and lives happily ever
after. Again, GoT cleaves to conventional themes even if it
uses over-the-top exhibition. Inbreeding consistently gets punished
through out the arc of the story (e.g., Mad King, shrinking dragons,
Cersei's children all dying horrible deaths, etc.). No, I find it
more likely that Jon will have to turn on Daenerys, and Sansa Stark
may be involved. Moreover, Jon doesn't need to sit on the Iron
Throne to complete a hero's journey and "win" if he's not playing
the Game, but is on a different quest.
When predicting, it's incumbent upon one to predict. OK, we'll get to
that, but we have things to consider first. A spanner in the works
is Beric Dondarrion. Jon wasn't the first to die and come back. If
you're not the only person to die and come back, then resurrection
loses some of it's awesomeness, especially when it's just whatever
the Brotherhood without Banners watches whenever Beric Dondarrion
gets cut down and Thoros "Stinky McStink Breath" of Myr brings him
back. Jon's status as "alive" is not entirely clear.
Consider, too, Maester Aemon's enigmatic "kill the boy, and let the
man be born" advice given to Jon Snow. (HT Sistopher) This could be
read different ways, the simplest being "grow up". But then Jon
literally dies for saving the Free Folk/Wildlings. Jon is definitely
a major hero, but is he Aragorn or Frodo Baggins? Or, is he Samwise
Gamgee? The easy out is Aragorn — Ranger of the North, leading the
Men of the West(North) against the armies of Sauron(Night King) and
reuniting the Kingdoms of Arnor and Gondor(Seven Kingdoms). Aegon
Aragorn — a set up or a Tolkien rewrite with lots of sex to distract
you from the fact?
Before we can get to the punchline, there is another factor we must
consider: Ghost. Of the original six direwolves, only Ghost and
Nymeria are still alive (Sansa is the only Stark alive whose
direwolf is dead, but more on that in later post). Does this mean anything?
I don't think you gum up a story with direwolves with psychic
connections to each other and their humans to have it all not really
mean anything. The fate of Ghost will be a tell.
As I mentioned in the
Daenerys
post, I don't think the whole Jon and Daenerys thing can
stand. Moreover, I think it ends in tears. In fact, Daenerys may die
by Jon's hand. Think about it — the whole damn show is about Jon
doing stuff he really doesn't want to do, and what would be more
tear jerkier than Jon "I already had to watch Ygritte die in my
arms" Snow having to kill aunt Daenerys and watch her die
in his arms while making some weepy confession. Jon's may already be
dead, so he doesn't need to die again, but I guess that depends on
the as of yet unclear definition of death
in GoT. Prediction: Jon's fate is to ride into the sunset
Man With No Name style after some "mission accomplished" event. I
don't think it is to sit on the Iron Throne. Better said, Jon Snow
will not be the last person to sit on the Iron Throne at the end of
season 8. The end of Jon's hero's quest wouldn't be to have to
continue to do stuff he doesn't want to do like rule over
Westeros. Jon wins by not having to do any more crap. Jon is Frodo
dressed up as Aragorn.
Ghost
So goes Jon Snow, so goes Ghost, and vice versa. However, the story
heaps all sorts of bad stuff on Jon, so I could see them killing
Ghost and bringing him back to fight with the Army of the Dead, and
Jon has to rekill his own direwolf. In this case, that's not
necessarily the end of Jon — it frees him from being a Stark so he
can ride off into the sunset.
A summary of all original and current predictions with pointers can
be found
at the WBC
Prediction Status page.
When you play the game of thrones, you win or you die. There is no middle ground. -- Cersei Lannister
As season eight of Game of Thrones approaches, it seems
appropriate to review the prospects of the different characters,
provide some analysis, and guess their fate. Westerosi Body
Count will be a series of these analyses that I'll roll out as
blog posts, followed by analysis of the hits and inevitable misses
after the season starts. The only predictions I make with
take-this-to-the-bank certitude is that there will be a significant
body count and Theon Greyjoy won't win the Game of Thrones,
though I think he's got a good shot at surviving. More on that in a
future post.
One of the things that struck me about GoT as I thought
about it a little was how conventional it is in some ways. That it's
not obvious is a tribute to Martin and the HBO crew — they execute
the familiar tropes very well. The two biggest conventions
are you'll pay for your mistakes and what goes around
comes around. Ned Stark isn't dead because he was a good or
honorable man — he's dead because he incompetently threatened Cersei
Lannister with no means of following through (after he squandered
them). Big mistake. He didn't even know what the game was that was
being played. Arya annihilated House Frey because those who would
kill guests under their protection don't deserve to have or be a
House. I would bet there is some Norse Edda that covers this in
gruesome detail. I have not read any Game of Thrones sites
that might reveal spoilers, etc., so if I guess right, it was just a
guess, not something gleaned from a leak. So with that said, let's
dig in. Thoughts and discussion welcome in the comments, but please,
no spoilers.
Daenerys Targaryen
Daenerys seems to be the odds on favorite to win the
Game. While like Ned Stark, she makes mistakes, unlike Ned,
she usually corrects them. She's got dragons, 40,000 Dothraki
screamers, 10,000 Unsullied, and her team of Tyrion, Ser Jorah, and
Varys. On paper, that's unbeatable in typical Westerosi terms, but
Winter has come and with it the Army of the Dead, so all bets are
off. It's going to come down to whether they are going to finish it
off as a comedy or tragedy, and if most of the season finales have
been guides, it may be the latter. I think Daenerys is the fan
favorite to win. If she does win, they're going to need some decent
twist to make it not too pat. And if she does win, I'll go out on a
limb and say it won't be with Jon Snow/Aegon Targaryen as her king.
As of today, my guess is she's going to die in Jon Snow's or Ser
Jorah Mormont's (maybe Daario Naharis'?) arms, getting Jon
out of his aunt-on-nephew karmic conundrum. It may be of wounds
sustained in battle or assassinated by Cersei Lannister, but it's
too early to make any guesses about that. At least, for me. If there
is some detail I've missed, please LMK. An early tell will be if
Varys gets uneasy feeling that Daenerys is not serving the realm.
BONUS: Your Game of Thrones Name
It may not obvious to people who only watchGame of
Thrones that you can turn an ordinary name into a GoT
name by changing an instance of i to y. Name Tim?
Your GoT name is Tym. IDK why Daario Naharis doen't have
a y up in there somewhere, but that's an exception to the
rule. If I had to guess, it's because Daario Naharis only does what
Daario Naharis wants, and if there are no ys in Daario
Naharis, it's because Daario Naharis doesn't want them there. Rules
don't apply to Daario Naharis.
A summary of all original and current predictions with pointers can
be found
at the WBC
Prediction Status page.
If ever there was a time to get back to ye olde blogge, it is in the throes of the collective mass psychosis that characterizes the Age of Trump™. However, something more important than the Mueller report is bearing down upon us, and it calls for action—immediate action—and that is Season 8 of Game of Thrones.
I'm planning on rolling out some predictions and possibilities for our heroes and villains in subsequent posts, but right now I'm not really what I think about this no spaces around em dash convention that's all the rage outside AP.
I installed Fedora 12 and I can't get the mouse to behave properly. WTF?
Frustrated in Ft Collins,
Foo
Dear Foo,
Allow Dr Aybabtu a Clintonian moment without blue dress collateral damage: I feel your pain. Dr Aybabtu will not editorialize about the reasoning behind Fedora 12's removal of access to the One True Way of dealing with WIMP interfaces, namely that the focus follows the mouse. And no, focus does *not* mean changing the stack order, raising, or anything other than focus. Fortunately, you can put it back. From the mighty command line, issue:
yum install control-center-extra
You may need to sudo that, or do it as root. Then, navigate the Gnome menu thingie at the top of your desktop (or wherever the hell you've put it):
System->Preferences->Windows
Check the box labeled:
Select windows when the mouse moves over them
Under *no* circumstances check the box labeled
Raise selected windows after an interval
Surely madness and damnation lie down that path.
Whatever you do, do not seek advice about this on slashdot or other places on the interwebs, because you'll get answers like "use blackbox" or "I have Steve Jobs' sweat on my iDork and I will never ever wash it!", which may be interesting enough, but not the answer to the question.
The PostScriptbind didn't work the way I remember it working. It only works on operators, not procedures. bind replaces the name by the operator, which saves a look-up at execution. There are times when I want to replace things late, but there are times when I would like to replace things early. PostScript with macros, anyone?
Right now, a coffee maker is obeying a timer, grinding beans in a kitchen in a house that used to be my home. It's still a home, just not mine. Presently, a woman, once the love of my life, will glide blearily into the kitchen and grope for a cup. She'll smile, thinking of a man that is not me.
It's not really naughty, but I just caved into something that I wish I had caved into *years* ago; getting a fountain pen that not only works, but kicks ass. I am so doomed, because I now need -- yes need! -- more pens to sling the ink that needs slinging. The pen: Lamy AL-Star, medium nib. AL is periodic table, not American gazetteer, BTW... The colors: r, g, b, c, m, y, k -- I have k -- and all of the glorious combinations their mingling might produce!
After many long years, GeoPDF is open and an OGC best practice. I would have like to have seen this go down in 2003 when I first wrote the specification. It would have been very different, since it would have been designed for external consumption (too many naught bits hang out in the LGIDict specification, but it had to get done in about a day and a half...), but it should have been open from the get-go, IMO. A little gruntle for the ranting set, too...
