there has only ever been one Bolton.

Have you seen that there are some people who've learned to perform "Piano Phase" as solo performers, doing both parts manually, on two different pianos arranged at right angles?

It's one of those things that's a little bit tricky - because so much of the band is doing the syncopation, which is why it's easy for them to have a hard time locking in at the start - but it's more of a "you probably didn't notice this" thing than a "Radiohead is doing something really complex" thing. It's like an…

I thought it was because with each volume, the destined fate of the entire universe depended more and more upon an endless stream of clones of Duncan Idaho.

yuuuuuuuuup.

I'm very anti-most of the more elaborate fan theories, but the one I totally wish was true even though I don't think it is: Roose Bolton is an ageless vampire.

Yes. I take it as a given, but there's no published text nor, I believe, comment from Martin that makes it explicit.

No. Damphair thinks that's what he is, but when he thinks he's hearing the voice of his god, he's just talking to himself. We can tell because Aeron isn't anything like Stannis' jester Patchface, who was drowned in the same shipwreck that killed Robert and Stannis' parents and then washed up on the shore days later,…

How else are you going to find out who that chick is at 3:54?

That's because his dad was a chump who did everything as stupidly as possible.

I expanded on this in another reply, but: the ceremonial drowning/resuscitation that the adherents of the Drowned God do is not magical, but in the books there is a clear instance of a genuine mystical revival by some aquatic power.

I don't know what's intended for Jon's post-resurrection character in the books, but Beric has been resurrected many, many times, and feels like he loses a piece of himself each time. After the first resurrection he was presumably much closer to being "whole".

The books have their issues, but even unfinished, honestly the only thing the show has over them is "economy of plot," and that's mostly due to "fuck it, let's just switch this navy to the other side of the continent now" type decisions to sacrifice internal logic for convenience, rather than carefully figuring out…

Rhaegar had to have suborned them anyway.

Littlefinger's entire raison d'etre is working out his petty resentments over not getting to marry Catelyn Tully, which is half of why he gets to float under everybody's radar, because it's just an unthinkable motivation to them. He never wanted anything from Ned but his death.

No offer Baelish made Ned was genuine in the first place.

At a certain point this becomes a semantic debate Martin has strongly indicated he'll never settle. What does it mean for a god to be "real"? And so forth.

The Iron Islanders are just doing CPR. Book Stuff here: Aeron Damphair THINKS he's a genuine prophet of the Drowned God, he thinks he was resurrected and saved, but he wasn't. And the difference between his experience and the "baptism" they put each other through indicates that they know the ceremony is … ceremonial…

Which is dumb.

I've always been intimidated by people who appear to really engage with architecture and poetry. There's some veil I haven't passed through there which makes me feel like compared to the people on the other side of it I'm a rube (and I've had many conversations with people much smarter and more insightful than me…