House of the Dragon (Game of Thrones) Thread

[gunnar hendershow]

Given the intersection of faith and magic in this universe it is actually to be expected that humans are more bound to destiny than have a chance to affect outcomes.

[LUKIE]

It's not Chaos Effect though, nor really time travel. It isn't something in the future being altered because of the past. It is literally the death of Hodor creating Hodor. It's a significantly different ideology to time travel then previously noted in time travel fiction.

It's not like if Bran didn't go back in time then Hodor wouldn't be Hodor. Hodor was already Hodor before he went back in time. It essentially means no one has free will and everything is already planned.

To put it in context. It's not someone choosing to travel back in time and changing something in the past to effect the future. The future is effecting the past. It's dramatically changed the way we should view the GOT Universe and if it doesn't... bad storytelling. But GOT is well known for that anyway.

[Benji]

8 minutes ago, LUKIE said:

It's a significantly different ideology to time travel then previously noted in time travel fiction.

Spoiler

Really? Plenty of time travel fiction features paradoxes. Heck, a lot of them are used in heroic fate/destiny tropes all the time. It's a tale as old as time travel itself.

I entirely get not liking paradoxes, but it's not bad story telling in the slightest. It told a terrifically sad story, one that made a pretty tragic character even more tragic.

And even if no-one does have free will in it - why do we care? The show is entertainment, it's not going to make the journey any less fun. It's all pre-determined anyway - just by the writers not the Old Gods or the New

 

[Nerf]

4 minutes ago, LUKIE said:

 

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It's not Chaos Effect though, nor really time travel. It isn't something in the future being altered because of the past. It is literally the death of Hodor creating Hodor. It's a significantly different ideology to time travel then previously noted in time travel fiction.

It's not like if Bran didn't go back in time then Hodor wouldn't be Hodor. Hodor was already Hodor before he went back in time. It essentially means no one has free will and everything is already planned.

To put it in context. It's not someone choosing to travel back in time and changing something in the past to effect the future. The future is effecting the past. It's dramatically changed the way we should view the GOT Universe and if it doesn't... bad storytelling. But GOT is well known for that anyway.

Spoiler

Did you even watch the show? They literally spent like three episodes showing that Hodor was clearly just some (admittedly outcast) normal kid, to further empathize that Bran had fucked with the future by warging into him during the time travel.

 

[LUKIE]

9 minutes ago, Benji said:

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Really? Plenty of time travel fiction features paradoxes. Heck, a lot of them are used in heroic fate/destiny tropes all the time. It's a tale as old as time travel itself.

I entirely get not liking paradoxes, but it's not bad story telling in the slightest. It told a terrifically sad story, one that made a pretty tragic character even more tragic.

And even if no-one does have free will in it - why do we care? The show is entertainment, it's not going to make the journey any less fun. It's all pre-determined anyway - just by the writers not the Old Gods or the New

I understand paradoxes. But most paradoxes are something akin of Fry going back in time to have sex with his grandmother creating himself. It's the past affecting the future. That isn't what is happening here and I haven't ever seen the future affecting the past in this manner.

There is no justification for this paradox. If I try and think of other ideas to justify it, it doesn't add up. If James Cole went back in time and changed the course of events so the world wasn't destroyed then he would likely not be in the position he was in which would mean he came from a parallel universe.

8 minutes ago, Nerf said:

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Did you even watch the show? They literally spent like three episodes showing that Hodor was clearly just some (admittedly outcast) normal kid, to further empathize that Bran had fucked with the future by warging into him during the time travel.

 

I don't understand why this is difficult to understand. The fact that Bran was in a position to warg into Hodor is because Hodor is Hodor. How does Bran create Hodor in the future if Hodor doesn't exist in the past? Hodor has to be Hodor to create Hodor. That sentence right there is fucking ridiculous and changes an entire Universe.

 

[Nerf]

I legit have no idea what you're trying to say, tbh.

[Gazz]

I get what Lukie is saying, at some point in time, in the universe, whatever, Wylis never originallly became Hodor because there was no previous Hodor.

It's the same idea that how can Dave Lister be Dave Lister's dad because at some point there had to have been an original Dave Lister whose dad wasn't Dave Lister. But there is. It's fiction. Fictional universes have fictional rules.

Game of Thrones has always been about closed-loop time travel, destiny and prophecy. A lack of free will is hardly a ground breaking concept.

Take for example 'Azor Ahai', who will save the world from darkness by defeating the White Walkers. Whoever that is, their destiny is, has and always will be to defeat the White Walkers and nothing, including death will stop them from fulfilling that prophecy.

[LUKIE]

It's really not difficult:

 

 

Hodor already exists as Hodor. He is already affected by Bran going into the past before Bran goes into the past. Hodor essentially becomes Hodor because of his own death while Bran is warging as Hodor.

So then, what is the reasoning for this? Bran can't be in the position he is in to go into the past to create Hodor unless Hodor is already Hodor.

What I am saying is that no one has free will. Their destiny is already put in place. We aren't watching people make decisions and choices to affect a reality, we are watching a puppet show with a linear timeline that is already written out. Nothing else can justify how Wylis becomes Hodor. If future Bran doesn't come back to create Hodor by essentially hearing his own death he can't become Hodor. If Hodor isn't Hodor Bran is not in that position.

 

5 minutes ago, Gazz said:

I get what Lukie is saying, at some point in time, in the universe, whatever, Wylis never originallly became Hodor because there was no previous Hodor.

It's the same idea that how can Dave Lister be Dave Lister's dad because at some point there had to have been an original Dave Lister whose dad wasn't Dave Lister. But there is. It's fiction. Fictional universes have fictional rules.

Game of Thrones has always been about closed-loop time travel, destiny and prophecy. A lack of free will is hardly a ground breaking concept.

Take for example 'Azor Ahai', who will save the world from darkness by defeating the White Walkers. Whoever that is, their destiny is, has and always will be to defeat the White Walkers and nothing, including death will stop them from fulfilling that prophecy.

So essentially we are not watching people make choices. We are watching a guy writing a book and it being performed on stage.

EDIT: Just to clarify. I have literally no problem with people feeling what they are feeling because of the revel or anything along those lines. But I personally think it's a terrible bit of a story telling and there are ramifications far beyond one character to make it all make sense.

[Nerf]

1 minute ago, LUKIE said:

It's really not difficult:

 

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Hodor already exists as Hodor. He is already affected by Bran going into the past before Bran goes into the past. Hodor essentially becomes Hodor because of his own death while Bran is warging as Hodor.

So then, what is the reasoning for this? Bran can't be in the position he is in to go into the past to create Hodor unless Hodor is already Hodor.

What I am saying is that no one has free will. Their destiny is already put in place. We aren't watching people make decisions and choices to affect a reality, we are watching a puppet show with a linear timeline that is already written out. Nothing else can justify how Wylis becomes Hodor. If future Bran doesn't come back to create Hodor by essentially hearing his own death he can't become Hodor. If Hodor isn't Hodor Bran is not in that position.

 

Spoiler

No, Hodor existed as Wylis. The Hodor we see in real time is a consequence of Bran warging into him during the time travel scene. Bran has affected the future by altering the past.

 

[gunnar hendershow]

That's true, sometimes when time travel is involved we actually don't see the "original" timeline and we are dropped into the action in a later timeline. It's actually a very useful storytelling device for explaining away some paradoxes.

[LUKIE]

1 minute ago, Nerf said:

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No, Hodor existed as Wylis. The Hodor we see in real time is a consequence of Bran warging into him during the time travel scene. Bran has affected the future by altering the past.

But that doesn't make sense. Hodor is already Hodor by the time this happens. For him to affect Wylis he needs to be Hodor to become Hodor.

Bran couldn't get to the point he was at without Hodor. Wylis became Hodor because of the way he died.

Look at it this way. If Hodor was not there would Bran have been in the position to create Hodor, and if so what purpose would that have had?

 

[Gazz]

5 minutes ago, LUKIE said:

So essentially we are not watching people make choices. We are watching a guy writing a book and it being performed on stage.

You know it's fake, right?

I don't understand why you're making such an issue of applying real world theoretical physics and philosophy to a situation, yet you seem to have no scientific issue with 'teenage boy can enter the conciousness of people, animals and trees at will' and 'teenage boy is being stalked by army of undead supernatural beings' or 'fire immune girl owns three sequentially hermaphroditic dragons'.

[LUKIE]

Just now, damshow said:

 

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That's true, sometimes when time travel is involved we actually don't see the "original" timeline and we are dropped into the action in a later timeline. It's actually a very useful storytelling device for explaining away some paradoxes.

I'm not sure if this is directed at me but if it is:

We are accepting that the GOT timeline we are viewing is a different timeline. It still doesn't justify how Hodor is Hodor.

 

Just now, Gazz said:

You know it's fake, right?

I don't understand why you're making such an issue of applying real world theoretical physics and philosophy to a situation, yet you seem to have no scientific issue with 'teenage boy can enter the conciousness of people, animals and trees at will' and 'teenage boy is being stalked by army of undead supernatural beings' or 'fire immune girl owns three sequentially hermaphroditic dragons'.

There is a significant difference between loldragons and lolnoonehasfreewillandtheirentirelifeisalreadyplannedoutbeforetheyareborn.

Yeah I am probably making it out to be bigger then it is. But it's pretty fucking big. And if it isn't... shit storytelling.

[Nerf]

5 minutes ago, LUKIE said:

 

It makes perfect sense.

Hodor isn't already Hodor. Everything we'd already seen of Hodor to that point is an alternate timeline because of Bran's actions.

[Benji]

Spoiler

Lukie, you're thinking as if time as a divergence. If fate exists as it would seem, Bran always went back, time is linear and it was always fated to happen. Time doesn't exist as we think of it - past to present - time (at least in the GoT universe) exists... well... all at the same time. There is no past, present or future because it is, was, and always will be. Bran isn't actually changing the time line at all, Bran is just moving to the place in the time line he always was. Basically there's no BTTF style divergence, time is not even a line, time is just a dot that is.

TL;DR - there's plenty of time travel theory that makes sense of this, you're thinking too linearly (or not linearly enough, depending on your perspective) at one particularly kind of theory.

 

[Nerf]

2 minutes ago, Benji said:

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Lukie, you're thinking as if time as a divergence. If fate exists as it would seem, Bran always went back, time is linear and it was always fated to happen. Time doesn't exist as we think of it - past to present - time (at least in the GoT universe) exists... well... all at the same time. There is no past, present or future because it is, was, and always will be. Bran isn't actually changing the time line at all, Bran is just moving to the place in the time line he always was. Basically there's no BTTF style divergence, time is not even a line, time is just a dot that is.

TL;DR - there's plenty of time travel theory that makes sense of this, you're thinking too linearly (or not linearly enough, depending on your perspective) at one particularly kind of theory.

 

I don't think it's even as complicated as that. Maybe I'm wrong, tho.

[Benji]

Oh there's plenty of time travel theories that could go with this, I just went with trying to explain the simplest one and note that I think Lukie is thinking of time travel in a specific concept of the device.

Despite what I said, the BTTF theory of divergence could actually be viable, but since we've not actually seen the divergence, I feel it's less valid.

I still think it's weird to be worried about whether fate exists or not in a fictional universe though, since fate does exist in every fictional universe, because the writer creates the fate. It doesn't affect the actual journey in any way, because you as a viewer don't know the entire fate of everyone. Even if you do, that doesn't make the story any less amazing - you know the fates of almost every person in FF7 Crisis Core, particularly the main character, but his story and ending is still probably one of the best stories and endings I've ever played.

But what doesn't annoy him might annoy me, so to each their own.

 

[MDK]

It's no weirder than Lister being his own Dad. 

[Your Mom]

Spoiler

meh

 

[Maxx]

1 hour ago, LUKIE said:

It's really not difficult:

 

  Reveal hidden contents

Hodor already exists as Hodor. He is already affected by Bran going into the past before Bran goes into the past. Hodor essentially becomes Hodor because of his own death while Bran is warging as Hodor.

So then, what is the reasoning for this? Bran can't be in the position he is in to go into the past to create Hodor unless Hodor is already Hodor.

What I am saying is that no one has free will. Their destiny is already put in place. We aren't watching people make decisions and choices to affect a reality, we are watching a puppet show with a linear timeline that is already written out. Nothing else can justify how Wylis becomes Hodor. If future Bran doesn't come back to create Hodor by essentially hearing his own death he can't become Hodor. If Hodor isn't Hodor Bran is not in that position.

 

So essentially we are not watching people make choices. We are watching a guy writing a book and it being performed on stage.

EDIT: Just to clarify. I have literally no problem with people feeling what they are feeling because of the revel or anything along those lines. But I personally think it's a terrible bit of a story telling and there are ramifications far beyond one character to make it all make sense.

I get all your saying, but the conclusion you've reached here is essentially confirming that yes, this is a television show.  Is that really that bad?