www.bfi.org.uk/sight-and-so...

Literally the first thing that came to mind. www.youtube.com/watch?v=Awde...

I had this with Tobey Maguire, Elijah Wood and Jake Gyllenhaal.

The attempt to draw parallels with guns doesn't work; there is an infrastructure of police and courts that can step in and enforce the law if you give up your arms. In the case of nation states there is no higher authority, and ultimately the only law that counts is the threat of force.

You'd think he'd have ready access to moisturiser.

It's a pretty fucking clear example, though, isn't it?

1. Give up your nukes in the Pollyannaish belief that aggressive, nuclear-armed nations will do the same.

2. Aggressive, nuclear-armed nations go "lol no" and invade you now you're defenceless.

3. <surprised Pikachu>

Ukraine gave up its nuclear weapons in 1994 and became a party to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons. Twenty years later it was invaded by its nuclear-armed neighbour. In a world where the US is sabre-rattling and threatening former allies, that position is untenable.

I can't believe anyone would look at the state of the world right now, with Trump sabre-rattling over Greenland and Putin invading Ukraine immediately after they gave up their nukes, and take this Pollyannaish view.

The instant they gave it up, they were invaded by the neighbouring nuclear-armed strongman.

We now have the USA turning into a similar threat to Western Europe.

Do you really think Trump and Putin would reciprocate if you gave up your nukes? They'll laugh and go, "nice country, we'll take it."

🚨🚂

Honestly at this point we don't really *need* GRRM to finish the saga because it's so obvious where it was meant to go. If he carks it and you really need the closure, get a brain trust of Bryan Cogman, Elio M. García Jr. and Linda Antonsson to polish the books off based on GRRM's notes.

With that in mind it's clear that Dany and Tyrion will be remembered by history as monsters despite their efforts to be good people; Bran will become the AI ruler of Westeros, and Jon will (probably) be remembered as Azor Ahai after dying heroically in battle and killing Dany, tragically.

GRRM loves Dramatic Irony, stuff characters thought was vitally important turning out to be inconsequential (like Ned's letter from the king), how history remembers characters vs how they see themselves, and prophecies that apply to multiple characters depending on how you look at them.

Yeah, but that's largely the fault of the showrunners for dropping the ball GRRM handed to them. GRRM seems to have slipped into a blue funk because he thinks people hated the plot beats he'd come up with, when the problem is simply the execution of them.

Like I mentioned elsewhere, I think the plot beats that GRRM gave the showrunners are clearly there, and work perfectly well. It's just that the showrunners 1) compressed the storyline down massively and 2) didn't have a handle on stuff like medieval battle tactics.

Bran becoming effectively an all-powerful AI ruling over Westeros – thus cutting the Gordian Knot of "who will take the throne," and proving the question to be entirely inconsequential – is almost certainly one of the plot beats that GRRM gave to the showrunners. It's very on brand for him.