Game of Throngs

[Yakk]

That indicates that 300 miles <= 100 leagues to some degree of certainty. Ie, maybe 100 leagues along the roads (maybe leagues stones are used like mileposts?), but 300 miles "as the raven flies"?

[pseudoidiot]

Depending on the exact wording it may simply be 100 leagues/300 miles as the raven flies. In other words that a league is 3 miles.

[gmalivuk]

Point being that a league must be *at least* 3 miles, ruling out shorter versions like the Roman one. (And since an English league is *exactly* 3 miles, I figure that's the most reasonable interpretation.)

Tangentially, my experience trying to watch the first episode was pretty much exactly this, with the one exception that I didn't check HuluPlus, not having an account with them.

Seriously, hbo, if you're going to make it this difficult for me to give you money when I'm genuinely trying to find a way to do that, then I guess you don't get my money.

[pseudoidiot]

Which is a shame, because HBO Go is actually pretty nice from what I've seen. They should seriously consider letting people just pay to use it separately.

Then again I'm still not giving them money, I just lucked into 3 free months of HBO. Don't know what I'll do for next season. heh

[Dark567]

Which is a shame, because HBO Go is actually pretty nice from what I've seen. They should seriously consider letting people just pay to use it separately.

I don't think they can, due to their current agreements with cable providers. When you get HBOgo, you have to link it to your cable account to prove to the both HBO and the cable company your an active customer.

[pseudoidiot]

Oh, I know. That's why I think it's a shame.

[Yakk]

Tangentially, my experience trying to watch the first episode was pretty much exactly this, with the one exception that I didn't check HuluPlus, not having an account with them.

Seriously, hbo, if you're going to make it this difficult for me to give you money when I'm genuinely trying to find a way to do that, then I guess you don't get my money.

They want your money. They just want about 100$ of it a month to watch their shows (cable+HBO). (of which, they pay ~90$ to other folks, and keep 10$ -- but the other folks do most of their marketing, distribution, and customer-facing interaction for them -- and they get money from people who wouldn't go off and give 100$ a month for HBO, but would spend that amount of money on HBO+SportsNet+TLC).

You, quite understandably, don't want to pay 100$ a month to watch one show.

[Diadem]

Well it's a genuine concern. It's often needlessly difficult and complicated to give producers or artists your money.

They should sell stand-alone licenses. If I could buy a license to watch S2 of Game of Thrones from HBO for a reasonable fee, I'd do that. I don't need it streamed, I don't need their distribution servers. I can download it myself faster than anything they can offer. I just want to give them some of my money to thank them for making a great show. Not too much, a reasonable fee.

Heck, even better would be if I could pay them to make the third season. You know, crowd funding. That would be an awesome way to produce TV shows ánd keep them free to watch.

[LaserGuy]

That indicates that 300 miles <= 100 leagues to some degree of certainty. Ie, maybe 100 leagues along the roads (maybe leagues stones are used like mileposts?), but 300 miles "as the raven flies"?

The author says that 3 miles = 1 league exactly in an interview. He also says explicitly that Wall is 100 leagues long, but he is intentionally ambiguous about distances and travel times in the books. He also mentions elsewhere that statements like "It's 1000 leagues away" should not necessarily be taken literally, just like such statements are not normally taken literally in the real world. The person might just be meaning "really, really, far".

[Yakk]

Well it's a genuine concern. It's often needlessly difficult and complicated to give producers or artists your money.

They should sell stand-alone licenses. If I could buy a license to watch S2 of Game of Thrones from HBO for a reasonable fee, I'd do that. I don't need it streamed, I don't need their distribution servers. I can download it myself faster than anything they can offer. I just want to give them some of my money to thank them for making a great show. Not too much, a reasonable fee.

Heck, even better would be if I could pay them to make the third season. You know, crowd funding. That would be an awesome way to produce TV shows ánd keep them free to watch.

How about 500$? You get to show it to up to 10 people in the privacy of your own home.

Or you can wait a year, and get it for 50$.

In both cases, distribution will be included for free.

(The problem is you don't think it is worth 500$ to see it right now, and would rather pay 50$ or less, and/or you disagree with their decision to hand some of that money to someone else.)

[Obby]

Well it's a genuine concern. It's often needlessly difficult and complicated to give producers or artists your money.

They should sell stand-alone licenses. If I could buy a license to watch S2 of Game of Thrones from HBO for a reasonable fee, I'd do that. I don't need it streamed, I don't need their distribution servers. I can download it myself faster than anything they can offer. I just want to give them some of my money to thank them for making a great show. Not too much, a reasonable fee.

Heck, even better would be if I could pay them to make the third season. You know, crowd funding. That would be an awesome way to produce TV shows ánd keep them free to watch.

I would really like it if I were able to selectively subscribe to HBO, because I do enjoy some of their other shows. $10 per month or something like that I feel would be a fair price to only subscribe to HBO. Though, Comcast probably would hate it, since I don't subscribe to any TV service at all right now, so them having to pipe in just HBO might cost them something.

Spoilered for OT:

Spoiler:

I actually really liked the idea that I saw on Reddit, where it was a Steam-like interface with each channel listed similarly to how Steam currently lists games, and you could pick and choose and build your own packages or select just individual channels. I'd love it if I could get HBO for 3 months, then Showtime for 3 months so I could watch Dexter, or something else they may have that would catch my eye.

/pipe dreams

Anyway, finally got around to watching the first episode last night. I feel like it was an appropriate start to the second book. It sets up the war pretty well, while moving the important characters into place for their roles that they have to play in the story. I am pretty curious how they're going to tackle Robb's appearances, since he really wasn't shown directly too often in the book. I thought that that was kind of the point of his thing with Jayne Westerling; it was supposed to feel like it came out of left field. Plus it's pretty important that this is a surprise for... later events...

[Yakk]

3.86 million viewers tuned in for the "Thrones" season premiere, titled "The North Remembers," with the final number climbing to 4.22 million when taking two subsequent airings into account.

Suppose 5 million people watch HBO for Game of Thrones. And we'll be cruel, and say that HBO's only revenue will come from those people after they turf their cable clients...

A total of 40 million US subscribers of HBO exist. So 1/8th of the subscriber base watches Game of Thrones as soon as possible.

For 42 million non-US subscribers, HBO earns 1 billion dollars a year or so.

Or 25$ per subscriber. Now, if we assume 12.5% of these subscribers would continue to pay if they only got HBO, that is 200$ per Game of Thrones watcher per year.

Now, non-HBO companies that buy HBO products or channels end up marketing them for HBO. Suppose they have a 30% marketing budget that HBO doesn't have to pay. HBO now needs 285$ per non-HBO subscriber.

This presumes zero distribution requirements for HBO. I'll be generous, and presume this is the near future, and HBO just needs to set up servers. And these servers and supporting clients on said servers on them only cost 10% of what HBO's revenue. So that's 320$ per watcher of game of thrones required.

Now, game of thrones is weekly for 13 weeks. Call it 4 months. So the cost per month ends up being 80$ per month for the right to watch game of thrones live. Give or take.

The numbers will, in the end, be much better because HBO gets revenue from other shows as well. But the cable companies who resell HBO both give HBO "marginal" customers with their subscription model (people who only buy HBO because it comes bundled with their sports pak), do marketing and recruit customers, provide front-end technical support, deal with local regulations and regulators, and do a myriad of other services for HBO. Which HBO would have to replicate in order to replace them as a delivery vehicle.

It also isn't just the matter of picking up marginal customers. The idea that HBO is worth 100s of dollars a year is part of the reason why they can charge that much. An alternative "cheaper" channel ends up devaluing their perceived worth in their primary channel. Plus, as they become competitors to their own distributors, their distributors get lots of incentive to screw them. Why push HBO when the result is people buying it a-la-cart and bypassing cable TV entirely?

I don't doubt the moment that some upstart content producer and broadcaster (like netflix) successfully starts selling access to top-tier premium TV HBO will follow suit.

[Diadem]

Well it's a genuine concern. It's often needlessly difficult and complicated to give producers or artists your money.

They should sell stand-alone licenses. If I could buy a license to watch S2 of Game of Thrones from HBO for a reasonable fee, I'd do that. I don't need it streamed, I don't need their distribution servers. I can download it myself faster than anything they can offer. I just want to give them some of my money to thank them for making a great show. Not too much, a reasonable fee.

Heck, even better would be if I could pay them to make the third season. You know, crowd funding. That would be an awesome way to produce TV shows ánd keep them free to watch.

How about 500$? You get to show it to up to 10 people in the privacy of your own home.

Or you can wait a year, and get it for 50$.

What kind of question is this? No, of course I won't pay $500 to watch GoT. What does that have to do with anything?

Production cost of GoT is estimated to be about US$50-60 million. Let's be very generous and tack on another 40 million for marketing. Total production cost of a season: $100 million. Considering they have about 5 million viewers, that is $20 per viewer. So selling individual licenses to internet users for about $20 per season would be reasonable.

And you know what, I'd pay that.

And of course I understand why the powers that be have a vested interest in making sure such a system won't happen. But even they can't stop progress forever.

[Dark567]

Production cost of GoT is estimated to be about US$50-60 million. Let's be very generous and tack on another 40 million for marketing. Total production cost of a season: $100 million. Considering they have about 5 million viewers, that is $20 per viewer. So selling individual licenses to internet users for about $20 per season would be reasonable.

And you know what, I'd pay that.

Yeah, but you also have to pay for distribution and a chunk HBO's overhead(offices, corporate governance) and add in a profit margin. Which is why the DVD's cost $60 instead of $20 or the digital license that costs $40.

[SlyReaper]

Now, game of thrones is weekly for 13 weeks.

That's funny, seeing as my DVD boxset has 10 episodes.

[Yakk]

Well it's a genuine concern. It's often needlessly difficult and complicated to give producers or artists your money.

They should sell stand-alone licenses. If I could buy a license to watch S2 of Game of Thrones from HBO for a reasonable fee, I'd do that. I don't need it streamed, I don't need their distribution servers. I can download it myself faster than anything they can offer. I just want to give them some of my money to thank them for making a great show. Not too much, a reasonable fee.

Heck, even better would be if I could pay them to make the third season. You know, crowd funding. That would be an awesome way to produce TV shows ánd keep them free to watch.

How about 500$? You get to show it to up to 10 people in the privacy of your own home.

Or you can wait a year, and get it for 50$.

What kind of question is this? No, of course I won't pay $500 to watch GoT. What does that have to do with anything?

You are saying "they won't take my money".

But they are. They will let you watch GoT for about 500$ US. Right now.

You just don't want to pay that much.

Production cost of GoT is estimated to be about US$50-60 million. Let's be very generous and tack on another 40 million for marketing. Total production cost of a season: $100 million. Considering they have about 5 million viewers, that is $20 per viewer. So selling individual licenses to internet users for about $20 per season would be reasonable.

And you know what, I'd pay that.

The Game of Thrones's budget has been compared to that of the TV series Rome.[15] The pilot reportedly cost HBO between US$5 and 10 million,[14] and the total budget for the first season has been estimated at US$50–60 million.[16] In the second season, the show obtained a 15% increase in budget in order to be able to stage the most important battle in the "clash of kings", the civil war that is the season's focus.[17]

So 60$ million first season, 70$ million second season.

Second, you didn't include any profit margin. At all. Nor did you account for the possibility of failure -- they go off and put together a big 60$ million bet, and it loses. Nor the cost of capital (the revenue is going to be ~ a year after the spending).

You are also presuming that every one of the 5 million watchers will spend 20$ specifically to watch Game of Thrones, and otherwise not change their spending habits. And that each of them are perfectly willing to get ahold of the material themselves. And they won't, once they realize that they can get the material themselves, choose to not pay the 20$. What percentage of people who download it will pay the 20$? You need to multiply your own price by that factor. Which easily reduces the percent who will pay... hey, is there someone willing to spend 100 million for the only legitimate copy?

You are also presuming that this massive digital distribution doesn't increase piracy in ways that eat into their revenue stream. Or that becoming a competitor to their distributors won't cause them massive amounts of damage as their distributors start screwing them.

And that not one of the people who spend 20$ on game of thrones would then choose to cancel their HBO subscription -- before, there where three shows they liked, now there is 2 (with their favorite a-la-carte for 20$), and they decide that they don't want to spend 20$ a month on two shows. Competing against themselves can be painful.

In theory, the power of copyright is the ability to enforce and have a monopoly on the creative content you made, and set the price and distribution however you wish on that content. You seem to want a mandatory license on all creative content, where they are not allowed to charge more than a zero profit margin.

---

Oops. Ya, 10 episodes.

[gmalivuk]

]How about 500$? You get to show it to up to 10 people in the privacy of your own home.

Or you can wait a year, and get it for 50$.

But because they're unwilling to make it possible for me to spend $50 *now* instead of waiting a year, they instead will get exactly $0 from me for the new episodes as they come out. So they're still the ones losing out in the end.

(And while Diadem's $20 doesn't assume a profit margin, it's also less than what some of us would be willing to pay. Plus I imagine the total number of viewers is rather more than 5 million, if that figure just comes from counts of HBO subscribers and ignores those of us who download it because they don't make it practical for us to pay for it, along with anyone who watches through someone else's HBO subscription, which is what I did for the first season when I was home for Christmas.)

[Dark567]

]How about 500$? You get to show it to up to 10 people in the privacy of your own home.

Or you can wait a year, and get it for 50$.

But because they're unwilling to make it possible for me to spend $50 *now* instead of waiting a year, they instead will get exactly $0 from me for the new episodes as they come out. So they're still the ones losing out in the end.

Maybe. They might be more than making up for it with subscribers. HBO is one of the most successful(profitwise) non-broadcast stations(I think number 2 behind ESPN). They probably are doing something right.

[gmalivuk]

They are still losing out on my $50, are they not?

[Dark567]

They are still losing out on my $50, are they not?

Sure, but they offer GoT at $50 they might lose a subscriber for your purchase. A subscriber is worth much more than your one time purchase.

[Yakk]

And really, if they aren't dumb, they can keep track of IP address usage of torrents, and toss you in jail in a few years (or sue you for everything you own at 250k per episode you torrented). Too many people being punished to be realistic? The percentage of the population that torrents is about the same as the percentage that use illegal drugs, and the war on drugs was sustained for decades. And they only have to pull off a 0.1% success rate, and a 10:1 return on fine amount, to pull off 250$ per pirate.

You might want to be careful about generating piles of quarter-million dollars in liability.

[Diadem]

Well it's a genuine concern. It's often needlessly difficult and complicated to give producers or artists your money.

They should sell stand-alone licenses. If I could buy a license to watch S2 of Game of Thrones from HBO for a reasonable fee, I'd do that. I don't need it streamed, I don't need their distribution servers. I can download it myself faster than anything they can offer. I just want to give them some of my money to thank them for making a great show. Not too much, a reasonable fee.

Heck, even better would be if I could pay them to make the third season. You know, crowd funding. That would be an awesome way to produce TV shows ánd keep them free to watch.

How about 500$? You get to show it to up to 10 people in the privacy of your own home.

Or you can wait a year, and get it for 50$.

What kind of question is this? No, of course I won't pay $500 to watch GoT. What does that have to do with anything?

You are saying "they won't take my money".

But they are. They will let you watch GoT for about 500$ US. Right now.

I said "It's often needlessly difficult and complicted to give producers or artists your money". This is still true. How does paying for an entire HBO + cable subscription just to get 1 show not fall under that? Besides, I can't get US cable, I'm not from the US.

Production cost of GoT is estimated to be about US$50-60 million. Let's be very generous and tack on another 40 million for marketing. Total production cost of a season: $100 million. Considering they have about 5 million viewers, that is $20 per viewer. So selling individual licenses to internet users for about $20 per season would be reasonable.

And you know what, I'd pay that.

The Game of Thrones's budget has been compared to that of the TV series Rome.[15] The pilot reportedly cost HBO between US$5 and 10 million,[14] and the total budget for the first season has been estimated at US$50–60 million.[16] In the second season, the show obtained a 15% increase in budget in order to be able to stage the most important battle in the "clash of kings", the civil war that is the season's focus.[17]

So 60$ million first season, 70$ million second season.

Second, you didn't include any profit margin. At all. Nor did you account for the possibility of failure -- they go off and put together a big 60$ million bet, and it loses. Nor the cost of capital (the revenue is going to be ~ a year after the spending).

Fair enough, I did not include a profit margin. I did include a 40 million mark-up on the actual production costs though. Mentally divide that as 30 million for marketing and 10 million profit if it makes you feel better. Note though that production costs include salaries of actors and writers. So profit would really only be profit for the financiers.

You are also presuming that every one of the 5 million watchers will spend 20$ specifically to watch Game of Thrones, and otherwise not change their spending habits. And that each of them are perfectly willing to get ahold of the material themselves. And they won't, once they realize that they can get the material themselves, choose to not pay the 20$. What percentage of people who download it will pay the 20$? You need to multiply your own price by that factor. Which easily reduces the percent who will pay... hey, is there someone willing to spend 100 million for the only legitimate copy?

Your are looking at this the wrong way. HBO is producing GoT now for 5 million people (not sure that figure is correct, I think it was pulled from air somewhere. But anyway, let's use that). So they are willing to pay 100 million for 5 million viewers. Apparently every viewer is thus worth at least $20 (and presumably not much more, or the show would have a higher budget). This is what viewers right now are already actually spending on the show, only in an indirect way. All I would like to see is that it's also allowed to spend it in an direct way as well.

[LaserGuy]

You are also presuming that every one of the 5 million watchers will spend 20$ specifically to watch Game of Thrones, and otherwise not change their spending habits. And that each of them are perfectly willing to get ahold of the material themselves. And they won't, once they realize that they can get the material themselves, choose to not pay the 20$. What percentage of people who download it will pay the 20$? You need to multiply your own price by that factor. Which easily reduces the percent who will pay... hey, is there someone willing to spend 100 million for the only legitimate copy?

No, I think what he's assuming is that the actual number of people watching Game of Thrones is probably much, much higher than 5 million. The 5 million people are the ones who already have HBO. Presumably at least some of those people like HBO shows enough generally to continue paying for it. I can't imagine there's that many people who are paying for an annual subscription to HBO for the sole purpose of watching Game of Thrones, and won't use the service otherwise.

So rather, the assumption should be this: given that there are 5 million people who are perfectly willing to pay full price for an HBO that happens to include Game of Thrones, and another market of people who are unwilling to pay for HBO, but may be willing to pay for Game of Thrones alone, why shouldn't HBO simply provide a method for people to pay for the one show that they want, when they want it. I'm sure that somebody with some experience in economics would be able to figure out an appropriate price for an a-la-carte version of Game of Thrones that would make it worth it for people to continue to subscribe to HBO and make a tidy extra profit on people who only want one or two shows.

You are also presuming that this massive digital distribution doesn't increase piracy in ways that eat into their revenue stream.

Honestly, I would be surprised to find that this has any effect. It's not like it's hard to find high quality pirated copies of the show as it is. You don't even need to torrent it. Within an hour or two of the end of the premiere, you could go to any of hundreds of different websites that were streaming it.

[Dark567]

So rather, the assumption should be this: given that there are 5 million people who are perfectly willing to pay full price for an HBO that happens to include Game of Thrones, and another market of people who are unwilling to pay for HBO, but may be willing to pay for Game of Thrones alone, why shouldn't HBO simply provide a method for people to pay for the one show that they want, when they want it. I'm sure that somebody with some experience in economics would be able to figure out an appropriate price for an a-la-carte version of Game of Thrones that would make it worth it for people to continue to subscribe to HBO and make a tidy extra profit on people who only want one or two shows.

You don't think HBO hires people to figure that out? Possibly coming to the conclusion that the price point would be so high to not hurt their subscription service that it simply wouldn't be worth it.

[Felstaff]

I'm just posting in here so it's in my egopost. I've finally caught up with the series to be able to watch it with the rest of the American/Torrenting world.

I enjoyed the episode. The confrontation between Robb and Jaime was particularly well-executed, as it showed us how potentially great (in the magnificent sense) Robb could become, seeing as he's only 16.

[latter book spoiler]

Spoiler:

For those knowing why this was spoilered in the place it is - fuck you, George R. R. Martin, you son of a bitch. I say that roughly three times per book.

Still, Martin shied away from all of Robb's three victories in the books, and the TV show has done the same. "you've won 3 victories, Robb Stark" ...when? I count, like, one, and only the aftermath of that (where they come out of the Whispering Wood to a tearful Catelyn Stark and her strangely clipped accent) was shown/implied. Series 1 spoiler:

Spoiler:

I thought the show might have shown them actually capturing Jaime. Or, you know, a bit of a scuffle at least. TV is made for action!

The first half of the episode, Joffrey's acting was woeful. By the confrontation with Cersei towards the end, it was much improved. He certainly became scarily malicious whereas earlier (during the tourney) he was mincey, bordering on pantomime.

I loved the 'knowledge is power'/'power is power' scene between Cersei and Peter Baelish. I don't recall that part in the book! episode/book spoiler:

Spoiler:

(then again, I can't remember reading about the horrific climactic scene, too, where we learn about the significance of Gendry. I need to re-read it. You'd'a thunk I'd remember a bit of babydashing.)

[LaserGuy]

Some book spoilers...

Spoiler:

I loved the 'knowledge is power'/'power is power' scene between Cersei and Peter Baelish. I don't recall that part in the book! episode/book spoiler:[spoiler](then again, I can't remember reading about the horrific climactic scene, too, where we learn about the significance of Gendry. I need to re-read it. You'd'a thunk I'd remember a bit of babydashing.)

Spoiler:

The baby dashing scene was discussed in the book, but only obliquely. None of those characters have a POV in the series. I believe it actually happens before Tyrion arrives, and he manages to get the details out of Slynt while getting him drunk. He then promptly ships Slynt off to the Wall. In the book, it is one of Slynt's cronies who does the dirty work, and Tyrion says something to the effect of "if he happens to fall out of the ship and drown, that would be okay". That character doesn't show up on the Wall when Slynt does...

We learn that the guards are looking for the bastards in the book when they catch up to Arya's party at the infamous inn at the crossing. She thinks they're after her, but they actually don't recognize her at all. Yoren manages to chase them away.

I think the power is power scene was also added to the series. Again, neither Cersei or Baelish have a POV in book 2, so unless it came to pass that someone told Tyrion (or Sansa, I guess) about it, we wouldn't have any way of hearing about it. Honestly, probably more than half of the Baelish scenes in the show are new content.

TV is made for action!

My understanding is that this is basically a budget constraint problem. Same reason why Tyrion was knocked unconscious at the start of his battle: there just wasn't enough money to film the whole thing. Apparently they found some money this season for a few big battles though.

[Obby]

I loved the 'knowledge is power'/'power is power' scene between Cersei and Peter Baelish. I don't recall that part in the book!

I think the show is making Varys and Peter a little different than they are in the books. There was a much more overt rivalry between them in season 1 than I remember there being in the first book... or, for that matter, the entire series. In the books, they always seemed to tolerate each other, they each knew the other had ways of getting information and were each very clever, but they were never actively working against the other (that I can remember, at least, it's been a while since I read the series). I always thought it was GRRM's way of not-so-subtly hinting at a future conflict in the books, since he's co-executive producer of the show.

Versus in the books (at least after DWD):

Spoiler:

In the books, I feel like that Peter is much more after power for his own sake. He really wants to prove that he is powerful, and can influence how others act. Whereas Varys, while similarly powerful and influential, has completely different motivations. He specifically says he's working for the good of the realm at the end of DWD, which had me thinking he's full on supporting the Targaryens. These two motives are not necessarily contradictory (at least from my view).

[ArgonV]

So how much is HBO per month in America? I can get it over here for €15 per month over here

[pseudoidiot]

I always see it for $15/month whenever I've paid attention.

[gmalivuk]

If it's possible to pay $15/month for just HBO, without also paying quite a lot more than that per month for the full cable package, please tell me which provider you have.

About Verys at the end of DWD:

Spoiler:

I don't know that he supports Targaryens in general, so much as he supports this particular one because he thinks it'd be best for the realm.

[pseudoidiot]

Oh no, it's most definitely in addition to existing cable service.

[CorruptUser]

Some book 4/5 spoilers

Spoiler:

IMHO, Petyr and Varys must be working together or have similar/compatible goals, otherwise they would never tolerate the other's continued existence. Each one is the other's greatest threat in the game; it wouldn't make sense for them to both be smart enough to realize this but do nothing to end each other. Perhaps Petyr doesn't mind which king he's under so long as he gets to become an archduke (and if that king is manipulatable, bonus!), and Varys doesn't mind Petyr being an archduke so long as a Tarygayen gets to be king.

Also, I'm going with Jon's mother being Tyrion's ex-wife as my crackpot theory. Not that Tyrion is his real father. Also, Ben Stark is Coldhands and the Others are sort of consumed by a crude form of duty, where all they remember is their greatest desire or some such. Most of the members nightwatch are little more than slaves with a hatred for everyone, wildling and nightwatch; especially the nightwatch, so they have the desire to kill everyone, especially the nightwatch.

[Yakk]

4th Book level spoiler: (includes speculation)

Spoiler:

This is basically all speculation -- it was never explicitly said. Most of this is described in the first few books, however. Jon's mother is a Stark, and his father the mad king. Jon was taken from the bed of blood by his uncle, after his uncle and a dozen knights fought and killed 3 members of the kingsguard, with only 2 survivors. His uncle lied and said Jon was his bastard boy to protect him. Thus Jon has stark blood, and his uncle never cheated on his wife. Jon is a skin changing half-Tarygayen, who (even more spoiler) has been killed, thus freeing him from the oath to the Night's Watch (which ends with your death), allowing him to take a wife, father children, and wear a crown without being an oathbreaker. He won't be the shield in the night, but the sword of light.

TV show level spoiler:

Spoiler:

The Others (or the White Walkers) and the "Ghouls" are not the same thing as far as we know. Others are the things that make people come back from the dead as "Ghouls".

[gmalivuk]

About Jon (Later book spoilers):

Spoiler:

I was also thinking he's Lyanna's son rather than Ned's, but by Rhaegar rather than the mad king, since Rhaegar's the one that actually spent any time with her. Ned's repeated memory of her saying "Promise me, Ned" or something along those lines is what made me think it was her son rather than his, and she made him promise her to raise Jon as his own. I hadn't thought of him as being the sword of light (and that really makes more sense as Dany, since she was born at Dragonstone as the prophecy says and as Maester Aemon concluded), but it is kind of a neat idea.

About the White Walkers (book 2/season 2):

Spoiler:

They are rather explicitly not the ghouls/zombies/whatever, since the latter are clearly walking dead while the former are the more incorporeal things like what Sam killed with his obsidian blade.

[Yakk]

Book level spoilers:

Spoiler:

Yes, Rhaegar. My bad.

Anyhow, this explains both why the king of the swamp people is important, why a huge chunk of the kingsguard would be guarding a tower containing Lyanna in the middle of a civil war, said promise to Lyanna, why Ned is so vague about who the mother is, etc.

The narrative effect of inverting the black brother's oath (which includes a passage about the shield of night), plus the red priestesses annoyance at always dreaming about Jon, is why I thought he might be (or wield) the sword of light.

[gmalivuk]

(Continuing book 5 spoilerificness)

Spoiler:

Yeah, that's true. It's possible this is yet another misinterpretation of prophecy on her part: The person with the sword and the person from Dragonstone who will bring back dragons themselves are not in fact the same. She fairly reasonably thought both might be Stannis, but with him (likely) now dead, she might realize that not only was he neither of those things, but nor was any single individual both of them. And his being another son of Rhaegar gives him (almost -- he is still a bastard after all) equal claim to the throne and Dany's hand as Quentyn.

[pseudoidiot]

More on the book speculations

Spoiler:

Is there a wiki or something somewhere with some passages and things with hints about Jon's true parentage? I've seen it mentioned before but it's been so long since I've read the earlier books that I really can't remember anything that hinted towards him not actually being Ned's son

[Yakk]

Book 5:

Spoiler:

And the dragon has three heads might be a reference to "one prophesy, fulfilled by 3 people".

http://awoiaf.westeros.org/index.php/Jon_Snow#Parentage -- and you can follow link to forum. (These people are independent of my theory, this is the first I've read of them. The book is pretty strong in implying it. GRRM might, out of spite, make it not true!)

[Ulc]

More on the book speculations

Spoiler:

Is there a wiki or something somewhere with some passages and things with hints about Jon's true parentage? I've seen it mentioned before but it's been so long since I've read the earlier books that I really can't remember anything that hinted towards him not actually being Ned's son

Seriously, spoilers

Spoiler:

http://towerofthehand.com/essays/chrisholden/jon_snows_parents.html

By this point everything hints to Jon Snow being a Stark/Targaryen mix by way of Rheagar and Lyanna

[pseudoidiot]

Sweet, thanks. I'm apparently pretty dense on picking up that sort of thing.