Game of Thrones Season 2!

But that's not what you've been saying all along. What you started out saying was that you did not like having to suspend disbelief that the Wall was effective at preventing an invasion, or that the people of the seven kingdoms expected it to be effective.

As to this new point, I will just agree with MentalMaden and say don't try too hard to anticipate Martin, because he might just surprise you.

I'm sorry I apparenly confused everyone but my position here has never changed. If anything I simply stated 1) why the Wall is silly and then 2) expounded on why that silly Wall makes me worry about the story in general.

I don't like having to suspend disbelief into thinking that the Wall is an effective deterrent to invasion when it clearly isn't and probably never was. It's a Maginot Line that the "enemy" (whoever that happens to be at any given moment organized or not) has had 8,000 years to figure out. It's a fundamentally stupid idea for that kind of status quo to be in place that long whether it be a fantasy, real life or otherwise.

But just because I think the very concept of a Wall like this is silly I never once denied that this story was forcing us to accept its key role in the climax of the entire series. The very fact that we're having to "take for granted" the workings of this flawed Wall in order to understand the greater notions of the overall story simply irks me.

I agree that 8000 years is a bit much to ask. But that aside, the idea that the Wall has EVER been an effective deterrent has been entirely dependent on the Night's Watch, and on the nature of the things it is protecting against. Ignoring those aspects of the story is not giving fair consideration to the concept. To recap some of the reasons why it's not such a stretch that the Wall serves a valid purpose (aside from the length of time being what it is):

Regarding Wildlings:
1 - It's not meant to keep out wildlings.
2 - Wildlings don't really care about crossing the Wall anyway.
3 - Wildlings have never ever been organized enough on a whole to get past the Wall and the Watch, except in small numbers (which they do from time to time), even if they DID care.

Regarding Snarks and Grumpkins:
1. The Wall is magical. That helps with the snarks and grumpkins.
2. The snarks and grumpkins rely on winter. The Night's Watch knows this. "Winter is Coming" isn't just a cool catch phrase. Preparation matters.
3. The Night's Watch knows other things - or they once did - which I can't expand on without getting spoilery. They also had some help in the past, which I also cannot expand on.
4. The snarks and grumpkins haven't been seen for a long, long time. That is why the Night's Watch isn't ready to fight them now.They've forgotten, and they've dwindled. In the past, they were ready, and they did know how to fight them, and they did a darn good job of it. But it was never easy, and the Wall never did it all by itself.

With those things in mind, I think it's not that hard to buy the idea that the Wall and the Night's Watch have been, in the past, an effective barrier against the snarks and grumpkins. Again, the 8000 years part might be a little hard to swallow, but the general concept works.

Edit: Your complaint that you have to take for granted that the wall works is really missing the point. What you're expected to believe isn't that the Wall works, it's that the Night's Watch works - or more accurately, that the Night's Watch ONCE worked. And the Wall helps.

Once again you are ignoring the part about how it's not protecting against an invading army that uses technology. It is protecting against magical snarks and grumpkins. And also, Hadrian's Wall wasn't 700 feet high, 300 miles long, and over 30 feet thick, made of sheer ice, and topped off with magical "thou shalt not pass" spells.

And finally, we're NOT supposed to believe that the Wall is a permanent solution. We're supposed to believe that the people who built the thing wanted it to help protect them - whether they expected it to work forever and ever doesn't matter - they built it and created the Watch to protect them. Just like the Romans did. The fact that these guys made it work for a long time when the Romans couldn't is entirely dependent on the previously-mentioned different circumstances which you're just not willing to acknowledge as significant.

I already offered that it doesn't really matter who the "enemy" is now or was 8,000 years ago. The simple logistics of trying to defend a frontier, no matter what you're defending it from, for such a long period of time is simply improbable to say the least. Worried about the Night's Watch falling apart now? Why didn't it fall apart 2, 4 or 6,000 years ago?

The Romans didn't just man the Hadrian wall - at their height they patrolled and defended a frontier that stretched across Europe and the Middle East. Arguably this was a much more formidable task than whatever distance the Wall is supposed to stretch in this story. Just because the Romans didn't make their walls 700 feet tall or use magic doesn't make them invalid as case study for the Night's Watch, a fictional organization which clearly borrowed quite a lot from how the Roman frontier legions worked.

I'm sorry but even with the "standard fantasy" excuses I really can't see the Wall (with the Night's Watch) existing as a status quo deterrent for 8,000 years given the typical political and social fluctuations that humans are prone to. *shrugs*

Maybe if Martin had come up with a more believable timeline for his story I wouldn't be having as much trouble with it.

In a world with magic, dragons, and walking dead I can't see getting hung up on expectations of anything pre-conceived notions of realistic.

edit: and for the sake of discussion - I give you the Han Dynasties of China as a relatively static society for 1000+ years, so the premise is not unbelievable at all, really.

I don't find that a valid comparison at all, for many reasons, but like MM said, you've dug in, so I'll just stop.

I'm sorry but even "fantasy" worlds like this usually tend to follow -some- kind of logic, or at least offer some kind of explanation for why logic should be disregarded if necessary. If the books explain -why- nothing's changed in thousands of years I might be more willing to accept the scenario in question.

The Han Dynasties of China weren't -that- static. But even if you could successfully demonstrate this point that'd only be at most 1/8 the time the people in this book supposedly managed their sociological miracle.

Instead of "dug in" I would probably use the phrase "accepted certain immutable truths about human nature". *shrugs*

I suppose I'll just conclude this line of discussion by saying I'd more readily believe that things like dragons and/or magic could actually be real on some planet in some universe than to believe a human (or at least human-like) race of people could remain -that- static for 8,000+ years. It's not going to stop me from watching this show, or maybe even eventually reading these books someday, but it will leave me with a certain bitter pill I'll just have to stomach to get past. *shrugs*

P.S. Ironically enough tonight's episode of South Park had Mr. Garrison trying to teach the class about "World History" and he starts off by saying, "What we start to see in world history is a pattern much like the Greeks and Romans. Remember that there were seven families fighting for the control of the kingdoms of Westeros..." and as he goes on it's clear that all he's talking about is Game of Thrones as if it was -actual- world history.

If THAT is your problem (which is again, not what you have been saying all along) then your complaints about the Wall are in the wrong direction.

Because yes, you have to hand wave the idea that the people of Westeros have not had any real cultural or technological advancement for thousands of years, at least until such time as a real reason is given. I have no problem with that.

But you do NOT have to hand wave to accept the idea that the Others have had no advancement, or the giants, or the snarks and grumpkins, because you can't apply human nature to things that aren't human. Might as well ask why dolphins have not made cultural and technological advancements the way humans have. You have no idea what the Others are, so you have no idea if they would have made advancements in culture or technology.

So your complaint about the Wall shouldn't be "how does it work" so much as "why isn't the land north of the Wall tamed and the Others eradicated altogether?"

Because even if the people of Westeros only advanced half as fast as the people of Earth did, they'd be way past us, while the Others might still be exactly the same as they ever were.

And I'd argue that the world of Westeros hasn't been that static either.
Valyria and it's fall, the conquering of the seven kingdoms, a complete forgetting of why the night's watch really exists other than a place to send undesirables...

You know, it may be those variable seasons that may just be the explanation you want. If a the cycles of long, hard winters nearly destroy everything/one then it would be hard to get any purchase on technological advancement. Couple that with active magic to weaken a need for scientific drive... and then a long summer of decadence followed by starvation and again a frozen population...

Added note, your earlier comparison to Hadrian's Wall was pretty apt - manned and supported with vigor at it's start, but by the fall of the wall it was a forgotten corner of the Empire that really protected little and no one cared much about.

You seem to think that my position on this keeps changing when in fact I'm simply exploring related reasons why there's a fundamental disconnect about the workings of the Wall in general.

It simply does not seem plausible (without an arbitrary literary excuse) that a Wall manned by a group like the Night's Watch could be maintained in a status quo situation for roughly 8,000 years for MULTIPLE reasons. First of all the "enemy" they are supposedly guarding against (magical critter or otherwise) has not seriously advanced around the Wall and/or even tried to threaten anything in the south for millennia. Surely anything that required a 700 foot magical wall to stop was apparently motivated enough at one point to have found a way -around- it within 8,000 years. We aren't just talking about a bunch of kitty-cats or bunny-rabbits here. But even if you accept that apparent non sequitur there's always the mystery that given nothing had actually happened for centuries why there would still be the political, sociological or economic will to support the expense of such a frontier defense force for that long without apparent need or benefit to anyone. Surely it would eventually become cheaper to just imprison or execute anyone you might have otherwise thought about banishing to the Wall.

It was a historical miracle that the Romans maintained the thousands of miles of frontier they had against their "wildlings" (the proto-viking types from northern/eastern Europe) for roughly 500 years and the inevitable breakdown of that defense directly lead to the fall of the Roman Empire. The parallels between the Roman frontier legions and the Night's Watch are just too close to readily accept that this pseudo-Maginot Line situation could possibly last 16 times as long under any circumstances fantasy or otherwise. Even the Soviets only managed to afford their half of the Cold War for 50 years before they had to give up on it and in their case they were dealing with an actual viable threat at the time (the United States) not a threatless boondoggle that the Wall had been representing for centuries.

Yes, yes I understand that by the beginning of Game of Thrones things are -finally- changing and we see that the wildlings are -finally- stirring right at the point when the Night's Watch is -finally- showing signs of weakness. I have no problem with that relatively immediate bit of drama. I simply have a hard time believing that nothing significantly changed on EITHER side of the Wall for thousands of years before that.

Like I said at the beginning this is just a nitpick criticism of mine. I realize that Martin probably tossed out "8,000 years" for the timespan of the Wall just because it sounded cool and exotic for the purposes of his fantasy world. All I'm suggesting is that seemingly random number of years doesn't really fit very well with the circumstances he tried to apply them to. I suppose one could make the case that the presence of magic coupled with the variable winter/summer cycles has collectively caused EVERYTHING on this planet to advance up to a certain technological level and then just stop dead for millennia, but then one could ask why did everything stop at this pseudo-medieval level - why not stay as cavemen or get to a space-faring level before the status quo set in?

Actually, I've found your position and approach to be consistent on a variety of topics.

I was just trying to toss out some other perspectives and elements of the issue.

I understand where you are coming from, just not sure it is something that would even make my nitpick list. But to each their own.

Do they though? Do "fantasy" worlds like this truely evolve and change over the course of thousands of years? I can't think of many examples, but two that spring to mind seem to counter your assertion:

Lord of the Rings - From the time that Sauron was originally defeated and the One Ring was lost, hundreds or thousands of years passed, and yet no one had invented guns, or radios or cars, or seemingly made any other sort of technological breakthrough.

Star Wars - The days of "The Old Republic" take place, what 4000 years or so before the movies? Yet in those days they had starships capable of interstellar travel, they had blasters, lightsabers, and droids. They weren't reduced to our current level of technological advancement, and yet in the intervening 4000 years they hadn't developed intergalactic travel, teleportation, or any other sort of unimaginable technology.

I think writers just like to throw out the "1000s of years of history" line to make their world seem more rich and full with no real intention of fleshing out the logic of why nothing has changed for those thousands of years.

I wasn't trying to imply you were changing your position, just that it wasn't clear what the core of your complaint was. Certainly some of that is on me, as the reader. But like Chyll said, I get what you're saying, I just don't find it to be worth a second thought. And that's not for lack of understanding of historical events, it's just that I don't see that as relevant. In the end, of course, it's all subjective.

Also I want to mention, I realize I can be a little overly argumentative in these kind of debates, but I didn't intend any ill will... I just find these kinds of discussions fun.

I think part of the frustration in explaining this is a desire not to spoil things that are coming.

The books do talk about the construction of the wall, and that the magic things the wall was meant to keep out had disappeared. There are 23 (?) castles located along the wall, but only three are currently manned.

From the books, we're not exactly clear when all the magical things disappeared from Westeros. The "children of the forest" have been gone for some time, and the Others (White Walkers) have not been seen for thousands of years. (It does not mean they haven't been there, though.)

Here's the thing -- with the way the seasons work on this world, I can buy why there has been little technological progress amongst the people. You're just not going to see a civilization advance when crippling winters come in and drop tens of feet of snow everywhere. And I can buy into the wall. It wasn't meant to keep people out of the south, but that's come to be the belief as generations passed when all the magic disappeared.

As others have said -- the wall does have magical properties, though this has not been explained on the TV show.

Either someone will buy into it, or they won't.

Eowyn: I am no man!

That kid can flat out act. You heard it here first. She has to be a front runner for supporting actress this year. Maisie and Dinklage will get Emmy's this year.