George RR Martin, Game of Thrones & Fe vs Te Themes

[asmodeus, king of demons]

The Lannisters are Fe as fuck.

[Animal]

@puffs
I already explained why it's Se/Ni in my first posts in this sequence. Go  back and look. 😉
As for the Lannisters being Fe as fuck, care to elaborate?

[asmodeus, king of demons]

Exactly! I talked about these exact things in Discord just the other day. Let me see if I can find it. I typed him as NiTe and defended his Ni-ness and Ni-Se holeism heavily.
he has so much depth in characters that tolkien and rowling lack

lightly comparing against two other Si fantasy authors is not justification

and the realism.. the way people “really are..” their development, the reasons, the things they don’t understand about themselves.. he just GETS It
relationships, family, love, sex, war..

still no actual reason as to why this has anything to do with Ni/Se or any particular function at all

i don’t even want to see someone comparing him to tolkien. there is absolutely no comparison. tolkien was a historian and linguist. this guy is a soul-ist and humanist. he understands and captures characters in such a realistic, profoundly intimate way
there are no one dimensional characters here. there are the ‘dead,’ but there are so many villains that aren’t “black and white,” and the good guys also have dark sides that develop organically by way of being human, without the need for a ring or a ‘dark force outside themselves'
he has realism down. being in his world is like living among real people

if this is considered justification, then the argument here is that "real = Ni/Se" which i have a very strong disagreement with.

i wouldn’t be surprised if he’s NiTe since he innately makes sense to me in a way whereas these Delta ST authors feel kind of ‘removed from reality’ .
to me.”

this is a justification for why you personally understand him, not for why his characters and story are so clearly born out of the mind of Ni/Se

“Multiple theories, world views and mythologies coexist in my books too without trying to pitch a single unified account
because.. “they just are.”
it’s just how the world is.
and my world reflects that
i actually felt Tolkien tried to pitch a unified theory of what is good and what is evil, and it was unrealistic and fantastical
ya, what i notice is that each individual character or even family, had its own world view.
and within each characters’ mind there was a consistent, consolidated world view.
he just assumed that to be the case; an organic development of “one way of seeing things”
i dont’ want to speak for puellae, but i interpreted it as, he doesn’t pitch a moralistic ‘this is good, this is evil’ as an overarching theme

still has nothing in particular to do with indicating Ni/Se. Honestly the not pitching a "this is good, this is evil" theme sounds more like a Fe/Ti thing than Ni/Se thing.

my complaint about many books is that they’re pushing a certain philosophy down your throat.
but they don’t present it in a realistic way that makes you “fall into it” naturally or contemplate it for yourself
whereas GOT really brings up questions that come up irl
priorities, values etc
but he gives the reader room to decide and to think and experience this reality with him

still says nothing about Ni/Se, more just good writing.
<hr />
As for the lannisters, we'll just cover recent history:
Tytos Lannister:
Father of Tywin, he was considered weak-willed and eager to please (unhealthily adaptive Fe, anyone?). He often loaned out money to debtors who never repaid him and allowed guests to taunt him openly.
Enters Tywin: Under his father's leadership, house Lannister was at the weakest and least influential state it had been for ages. Tywin -- so unimpressed by his father that he later would say the only thing he learned from him was to mistrust laughter -- develops a real directive streak in order to restore the Lannister Family Honor.
----The Reyne-Tarbeck Revolt----
I don't even know how to cover the whole Reyne revolt, the entire event is chock full of directive Fe "payment for payment, blood for blood" upholding the honor of transgressions business. Like when Lord Tarbeck is imprisoned by the Lannisters and Lady Tarbeck imprisons three Lannisters in and demands her husband's return,  Tywin suggests they return her husband but in three parts, one for each Lannister taken. Again the same theme of one-for-one retribution in defence of the family honor is front and center with this dude. He goes so far as to eliminate the Reynes and Tarbecks entirely from the gene pool, ensuring his family legacy will long outlast theirs.
Like, literally read the directive Fe section in the heartitudes article:
Shaming - You can see this in pretty much every conversation he has with everyone in his family. Shaming his family members for not acting in ways that uphold the family honor. From his very first conversation with Jamie in the series to "any man who must say 'I am the king' is no king" and beyond, the fella Fe shames the shit out of dishonorable people.
Retribution - I feel I've covered this sufficiently but i can find further evidence if you don't think Tywin is into retribution.
Leveling in the truth - also patently clear from every conversation he has with everyone. He probably lies the least out of anyone in the series. In fact, if you wanted to, you could make a case for Tywin being the best in-world example of someone being steadfastly honorable(of a form) and also successful -- to contrast Ned/Jon's first go/Robb as a cases of failed honor.
Tywin doesn't have nearly as good a case for him that can be built out of the Te/Fi descriptions
 
As for the kids, Tyrion and Jamie come off as NeTi and SeTi to me, respectively but it's fuzzier to make a case for them since most evidence kinda points to general PeJi types.
I would recommend you check out the Tyrion chapters from the books during his time as Hand to Joffrey, though. His time as hand is some good Fe stuff. Building networks of human relationships and putting them to work for his ends. Knowing when to manipulate and when to level in the truth. Classic Fe People-math stuff.
Cersei yeah she's probably Fi though.
 
But as a family on the whole, the Lannister tribe and their roots are steeped in Fe to both extremes.

[Animal]

I don't need a "justification." It was my opinion that his stuff was Ni-Se and according to his vultology I was unsurprisingly correct. The Gamma vs Beta stuff I had "hunches" which I discussed, but not a strong case or opinion.
Ni/Se realism is what stood out most to me and I was correct.. you don't have to understand why I thought it and I don't need to "justify" anything to  you. Auburn had similar reasoning and got where I was coming from; thats good enough for me. You read meanings into my words that were not anything close to what I was trying to say, so I feel like this argument won't go anywhere.

[asmodeus, king of demons]

You said it was unlikely for the characters and story to come from anything other than Ni/Se. This is a firm claim and not an opinion. One that I have asked for justification for, as I find it incredibly tenuous.

[Animal]

Yes, it is a firm claim, and I was right. 🙂
I typed several other people here correctly too, based on nothing but descriptions and assessing their personality. Then Auburn VI'ed them and I was right and/or very close. In my world, results matter, and I don't have to "justify" my case if it leads me to the correct result time and time again. The process needs tweaking when the results are unsatisfactory.
People who have been paying attention to the ongoing conversations about Se/Ni "holeism" all heard my case on Discord loud and clear, and Auburn recognized and acknowledged those same 'trends' oh his own, before seeing my argument. I do personally believe the points I offered are relevant and self-explanatory, and also clearly evident to many people here. The ability to delineate those trends is why my typing accuracy has been fairly high, and I am continuing to refine the points that I miss. The difference between Se/Ni vs. Ne/Si psychology is fairly obvious to me at this point, even if I can't articulate the reasoning in a way that naysayers will appreciate.
I'm going to mull over your thoughts about the Lannisters and get back to you, because I find them interesting. But I'm not going to spend tons of time arguing just to prove to you that the process behind my repeated accurate assessments is relevant. Either you see the trend or you don't. I pointed out an overarching trend, I explained it as well as I could in a short time period, and I don't have weeks to defend or justify it; nor do I want to divert the thread with a nitpicking session. Take it or leave it.

[Juan E. Sandoval]

The question of:

• "Could [ artistic work X ] have only been made by [ Z ] types?"

...is one which I would technically answer no, because no work is absolutely undoable to any type. But at the same time there are probabilities/statistics. So we need to be able to say that a [ z ] type most likely made it, but not necessarily. I agree with the sentiment that I think lies behind Puffs argument, which is that nothing is beyond the capacity of anyone to do.
Err... but to be fair to any topic, we need to actually derive statistics before we speak so firmly about anything. And CT does allow for pretty concrete statistics to be extracted; it's just a matter of doing the research in a controlled way. We can do this all sorts of ways.
For example, we can analyze the writing styles of typed authors and tally the number of adjectives they use, and what kind of adjectives they use (tactile/conceptual/ideological/etc? (also, how do we create these categories and how do we qualify language categories?) We can then say that vultological Ni/Se users do indeed use ~20% more tangible* adjectives in their fictional works, when we analyze some 300 pages from ~30 best-selling authors (10 pages each). Or the answer could be that there's no difference. Or something else. This is just one suggestion on the fly. I'm sure better parameters could be devised for such a study.
* = Whatever "tangible adjectives" means, but we can define this, for example as: textures/smells/tastes/sounds (i.e. sweaty, hairy, moss-eaten, starved, muscular, pungent) Oppositely, intangible adjectives may be pre-processed descriptors such as: mellow, friendly, sacred, brave, powerful, etc... which are already extracted from raw data, and don't have any physical qualities themselves.
 

[Faex]

First, BIG FAT WARNING!!!! MAJOR SPOILERS IN MY POST. READ AT YOUR OWN RISK IF YOU HAVEN'T WATCHED GOT UP TO EDPISODE 4 OF SEASON 8.
Re, the Lannisters . . .damn! I never thought of Fe before but Puff makes a compelling case. I always thought Tyrion was 'entj' and. I always assumed Tywin was Te because he's an administrator per excellence: so much, the mad king was envious of him. But after Puff's write-up, yeah it seems Fe motivated. He was all about the Lannister name. Nothing else mattered. I think it's even why despised Tyrion so much and was always seeking an "honoroble"/face-saving way of getting rid of him without looking like a bad dad.
But I agree with Animal on the realism. I assumed GRRM was TeSi because of the trend of major authors and film directors getting typed this way, but once he was typed, it did make a lot of sense. I've always felt GOT is history with different names for places and people and just a bit of fantasy. With Tolkien and JKRowling, it's pure fantasy. Much more in Tolkien who doesn't connect his world to modernity in any direct way except "long ago". Rowling puts magic in a modern boarding school but the fantasy is still the ocean in which the story swims.
Whether you like one or the other depends on many things, I guess. I love wonder and for this reason, this difference has always been a point of critique for me in Martin ("too much like real-life!" was my complaint and "no hope/cynical"). I actually saw it as poo-hooing the concept of goodness and for the first five seasons (pre-Jon's death) had gotten tired enough of it to want to quit. I guess to my mind, the point of fantasy is to escape the darker parts of reality. Essentially, the show caused me suffering every time a good person was killed. It became too much, man.
Now I dislike what the TV writers have been doing with the plot starting with Arya's appearance in Westeros within no time at the end of season 6, a trend that has continued in many major ways till noww. I feel they're bastardizing a work that had no plot holes I could find anywhere (that's very rare!) because they ran out of Martin's books and don't care enough for such things, as he does. It makes me very angry.
I'm not sure I agree that Arya and Sansa have become better people. They're more worldly, sure. Sansa in particular pisses me off to no end. I feel the show is desperately trying to make Dany a villain in a way that makes absolutely zero sense. It's Sansa who is unreasonable and power hungry. Dany just left her quest for the Iron throne to save the North from certain death. Shame on her (Sansa) and the writers who are trying to use dialogue and other things to make us think Dany is the unreasonable one here. What do they mean the Starks even mean saying they don't trust her? If that kind of sacrifice is not demonstration enough for a leader in that world, then their trust shall never be earned, so screw em. Dany lost a dragon to save Jon and now she has lost so much more. The audacity that people have to try and question her morality is beyond me. How dare Sansa even dream of demanding independence for a "North" whose fate was zombie kingdom were it not for Dany? Silly girl.

[Animal]

@auburn
Yeah but I wasnt talking about statistics, I was talking about an overarching trend or "vibe" which is obvious to me. Ne people just don't approach things the way Martin does.
This is what I meant by Alpha/Gamma arguments 😀 We assess what constitutes "reality" in a very different way; Alphas looking for statistical probability, Gammas having a more experiential take on things.
But I guess thats why I was initially "???" when asked to jusify my "firm claim." I wasnt actually trying to convince anyone, I was just saying how things look to me due to trends that appear obvious to me. And so far that process has yielded high accuracy with me typing people based on their personality and you confirming it vultologically. To me there are different ways that different types express themselves and although I'm still learning , my current sample set and 'lived experience' is enough for me to extrapolate that an Alpha or Delta probably didnt write that series.
That said, if I were in your position and this project was mine, I would be much more meticulous about answering everyone's protests and making sure everyone felt like their questions were addressed. I can afford, as a mere forum poster, to say "it's just what I see, take it or leave it," since I already know that no amount of statistics I would be capable of collecting would be enough to convince a skeptical Alpha of my case. :p  I have to write my own book, take care of my illness, work, deal with my house, etc....   and I'm not sure if some Alphas realize that it takes a lot of time and energy out of Gamma to "think like Alphas" and come up with a list of probabilities and possibilities.  Part of learning the differences between types and thinking about possible miscommunications, is also knowing when someone seems open only to a certain type of information that I don't have the wherewithal to provide, and simply saying, "You don't have to accept my argument," so that I don't drain myself (and everyone else) dry.
[To be clear - I'm not assuming that because someone is an Alpha, they're only open to certain types of information. I make that assessment based on what they actually say, and how I am approached.]
I am a strong believer that there are differences between the types.  A sentiment going around the forum that any type can do anything - well, I agree that any type can DO anything; but HOW they do it will make their type evident.
So thank you @auburn for translating the Alpha sentiment hehe, now I get where he may have been coming from.

[Bera]

@puffs

@bera Bruh what. Sansa and Arya have become liars and murderers who’s only real concern is protecting their family and Bran is at this point a being who exists outside of time and humanity and honor isn’t even an applicable concept to him anymore.

I think protecting their family is an essential part of their journey and development. Both Sansa and Arya start as early teens who in some way want to get away from home and live a glamorous respectively adventurous life.
In the first book Sansa credited Joffrey and Cersei more than her own family because she believed that it was her role to adapt to the new environment and to become the perfect future wife for Joffrey. This is why she chose to be on Joffrey's side in his conflict with Arya that lead to Lady's death.
At the same time, Arya rejected the idea of becoming a lady who would be married to a lord and she preferred to spend her time in other ways. She loved her family but she was almost always doing her thing. She was not really there, her parents and siblings and Winterfell were not on her..list of priorities. 🙂
They both started from that point and made long journeys that led them back home. Where they realized the importance of family and of Winterfell. And this can be seen in scenes like the one in which Sansa tells Arya to remember their father's words - "When the snows fall and the white winds blow, the lone wolf dies but the pack survives." Or in which Arya tells Jon that Sansa cares about their family and that he should also keep his family in mind. Or in which Sansa asks Dany - What about Winterfell??
Now, about honor.
Arya kills everyone to avenge her family members deaths and to protect her siblings that are still alive. She is of course a murderer but she is honorable. I think it might depend on what you believe is honor. When I say she kept being honorable and combined that with something else I mean scenes like this one in which she killed the Freys :

We can discuss if you think the right word for this is not honor, of course. Do you think she is not acting from an honor based value system? Or are you just saying she is evil? Because this is a different issue. Evil is one thing and being dishonorable another.
Now about Sansa and Bran's honor, I think this is a good scene to show it (SPOILER).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LuIML65jqsM
Sansa is moved because Jaime saved Brienne from being raped, she has an emotional reaction but what she says is appropriate to the situation and coming from someone who knows the importance of honor to her family and to her people. She asks - would you fight with him? do you vouch for him?
I think Bran's case is debatable. I honestly don't believe that he is completely out of time and humanity. He acts in suspiciously moral ways for someone completely out of time and humanity. But this could be discussed and analyzed for pages and we already diverged a lot.
I don't really know if the Starks are more representative for Fi; Ned was an Fe user. We would have to check the vultology of all the Stark kids and in the end it's hard to determine if in the books they are the same types as in the show.
And regarding honor as being an attribute of the Starks - I think many members of other houses also display it. Jaime does it several times. So does Dany.
I actually think honor is a general theme in the books and show and not just connected to a certain House. It might be simply because George Martin is an Fe user. 🙂 But also it is natural for honor to be important in this world.
@fae - I don't have time to detail all my thoughts about this issue right now but I don't think Dany is necessarily portrayed as evil vs. Sansa as being good. I think Dany is portrayed as a Conqueror vs. Sansa - a Ruler. And this is a very realistic approach because conquering is very different from ruling. Taking over territory and winning the hearts of people requires certain qualities and administration of resources others. Sansa uses her Te well enough to be able to handle logistics and this is important in administration. Also, she grew up having a family and being connected to a house, she spent a lot of time at King's Landing...she can handle court intrigue. Dany has a different background, the background of a conqueror.
I don't say Dany can not rule, of course, she can, but I think this contrast between conquering and administration is what we are being shown.

[Animal]

@bera
Brilliant post wow. Your posts are just stellar! I love it.
I'll respond to points later, I don't have much time today. But you're covering ground that I really appreciate and I can see all your points clearly, and the distinctions you're bringing up. When I have a while I'm going to sit down and address stuff here and in your other posts more specifically. Love your take on this.

[Faex]

@Bera,
I wouldn't call any Stark evil. I think me issue is whether they are 'better' people now than they were on episode 1 of Season 1. Sansa is certainly more mature and less superficial than she was, but she's also way more parochial. Arya has been the same person throughout, IMO.
Now is Sansa a better ruler? I disagree. If all decisions were up to her, the North would be a swarm of zombies right now. She'd refuse to give up "independence" to save her people. I don't see that as a smart thing for a good ruler to do. Secondly, it's not smart to give attitude to a person who has shown up with her army and dragons to fight for your people as they're about to be slaughtered which she's done from the start. Sansa is not a good ruler. She's a politician. (IMO).
Tyrion Lannister is the good ruler in Westeros rn. Jon is a good ruler too--he has effectively saved all his people and Westeros. But he's not ruthless enough when it counts because he gives too much benefit of the doubt to others (Ramsey, Cersei etc). Dany is a good ruler: The only reason she's not on the iron throne rn is because she gave a damn about slaughtering civilians. Sansa is a good administrator but a bad leader.
Edit// Ok, to be fair, she also saved the North from Ramsey Bolton, so its not good to dismiss her as a bad leader; but the same thing that drove her to save the North from Ramsey--her Northern parochialism--is the same one that would cause her to bring about their slaughter by the Night King were it not for Jon. She should serve under Queen Danaerys but should never be queen herself, IMO.

[Bera]

@rondo

I do wonder whether P-leads identify a lot with realism and “how things are”, and that polarized ones would be concerned both with “how things are” and “how things develop” whereas the opposite would be true for J-leads and polarized J-leads, they would be more focused on the ideal of how things should be and how to get them there. Just speculating

This is a very interesting idea ! I don't really know. I have a close friend who seems to be Je lead and most of our talks are her telling me what people should do or should have done and me telling her what the possible reasons for their behavior are. This is a huge pattern I noticed.

Whereas Bera, and my best friend as well, were able to notice that he had created a sort of moral system to impart lessons that you had to glean from the history and current happenings within the universe rather than through the more direct moralizing style of a Je-dom. (And iirc my friend picked this up from interviews of GRRM and from watching the show, with no direct knowledge of the books).

There is for sure a moral system behind it. Did you see how many characters died the exact same way they killed someone else? Ned dies being beheaded. The books and show start with an event after which he beheaded people. Olenna is poisoned; she poisoned Joffrey. Lysa is pushed out the moon door. She was doing this to her convicts. Ramsay gets eaten by his dogs and he fed bodies of dead people to his dogs. The Freys die during a feast, drinking wine. They killed Robb at the Red Wedding. Cersei kills Ellaria's daughter the same way Ellaria killed Myrcella.
I think this is Ni & Fe though Ni and Te can work in a very similar way and I can't see the differences in manifestation very well. Ni and Fe would be more like justice in the hands of people and Ni and Te more mechanical? Ni & Fe Judgement Day vs Ni and Te karma??

@animal

I’m not sure if some Alphas realize that it takes a lot of time and energy out of Gamma to “think like Alphas” and come up with a list of probabilities and possibilities.

Indeed, but I think one of our lessons in this life is to transcend our personal views and experience and see the bigger picture !
Regarding GRRM's Se and Ni, I think this interview shows them pretty well :

"one thing I know about war is it brings out the beast in men" ;
"we go on roller coaster rides and we are scared, you know, roller coaster rides are scary but we're not REALLY scared, we know we are going to get off the roller coaster in 3 minutes and however high we go and then we plunge down and there is a certain thrill and I guess an adrenaline rush or something like that..." ;
"there's another kind of fear that you feel when you're all alone and you're walking in a bad neighborhood and suddenly you hear footsteps behind you and you turn and you see some people coming and you don't know who the hell they are...and that's a moment..."
"that's a much more visceral kind of fear"
"if I'm going to describe a feast, I don't want to just say yes and then they ate at a feast, I want you to smell the food and taste the food, whether there's delicious food or bad food or whatever, smell the particular things; if it's a joust I want you to feel the excitement of getting caught in who is going to win the joust" etc
"I want you to not just read my work but live my work".
"I think reading is about vicarious experience."
So, yes, he does think like an Se-Ni user...we can see this is what an Se-Ni user would be saying but this is not exactly enough to represent scientific proof. Since counter arguments could be brought - Ne-Si writers could also say similar things at some points although their psychology is actually different.
I think the surest way would be for functions to be somehow seen...at the neurobiological level? I know almost nothing about how the brain works but there must be some patterns of brain activity that can be correlated to different functions. We can't really see that yet but it must be there and it must be measurable. At some point in the future we must see how the whole mechanism works.
But, as far as I know, the best we have at this point are statistics. Individual experience is necessary to build them though.

[Bera]

@fae - Sansa doesn't have any claim to the iron throne. Neither does Tyrion. So I don't really see how she could become queen. I think Jon has the rightful claim to the iron throne and he should be the one to rule the Seven Kingdoms.
About the North being a swarm of zombies if it was only for Sansa - yes, but this applies to Dany too. 🙂
I think we could make another thread about GoT opinions and theories because this one is about Soft readings and we might be getting into heated arguments about GoT here if we continue, since many of us are very invested in the story ! I saw a lot of very fun theories and would love to have a place to share them and ask about other people's opinions.
 

[Faex]

LOL, @bera, I didn't mean to come across as arguing in a heated way, sorry 4 that, ha ha. But I agree about a new thread (would be great to analyze the whole show through the CT lens. Would be fun too. I like your insights, by the way, about honour and the different kinds of leaders. I'm just mad at D&D right now. I feel like they're bastardizing GRRM's masterpiece.)

[Bera]

Oh, dear ! No, no, no, it's ok, you didn't ! I actually felt I got into that state earlier, while writing another post. So, the heated argument warning was about all of us, including myself !
While writing one or two of the posts above I felt I was becoming a little ball of fire, which usually doesn't happen to me thanks to high seelieness. :))
I am mad at them too because they did not do The Long Night episode in a satisfying way. I don't really know what they should have done but...not what they did. It felt simply... wrong.
 

[Juan E. Sandoval]

I am mad at them too because they did not do The Long Night episode in a satisfying way. I don’t really know what they should have done but…not what they did. It felt simply… wrong.

yes, agreed. I saw a nice video with suggestions on how it could have been made better:

[Bera]

Yes ! Arya should have totally worn a face when she killed the Night King ! She appeared out of nowhere and this didn't make any sense, how did none of the white walkers see her?
Also Bran should have been the Night King ! Or at least he should have used his abilities to try to change something in the past in order to make it possible for the Night King to be killed. This would be the logical thing to do and he knew he could do it. I can't see any explanation for why he didn't at least try it, taking into consideration how serious the situation was !
Also it remains ambiguous what Bran's connection to the Night King actually was. When Sam said Bran was something like "the collective memory" and therefore needed to be killed...that didn't make any sense. I mean, it was representative of Sam's way of seeing things, of course. But what is relevant in Bran's story arc is not that he can see the past, c'mon, it's that he can CHANGE the past and implicitly also the present and future. Bran is not a walking library, he is someone who has the capacity to go into the tapestry of time and rearrange the threads. Treating him like something different in this situation after showing us he is capable of doing this is not like a Chekov's gun not blowing, it's like someone taking the Chekov's gun from the wall and replacing it with a deer head and telling us it has been a deer head all along !
Jorah should have come back as a white walker. They didn't want to do that, I get it, but it would have been pretty scary. I actually expected that and wondered how he could have survived when I saw him riding back. It didn't look plausible at all.
Also Theon charging made no sense either.
I totally agree with this guy - he made a much better version of The Long Night than the one we watched !

[Author]

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