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Heresy 198 The Knight of the Laughing Tree


Black Crow

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12 hours ago, Matthew. said:

This is why I made the comparison to Dany's experience while she's on Shade of the Evening; it may be that Bran's state of mind is altered to a degree that he would not notice if the line between himself, the Singers, weirnet, etc. is becoming blurred.

Well, I daresay that if Dany had suddenly lost control of her body and instead, it started doing things not of her control, she would certainly notice that, and we would observe her noticing it, in reading the chapter.

And if, having lost control of her body she couldn't talk about it then (as Bran clearly could talk), she would most certainly have mentioned it later to Jorah.  It would just be basic storytelling malpractice if she didn't.

Re the possibility that GRRM could suddenly introduce into ASOIAF drug-aided, non-skinchanging, telekinetic powers for the CotF capable of overriding a greenseer's command of his own body... well, yeah, certainly he could.  :D

However, I would reserve the right to roll my eyes at him.  Which is what I did when he did the other freaky things he's done (like parking Dany in Meereen, taking 11 years to write 1 book that he split in two, creating and then abandoning the five-year-gap, having Jorah bump by complete coincidence into Tyrion on the one occasion in Essos when he could be captured, etc).  

So I guess this really boils down to the probability GRRM would do another freaky thing of this particular type, and there anybody's guess is as good as mine.   I would never even have believed he'd let the show pass him, but he did.

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17 hours ago, 40 Thousand Skeletons said:

Hello fellow heretics. I just posted the final part of my personal grand theory concerning Bloodraven over in the main forum and wanted to advertise it here, since it is quite heretical in nature ;) 

Enjoy

Thank you! 

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On 5/22/2017 at 2:55 PM, ravenous reader said:

But Bran never participates in this singing and is not a CotF.

I believe Bran will be able to or he did.

“And he loved to listen to the Direwolves sing to the stars. Of late he often dreamed of wolves .They are talking to me brother to brother, he told himself when the Direwolves howled.He could almost understand them.Not quite….almost……as if they were singing in a language he had once known and somehow forgotten(Bran,ACOK,pg.71)…………..If I were a true wolf I’d understand the song.

Now to categorize it as "this " singing is interesting.In that moment,no but where he would in time...

 

21 hours ago, Black Crow said:

But unlike Thistle he has consented and he has eaten the paste. The two are not comparable, for the point here is not that Bran's body is being taken over, as Varamyr attempted to do with Thistle, but that the body is becoming irrelevant.

It depends,it still the same would one know that the action in this case is your own or not? Bran is half way down the rabbit hole when it comes to being a sympathetic player.

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7 hours ago, JNR said:

Re the possibility that GRRM could suddenly introduce into ASOIAF drug-aided, non-skinchanging, telekinetic powers for the CotF capable of overriding a greenseer's command of his own body... well, yeah, certainly he could.  :D

But i think he cleverly did though:

Quote

 

He ate.

It had a bitter taste, though not so bitter as acorn paste. The first spoonful was the hardest to get down. He almost retched it right back up. The second tasted better. The third was almost sweet. The rest he spooned up eagerly. Why?had he thought that it was bitter? It tasted of honey, of new-fallen snow, of pepper and cinnamon and the last kiss his mother ever gave him.*

 

There does seem to be some chemical alteration going on.We see a gradual progression especially in terms of the emotional association which serves what purpose?

If Bran is already a greenseer because of blood:

Quote

 

"Will this make me a greenseer?"

 "Your blood makes you a greenseer," said Lord Brynden. "This will help awaken your gifts and wed you to the trees."

 

 I think the answer lay in marrying Bran to the trees.This not a natural union per what happened with the wolves,seem less and fluid.They needed a chemical agent to make the marriage occur in this case.It don't matter if Bran was consenting it wouldn't work without the paste or seed (like i said in the past Bran is the right type but wrong person for that chair). 

So it comes down to whats the effect of the seed? 

Or it could be a typo and it was really "she" then someone should ask GRRM if that slipped the editor.

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30 minutes ago, wolfmaid7 said:

But i think he cleverly did though:

There does seem to be some chemical alteration going on.We see a gradual progression especially in terms of the emotional association which serves what purpose?

If Bran is already a greenseer because of blood:

 I think the answer lay in marrying Bran to the trees.This not a natural union per what happened with the wolves,seem less and fluid.They needed a chemical agent to make the marriage occur in this case.It don't matter if Bran was consenting it wouldn't work without the paste or seed (like i said in the past Bran is the right type but wrong person for that chair). 

So it comes down to whats the effect of the seed? 

Or it could be a typo and it was really "she" then someone should ask GRRM if that slipped the editor.

As Matthew points out, Bran is vulnerable but too innocent and trusting to be suspicious.  Notably Meera, Jojen, Hodor and Summer are all absent when the wedding takes place.  So he is also isolated from his protectors.  As Pretty Pig points out, Jaime, Dany and Drogon all perceive the menace of the encroaching darkness while Bran does not.   I think the darkness is really the 'heart of darkness', something that loves him not.   Black Crow may be right in saying that his body is becoming irrelevant although I'm still suspicious of Leaf's actions here.  He drops the bowl, she touches his hand as though testing his response before the 'signal' is given to put out the light. 

I think it's curious that Jojen tells Bran that the ravens can't find the crannogmen and that the Isle of Faces has remained unmolested since the time of the Pact.  I wonder what ravens he has in mind and I don't think it's the ravens sent from the Citadel or from some Maester.  I think the Crannogmen as agents of the Isle of Faces are hidden from the ravens sent by the 'heart of darkness' beyond the Wall.   There is a reason that the warg connection is blocked by the Wall.  There might also be a reason that the God's Eye also separated from the North by the Wall as well.

Now we have Euron Blood-Eye's express intent is to attack the God's Eye and kill all the small gods or impale them on his own tree of thorns... the iron throne. 

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8 hours ago, JNR said:

Any way you slice it, Bran has no remote clue that his hand is going to start doing things that he didn't want it to do, and that he can't override. 

When he sees his hand lifted up, he knows perfectly well he isn't responsible.  He should be shocked senseless. 

Yet this strikes me as one of the least implausible parts of the proposed scenario--for all intents and purposes, it describes the state of mind that is induced while under twilight anesthesia. We don't know how he "should" behave, because we don't know the full impact of the weirwood paste.

What is the significance of the weirwood paste? Bloodraven explains that Bran already has the inherent gifts necessary to become a greenseer, and that the paste will make it easier to wed himself to the trees. How? One might speculate that the instinct to preserve the self - highlighted by Thistle's resistance of Varamyr - is an impediment to merging with the collective consciousness of the weirwood, and that the paste serves to reduce that barrier.

To reiterate, I don't question the plausibility of the scenario, what I doubt is that the cited passage actually depicts Bran being skinchanged--I just don't see what's noteworthy about Bran raising his hand at that moment, such that it needs some "explanation," even the typo explanation. :dunno:
 

8 hours ago, JNR said:

Re the possibility that GRRM could suddenly introduce into ASOIAF drug-aided, non-skinchanging, telekinetic powers for the CotF capable of overriding a greenseer's command of his own body... well, yeah, certainly he could.  :D

Is that what people are suggesting? All I'm suggesting is that:

1.) Bran might have been made more mentally vulnerable/pliable/compliant by the weirwood paste
2.) In that pliant state, he might be subtly skinchanged

I can't speak for what others are envisioning, but I'm not imagining a forceful invasion like what Varamyr attempts with Thistle, or with his snow bear and shadow cat--I'm envisioning something more akin to what's happening with the Starks and their wolves, with the merging of minds developing more naturally, the line between wolf and warg being blurred; in Bran's case, it may be that the line between him, the CotF, and weirnet is being eroded in a way that's too subtle for him to immediately appreciate, that he is already gradually joining the collective consciousness.

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On 5/23/2017 at 10:31 AM, ravenous reader said:

Of course you're talking about the 'literal singing' -- you prefer to stick strictly to the literal, whereas I like reading between the lines and intuiting connections, after which you use the literal against me in order to prove me wrong, so we're unlikely to find consensus (although I do appreciate your whipsmart sense of humor in which you occasionally loose your grip on the literal).  :)

I agree that we don't see Bran participating in that singing, although the ravens 'kissing' his arms with their beaks (in time to the music, or prompted by a signal in the music rising up to them?) seem to be urging Bran to join in!

When Bran weds the tree, or slips the skin of the tree, what else is that but 'going into the wood, into leaf and limb and root'?  Once he's joined to the tree, he has access to 'all their songs and spells' which the trees remember (it's a giant archive of collective knowledge); so although Bran is not of the 'singer' species technically, he can partake in their language and potentially 'sing their songs'.  Think of it as a human having access to the singers' library!

The True Tongue is a Song.  We've been told that in a number of ways...'song of the earth...song of stones...song of wind...song of water.'  So speaking it is a kind of 'singing'!  I was not arguing that Brandon became another species, just that when he sings their song -- the one they taught him -- he becomes a singer of sorts!

There's one verb here -- 'sing' -- and GRRM uses it ambiguously, regardless of your attempts to pigeonhole it.

Agreed.

The strongest argument yet.  Yet insofar as greenseers learn to sing, they become singers, just not the species 'singer.'  

Were all these tribes singing the secret song singers?  No, some of them are men, who are singers.

What 'song' is this, and where did they learn it?

You're right; his vocalizations are limited by the 'voice apparatus' of the particular creature skinchanged.  He's skinchanging a tree, so he's singing the song of wind through leaves, otherwise known as the preternatural 'rustling'!  I differ from you in that I've interpreted this as the True Tongue.  Bran is part of the tree so he has access to all that knowledge.  He's 'one with the library', immediate download and all that, as I've mentioned!

I don't think the CotF are mass murderers.  But humans are; and they used the song they learnt from the singers to kill (hence the greenseer wars).

For me 'song' is synonymous with magic.  It's not limited to a specific species.  Bran is practising that magic for example when he speaks via rustling to Theon on a windless night.  Bran is singing and the 'wind' created is his figurative 'breath' passing through the wooden 'wind instrument' of the tree.

Finally, there's the evidence of the sentence which you're asserting (rather conveniently) is a typo.  If it isn't however, then we're left with having to explain 'He raised his hand, and the other singers began to move...' in which 'the other singers' ambiguously refers not only to Leaf as singer, but to Bran himself as the primary subject of the sentence.

Your logic is hard to deny. I've always understood the "singers" and "singing" to be those who know the songs of earth, stone, water, etc and not as that being the name of their race. Brandon learned those songs, so he was a "singer" of those songs/language. I think we could understand "singers" as being skinchangers that know how to slip into every element. It could be how they moved water and stone.

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3 hours ago, Matthew. said:


1.) Bran might have been made more mentally vulnerable/pliable/compliant by the weirwood paste
2.) In that pliant state, he might be subtly skinchanged

I can't speak for what others are envisioning, but I'm not imagining a forceful invasion like what Varamyr attempts with Thistle, or with his snow bear and shadow cat--I'm envisioning something more akin to what's happening with the Starks and their wolves, with the merging of minds developing more naturally, the line between wolf and warg being blurred; in Bran's case, it may be that the line between him, the CotF, and weirnet is being eroded in a way that's too subtle for him to immediately appreciate, that he is already gradually joining the collective consciousness.

My theory and money is on (2).(1) may be the mechanism which makes it possible.And it is.

Have you ever heard of a drug called Scopoalamine? Its from a tree in South America  called Borrachero ( don't trust me on the spelling).I was cautioned about this when i went to Columbia.Locals would sometimes put this in drinks of visitors and or  blow a powder form  in peoples faces( Devil's breath).Its said to take away free will and make coercion very easy.Girl's would give up themselves  not remembering anything.People would give away all there money just because they were asked.

Crazy crap.

 

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4 hours ago, LynnS said:

As Matthew points out, Bran is vulnerable but too innocent and trusting to be suspicious.  Notably Meera, Jojen, Hodor and Summer are all absent when the wedding takes place.  So he is also isolated from his protectors.  As Pretty Pig points out, Jaime, Dany and Drogon all perceive the menace of the encroaching darkness while Bran does not.   I think the darkness is really the 'heart of darkness', something that loves him not.   Black Crow may be right in saying that his body is becoming irrelevant although I'm still suspicious of Leaf's actions here.  He drops the bowl, she touches his hand as though testing his response before the 'signal' is given to put out the light. 

I think it's curious that Jojen tells Bran that the ravens can't find the crannogmen and that the Isle of Faces has remained unmolested since the time of the Pact.  I wonder what ravens he has in mind and I don't think it's the ravens sent from the Citadel or from some Maester.  I think the Crannogmen as agents of the Isle of Faces are hidden from the ravens sent by the 'heart of darkness' beyond the Wall.   There is a reason that the warg connection is blocked by the Wall.  There might also be a reason that the God's Eye also separated from the North by the Wall as well.

Now we have Euron Blood-Eye's express intent is to attack the God's Eye and kill all the small gods or impale them on his own tree of thorns... the iron throne. 

I have little doubt they are manipulating Bran's humanity but its a good catch the isolation of Bran from the others.I get the feeling that their are factions of COTF and green seers.I think that label is a limiting as well so i can't wait to see when different players come on the scene.

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Ok, I'm on vacation, in Florence and extremely hammered right now, so I may or be making too much sense.  But has anyone read the tourney scene in Ivanhoe?  Because  for some reason, my sober mind may make sense of, I think this was a very big inspiration for Martin and his tourneys for the Queen of love and beauty.  

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27 minutes ago, Frey family reunion said:

Ok, I'm on vacation, in Florence and extremely hammered right now, so I may or be making too much sense.  But has anyone read the tourney scene in Ivanhoe?  Because  for some reason, my sober mind may make sense of, I think this was a very big inspiration for Martin and his tourneys for the Queen of love and beauty.  

We had this conversation earlier, but in the circumstances I'd say that its worth you repeating the parallels vis a vis the Laughing Tree.

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Those who sing the song of earth know the individual songs of stone, water, etc. When you sing the song of stone, for instance, you can move stone. When you sing the song of water, you move water. If you know all those songs, then you are a singer of earth.

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On 5/24/2017 at 9:30 AM, Matthew. said:

for all intents and purposes, it describes the state of mind that is induced while under twilight anesthesia. We don't know how he "should" behave, because we don't know the full impact of the weirwood paste.

Really, whether or not his hand is numb... he should notice that he can't control what it's doing.

His mind works throughout this chapter.  He notices things in his visions. He remembers them.  He questions Bloodraven about what he saw. 

He also, and this is very telling, never loses control of his voice, which alone is proof he was never skinchanged, as his own experience with Hodor demonstrates.

On 5/24/2017 at 9:30 AM, Matthew. said:

In that pliant state, he might be subtly skinchanged

If it happened, he would notice it, which he never does, and he would also lose control of his voice, which he never does. 

On 5/24/2017 at 9:30 AM, Matthew. said:

I'm envisioning something more akin to what's happening with the Starks and their wolves

That's the result of a long history, an intense familiarity, and a voluntary bond; none of that applies.  But Bran is a clueless kid who has no idea what the paste is going to do, at all:

Quote

 

Something about the look of it made Bran feel ill. The red veins were only weirwood sap, he supposed, but in the torchlight they looked remarkably like blood. He dipped the spoon into the paste, then hesitated. "Will this make me a greenseer?"

"Your blood makes you a greenseer," said Lord Brynden. "This will help awaken your gifts and wed you to the trees."

 

He certainly has no faint clue that it would let somebody else assume control of his body!  And his reaction should that occur would not be a favorable one.  Since this is a Bran POV chapter, he would have many appalled thoughts, and we would read them.

Also, of course, the wolves never (not once) assume command of the Stark kids' bodies.  Always, it's the other way around.  Bran has never been skinchanged by anything else in his life and it's unimaginable to me that that could happen without his noticing it.

Here's the last thing I'm going to say on this topic, which I find a fairly silly one.  :D 

Bran has been told by Leaf that their term for themselves is singers of the song of earth.  So he immediately starts thinking of them as singers.  There are dozens of sentences like this, in which he uses "singers" as a short form.  Example:

Quote

"The trees will teach him," said Leaf. She beckoned, and another of the singers padded forward, the white-haired one that Meera had named Snowylocks.

Singers obviously means CotF, and only CotF, here.  "Another" means another CotF besides Leaf. 

Notice also that Leaf is beckoning to another CotF (telling the other CotF what to do, because only she of all the CotF there knows Common, and therefore, only she knows what Bran has just said, and only she knows whether it's okay to proceed). 

Now let's compare the above sentence to the mystery sentence:

Quote

Leaf touched his hand. "The trees will teach you. The trees remember." She raised a hand, and the other singers began to move about the cavern, extinguishing the torches one by one. The darkness thickened and crept toward them.

This is virtually identical to the above. 

Once again, "other singers" means "besides Leaf."  Once again, she is beckoning (telling the other singers what to do) because only she knows Common and understands Bran. 

There's no doubt that singers in this particular sentence can only mean CotF (because Bran and Bloodraven aren't moving, and Meera and Jojen and Hodor aren't even there, and if there are goats handy, they can't extinguish torches).  So who is the original CotF, beside the "other" ones?  That would be Leaf.

All that is required to understand this is to correct the typo from "he" to "she" as I have done above.

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3 hours ago, Feather Crystal said:

Those who sing the song of earth know the individual songs of stone, water, etc. When you sing the song of stone, for instance, you can move stone. When you sing the song of water, you move water. If you know all those songs, then you are a singer of earth.

Song of water, air and stone.  It's basically the power of telekinesis, and I doubt it's limited to any particular species.  Furthermore, although it's collectively referred to as 'the song of earth,' there's no reason why this power should be earthbound.  Logically, it should work just as well on the 'stones' in space ;).  As Ned prophesied of his son Bran in the godswood, 'Bran can bridge that distance.'

Look at this passage:

Quote

A Game of Thrones - Bran IV

Summer followed them up the tower steps as Hodor carried Bran back to his bed. Old Nan was asleep in her chair. Hodor said "Hodor," gathered up his great-grandmother, and carried her off, snoring softly, while Bran lay thinking. Robb had promised that he could feast with the Night's Watch in the Great Hall. "Summer," he called. The wolf bounded up on the bed. Bran hugged him so hard he could feel the hot breath on his cheek. "I can ride now," he whispered to his friend. "We can go hunting in the woods soon, wait and see." After a time he slept.

In his dream he was climbing again, pulling himself up an ancient windowless tower, his fingers forcing themselves between blackened stones, his feet scrabbling for purchase. Higher and higher he climbed, through the clouds and into the night sky, and still the tower rose before him. When he paused to look down, his head swam dizzily and he felt his fingers slipping. Bran cried out and clung for dear life. The earth was a thousand miles beneath him and he could not fly. He could not fly. He waited until his heart had stopped pounding, until he could breathe, and he began to climb again. There was no way to go but up. Far above him, outlined against a vast pale moon, he thought he could see the shapes of gargoyles. His arms were sore and aching, but he dared not rest. He forced himself to climb faster. The gargoyles watched him ascend. Their eyes glowed red as hot coals in a brazier. Perhaps once they had been lions, but now they were twisted and grotesque. Bran could hear them whispering to each other in soft stone voices terrible to hear. He must not listen, he told himself, he must not hear, so long as he did not hear them he was safe. But when the gargoyles pulled themselves loose from the stone and padded down the side of the tower to where Bran clung, he knew he was not safe after all. "I didn't hear," he wept as they came closer and closer, "I didn't, I didn't."

Bran can understand the 'song of stone,' and this is coming from a place in the vicinity of the moon.  What do you think the reference to the 'once lions, but now twisted and grotesques' is about?

The point I still don't understand is why the species calling themselves 'those who sing the song of earth' need human greenseers at all.  Surely if they can sing this song themselves, they would be all-powerful without any need, nor indeed inclination, to share this 'song' with others?  What advantage are they gaining via the humans?

8 minutes ago, JNR said:

There's no doubt that singers in this particular sentence can only mean CotF

That's true in this context.  I'll concede that.  However, it's nevertheless also true that more broadly taken 'those who sing the song of earth' are not the only ones who sing the song, and are therefore not the only singers, LOL!

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I'm not sure that skinchanging is the term that I would use.  Rather Bran is merging with the tree. 

- to combine, blend, or unite gradually so as to blur the individuality or individual identity

And perhaps more literally, he is being grafted to the tree.

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