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Dany somehow knows what molten gold tastes like...


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13 minutes ago, maudisdottir said:

I think we are working from two very different interpretations of "none of them".

Correct me if I'm wrong, but you're assuming that "it was all the tastes she had ever known, and none of them" means "it was all the tastes she had ever known AS WELL AS none of them" ie it was a bunch of tastes she knew, plus a bunch she didn't.

Whereas I'm taking it to mean something along the lines of "it was all the tastes she had ever known, yet at the same time they were all unrecognisable". Which fits right in with her trippy, drug-induced, non-literal hallucinations.

I think you have a good point.

You see that's the perverse game GRRM is playing with us.  He directly contradicts himself in the same sentence.  It's not even particularly poetic half the time.  Anyway; and then we bend over backwards, fall all over ourselves to decipher it, have at each other tooth and claw, tie ourselves in knots, and sink deeper into the morass -- let's say the 'mire' since that's a pun on 'Myr'.

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I'm not arguing that my interpretation is better or more correct, just that the passage isn't literal or metaphor-free. Hence the tasting of molten gold doesn't necessarily mean she's familiar with that taste, which was the original claim of the OP.

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Just because the beginning of the list is comprised of things that Dany has literally tasted does not indicate that all of them must necessarily be things she has literally tasted. Hallucinogens warp and alter the way the real world is perceived. She would still be able to taste literal flavors, but her drug addled mind would also begin to alter her perception of feelings and senses. This passage reads to me that she experienced literal tastes and also began to experience emotions in an altered fashion. She was able to "taste" some feeling associated with her brother's gruesome death - that feeling could be guilt, pleasure, a mix of the two, whatever. This passage brings to mind the phrase "bitter taste of defeat." There is no literal taste associated with defeat, it's metaphorical.

I feel that employing some telepathic link for Dany to literally taste molten gold is overly convoluted and adds nothing to the story. What does the story gain if Dany telepathically linked to Viserys at the moment of his death? And she's given us no indication that she did (aside from your belief that she tasted what he tasted at that moment). So if she was able to telepathically link to him was this link confined to only tasting things? Why haven't we seen her express other feelings, senses, perceptions from the moment of Viserys' death throes? I don't see what this contributes to the story and it seems unnecessarily confusing.  In my opinion the simplest solution, and the one that makes the most sense with the story, is that Dany experienced a drug induced form of synesthesia in which she perceived her emotions regarding Viserys' death as a taste as real as all the things that she had actually tasted in her life.

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On 5/26/2017 at 1:43 AM, maudisdottir said:

I think we are working from two very different interpretations of "none of them".

Correct me if I'm wrong, but you're assuming that "it was all the tastes she had ever known, and none of them" means "it was all the tastes she had ever known AS WELL AS none of them" ie it was a bunch of tastes she knew, plus a bunch she didn't.

Whereas I'm taking it to mean something along the lines of "it was all the tastes she had ever known, yet at the same time they were all unrecognisable". Which fits right in with her trippy, drug-induced, non-literal hallucinations.

NO, THAT'S NOT WHAT I AM ASSUMING AT ALL! :P Here is my interpretation of the line, which I stated earlier:

It was all the tastes she had ever known, and at the same time it tasted like none of those tastes.

basically the same as your interpretation, ie it was a bunch of tastes she knew, and simultaneously tasted like basically nothing at all. It definitely did not taste like tastes she didn't know. Because she is tasting things from her memory and she can't remember a taste she never knew.

THEREFORE, every taste on that list is from her memory. There are 8 items on the list. The first 7 are things she has literally tasted in her life. THEREFORE, it stands to reason that the eighth item on the list is also something she has literally tasted in her life.

I hope that was a more clear explanation of my thoughts. :D 

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On 5/26/2017 at 7:30 AM, Red Man Racey said:

Just because the beginning of the list is comprised of things that Dany has literally tasted does not indicate that all of them must necessarily be things she has literally tasted. Hallucinogens warp and alter the way the real world is perceived. She would still be able to taste literal flavors, but her drug addled mind would also begin to alter her perception of feelings and senses. This passage reads to me that she experienced literal tastes and also began to experience emotions in an altered fashion. She was able to "taste" some feeling associated with her brother's gruesome death - that feeling could be guilt, pleasure, a mix of the two, whatever. This passage brings to mind the phrase "bitter taste of defeat." There is no literal taste associated with defeat, it's metaphorical.

I feel that employing some telepathic link for Dany to literally taste molten gold is overly convoluted and adds nothing to the story. What does the story gain if Dany telepathically linked to Viserys at the moment of his death? And she's given us no indication that she did (aside from your belief that she tasted what he tasted at that moment). So if she was able to telepathically link to him was this link confined to only tasting things? Why haven't we seen her express other feelings, senses, perceptions from the moment of Viserys' death throes? I don't see what this contributes to the story and it seems unnecessarily confusing.  In my opinion the simplest solution, and the one that makes the most sense with the story, is that Dany experienced a drug induced form of synesthesia in which she perceived her emotions regarding Viserys' death as a taste as real as all the things that she had actually tasted in her life.

Technically true, but it's not just the "beginning" of the list. The first 7 out of 8 items on the list are things she has literally tasted.

In my arrogant opinion, all arguments that go "What would that add to the story?" are complete nonsense. What does it add to the story if I'm wrong?

Your explanation has a good chance of being correct, but it is not convoluted at all to think that in a world filled with telepathy, a known telepath (Dany) had an intense telepathic experience as her brother died in front of her.

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Has anyone mentioned that you taste through smell too so she could have literally tasted molten gold when it was poured on her brother. Don't think grrm was referencing this in any way, but thought I'd mention it still. Also smell is the sense most strongly associated with memories

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On 5/26/2017 at 4:09 AM, maudisdottir said:

I'm not arguing that my interpretation is better or more correct, just that the passage isn't literal or metaphor-free. Hence the tasting of molten gold doesn't necessarily mean she's familiar with that taste, which was the original claim of the OP.

This is correct.  As much could be said for much of the rest of the text!  The best interpretations therefore are the ones that don't take themselves too seriously, for that reason :).

 

On 5/26/2017 at 7:30 AM, Red Man Racey said:

Just because the beginning of the list is comprised of things that Dany has literally tasted does not indicate that all of them must necessarily be things she has literally tasted. Hallucinogens warp and alter the way the real world is perceived. She would still be able to taste literal flavors, but her drug addled mind would also begin to alter her perception of feelings and senses. This passage reads to me that she experienced literal tastes and also began to experience emotions in an altered fashion. She was able to "taste" some feeling associated with her brother's gruesome death - that feeling could be guilt, pleasure, a mix of the two, whatever. This passage brings to mind the phrase "bitter taste of defeat." There is no literal taste associated with defeat, it's metaphorical.

That's well-expressed.  There's definitely that dimension to it.  However, that doesn't rule out a more literal telepathic experience.  We are reading a fantasy novel, after all.  Or would you say Theon hearing a voice emanating from the heart tree is merely psychotic, when viewed through the lens of current scientific norms?

We also have a precedent for experiencing someones death telepathically, in Bran -- who is Dany's counterpoint (and counterpart)-- when Bran remotely 'tastes' the captive's blood at the moment of his death via the weirwood conduit.

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I feel that employing some telepathic link for Dany to literally taste molten gold is overly convoluted and adds nothing to the story. What does the story gain if Dany telepathically linked to Viserys at the moment of his death?

We gain a parallel to Bran and Jon, siblings telepathically linked by the bond of their wolves.  Analogously, Dany and Viserys are siblings telepathically linked by the bond shared by their dragons.  As I've inferred by following the symbolic connections, part of Viserys may have remained in Viserion who is linked to Drogon, and via him to Dany.  (But I could be wrong...;))

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And she's given us no indication that she did (aside from your belief that she tasted what he tasted at that moment). So if she was able to telepathically link to him was this link confined to only tasting things? Why haven't we seen her express other feelings, senses, perceptions from the moment of Viserys' death throes?

We have seen this.  For example, she hears Viserys's voice on the Dothraki sea.  GRRM presents this voice in Dany's mind in italics, which can either indicate an intrusive telepathic presence or a character's own private thoughts.  An example of the former would be the words of the three-eyed crow to Bran (so-called 'coma dream') or the 'silent shout' from Bran to Jon (so-called 'weirwood sapling dream'); an example of the latter would be Jaime's internal thoughts, the ones he doesn't dare share with anyone -- well, almost everyone, except Brienne!  Memories, on the other hand are present in quotation marks (inverted commas), e.g. Bran thinking of his father saying 'that's the only time a man can be brave...'  I'm not going to pull the quotes here, but when you check them out be sure to consult the actual paper text (or the books.google text), not the 'search of ice and fire' search engine which has unfortunately deleted all italics, inadvertently distorting the meaning and its attribution.

Here's Dany on the Dothraki sea -- sick, hungry, dehydrated, sleep-deprived, and isolated -- all conditions which are conducive to inviting telepathic experiences elsewhere (check Sam at the Fist of the First Men, Theon at Winterfell/the heart tree, Bran in the darkness of the crypt/Bloodraven's cave, etc.):

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A Dance with Dragons - Daenerys X

She dreamt of her dead brother.

Viserys looked just as he had the last time she’d seen him. His mouth was twisted in anguish, his hair was burnt, and his face was black and smoking where the molten gold had run down across his brow and cheeks and into his eyes.

“You are dead,” Dany said.

Murdered. Though his lips never moved, somehow she could hear his voice, whispering in her ear. You never mourned me, sister. It is hard to die unmourned.

“I loved you once.”

Once, he said, so bitterly it made her shudder. You were supposed to be my wife, to bear me children with silver hair and purple eyes, to keep the blood of the dragon pure. I took care of you. I taught you who you were. I fed you. I sold our mother’s crown to keep you fed.

“You hurt me. You frightened me.”

Only when you woke the dragon. I loved you. “You sold me. You betrayed me.”

No. You were the betrayer. You turned against me, against your own blood. They cheated me. Your horsey husband and his stinking savages. They were cheats and liars. They promised me a golden crown and gave me this. He touched the molten gold that was creeping down his face, and smoke rose from his finger.

“You could have had your crown,” Dany told him. “My sun-and-stars would have won it for you if only you had waited.”

I waited long enough. I waited my whole life. I was their king, their rightful king. They laughed at me.

“You should have stayed in Pentos with Magister Illyrio. Khal Drogo had to present me to the dosh khaleen, but you did not have to ride with us. That was your choice. Your mistake.”

Do you want to wake the dragon, you stupid little whore? Drogo’s khalasar was mine. I bought them from him, a hundred thousand screamers. I paid for them with your maidenhead.

“You never understood. Dothraki do not buy and sell. They give gifts and receive them. If you had waited …”

I did wait. For my crown, for my throne, for you. All those years, and all I ever got was a pot of molten gold. Why did they give the dragon’s eggs to you? They should have been mine. If I’d had a dragon, I would have taught the world the meaning of our words. Viserys began to laugh, until his jaw fell away from his face, smoking, and blood and molten gold ran from his mouth.

When she woke, gasping, her thighs were slick with blood.

For a moment she did not realize what it was. The world had just begun to lighten, and the tall grass rustled softly in the wind. No, please, let me sleep some more. I’m so tired. She tried to burrow back beneath the pile of grass she had torn up when she went to sleep. Some of the stalks felt wet. Had it rained again? She sat up, afraid that she had soiled herself as she slept. When she brought her fingers to her face, she could smell the blood on them. Am I dying? Then she saw the pale crescent moon, floating high above the grass, and it came to her that this was no more than her moon blood.

If she had not been so sick and scared, that might have come as a relief. Instead she began to shiver violently. She rubbed her fingers through the dirt, and grabbed a handful of grass to wipe between her legs. The dragon does not weep. 

Not only is she hearing Viserys's voice, she is starting to identify with him in other ways, thinking about his credo of 'blood and fire', and like him focused more on 'stealing eggs' rather than flying!

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A Dance with Dragons - Daenerys X

The hours passed slowly. The stream bent this way and that, and Dany followed, beating time upon her leg with the whip, trying not to think about how far she had to go, or the pounding in her head, or her empty belly. Take one step. Take the next. Another step. Another. What else could she do?

It was quiet on her sea. When the wind blew the grass would sigh as the stalks brushed against each other, whispering in a tongue that only gods could understand. Now and again the little stream would gurgle where it flowed around a stone. Mud squished between her toes. Insects buzzed around her, lazy dragonflies and glistening green wasps and stinging midges almost too small to see. She swatted at them absently when they landed on her arms. Once she came upon a rat drinking from the stream, but it fled when she appeared, scurrying between the stalks to vanish in the high grass. Sometimes she heard birds singing. The sound made her belly rumble, but she had no nets to snare them with, and so far she had not come on any nests. Once I dreamed of flying, she thought, and now I've flown, and dream of stealing eggs. That made her laugh. "Men are mad and gods are madder," she told the grass, and the grass murmured its agreement.

 

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I don't see what this contributes to the story and it seems unnecessarily confusing.  In my opinion the simplest solution

If one more person cites 'Occam's Razor' ...:whip::o:devil:

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, and the one that makes the most sense with the story, is that Dany experienced a drug induced form of synesthesia in which she perceived her emotions regarding Viserys' death as a taste as real as all the things that she had actually tasted in her life.

Perfectly valid explanation, but not exclusive nor conclusive.

4 hours ago, Aegon VII said:

Has anyone mentioned that you taste through smell too so she could have literally tasted molten gold when it was poured on her brother. Don't think grrm was referencing this in any way, but thought I'd mention it still. Also smell is the sense most strongly associated with memories

Good point.  Yes, I think it was mentioned upthread, right at the beginning of the discussion.  Interestingly, Jon, while awake and fully compos mentis also has this kind of experience in terms of being able to smell things one oughtn't by rights to be able to smell!

-- e.g. the smell of 'red'...which he concludes is the smell of fire, specifically molten metal:

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A Storm of Swords - Jon XI

"All you have to give, Jon Snow. He is a king."

He shut the door and pulled the bell cord. The winch began to turn. They rose. The day was bright and the Wall was weeping, long fingers of water trickling down its face and glinting in the sun. In the close confines of the iron cage, he was acutely aware of the red woman's presence. She even smells red. The scent reminded him of Mikken's forge, of the way iron smelled when red-hot; the scent was smoke and blood. Kissed by fire, he thought, remembering Ygritte. The wind got in amongst Melisandre's long red robes and sent them flapping against Jon's legs as he stood beside her. "You are not cold, my lady?" he asked her.

She laughed. "Never." The ruby at her throat seemed to pulse, in time with the beating of her heart. "The Lord's fire lives within me, Jon Snow. Feel." She put her hand on his cheek, and held it there while he felt how warm she was. "That is how life should feel," she told him. "Only death is cold."

In a further passage, Jon can almost taste Melisandre, as suggested by how he compares her voice to various spices, notably nutmeg, anise and cloves.  By the way, anise is mentioned only twice in the whole of ASOIAF -- once in conjunction with Jon's impressions of Melisandre, and once with Dany's experience of tasting shade of the evening:

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A Dance with Dragons - Jon III

His words fell on deaf ears. Stannis had remained unmoved. The law was plain; a deserter's life was forfeit.

Beneath the weeping Wall, Lady Melisandre raised her pale white hands. "We all must choose," she proclaimed. "Man or woman, young or old, lord or peasant, our choices are the same." Her voice made Jon Snow think of anise and nutmeg and cloves. She stood at the king's side on a wooden scaffold raised above the pit. "We choose light or we choose darkness. We choose good or we choose evil. We choose the true god or the false."

Mance Rayder's thick grey-brown hair blew about his face as he walked. He pushed it from his eyes with bound hands, smiling. But when he saw the cage, his courage failed him. The queen's men had made it from the trees of the haunted forest, from saplings and supple branches, pine boughs sticky with sap, and the bone-white fingers of the weirwoods. They'd bent them and twisted them around and through each other to weave a wooden lattice, then hung it high above a deep pit filled with logs, leaves, and kindling.

-- e.g. the smell of 'cold' -- which Jon can also taste when the wight thrusts his arm into Jon's mouth:

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A Game of Thrones - Jon VII

Ghost leapt. Man and wolf went down together with neither scream nor snarl, rolling, smashing into a chair, knocking over a table laden with papers. Mormont's raven was flapping overhead, screaming, "Corn, corn, corn, corn." Jon felt as blind as Maester Aemon. Keeping the wall to his back, he slid toward the window and ripped down the curtain. Moonlight flooded the solar. He glimpsed black hands buried in white fur, swollen dark fingers tightening around his direwolf's throat. Ghost was twisting and snapping, legs flailing in the air, but he could not break free.

Jon had no time to be afraid. He threw himself forward, shouting, bringing down the longsword with all his weight behind it. Steel sheared through sleeve and skin and bone, yet the sound was wrong somehow. The smell that engulfed him was so queer and cold he almost gagged. He saw arm and hand on the floor, black fingers wriggling in a pool of moonlight. Ghost wrenched free of the other hand and crept away, red tongue lolling from his mouth.

The hooded man lifted his pale moon face, and Jon slashed at it without hesitation. The sword laid the intruder open to the bone, taking off half his nose and opening a gash cheek to cheek under those eyes, eyes, eyes like blue stars burning. Jon knew that face. Othor, he thought, reeling back. Gods, he's dead, he's dead, I saw him dead.

...

The corpse lurched forward. There was no blood. One-armed, face cut near in half, it seemed to feel nothing. Jon held the longsword before him. "Stay away!" he commanded, his voice gone shrill. "Corn," screamed the raven, "corn, corn." The severed arm was wriggling out of its torn sleeve, a pale snake with a black five-fingered head. Ghost pounced and got it between his teeth. Finger bones crunched. Jon hacked at the corpse's neck, felt the steel bite deep and hard.

Dead Othor slammed into him, knocking him off his feet.

Jon's breath went out of him as the fallen table caught him between his shoulder blades. The sword, where was the sword? He'd lost the damned sword! When he opened his mouth to scream, the wight jammed its black corpse fingers into Jon's mouth. Gagging, he tried to shove it off, but the dead man was too heavy. Its hand forced itself farther down his throat, icy cold, choking him. Its face was against his own, filling the world. Frost covered its eyes, sparkling blue. Jon raked cold flesh with his nails and kicked at the thing's legs. He tried to bite, tried to punch, tried to breathe …

 

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A Clash of Kings - Jon IV

"What is it you smell, Dywen?" asked Grenn.

The forester sucked on his spoon a moment. He had taken out his teeth. His face was leathery and wrinkled, his hands gnarled as old roots. "Seems to me like it smells . . . well . . . cold."

"Your head's as wooden as your teeth," Hake told him. "There's no smell to cold."

There is, thought Jon, remembering the night in the Lord Commander's chambers. It smells like death. Suddenly he was not hungry anymore. He gave his stew to Grenn, who looked in need of an extra supper to warm him against the night.

Just remembering the 'smell of the cold' causes Jon to lose his appetite, proving your point about how smell and taste are intimately connected.

 

9 hours ago, 40 Thousand Skeletons said:

NO, THAT'S NOT WHAT I AM ASSUMING AT ALL! :P Here is my interpretation of the line, which I stated earlier:

It was all the tastes she had ever known, and at the same time it tasted like none of those tastes.

basically the same as your interpretation, ie it was a bunch of tastes she knew, and simultaneously tasted like basically nothing at all. It definitely did not taste like tastes she didn't know. Because she is tasting things from her memory and she can't remember a taste she never knew.

THEREFORE, every taste on that list is from her memory. There are 8 items on the list. The first 7 are things she has literally tasted in her life. THEREFORE, it stands to reason that the eighth item on the list is also something she has literally tasted in her life.

I hope that was a more clear explanation of my thoughts. :D 

This is still the weakest part of your argument, although that shouldn't be taken to mean you and your argument aren't growing on me... ;).  Objectively, the line is more ambiguous than you're making out, I'm afraid (although I tend towards your interpretation of the telepathy).

 

"Come, listen, my men, while I tell you again
 The five unmistakable marks
By which you may know, wheresoever you go,
 The warranted genuine Snarks.


"Let us take them in order.
 The first is the taste,
 Which is meagre and hollow, but crisp:
Like a coat that is rather too tight in the waist,
 With a flavour of Will-o-the-wisp.


"Its habit of getting up late you'll agree
 That it carries too far, when I say
That it frequently breakfasts at five-o'clock tea,
 And dines on the following day.


"The third is its slowness in taking a jest.
 Should you happen to venture on one,
It will sigh like a thing that is deeply distressed:
 And it always looks grave at a pun.


"The fourth is its fondness for bathing-machines,
 Which is constantly carries about,
And believes that they add to the beauty of scenes--
 A sentiment open to doubt.


"The fifth is ambition.
 It next will be right
 To describe each particular batch:
Distinguishing those that have feathers, and bite,
 From those that have whiskers, and scratch.


"For, although common Snarks do no manner of harm,
 Yet, I feel it my duty to say,
Some are Boojums--" The Bellman broke off in alarm,
 For the Baker had fainted away.

 

-- Lewis Carroll

From:  'The Hunting of the Snark'

 

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18 hours ago, ravenous reader said:

This is still the weakest part of your argument, although that shouldn't be taken to mean you and your argument aren't growing on me... ;).  Objectively, the line is more ambiguous than you're making out, I'm afraid (although I tend towards your interpretation of the telepathy).

Is it really Viserys' voice though?  I'm starting to wonder about these accusing second voices that come in the guise of someone of close acquaintance.  For example, does Arya really hear her father's voice in the godswood?  Do Ned really hear Robert's voice or Petyr's voice in his fever dream? Does Jaime really hear Rhaegar's voice in his weirwood stump dream?  Or is someone or something else messing with these dreams; pulling out memories and and manipulating the dreamer, assuming the shapes of the dead?  I go back to the concept of the 'watchers' whether that's by means of glass candle or weirnet.

 

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6 hours ago, LynnS said:

Is it really Viserys' voice though?  I'm starting to wonder about these accusing second voices that come in the guise of someone of close acquaintance.  For example, does Arya really hear her father's voice in the godswood?  Do Ned really hear Robert's voice or Petyr's voice in his fever dream? Does Jaime really hear Rhaegar's voice in his weirwood stump dream?  Or is someone or something else messing with these dreams; pulling out memories and and manipulating the dreamer, assuming the shapes of the dead?  I go back to the concept of the 'watchers' whether that's by means of glass candle or weirnet.

Could very well be some kind of psychic manipulation by posing as another, analogous to a skinchanger fooling someone by wearing someone else's skin, or a faceless man achieving the same by wearing someone else's face.

In general, I've noticed that there are two basic ways GRRM presents the 'second voices' in the stream of consciousness of any given character:  i.e. firstly, in italics and secondly, in quotation marks (inverted commas), by which he may be conveying something about the source attribution of the voice.

Italics are used to indicate an intrusive telepathic message (e.g. the three eyed crow to Bran, or the 'silent shout' from Bran to Jon); or alternatively a character's private thoughts (e.g. the thoughts Jaime keeps to himself, to which only the reader is additionally privy, which often run counter to the things that are actually coming out of his mouth).  

Quote marks are used to indicate a memory of someone's voice, sometimes the memory of their words verbatim (e.g. Bran during the coma dream recalling his father's words at the beheading 'that's the only time a man can be brave'); or if not a memory of an actual event, imagining someone's voice for the purpose of working through troubling events in the past on a psychological level (e.g. Ned's fever dream involving Robert and Petyr as one person); or alternatively an audible message coming from an external source (e.g. Theon hearing Bran's voice at the heart tree as articulated by the leaves which are actually moving to create the sound).

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For example, does Arya really hear her father's voice in the godswood? 

I think that's a memory of something he actually told her ('the lone wolf dies; the pack survives', etc.).  The telepathic element in that scene would be the lonely plaintive wolf call she hears in response to her prayer, the one coming from 'far far off' which I believe represents Ghost in ACOK voicing his longing for his siblings (during the 'weirwood sapling dream' we know and love so much...although you and I still know almost as much as Jon Snow in that respect!  ;)).

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Do Ned really hear Robert's voice or Petyr's voice in his fever dream?

No, I don't think any telepathy is involved.  I read that as the voice of Ned's subconscious, deeply-buried, repressed 'wolfsblood' welling up in the darkness to nudge him to see what he's been blind to -- i.e. that Baelish is the beast in the woods threatening the sanctity of the wolfswood, and the one who manipulated Robert into asking him to be Hand by having Jon Arryn murdered:

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A Game of Thrones - Eddard VIII

When he had gone, Eddard Stark went to the window and sat brooding. Robert had left him no choice that he could see. He ought to thank him. It would be good to return to Winterfell. He ought never have left. His sons were waiting there. Perhaps he and Catelyn would make a new son together when he returned, they were not so old yet. And of late he had often found himself dreaming of snow, of the deep quiet of the wolfswood at night.

And yet, the thought of leaving angered him as well. So much was still undone. Robert and his council of cravens and flatterers would beggar the realm if left unchecked … or, worse, sell it to the Lannisters in payment of their loans. And the truth of Jon Arryn's death still eluded him. Oh, he had found a few pieces, enough to convince him that Jon had indeed been murdered, but that was no more than the spoor of an animal on the forest floor. He had not sighted the beast itself yet, though he sensed it was there, lurking, hidden, treacherous.

Tyrion's eyes are open, however.  He sees 'the beast' in all his sordid glory:

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A Game of Thrones - Tyrion IV

Just for a moment, he thought he saw a flicker of doubt in her eyes, but what she said was, "Why would Petyr lie to me?"

"Why does a bear shit in the woods?" he demanded. "Because it is his nature. Lying comes as easily as breathing to a man like Littlefinger. You ought to know that, you of all people."

She took a step toward him, her face tight. "And what does that mean, Lannister?"

'Spoor' includes animal droppings in addition to footprints etc., so 'spoor in the forest' left by a beast is suggestively close to 'a bear shitting in the woods'.  Ergo, the shadow beast is Littlefinger.

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Does Jaime really hear Rhaegar's voice in his weirwood stump dream? 

I don't think he hears Rhaegar's voice per se.  It's one of these imaginative reworkings, reflective of Jaime's guilt, like in Ned's analogous fever dreams.  However, the dragon associated with the three-headed dragon mosaic at the crossroads where 'half a dozen tunnels met' in the Red Keep dungeon addresses Jaime in italics, saying provocatively 'I know you kingslayer...I have been here all the time waiting for you to come to me.'  I have always found that one very interesting.  In fact, although it's unpopular to still maintain the possibility of A+J=C+-J, I still sometimes think Jaime misheard the dragon, who said 'I know you kinslayer' not kingslayer!

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I ought to have a banner sewn, she thought as she led her tattered band up along Astapor's meandering river. She closed her eyes to imagine how it would look: all flowing black silk, and on it the red three-headed dragon of Targaryen, breathing golden flames.

The taste of molten gold?.

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@ravenous reader

OMG I never noticed the "bear shit in the woods" thing, that's hilarious.

I do think that the dreams we see in pov chapters are a mix of "real" dreams and telepathic manipulation. But I wouldn't be so quick to dismiss the dreams of Jaime and Ned as being real. As I outlined in my post on telepathy (that linked above), things like darkness, being crippled, an altered state of mind, drugs, sleep, and general trauma/near-death experiences can all enhance telepathic connections. For instance, Arya was blind, surrounded by cats, and constantly attacked by an unknown, silent assailant until she skinchanged a cat while awake.

So when I read Jaime's dreams, I take into account the fact that he has recently lost his hand and almost died, becoming crippled in a manner very similar to Bran. Not only did he lose part of his body, but his identity as well. And sleeping on a weirwood stump/in moonlight may have also helped enable some telepathic meddling. As for Ned, he broke his leg, almost died, and was in a near-coma state drinking milk of the poppy, which is basically heroine. And later, this is compounded when he is thrown in the Black Cells (darkness) and starved. And since Ned's leg was broken by a horse, I am even more suspicious that BR or someone is messing with Ned's mind. The first fever dream is followed by his disastrous coup attempt, and the second is followed by his confession of guilt/support of Joffrey, arguably another huge mistake.

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