Heresy 201 and onward we go...

[LynnS]

11 minutes ago, Tucu said:

Durran Godsgrief declared war on the gods like Euron seems to be doing. He built it to withstand their powers.

Did Durran make himself into a god?  That seems to be Euron's intent.  Was it Bran the Builder who added the warding?

[Tucu]

2 minutes ago, LynnS said:

Did Durran make himself into a god which seems to be Euron's intent.  Was it Bran the Builder who added the warding?

There is where it gets messy. He married the daugther of those gods. It seems to also be a tale of how the First Men abandoned their previous gods (in this case the Sea God and the Goddess of the Wind) and adopted the Old Gods and befriended the CoTF. They assisted in the construction of Storm's End (maybe via Bran The Builder)

[SirArthur]

Ok, something does not add up here. Melissandre burned the weirwood tree in Storm's End ... for a god of fire. But if Storm's End is build to protect against the old gods ... and the god of fire is the player here ... is he also the god of water ? 

[Tucu]

2 minutes ago, SirArthur said:

Ok, something does not add up here. Melissandre burned the weirwood tree in Storm's End ... for a god of fire. But if Storm's End is build to protect against the old gods ... and the god of fire is the player here ... is he also the god of water ? 

I think that it was warded to protect against attacks from people with strong magical powers (later identified as "gods").

[Black Crow]

1 minute ago, Tucu said:

I think that it was warded to protect against attacks from people with strong magical powers (later identified as "gods").

Or it was warded against the Old Gods and the New by a man who was sick of their interference in the realms of Men

[SirArthur]

1 hour ago, Tucu said:

I think that it was warded to protect against attacks from people with strong magical powers (later identified as "gods").

If we go full atheist here and declare holy as magic and magic as science  ... why should we even care what Euron is doing ? 

 

[Tucu]

1 hour ago, SirArthur said:

If we go full atheist here and declare holy as magic and magic as science  ... why should we even care what Euron is doing ? 

 

I would not declare magic as science. Its method is not well understood or quantified.

We should fear Euron because Aeron's dreams seem to be prophetic and we are not sure if they are "must come" or "may come" events.

[SirArthur]

1 hour ago, Tucu said:

I would not declare magic as science. Its method is not well understood or quantified.

We should fear Euron because Aeron's dreams seem to be prophetic and we are not sure if they are "must come" or "may come" events.

So it's not understood science. And if the dreams are just not understood and are not send by a higher or mystic being  ... are they even relevant ? Can the dreamsender not just use the phone in all other situations ? 

[Frey family reunion]

8 hours ago, SirArthur said:

I don't know. The only character we know of who is old, small and vanished recently from the world of man and would fit  ... is Old Nan. But there are no connection unless we can connect one of her stories to Coldhands. 

I mean there is Bran and Hodor ... but no text evidence.

I'm not saying it's someone we know, I think it might be a faceless man(girl).

Quote

A cloud of ravens was pouring from the cave, and he saw a little girl with a torch in hand, darting this way and that.  For a moment Bran thought it was his sister Arya ... madly, for he knew his little sister was a thousand leagues away, or dead.  And yet there she was, whirling, a scrawny thing, ragged, wild, her hair atangle.

Quote

Meera cradled Jojen's head in her lap.  And the Arya thing stood over them, clutching her torch.

Quote

That was not Arya's voice, nor any child's.  It was a woman's voice, high and sweet, with a strange music in it like none that he had ever heard and a sadness that he thought might break his heart.  Bran squinted, to see her better.  It was a girl, but smaller than Arya, her skin dappled like a doe's beneath a cloak of leaves.  Her eyes were queer - large and liquid, gold and green, slitted like a cat's eyes.  No one has eyes like that. 

Quote

"Our name in the True Tongue means those who sing the song of earth.  Before your Old Tongue was ever spoken, we had sung our songs ten thousand years."

Meera said, "You speak the Common Tongue now."

"For him.  The Bran boy.  I was born in the time of the dragon, and for two hundred years I walked the world of men, to watch and listen and learn.  I might be walking still, but my legs were sore and my heart was weary, so I turned my feet for home."

Leaf is the only Child that speaks the Common Tongue, which is passing strange.  She has a cover story for her ability to speak and her knowledge of man.  Apparently she can cast a glamour by her own admission since she stated that she has walked amongst men. 

But I would be surprised if the Children can speak the tongue of Man.  After all they appear to be a completely different species.  Why do we assume that they are vocally capable of human language?  Just like man is not vocally capable of speaking their tongue, which is supposed to mirror the sounds of nature.

So perhaps Leaf is currently under a glamour.  Perhaps she is one of the "waif" like girls from the House of Black and White, who are women in young girls' bodies.  It wouldn't be shocking if the Children and/or the Weirwoods have reached out to faceless men through their own human agents. 

[Tucu]

40 minutes ago, SirArthur said:

So it's not understood science. And if the dreams are just not understood and are not send by a higher or mystic being  ... are they even relevant ? Can the dreamsender not just use the phone in all other situations ? 

Well, I would call it "not understood nature". I see the dreams and visions falling under two categories:

-those projected by humans (or other species) via some form of telepathy. Dany+Quaithe interactions seem to fall in this category.

-visions of past, present and possible futures obtained by tapping into the weave of time/causality via the third eye or equivalent. Bran, Mel, GoHH and the users of shade of the evening seem to fall in this category.

 

[LynnS]

37 minutes ago, Frey family reunion said:

So perhaps Leaf is currently under a glamour.  Perhaps she is one of the "waif" like girls from the House of Black and White, who are women in young girls' bodies.  It wouldn't be shocking if the Children and/or the Weirwoods have reached out to faceless men through their own human agents.

That's interesting.  I was just wondering the same thing about Wex.

[SirArthur]

In my mind only children should send blurry visions. Bran has no problems using the weirwood tree and see things more or less clear. And humans - no matter how old - can use their mouth or a pen. I mean the humans want the receiver to understand the message. In most cases I guess. And if there is no other way - just use a vision/dream and show a paper with the message. 

 

The only other possibility I can image is someone using children as a transmitter. And if you use drugs .. well ok. I can see how the visions come to be in that case.

So Euron is relevant because Aeron uses drugs or something is unable to communicate in understandable pattern. And if its from the future I guess it has not formed yet and that is why it is so shady. Like Bran sending information back in time and he can not form a nice written letter in his mind for whatever reason. That would actually make sense.

[Matthew.]

8 hours ago, LynnS said:

The dark eye, crow's eye, blood eye; the heart of darkness, the soul of ice; the tall and twisted thing, with ten long arms and one dark eye; the first storm and the last storm. 

My thinking is probably too narrow here, as when I think of a "tall and twisted thing with ten long arms," besides the more straightforward interpretation that this is just Euron represented as a kraken, the alternative that most immediately comes to my mind is a weirwood--which, presumably, could be described as a "tall and twisted thing with ten (give or take) long arms," depending on the weirwood.

If three eyed crow(s?) are spirits in the wood, and Euron has been taken, that would reconcile a lot of the surrounding imagery--the red eye as a "third eye" on his sigil, the repeated association of red eyes and albinism with sensitivity to the old gods; and of course, Crow's Eye, which could turn out to be a very literal title.

--

Yet another alternative would be that GRRM is using purposely repetitive language with Moqorro's vision--"tall and twisted" is the exact description that is also used for the glass candles. While Euron's sigil is red, his hidden eye appears as black or onyx in visions--the color of the glass candle.

It may be that, in addition to his Shade of the Evening consumption, he has embedded a chunk of dragonglass into his eye socket. If that were the case, it may be that he's receiving visions, or perhaps even manipulating dreams, a suggested capability of the glass candle; in that regard, he would be kind of like Sauron in the Palantir.

[LynnS]

1 hour ago, Matthew. said:

My thinking is probably too narrow here, as when I think of a "tall and twisted thing with ten long arms," besides the more straightforward interpretation that this is just Euron represented as a kraken, the alternative that most immediately comes to my mind is a weirwood--which, presumably, could be described as a "tall and twisted thing with ten (give or take) long arms," depending on the weirwood.

Yes, I went back and forth between the kraken and the weirwood for a while.  But then someone pointed to an SSM where Martin describes the iron throne as a tall and twisted thing.

Spoiler

This is what Aeron sees in his vision as well. Euron sitting on the iron throne with the gods impaled on the throne. 

Although I do think that the drowned god was once a greenseer and Euron is mocking the old gods of the wood and means to replace them with his own version of a weirwood throne.

1 hour ago, Matthew. said:

If three eyed crow(s?) are spirits in the wood, and Euron has been taken, that would reconcile a lot of the surrounding imagery--the red eye as a "third eye" on his sigil, the repeated association of red eyes and albinism with sensitivity to the old gods; and of course, Crow's Eye, which could turn out to be a very literal title.

I still find this rather nebulous and difficult to grasp.  Consider that crows are men of the Night's Watch.  Although I don't know what the blood eye would signify as a third eye or a missing eye or blood running into the eye.

1 hour ago, Matthew. said:

Yet another alternative would be that GRRM is using purposely repetitive language with Moqorro's vision--"tall and twisted" is the exact description that is also used for the glass candles. While Euron's sigil is red, his hidden eye appears as black or onyx in visions--the color of the glass candle.

 

 It's and interesting idea. I actually think that glass candles are used in conjunction with fire and blood offerings.  At least Sam smells something burnt in the brazier when he enters Marwyn's chamber.  Suspiciously, the faceless man is closeted with Marwyn while he has been spying on Sam and Alleras.  So I which body part belonging to Pate went into that brazier.   That brings to mind Varys' own account when he hears the voice from the flames.  I suspect that the glass candle amplifies visions but fire and blood are also used; the visions come from the with the flames rather than the candle itself and so their eyes might look like burning coals or blood.

Quote

A Game of Thrones - Bran IV

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.

 

 

1 hour ago, Matthew. said:

It may be that, in addition to his Shade of the Evening consumption, he has embedded a chunk of dragonglass into his eye socket. If that were the case, it may be that he's receiving visions, or perhaps even manipulating dreams, a suggested capability of the glass candle; in that regard, he would be kind of like Sauron in the Palantir.

  I'm fairly sure that Cersei's dreams of the valonqar are being manipulated and that she is on Euron's bucket list.    

[Black Crow]

17 hours ago, Frey family reunion said:

I'm not saying it's someone we know, I think it might be a faceless man(girl).

Leaf is the only Child that speaks the Common Tongue, which is passing strange.  She has a cover story for her ability to speak and her knowledge of man.  Apparently she can cast a glamour by her own admission since she stated that she has walked amongst men. 

But I would be surprised if the Children can speak the tongue of Man.  After all they appear to be a completely different species.  Why do we assume that they are vocally capable of human language?  Just like man is not vocally capable of speaking their tongue, which is supposed to mirror the sounds of nature.

So perhaps Leaf is currently under a glamour.  Perhaps she is one of the "waif" like girls from the House of Black and White, who are women in young girls' bodies.  It wouldn't be shocking if the Children and/or the Weirwoods have reached out to faceless men through their own human agents. 

I wouldn't infer that Leaf is necessarily the only tree-hugger who can speak the Common Tongue, she just says that she's speaking it for Bran's benefit, which isn't the same thing at all - it's also interesting by the way that she tells Meera that she's speaking it "For him, the Bran boy" rather than "For you". Does Meera speak the old tongue?

AS to being vocally capable of speaking each others tongues, its worth remembering that the Kalahari Bushmen speak in a series of klicks and other sounds which are quite different from "normal" human speech 

[SirArthur]

if we accept "no one" as an indication for a faceless man or child in the story ... we have a lot of suspects.

[LynnS]

1 hour ago, SirArthur said:

if we accept "no one" as an indication for a faceless man or child in the story ... we have a lot of suspects.

There is a lot of faceless man stuff you could associate with the Night's Watch.  They pledge to give up their identities and allegiances, have no wives, father no children etc.  They become 'no one' in a sense.  The Black Gate is ghost face hung on a wall.  Coldhands doesn't identify himself; keeps his face covered and takes an oath of silence from Sam in exchange for the life that Sam owes him.    

[Black Crow]

But with so much else in this story, they have forgotten...

[JNR]

On 9/14/2017 at 11:29 PM, Matthew. said:

I'm not saying GRRM doesn't aspire to something similar, I'm saying he falls short, not the least because of his aforementioned unambitious prose, likely stemming from a desire to not make ASOIAF too unapproachable.

Well, style is really in the eye of the beholder.  Austen and Hemingway and Chaucer and Faulker and Wodehouse are all extraordinary stylists, but I wouldn't try to rank them.  Would you?

But I'm not talking about writing in some overarching sense here.  I'm talking strictly about puzzle-building within literature, a small subset of the total skill required.

How can you say GRRM "falls short" as a puzzle-builder if the solutions haven't been revealed, and you don't know what they are and can't even be sure you've recognized the existence of the puzzles?  One has to come to the end of Lost before one can pronounce it a turd someone dropped on one's doorstep (as GRRM so famously did).  We're nowhere near the end.  And I think as we approach it -- as GRRM publishes the last two books from his original designed trilogy -- we're going to get the frame of reference we need, that we lack today.

To simplify the point, I'll limit this to a particular case: Jon's parents.  

I think most Heretics and most of the fandom of ASOIAF/GOT, in general, would agree that R+L=J is the most famous, best-established, most widely accepted major theory in the history not just of this fandom, but in the history of fantasy and science fiction altogether, since the genre began.

For twenty years (literally -- 1997) people have been discussing and developing it.  Tens of thousands of fans, writing millions of words, over two decades, all over the Internet have been developing it.  Every major media analyst I'm aware of, bar none, sees it as factual. It's so accepted, people like Ran (who is often cited as GRRM's #1 fan) say it's "not even a theory," and it's routinely described as "unwritten canon" on this site.  All the polls, going back many years, confirm all of this.

So... if Jon's parents are not R and L, and GRRM did provide sufficient evidence in his books for Jon's true parents to be deduced long before the revelation... and that can irrefutably be demonstrated prior to the release of TWOW... what will that tell you, following the release of TWOW, about GRRM's skill as a puzzle-builder?  In fooling people so utterly for twenty years that they think they can't possibly be wrong, yet are? 

I'd call it such an impressive stunt as to elevate GRRM over all other puzzlers in F/SF history.

We'll have to wait and see whether TWOW shows that GRRM actually did pull off that stunt -- or as you seem to think, he did not, because he falls short of other puzzler-builders from F/SF such as Wolfe.  I admit the waiting is taking longer than I ever expected it would.

[JNR]

On 9/15/2017 at 9:37 AM, LynnS said:

If it's not Robert, then I'll go with Howland as second choice.

How can Robert, who is six and a half feet tall, be described as short of stature, as the KotLT was?