Jump to content

The Fattest Leech

Members
  • Posts

    6,508
  • Joined

Everything posted by The Fattest Leech

  1. Something else that struck me a while back is Dalla's name is possibly derived from the Swedish Dala horse, and we know GRRM as said he studied Sweden's history, especially it's wars. GRRM has his running theme of fire-elementals burning the green/horse-elementals (Ramsay w/ Theon, Rhaegar w/Lyanna, etc) and Dalla being "burned/consumed" while giving birth at the wall while Stannis & Mel invaded is interesting, especially since GRRM said what Mel was doing there when the birthing was happening meant something else was "going on". "According to the legend, soldiers loyal to King Charles XII were quartered in the Dalecarlian region and carved the toys as gifts for their hosts."
  2. I think this sounds familiar, but I am questioning myself and wondering if this is something Sansa does for Dontos at Joffery's name day? Basically Sansa saving Dontos at the time.
  3. Is this the only mention of Daenerys getting or using/wearing this feathered cloak? I searched a bit more but there's always that chance my search terms are off. Thanks A Game of Thrones - Daenerys VI Dany smiled shyly. It was sweet to laugh. She felt half a girl again. They wandered for half the morning. She saw a beautiful feathered cloak from the Summer Isles, and took it for a gift. In return, she gave the merchant a silver medallion from her belt. That was how it was done among the Dothraki. A birdseller taught a green-and-red parrot to say her name, and Dany laughed again, yet still refused to take him. What would she do with a green-and-red parrot in a khalasar? She did take a dozen flasks of scented oils, the perfumes of her childhood; she had only to close her eyes and sniff them and she could see the big house with the red door once more. When Doreah looked longingly at a fertility charm at a magician's booth, Dany took that too and gave it to the handmaid, thinking that now she should find something for Irri and Jhiqui as well.
  4. I cannot seem to find the quote by GRRM where he states something along the lines of 'X' won't have a POV because they know too much. Was it Littlefinger, or Varys, or Howland? I have searched but cannot find the source. Does anyone out there know of this source. Thanks a billion
  5. The wiki says Reek's name is Heke and it gives the source as a Bran ACOK chapter, but I cannot find the actual statement that says this. Does anyone know/have the quote this came from? Am I looking right at it! And this Reek I am talking about is the first Reek to Ramsay, not Theon (naturally ). https://awoiaf.westeros.org/index.php/Reek#cite_note-Racok46.7B.7B.7B3.7D.7D.7D-2
  6. Yeah, that is somewhat what I was thinking as well, just using the old godsy direwolf symbols/sigil (which is a magical term) instead.
  7. Ooh, that’s good. Think of John the Fiddler/ Daemon Targ-Blackfyre that pops up along the road in D&E who is only there to commit treason, as Bloodraven so smartly knows. This is the moral question posited and recited in the Mystery Knight, “ Is the boy his father's son?" adding: Now that I think about it, this same story that questions treasons in un-rightful rulers (sons of) is where we are also introduced to the Frey’s and snot nosed Lord Walder as a wee child, who then later in life commits crimes against his king, and in TMK Bloodraven tells the Frey’s he will deal with them later... bring on Nymeria and her wolf pack!!! Also, GRRM has used this “sons of” treason idea before. In his story For A Single Yesterday, he has a rogue bunch of army dudes that were sworn to protect now out and about terrorizing survivors of a nuclear (dragon) blast. This group is called Sons of the Blast (SoB), but the good guys call them SoB’s for other reasons.
  8. Bookmarking to get back to later when I’m at my computer. Thanks for the thread.
  9. The last few days have been hairy and busy and busy. I thought I had that quote bookmarked, but I don't... but I have a general idea where it is and I will find it this evening. Sorry to keep you hanging
  10. I also pronounce it Eeronwood. ETA I do know this is a play on Ironwood, as GRRM likes to play around with his spellings based on region and such. I pronounce the ‘y’. Alarmist Almost like ‘yawn’, but more like ‘yohn’ with not so much of the ‘aw’ emphasis. Does that make any sense?
  11. I have a LeGuin quote I have been meaning to share with you. It’s at home in a book or I’d just paste it now. I’ll send a bird later
  12. I always assumed his minion was honored as Lemore. But you could be more right than I. Nice!
  13. Not much time at the moment, but so many story parrallels to the Nights Watch storyline as well... right down to a queen of Whores.
  14. Thanks. I hate to sound bossy, but figured I'd ask. --Leech
  15. This may be more of a small question, but, can the page number line on each thread be lightened on the phone version? I am on my phone a lot because of work, and the page number boxes for each thread on the index pages are really bulky and dark, which takes away from the visual ease of scanning to see what the thread title is and which thread you've already read or not. The numbers just seems too visually important when they aren't. I have no idea if it looks this way on tablets, but on my laptop the thread page numbers are a lighter grey (and easier to scan the forum page). Thanks, TF Leech
  16. Hey there @Seams thanks for the mention. Every time I think that Pinocchio "connection" was just a funny fluke, it pops back up again in strange places. That is pretty cool. I like it The last few posts in that thread with @Feather Crystal start to get in to some cool mirroring metaphors. Also, because of this AKoSK reread focus of yours, I went searching in those stories for some possible ideas that link the past to the future plot, and I found it! Maybe I will detail it here later, but as for now it is in something else I am writing up. Hint: beards!
  17. I totally forgot about "ghost skin". Cool. That is kinda what I was wondering as well. I know some of my quotes said moss, but I tell ya, they are so close. The pictures of it are wildly varying in structure and color. So beautiful. And some can even be purpley. I will check it out (if my ailing computer allows me to do so). Ya know what was one of my favorite parts of this wordplay that had me lichen the whole thing, the part where I found out that, "lichenized fungus, is actually two organisms functioning as a single, stable unit." I see that potential theme happening a lot in the story (already has in some cases). Funny how Tyrion uses a potential healing ingredient to kill a nurse. Tyrion was so afraid to eat the mushrooms soaked in garlic butter that Illyrio was offering, and yet Tyrion dishes his own out to a nurse. I gotcha, and that is how I feel about the maybe ghost grass connection- just for literary purpose. I see what you mean about Robb. They are brothers even in a way that differs from Jon and his NW brothers. IF Robb's will does decree Jon as King/next in line, when we first see Borroq and his boar arrive at the wall, they bow to Jon (as if he is a king, or something ) before crossing through the wall. The skinchanger stopped ten yards away. His monster pawed at the mud, snuffling. A light powdering of snow covered the boar's humped black back. He gave a snort and lowered his head, and for half a heartbeat Jon thought he was about to charge. To either side of him, his men lowered their spears. "Brother," Borroq said. "You'd best go on. We are about to close the gate." Also, Lady's bones are in the lichyard. (aah crap! now it's gettin' all misty in here) Thank you.
  18. I scanned this thread (and the forum) and I did not see this mentioned, but apologies if I missed it. This popped in to my head late last night as I was reading about something else totally not related to ASOAIF. Lich, Lichyard, Lichen... Ghost Grass? Lich being an old English word for "corpse", the gate at the lowest end of the cemetery where the coffin and funerary procession usually entered was commonly referred to as the "Lich Gate". This gate was quite often covered by a small roof where part of the funerary service could be carried out. The lich developed from monsters found in earlier classic sword and sorcery fiction, which is filled with powerful sorcerers who use their magic to triumph over death. Many of Clark Ashton Smith's short stories feature powerful wizards whose magic enables them to return from the dead. Several stories by Robert E. Howard, such as the novella Skull-Face (1929) and the short story "Scarlet Tears", feature undying sorcerers who retain a semblance of life through mystical means, their bodies reduced to shriveled husks with which they manage to maintain inhuman mobility and active thought.[5]Gary Gygax, one of the cocreators of Dungeons & Dragons, stated that he based the description of a lich included in the game on the short story "The Sword of the Sorcerer" (1969) by Gardner Fox.[6][7] The term lich, used as an archaic word for corpse (or body), is commonly used in these stories. H. P. Lovecraft also used the word in "The Thing on the Doorstep" (published 1937) where the narrator refers to the corpse of his friend possessed by a sorcerer.[8] Other imagery surrounding demiliches, in particular that of a jeweled skull, is drawn from the early Fritz Leiber story "Thieves' House".[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lich Lichyard lich (“corpse”) +‎ yard lichyard (plural lichyards) (literary) A graveyard Lichen, or lichenized fungus, is actually two organisms functioning as a single, stable unit. Lichens comprise a fungus living in a symbiotic relationship with an alga or cyanobacterium (or both in some instances).https://www.livescience.com/55008-lichens.html Some lichens can grow inside solid rock between the grains (endolithic lichens), with only the sexual fruiting part visible growing outside the rock. Different colored lichens may inhabit different adjacent sections of a rock face, depending on the angle of exposure to light. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lichen "But there's no sun. How do you know?" "From the moss. See how it grows mostly on one side of the trees? That's south." "What do we want with the north?" Gendry wanted to know. The rains came and went, but there was more grey sky than blue, and all the streams were running high. On the morning of the third day, Arya noticed that the moss was growing mostly on the wrong side of the trees. "We're going the wrong way," she said to Gendry, as they rode past an especially mossy elm. "We're going south. See how the moss is growing on the trunk?" Beneath the shadow of the First Keep was an ancient lichyard, its headstones spotted with pale lichen, where the old Kings of Winter had laid their faithful servants. It was there they buried Lady, while her brothers stalked between the graves like restless shadows. She had gone south, and only her bones had returned. The base of the tower was white from centuries of salt spray, the upper stories green from the lichen that crawled over it like a thick blanket, the jagged crown black with soot from its nightly watchfire. The views atop the hill were bracing, yet it was the ringwall that drew Jon's eye, the weathered grey stones with their white patches of lichen, their beards of green moss. It was said that the Fist had been a ringfort of the First Men in the Dawn Age. "An old place, and strong," Thoren Smallwood said. "Old," Mormont's raven screamed as it flapped in noisy circles about their heads. "Old, old, old." Inside was a cobbled square with a fountain at its center. A stone merman rose from its waters, twenty feet tall from tail to crown. His curly beard was green and white with lichen, and one of the prongs of his trident had broken off before Davos had been born, yet somehow he still managed to impress. Old Fishfoot was what the locals called him. The square was named for some dead lord, but no one ever called it anything but Fishfoot Yard. It was cool and dim inside the castle walls. An ancient weirwood filled the yard, as it had since these stones had first been raised. The carved face on its trunk was grown over by the same purple moss that hung heavy from the tree's pale limbs. Half of the branches seemed dead, but elsewhere a few red leaves still rustled, and it was there the ravens liked to perch. The tree was full of them, and there were more in the arched windows overhead, all around the yard. The ground was speckled by their droppings. As they crossed the yard, one flapped overhead and he heard the others quorking to each other. "Archmaester Walgrave has his chambers in the west tower, below the white rookery," Alleras told him. "The white ravens and the black ones quarrel like Dornishmen and Marchers, so they keep them apart." The Ghost grass "wildcard" could fall under this lichen umbrella, but being on the other side of the world, it appears rather different even if it has some shared literary functions. And we know people and objects from the other side of the planet most often have different names. Or not? Ghost grass is a type of grass that grows throughout the Shadow Lands in eastern Essos, both on its shores and in the valleys between its mountains.[1] Ghost grass is taller than a human on horseback and has stalks as pale as milkglass. It is an invasive plant that overwhelms other grass. The Dothraki believe that ghost grass glows with the spirits of the damned and will one day cover the entire world. http://awoiaf.westeros.org/index.php/Ghost_grass
  19. Who says GRRM doesn't like wordplay? My pardons, but this is from another GRRM story, but every time I read it, I think of this thread here Jambles <-> Jumbles and back again. "Yet you have never been beyond the Tempter's Veil until now. Only in the jambles, and never to the outworlds. You will find things different here, t'Larien." Dirk frowned. "What was that word you used? Jambles?" "The jambles," Vikary repeated. "Ah. Wolfman slang. The jambled worlds, the jumbled worlds, what you will. A phrase that I acquired from several Wolf-men who were among my friends during my studies on Avalon. It refers to the star sphere between the outworlds and the first- and second-generation colonies near Old Earth. It was the jambles where the Hrangans saturated the stars and ruled their slaveworlds and fought the Earth Imperials. Most of the planets you named were known then, and they were touched hard by the ancient war and jumbled by the collapse. Avalon itself is a second-generation colony, once a sector capital. That is some distinction, do you think, for a world so very far in these centuries ai-shattered?" Dirk nodded agreement. "Yes. I know the history, a little. You seem to know a lot of it." "I am a historian," Vikary said.
  20. George knows and admires the author John Steinbeck. I think George was maybe referencing Steinbeck's view on the mighty redwood tree, the sequoia, when he pictured the weirwood trees in ASOAIF. It seems GRRM merged Steinbeck's writing with the Norse tales of Yyggdrasil (no secret there), and his own oft used themes of something/someone being bone-white with red eyes when he wants to convey timeless, vast, psionic knowledge. John Steinbeck wrote about the redwood, and it's pretty easy to see the ASOIAF relations (and not just because I highlighted them ): "The redwoods, once seen, leave a mark or create a vision that stays with you always. No one has ever successfully painted or photographed a redwood tree. The feeling they produce is not transferable. From them comes silence and awe. It's not only their unbelievable stature, nor the color which seems to shift and vary under your eyes, no, they are not like any trees we know, they are ambassadors from another time." The Margaery Tyrell painting meant to lure Robert was just a Lyanna "Knight of the Laughing Tree" knock-off, and it failed. Silence from the tree is Ghost. Colors that shift is Val's eyes, and she does come from the trees, leading her free folk people to Jon, dressed and pinned as a weirwood. Ambassador's from another time is just as Bloodraven describes time to a tree... like a river and such.
  21. The Corsair King and the pirates of the seas. George borrowed the name "Corsair King" from the poet Lord Byron, to which his book Fevre Dream is chocked with Byron (and other poetry) references, including the fact that the poetry is the answer to a plot progressive riddle in the book. The story also takes place along the rivers and New Orleans, Louisiana is a key place in the story. This story is a prototype to many of the arcs we see in ASOIAF now, mainly with Jon at the wall. However, GRRM seems to take his inspirations and divvy them up and place a little in each section of Planetos storytelling. The Corsair is a tale in verse by Lord Byron published in 1814 (see 1814 in poetry), which was extremely popular and influential in its day, selling ten thousand copies on its first day of sale.[1] Its poetry, divided into cantos (like Dante's Divine Comedy), narrates the story of the corsair Conrad, how he was in his youth rejected by society because of his actions and his later fight against humanity (excepting women). In this tale the figure of Byronic hero is presented by the point of view of the people. Many Americans believed that Lord Byron's poem "The Corsair" was based on the life of the privateer/pirate Jean Lafitte; the work sold over 10,000 copies on its first day of publication. (Adding: the number 10,000 is a favorite number that GRRM likes to use in ASOAIF that relates to rivers ) Jean Laffite https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean_Lafitte
  22. Awful. Again, it does not make sense within its own world. Meaning, even though they have been way off from the books since season 3 (at minimum) and it is now its own story, it does not make sense within itself. Where is Ghost? How did Dany not send people after Jaime and Bronn, the guys who literally just tried to kill her and Drogo, and only fell about 15 feet away from her? How did Bronn find Jaime's hand? How did Jaime not drown in that heavy armor, and Bronn with him, or left Jaime behind? I guess Cersei will die in childbirth as the "other queen with a golden crown"-thing comes along? Or, will it be Asha Yara? The Tyrion and Varys bookend show is lame and pointless. Where is Ghost? Why are Arya and Littlefinger playing Scooby-Doo castle tag? Isn't Arya supposed to have magic skills now? Is Arya really suggesting beheading people? THIS is what the showrunners have decided to do with Arya? The frickin' White Walkers and wights should be sunbathing in the Reach by now!!!!! Last season they were right on top of Bran and Meera... that door did not hold for THAT long. And you are telling me that a young girl (Meera) can outrun the White Walkers while she pulls a living graveworm Bran??? She looked pretty exhausted and worn out when She got to Castle Black for the first time. Gotta love me some first time in all of Planetos history that greyscale can be cured in 10 1/2 hours so Jorah can make it back to Dany just in time to leave her again. All of this travel which is practically right next to King's Landing, and NO ONE notices this? Is Euron sleeping off his leather coma? So, is no one gong to talk about Arya? During the Eastwatch dungeon scene almost everyone in that room had time with Arya, and they know Jon is a Stark... so what's up everyone??? The dialogue from everyone is like a giant exposition machine. Let's just crank out every fanbased internet meme joke we can, "keep rowing", and then have the characters hamfist every detail in season 7 that should have been included all along. Sam, who is so intent on discovering overlooked details, overlooks the big detail about Rhaegar in favor of "shit" dialogue. So, if I do my regular start neutral at 5, and rank one way or another from there, then that puts me at -9 for this episode.
×
×
  • Create New...