LmL

Yeah I'm all over it. Going to make an emergency video if I can. You saw the same thing I did my brother. And yeah, that Yoren quote jumped to mind for sure. We also saw that symbol when Dany burned Drogon - there was an overhead shot that shows it, I highlighted it in my video.

Wow, this seems a bit over the top. I am sorry you feel this way. - I never said or implied my / our analysis was exclusive to any other, not sure why you would take that meaning - the point of sharing analysis is to start a conversation, not kill it. Every single time I comment on your thread, it is because I imagine an idea I have might help you in your own analysis. That's the only reason I take the time to comment. You were discussing something we had been discussing too, so I shared our thoughts about pennytree, thinking you might enjoy them or find something useful to your own inquiry. That's what people do on the forum - not sure why my opinion, couched in qualifiers like "such and such CAN refer to" and "I believe that," comes across as an attempt to kill the convo when you don't interpret other people's comments that way. - "my friends" that I listed were, to the best of my knowledge, also your friends, as I know they comment on your threads and share ideas with you. I guess not? I mentioned them in the interest of not taking credit for other people's ideas or acting like a know-it-all. Unfortunately that seams not to have come across as I intended - the rest of your invective is just bizarre. I'm sorry you have such a grudge against me, for what, I do not know. I'll be sure to leave you alone though! Actually this was a simple mistake, it was a comment intended for a different thread. However I am glad the mistake forced you to show your apparent true feelings of hostility. Now I know better than to try to share ideas with you. I only ever did that because I respect your analysis and your insights frequently overlap with my own. Clearly you do not appreciate my input, so I will stop trying to contribute to your thread.

edit: wrong thread

Pennies can be stars in ASOIAF, and are made of copper, which is a terrific conductor of electricity.. or a good way to draw lightning. The 'lightning striking the tree' motif of the Ironborn legend, the burning tree which transmits the fire of the gods to mankind, refers to (I believe) the weirwoods, whose bloody hands leaves are also described as a "blaze of flame." So, the penny tree is a "star tree" by virtue of the pennies and also a "tree that wants to be struck by lightning." That lightning was actually a falling star, a moon meteor. That is why Dunk's sigil is a falling star and a tree - it's all about this idea of the lightning striking the tree. His horse is thunder, which alludes to the thunderbolt and also the deeper concept of a shamanic horse like Sleipnir, but I digress. This is not just my thinking; some of this comes from @Pain killer Jane and @Blue Tiger and @ravenous reader and perhaps a couple of others; I don't recall exactly but we pieced it together collaboratively is the point.

I noticed in Theon's Winterfell nightmare of the two direwolf children chasing him, all the trees had faces, and all the faces were laughing. It seems like a pretty strong theme. It might be an extension of the "sex and swordplay" double entendres about bloody swords and "giving a maiden the sword when her moon blood is on her" , the childbed being a woman's battlefield and the like.

@GloubieBoulga, weirwoods are also slaughter trees for what it's worth. I'd have to agree those words are meant to play off one another. There's also the link between laughing and slaying implied by the Crescent moon. It can either be a sickle, such as Bran's last ADWD chapter, or it can be a smile like a Cheshire cat moon. Martin is working that angle quite a bit. ETA: you might consider the scene from AFFC where Jaime and The silent knight Ilyn Payne dance beneath the horned moon, with Payne doing his choking laughter thing.

Isobel, I'll reeling you back in from the brink; please accept my extended hand. You're awfully close to the edge there - the edge of madness. Don't slip Isobel! ISOBEELLLLLLLLL!!!!!!!!!!! NNNOOOOOO!!!!!

Have you guys put together the scarecrow connection between the burning scarecrows in Jon's dream and Beric, the scarecrow knight? Basically, when Jon has his burning red sword / AA dream, he dreams about those scarecrow brothers they made, and in the dream, they are the only ones with him. They tumble down, black cloaks ablaze - like fiery black meteors, it must be said - meaning that they have become burning scarecrows. Those scarecrows were named for brothers who were either dead or absent, so there is an implication of the burning scarecrows as dead or undead fiery scarecrows. That's EXACTLY what Beric is, a fiery undead "scarecrow knight" who also wears a black cloak and who wields a burning sword, just like Jon does in the dream. What I think all that is about is that the original Night's Watch were undead greenseers, resurrected by fire magic - probably he Last Hero's 12 who "died." Jon is about to be an undead skinchanger, quite possibly reanimated with fire magic, so essentially Jon would be recreating what I think is the truth behind the original Last Hero. Returning to Beric, he's not a skinchanger like Jon, but he has obvious Bloodraven symbolism with the weirwood throne and the one eye missing. That is done to imply him as a greenseer (or skinchanger, same diff) - a greenseer who has been reanimated with fire. Who holds a burning red sword. The reason you have to use skinchangers to make a good zombie is because the animal (or tree in the case of a greenseer) can preserve the soul intact for a short time (before it merges with the animal spirit). The animal is a soul-jar, so the resurrected person would not be a faded remnant like Beric or Cat, but a skinchanger who sort of skinchangers his own resurrected corpse. Such a person would be a lot like Coldhands, or a warmer version if fire is used, and they are ideal to fight the Others because they do not need to eat or sleep or seek warmth. Coldhands can live up there for centuries, and probably has. I think the Last Hero and his company had to make this great sacrifice to journey into the frozen lands, to become a burning scarecrow. See what y'all think of that. You're talking about my favorite subjects here.

I'm cautious of commenting on your threads at all at this point, having been chewed out by you so many times for mentioning nay kind of astronomy, but nevertheless, I have a thought or two here. Hell-hound. That's your fiery dog. I have my own interpretation of hellhounds in mythical astronomy terms - they are very similar to dragons in many ways - but if you want to follow your own nose on this (ha ha) then I suggest looking to Theon's dream of Bran and Rickon as hellhound / dire wolf children, and also everything having to do with Sandor, as he is a burnt Hound. You will notice all the Stark wolves have fiery descriptions of their eyes, and that is no accident - I believe all the dire wolves are "hell hounds" after a fashion. Sander's "what dogs do to wolves" quote is misleading in this sense. Thematically, fire consumes, hounds hunt. R'hllor is a ravenous dog god, he's coming to getcha. You've considered Quentyn martial, the sun's son, right? There is a very large theme about the second suns which all of this plays into. Basically, Lightbringer is the child of the sun and moon, and so it is the sun's son. Every single second son reference of any kind will lead back to Lightbringer and Azor Ahai. Quentyn seems like a lame-o, but he is trying to ride dragons and marry the "Amethyst Empress Reborn," just as Euron is, and he does have some dragon blood. It's what you would call a weak echo, but there it is. As for the Second Sons company, their banner is a broken sword, and all the broken sword ideas relate to Lightbringer, specifically to the idea of the Last Hero breaking his sword. There are a lot of broken swords - Ice, split in half; the Titan of Bravos holds a broken sword (who heralds the morning and evening, just Venus the Morningstar, whose name means light-bringer), Beric, a clear Azor Ahai echo, has his flaming sword broken, Joffrey vows to break Stannis's magic sword, and so on. Anyway don't shoot me but hopefully some of those ideas might help you in your own quest.

This will come as bad news to Lem

@Seams I am always trying to simultaneously identify symbolism and also figure out what it means for the story. For example, the green sea / greenseer wordplay is fairly compelling, but until we can figure out what the POINT is - what the sea has to do with greenseers, what Deep Ones have to do with greenseers, etc, it's only interesting wordplay. I tend to think martin doesn't just do wordplay with purpose - I'm sure there is a deeper truth behind the sea / seer thing having to do with an important part of the story, but I can't figure out exactly what.

Well, I definitely think it's healthy to explore an idea even if it seams far fetched. I do think Martin is immensely clever and that he clearly takes advantage of the English language in many clever ways, so I am not set against the idea of anagrams... just seems like a whole 'nother level of cryptic. What is your best example of an anagram which has an obvious logical correlation?

I myself have a hard time with this, and you know I am not a sceptic. I follow the similar sounding words and different spellings for the same sound (see/ sea), but anagrams... yeah I don't know, seems pretty far out. I don't really see a connection between silver seaweed and red weirwood leaves, what was that supposed to be again?

Sure thing man, I thought we were riffing on the green sea / greenseer thing. It's kind of been bleeding over on several threads, and I think most of us are familiar with your puns and wordplay thread here so some crossover is natural. But sure, I guess you want the thread to stick to identifying the puns and not following out any one idea?

I'm not sure what you're asking exactly. Do I think House Velryon itself is important? No, not really, I would interpret all of their symbolism and actions as clues about other things. But those others things absolutely do include free seeing ideas, that's exactly what I am suggested. All of the underworld ideas have to do with resurrection and coming from death, and that's what is going on when greenseers transform themselves through ice or fire magic I believe.

The Velaryons are dragon people who took a driftwood throne from fish people (the Merling King according to legend), and now their sigil is a dragon-like seahorse. To me those are all clues about the Ironborn having an ancestry from the original dragonlords from Asshai / the Great Empire of the Dawn conquering the Iron Islands and taking a wooden chair (Nagga's fangs which made the Grey King's throne being petrified weirwood) from the fish people that lived there. The result is a merger of dragon people and fish people, which is one layer of meaning of the myth of the sea dragon, IMO. Furthermore, I believe I have established a plausible theory about the Grey King being some sort of greenseer, sitting on a weirwood throne, so we have the idea of a greenseer being associated with fish people / being drowned. We've been talking about that I the Nennymoan thread as well. ETA: Addam Velaryon makes my points nicely. He rides a dragon named Seasmoke, a grey dragon associated with the sea - an allusion to the Grey King, who as I have suggested is both a greenseer and a dragon blooded person who has something to do with drowning or water magic. He goes to the Gods Eye, consulted with Green Men, enhancing his connection to greenseers. So, the grey color of the dragon, the Seamoke name, the Velaryon sigil (dragon that becomes a seahorse) and the Velaryon story about taking the throne of the Merling King all connect Addam to aquatic ideas, people and magic. He's a dragon rider, obviously, giving us the idea of a dragon blooded person. And he's connected to greenseers via his trip to the Gods Eye and the potential double meanings of sea and see. Also Addam used to be Addam of Hull, connecting him with boats. I believe that the bones of the sea dragon are not only weirwood, but actually the flipped over ribbing of a boat made with weirwood. So that's one more sea dragon idea. I guarantee if we look at Addam's scenes in TPATQ we will find metaphors about these ideas in the actual text. I've looked a bit, and TPATQ is definitely full of metaphors, but I wasn't looking for these things. Of course Addam's dad is the Sea Snake Corlys Velaryon, another sea dragon idea. I'm definitely going to have to include the Velaryons in a subsequent episode. FWIW smoke can also be used as a medium to see the future. Seasmoke as a concept makes me think of a meteor falling into the sea, which is my primary explanation of the sea dragon which drowns islands myth.

Very cool, I like that one @Seams. Petyr who loves mint and minting coins uses plot elements which have coin symbolism. Pretty clever stuff by George.

Whatever you do, don't google search "Dirk Lance." LoL, just kidding, I've never google'd that and I have no idea what you might find. As for ice and black ice, you've noticed Jon's dream where he is armored in black ice, correct? What do you make of that I wonder? I tend to see black ice as the perfect symbol of a comet, which is full of dirty rock and is covered in a very dark black goo called "space gunk" which is something like the char on your barbecue. In other words, comets contain oily black stone and black ice. And the most prominent sword in the story... is black Ice. Anyway I own't get carried away, but I find the black ice thing fascinating.

Perhaps this will help you , perhaps not, but there is al ink between frostbite and valyrian steel, specifically Ned's black sword called Ice. In the scene at Craster, sit comes hot and heavy: Cratser refers to Gared and asks if the bite did that too (took his head off), equating black Ice with frostbite. And then Craster needs an axe with bite, because his has lost its bite, and gets a black steel (think of V steel being almost black) axe from Mormont. Then we have the scene with Ygriite almost being executed by Jon - when Longclaw touches her, she says "that's cold," just as Sam says when he picks up the dragonglass after stabbing the Other. Dragonglass is like black ice, in a manner of speaking, just as Ned's sword is. When Jon touches her with Longclaw, he immediately thinks about Ice and Ned. I am coming at this from the angle of fire and ice - I am seeing George personify ice as burning and fire as being frozen, perhaps as a way of crossing people up and making things more interesting, but I saw your speculation about frostbite and thought I would offer it up.

Yeah, I figure you might be aware of them, but I thought I'd call your attention to it just in case. I love seeing them in the god's eye... terrific.

@Seams, are you following the detailed swan maiden analysis on @sweetsunray's thread? They are swanning it up over there. Sweetsun, check out this scene seams found. Three Blck swans swimming in the gods eye - that's yet another confirmation that the black swans are equivalent to the three black dragon moon meteors, the reborn moon maiden, etc. That is in fact what Arya's archetype is. Seams, there are a couple of other scenes where "north of the Wall" is symbolized that you might want to examine. Dany's last chapter of ADWD, when she sleeps by the old well and awakened covered in ants the next morning. The broken wall she sleeps next to is directly compared to the Wall of Westeros. Then we have Quorin and Jon hiding in that cave right before they are forced to fight when caught by the Wildlings. That entire cave scene after they pass through the waterfall is a "north of the Wall" metaphor. It's possible you'll find compatible themes there to what you've just discussed. The idea of hedge knights and edge nights (Nights watch) being symbolically connected is interesting. The Kingsguard knights are analogies for the Others, I have found, while the lowly Nights Watch compares to hedge knights? Makes sense.

George is infamous for abusing alliteration as a technique, so I think you're likely to go quite made searching for cryptic word clues based on alliteration. But who knows. I'd believe nearly anything in the way of cryptic Martin ideas at this point.

Enjoyed your comment where @Evolett, and I will again point out this passage, with selected quotes: I own't go into detailed analysis here, but the point is that the weapon of the sun is a black iron rose with gleaming thorns. I am claiming that this represents one aspect of Lightbringer. The moon was the flower, and Lightbringer / the black moon meteors the gleaming thorns. There are some Azor Ahai reborn manifestations who seem to protect and / or avenge moon maidens, namely, Tyrion (the gargoyle version of Azor Ahai reborn) and Sandor (the hellhound version of AA reborn), both of whom protect and avenge Sansa and other moon maidens (penny for Tyrion, Arya for Sandor). I'm speaking in terms of AA reborn archetypes of course when I talk about the hellhound and gargoyle versions of AA reborn. But the point is, they are the thorns to the moon maiden's sweet flower. It's 100% in line with your thematic analysis about thorns and flowers, Evolett. I've really honed in on this moon avenging / protecting aspect of things in my last essay and the one I am going to put out next called "Tyrion Targaryen." @Seams, amazing catch on Widow's Wail being a flower. That's absolutely awesome, it fits in perfectly with Widow's Wail being a symbol of Lightbringer the black moon meteor. It's tied to Nissa's Wail which cracked the moon, and as I said the moon is a flower - a sun-drinking heliotrope (the dragons that poured forth from the moon drank the fire of the sun). When Jaime gives Oathkeeper to Brienne, he says "you';; protecting Ned Starks' daughters with Ned Stark's steel" - again, the protection aspect. Widow's Wail being a flower is just one more tie to it as a moon sword. Just as Lightbringer was stained with Nissa Nissa's blood, Ned's own sword was stained with his blood. And you'll remember that Arya looks at the red comet, symbol of Lightbringer, and compares it Ned's sword, red with Ned's blood... so again it all ties together very nicely. I'll be sure to credit you when I mention that on the podcast.

There's also a scene in AGOT at the Battle of the Green Fork where Tywin's army unfolds like an iron rose, thorns gleaming. Lightbringer is the weapon of the solar king, but it's made of moon: and thus, the iron rose (which would be a black iron rose) with all of its thorns is the weapon (army) of the solar king, which is Lightbringer.