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evita mgfs

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    Lady Evyta

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  1. Regarding Thorne, if my speculations from 2012 have been right, Thorne's speech is akin to that of Brutus' speech after the death of Caesar. Thorne does not "inspire" with emotions - he merely gives the men his reasons for killing Snow. It will be Tormund Giantsbane who will give the speech of Marc Antony's ilk - the one that stirs men's blood to mutiny and rage - and Tormund will "Cry Havoc - and let slip the dogs [direwolves] of war!" I bet we hear that oration in Episode 2 or 3,
  2. YOU ARE GOING TO DIE! RAVENOUS READER AND I JUST FIGURED THAT OUT ON BRAN'S GROWING POWERS THREAD!!! RAVENOUS READER SAID: If Will = Shakespeare = ('one with') the environment = natural order = the hierarchy of authors; and if Ser Waymar desires to disrupt the natural order; assuming my thesis that Martin surreptitiously desires to silence or subvert Shakespeare; Then the upstart lordling = GRRM! Considering his penchant of constructing things in threes, why would GRRM make playful allusions to two writers, without doing the same for the third ranger? Assuming this symmetry holds true, this suggests that 'Ser Waymar' is also 'way more' than we think he is! I've tried playing with various permutations of GRRM's full name, 'George Raymond Richard Martin' but this is the best I can come up with: Way-mar = Mar-tin Ray-mond = Way-mar...! (granted, maybe I am overreaching here!) Do any of you have some more convincing ideas about the meta-significance of this ('minor') character? THEN I SAID: MIND BLOWN! AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN!!! I LOVE THE MAR-TIN THING, AND IF I MAY ADD, Royce's cloak is made of fur from MARTEN ! HAR HAR HAR!!!! I THINK IT IS TRUE - MARTIN/MARTEN AND YOUR WORD PLAY - Martin aligns himself with the two writers he pays homage to, doesn't he? We must look out for a homage to William Golding! SO YOU BEST HIE TO SEAMS WITH YOUR AWESOME PUNNING!!! It must be true - great minds DO think alike! I wish I knew how to tag like RR does. I will have to ask her how she does that! I think it is hilarious how we all came up with it at the same time!
  3. I posted this pun in your excellent Reread thread: Martin opens Cat’s POV in AGoT with Robb sitting in the front of the vessel: “Robb sat in the bow with Grey Wind, his hand resting on his direwolf’s head” [785]. Martin closes with the northmen “bowing” their knees to the King in the North: “He [the Greatjon] pointed at Robb with the blade. “There sits the only king I mean to bow my knee to m’lords,” he thundered. “The King in the North!” “And he knelt, and laid his longsword at her [Catelyn’s] feet” [796]. Martin deviates from “bend” the knee to “bow” in this instance, thereby framing the POV and punning the word “bow”. In each case, Robb is out front and elevated symbolically and literally.
  4. I meant the character Bronn who is Tyrion's muscle or BRAWN at the Vale. I did not mean BROWN or another color, Sorry. Color symbology is too fast with a myriad of cultural distinctions. Those colors most pertinent to the series - such as red and white for the weirwoods/Ghost/blood/death are the clearest to articulate. Moreover, Martin employs colors ironically and not in the traditional senses of color symbology in literature at large. He likes to make things his OWN. But if you want a headache, discuss colors, by all means!
  5. hippocras / hypocrite Bronn / brawn
  6. Abel / Brother of Cain and Able to do the job. Waymar Royce / “Way More” arrogant, knowing, and dressed Will / Will to succeed / Short for William Shakespeare Gared – GAR / ED = EDGAR Allan Poe MARTIN and NOMENCLATURE WILL and GARED in the “PROLOGUE” from A GAME of THRONES Will and Gared may be dispensable, “generic” rangers on a fatal mission whose lives are forfeit because of their inexperienced commander Ser Waymar Royce, but Martin names them with purpose as a way to honor and thank two authors who inspire his prose fiction in A Song of Ice and Fire Series. The appearance of the names Will and Gared in the first “Prologue” of a voluminous series of novels speaks to the degree of gratitude Martin owes his sources. First, Will is short for “William”, or for “William Shakespeare”, the celebrated English writer whose works still have universal appeal hundreds of years after his death. It is no secret that Martin borrows from “the bard”, and among Shakespeare’s many poetic plays that Martin alludes to in conflicts, plot elements, and language, The Tragedy of Julius Caesar ranks high as the source material Martin prefers, putting his own “spin” on ideas and themes throughout his fantasy novels. To convey Will’s association with Shakespeare, Martin includes details pertaining to Will’s crime of poaching a deer that parallels similar events Shakespeare biographers debate happened to young Will Shakespeare before his arrival in London. Martin says of Will’s crime: “Will had been a hunter before he joined the Night’s Watch. Well, a poacher in truth. Mallister freeriders had caught him red-handed in the Mallisters’ own woods, skinning one of the Mallisters’ own bucks, and it had been a choice of putting on the black or losing a hand” (AGoT). Likewise, William Shakespeare trespasses on Sir Thomas Lucy’s property to kill a deer. In the article “In Search of Shakespeare: The Poaching Myth 1598”, a PBS.org author writes: “Though the tale is widely discredited today, three seventeenth-century accounts claim that Shakespeare was once beaten and imprisoned for poaching [a deer]. The alleged crime took place on land belonging to Sir Thomas Lucy - one of Walsingham's and Elizabeth's chief enforcers”. [http://www.pbs.org/shakespeare/events/event83.html]]. Although Will and Will share like crimes, their punishments are quite different. Ranger Will chooses an option that will take him a lifetime to repay, but he prefers becoming a Sworn Brother of the Night’s Watch over losing his hand, which is an early allusion to the stigma associated with disfigurement in Martin’s world of ice and fire. Second, the name “Gared” has an unusual spelling, one not Americanized with a “J”. However, Martin aspires to create memorable characters, and he alters spellings of familiar names to give them a medieval flare. Analyzing the spelling of “Gared” requires some mental creativity: when readers divide “Gared” into two syllables, GAR / ED, and transpose them, one with the other, the “revised” appellation is EDGAR, the first name of American author and poet Edgar Allan Poe. Of course, the obvious inspiration Martin takes from Poe is Lord Commander Mormont’s talking raven, a character that owes a debt of gratitude to Poe’s poem “The Raven”. The title bird flies in a window and perches on a bust of Athena, and he punctuates any question the narrator poses by saying hauntingly “Nevermore!” The narrator asks the raven if he will ever see his dead lover Lenore: quothe the raven, “Nevermore!” Furthermore, Poe’s favorite thematic inclusion in several of his short stories is the death of a beautiful woman. In Martin’s I & F Series, the death of Lyanna Stark haunts Ned and figures in many other character arcs throughout the novels.
  7. Martin describes the Undying as burning like corn husks, the dragon’s flames eating away at their fragile encasements. The Undying burn up very much like the parchment of ancient scrolls. The Undying may represent a collective knowledge of the warlocks - and other magical forces - which Drogon sets ablaze and ultimately destroys. Similarly, several irreplaceable scrolls are destroyed in the library fire at Winterfell – knowledge lost forever in the flames. The forces that are the old gods of the north preserve their collective knowledge within elements of nature that are, in most cases, indestructible.
  8. This is such a clever, fun topic idea, and you did an excellent job detailing those unfortunate souls who have gone missing. Since I cannot meaningfully contribute as you and everyone else has mentioned those folk I would have put on a milk carton, I thought I would add my support to another excellent OP by Dark Sister. Good Job!
  9. Thanks! Thanks! I look forward to reading your link. Nothing sounds crackpot from you - you are well-informed. Share my Star/Stark with LML. His theories lead me to a connection of "star" in the name "Stark" and that Bran is the Fallen Star - K. I think I have listened to your podcasts - although I may have the wrong name. Sorry if I do!
  10. Near the center of the novel A Dance with Dragons, Martin presents a Jon POV that is rich in figurative language that speaks to the oneness of Jon the warg and his direwolf Ghost. At the same time, Martin foreshadows Jon sharing his direwolf’s skin in the near future. Martin plays with his cloaking/coating motif by suggesting that Jon Snow metaphorically is the “snow”, as in Jon’s observation that Ghost “seemed to love fresh snow” [462]. Ghost loves Jon Snow so much that he even covers himself with “snow”! So much so that “At the base of the Wall he [Jon] found Ghost rolling in a snowbank . . . When he saw Jon he bounded back onto his feet and shook himself off” [462]. Because Martin repeats this and more figurative language pertaining to cloak/coat wearing and removing, Martin may indeed suggest that Jon Snow will wear his direwolf’s skin as warg – and direwolf will be in disguise as Jon Snow, wearing his snowy coat, yet cognizant and aware as his master – the warg within the direwolf. Eventually, Ghost will “shake” off or shake out Jon Snow’s warg, returning warg and wolf to the body of Jon Snow. Furthermore, Martin makes clear to readers to pay heed to language when Jon Snow says, “The words matter . . .”[462]. In context, Jon refers to the NW oath that his new recruits will speak beyond the Wall in the grove of nine weirwoods. Yet, at the same time, Jon’s words “cloak” deeper meanings – Jon is Martin’s voice attesting to the importance of the author’s words as well as the sacred oath of the SB of the NW. A great deal of Jon’s dialogue has deeper meanings: the NW words “bind us all together” and “They make us brothers” [462-463]. Jon and Ghost are thus bonded, closer than even Jon and his half siblings. When Jon calls Ghost “To me”, the direwolf “shook the snow from his back and trotted to Jon’s side” [463[. This is the second reference to Ghost wearing the skin of “Jon Snow”. Then Jon and Ghost travel beneath the ice, “the trees stood tall and silent, huddled in thick white cloaks” [463]. Martin dresses the trees to emphasize the idea of “transformation/rebirth/skinchanging”. The men who march with Jon will return transformed – and they will wear the black as SBs. Likewise, Jon Snow will also be transformed/reborn/skinchanged not long after his return to the Wall. Mayhap he will shed his black cloak – Martin hints at this, yes? Ghost stalks beside Jon’s mount, sniffing the air. When Jon asks “What is it?”, Jon admits to himself, the reader, and Ghost that Jon Snow has limited vision: “The woods were empty as far as he could see, but that was not very far” [463]. Perhaps Jon’s vision will be clearer when he looks through the red eyes of Ghost. Jon watches as “Ghost bounded toward the trees, slipped between two-white-cloaked pines, and vanished in a cloud of snow” [463]. Martin employs the past participle of “slip” - “slipped”, a word BR speaks to Bran, telling him to slip his skin and fly. “Vanished” is an important word as Martin employs it consistently from the first novel AGoT throughout the novels that follow, when the author describes any of the Stark direwolves as they enter the forest or elsewhere. “A vanishing act” is a trick, an illusion that magicians perform – it is a fitting word for Martin to repeat because his world of ice and fire is filled with magic. Martin poignantly depicts Jon and Ghost’s bond – their oneness: “Jon smelled Tom Barleycorn before he saw him. Or was it Ghost who smelled him? Of late, Jon Snow sometimes felt as he and his direwolf were one, even awake” [466]. “The shield that guards the realms of men. Ghost nuzzled up against his shoulder, and Jon draped his arm around him. He could smell Horse’s unwashed breeches, the sweet scent Satin combed into his beard, the sharp smell of fear, the giant’s overpowering musk. He could hear the beating of his own heart” [469]. Martin emphasizes that Jon and Ghost are connected in language that is obvious and in metaphoric/symbolic language as well. The third time Martin refers to Ghost and his snow coat is here: “The great wolf appeared first, shaking off the snow” [466]. However, Ghost is also a “white shadow at Jon’s side” with red eyes like the weirwood’s. Martin makes many other references to cloaks, all of which play into the theme of changing/transforming through wearing an outer garment that is superfluous when held up against what rests inside the heart of he who wears another’s likeness. “The evening sky had turned the faded grey of an old cloak that had been washed too many times . . .” [466]. “Their hoods were raised against the biting wind, and some had scarves wrapped about their faces, hiding their features” [464]. “With their black hoods and thick black cowls, the six might have been carved from shadow” [468]. “The wind . . , made their coats snap and swirl . . .” [469]. Finally, Jon Snow removes his cloak upon returning, “hanging his cloak on the peg beside the door” [470]. After taking off his cloak, Jon reads the words of a king, after which he reflects upon Winterfell, “the castle is a shell . . . not WF, but the ghost of WF” [470]. Jon without his NW identity and cloak is an empty shell as is WF without a visible Stark on location. Ghost will house Jon Snow’s warg, and wolf and warg will make their presence known as a Ghost in Winterfell, literally and symbolically.
  11. The first two sentences of Ned’s POV I from AGoT follow: “The visitors poured though the castle gates in a river of gold and silver and polished steel, three hundred strong, a pride of bannermen and knights, of sworn swords and freeriders. Over their heads a dozen golden banners whipped back and forth in the northern wind, emblazoned with the crowned stag of Baratheon” (AGoT 39). First sentences in a POV are often significant, and in these opening sentences Martin captures the pomp and circumstance of a royal arrival featuring colors uncharacteristic of the cold grey north splashed against the sky, Martin’s “nautical motif” is evident in words such as “poured”, “river”, “gate”, “whipped back and forth”, and “in the northern wind”, all of which conjure images of movement as well as of the sails of a craft upon a body of water. The “river” speaks to an analogy Lord Brynden makes in his lessons to Bran, comparing time to a river. Moreover, the water imagery brings to mind Homer’s Odyssey, the story of Odysseus’ ill-fated voyage home to the island of Ithaca. Like Odysseus, each Stark embarks on a symbolic “odyssey” of his/her own, a long arduous journey during which he/she will encounter perils that he/she must overcome. Some will survive, others will fail. Ultimately, all will return to their home in some fashion or another. LION MOTIF: Martin uses the word “pride” – aka a family of lions – here “a pride of bannermen and knights, of sworn swords and freeriders ”. When Robert vaults off his warhorse, he greets Ned with a “familiar roar”. Martin intimates that this Baratheon is more a LION than a STAG, for King Robert confides in Ned that he plans to name Jaime Lannister “Warden of the East” and send little Robert Arryn to foster with Tywin Lannister. Two pages later, once the King is with Ned for a while, he behaves more like a STAG when he “snorts” a remark that Ned’s people in the north are hiding underneath the snow.
  12. Dolorous Eddison Tollet, OR Toilet: he seems to be around urine, feces, and vomit.
  13. Dawn was forged on the heart of a fallen star. Bran is the fallen Stark who is in the heart of the weirwood.
  14. Hey Evita!  :wub:  Thanks for hooking me up with the QI, that's a cool little forum, and a bit more personal as well.  Good work!  I logged in to reply to your wonderful posts today but was side tracked by the invite from iheartseverus. 

    On that note, some more great posts.  Loved the crab symbolism, and all your other posts, I have loads I want to chat about. 

    You have been prolific these last few days, it's awesome!  Forgive me if I don't always reply straight away, but I always read and try to reply where ideas and time allows.  Anyway, here's to the QI!!   :cheers: 

    1. Show previous comments  3 more
    2. evita mgfs

      evita mgfs

      Wizz,

      Here is a hilarious recap of the first trailer you might enjoy!

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GYDRTQaqm3Q

    3. Wizz-The-Smith

      Wizz-The-Smith

      Hi Evita.  It seems we do have even more in common, that's awesome.  I love The Walking Dead, I am always on edge watching that show, it's full of surprises.  I always watch the Talking Dead as well, mainly for the preview of next weeks show, but there's some cool guests, facts and interviews etc...  However, I haven't seen Fear The Walking Dead yet, I missed it first time round, but I think there's a re-run happening over here after next weeks finale, so I will catch up then.

      I've only seen about the last hour of Titanic' so I can't claim to have watched it really, I'm not a massive film guy. LOTR, yes, occasional others that look good.  But I do enjoy a good documentary, and have watched a few on the Titanic.  

      I have the ability to Skype, but have never done so.  But hey, there's a first time for everything!  Perhaps we should arrange a time for a chat? 

      Britain is 'lovely', our green and pleasant land.  That's because we get so much damn rain!  :D  I'm only joking, I love it here.  So very British, I miss the food and climate as soon as I'm away, then moan about it when I'm back.  :P 

      Finally, your son George not only has a cool name but good taste in Tv shows, thank the old gods and the new he put you onto Asoiaf.  And that recap was cool, very funny, thanks for that.  Do you often use YouTube for GOT content?  If so I have enjoyed the channels 'Radio Westeros' with Yolkboy and Lady Gwyn and 'History of Westeros' with Aziz and Ashaya.  Both have really detailed analysis on the books and show reviews as the seasons progress.

      Speak soon.  :D 

    4. evita mgfs

      evita mgfs

      Hello, my Lord of Light,

      Wow!  I have been touched by Arya's Song and her post in our thread.  She seems to need encouragement to post her ideas, and she came to the best place in the reread forum, I think.  I have been having such a good time with how everyone is sharing and inspiring one another.  You are so nice and kind.  I sung your praises to iheart on IQ in a PM.  I am going to recommend Arya's Song.  How well do you know Longrider?  You should recommend some of your pals.  They namay enjoy QI too.

      Yes - we can make a Skype date.  I know that you work, so I think you should set a day and time, when you are available, and I will work around it.  I am retired, and my schedule is fairly open,.  I am more a night owl than a morning person.  Are you five hours ahead or behind?  I cannot remember.

      Give me the links for the Radio Westeros, and please post them in Bran's Growing Powers.  I think we all will benefit from such sharing.  I sometimes stumble on things rather than by design.

      Yolkboy is on QI - I saw his name.

      Skype is super easy.  Open it up and follow directions - with Google Chrome, Skype is on my tool bar, and it remembers my password s.  Belonging to different forums and such, I like to have someone other than me remember my passwords.

      My name is mary.feasler.  If you put that in and hit dial, my Skype will ring kind of like a phone.  We can chat with or without video.  I prefer video - then we can show each other stuff - like I want to show you my Game of Thrones display, and my awesome Dark Horse figures, especially my favorite with Hodor and Bran on his back.

      I actually crafted the ice Wall using Masters of the Universe Castle Grey Skull.  I found awesome shields, helmets, and breastplates at the buck store that I incorporated into the display.  I even found an illuminated tree that I sat Ned under, cleaning Ice.  It is super cool - I think.

      I also want to introduce you to  my four golden retrievers and show you my book towers - all Martin's books.  I usually buy two of everything - one to write in and take apart. and then others to keep new and in pristine condition.  I even have the maps - and the pop up book.

      Thanks for being such a great westeros buddy.  Every day I wake up, looking forward to hearing from you and reading what you have to say.

      I did a bit of reading last night, and I found something to share with you as soon as I get it written up.

      More later.  My computer is chirping.  Someone may have posted something in our thread.

      Love ya',

      Mary

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