Heresy 153

[Black Crow]

Thanks, Flagons!

As far as the blue eyes line goes, it is definitely an interesting choice of words and I seem to remember other lines in the books referring to blue eyes in a similar fashion. A curious motif? We shall see.

Welcome to heresy. Yes I'm with Flagons in simply regarding it as a metaphor, but one specifically relating to the starry blue eyes of Craster's boys and the wights, so perhaps Eddard isn't as ignorant of such matters as he appears to be

[WeaselPie]

"The dead and black" i read as describing the roses spilling from her hand. I dont see Lyannas palm as black. Although the two descriptions are interesting and I wanted to see where WeaselPie is taking it.

I do believe it is the sky that is blue as the eyes of death, streaked with blood. Of course this is a dream and not what happened in reality, a fever dream at that and the authors flowery description too.

But GRRM is the one who made the connection with the others and wights with his words "blue as the eyes of death."

And glad to see you join in the conversation. :cheers:

Oh, I'm taking it somewhere for sure. Just gathering my notes. ;)

And welcome to Bryaugh as well, cheers. You're so lucky to have found this thread so early here, unfortunately I suffered elsewhere first. This is the absolute best thread to hear alternate theories, and the absolute best thread to express them.

[Urrax2]

Welcome to heresy. Yes I'm with Flagons in simply regarding it as a metaphor, but one specifically relating to the starry blue eyes of Craster's boys and the wights, so perhaps Eddard isn't as ignorant of such matters as he appears to be

Bryaugh, as a newbie (welcome!) you may not be aware that by "Craster's boys" Black Crow means the Others. Not all of us agree with that.

[Black Crow]

Bryaugh, as a newbie (welcome!) you may not be aware that by "Craster's boys" Black Crow means the Others. Not all of us agree with that.

True, but everything we're given in text points to it :cool4:

ETA: I think, given the brief conversation above about the limited knowledge we've been granted about the others, its worth emphasising that the argument may turn out to be a fundamental one, because if the walkers are indeed Craster's sons rather than something completely alien it provides an entree into the Stark connection to Winter, and, by looking on them as corrupted humans tracing an even more direct connection for good or ill to the Starks and a reason for that journey into the heart of Ice.

[JNR]

Actually I'm not sure about that one. I'd be inclined to argue that the first volume [AGoT] was written pretty well as it was intended in the context of the original trilogy and salted accordingly with glimpses of the blue-eyed lot.

Yes. Actually, I think we can pretty safely conclude that GRRM was doing a book dedicated largely to each of the three primary threats to Westeros. Hence

A Game of Thrones: Clearly a reference to the political struggles of the Starks and Lannisters

A Dance with Dragons: Dany comes back to Westeros, which is not in the best shape, and finds a mixed welcome

The Winds of Winter: Popsicles descend on and overwhelm the Wall and Westeros must somehow cope

All three titles make obvious sense in this design (compare to the doubtful title of the fifth novel we got).

So the actual AGOT does seem pretty close in intended content, but doesn't go nearly far enough (meaning, GRRM lost control of his wordcount) and winds up not far enough along in the plot. And then, as you say, the next four books largely extend that one, rather than entering the turf of the intended next two.

Thus I agree with you that the Others weren't intended to be developed to this extent in the first book... but neither was anything else. If GRRM was going to inflate the political struggle to this incredible extent, he could have inflated the Others' preliminary as well, to keep things in proportion, and really... two scenes is not even close to getting that job done over all those thousands of pages.

The show does a better job balancing the ratio, and hence has at least twice as many Other-relevant scenes (eg, Jon spies one taking a baby, and there's the infamous never-in-canon baby transformation scene, and then there's the scene where Rast spies water freezing before that). The problem there isn't one of balance, but... er... doubtful invention on the part of the show-runners.

[JNR]

But GRRM is the one who made the connection with the others and wights with his words "blue as the eyes of death."

Yeah, that's an interesting bit, though I'm not sure it was GRRM talking; I think that's how Ned remembers the dream.

And Ned doesn't even believe the Popsicles or wights exist:

The Others are as dead as the children of the forest, gone eight thousand years. Maester Luwin will tell you they never lived at all. No living man has ever seen one.

So the line about "blue as the eyes of death" seems to suggest that Ned's unconscious, dreaming mind is aware of truths his conscious mind isn't.

It seems a little out there, but consider that GRRM is developing the same premise every time he gives a character a Meaningful Dream (something that's happened to everybody from Jaime to, far more significantly, Jon). I think it's a pretty nice touch.

[King of Winters]

Continuing the most imaginative and ambitious epic fantasy since The Lord of the Rings Winter has come at last and no man can say whether it will ever go again. The Wall is broken, the cold dead legions are coming south, and the people of the Seven Kingdoms turn to their queen to protect them. But Daenerys Targaryen is learning what Robert Baratheon learned before her; that it is one thing to win a throne and quite another to sit on one. Before she can hope to defeat the Others, Dany knows she must unite the broken realm behind her. Wolf and lion must hunt together, maester and greenseer work as one, all the blood feuds must be put aside, the bitter rivals and sworn enemies join hands. The Winds of Winter tells the story of Danys fight to save her new-won kingdom, of two desperate journeys beyond the known world in to the very hearts of ice and fire, and of the final climactic battle at Winterfell, with life itself in the balance.

What I find really ironic about this is that this situation with Dany having to unite the broken kingdoms of Westeros, is that it's called one of the most cliched endings by other people, myself amongst them. Though as the entire story has been changed I think this won't happen.

One bit I do find interesting is "two desperate journeys beyond the known world in to the very hearts of ice and fire", which does bring to mind a theory involving Jon, the Wall, Dany and Valyria.

Oh and just to say I saw 'The Ice Dragon' in a bookshop and the blurb said that it was set in Westeros. I know GRRM doesn't have a say in what the blurb says, but I thought it ws interesting.

[Black Crow]

Thus I agree with you that the Others weren't intended to be developed to this extent in the first book... but neither was anything else. If GRRM was going to inflate the political struggle to this incredible extent, he could have inflated the Others' preliminary as well, to keep things in proportion, and really... two scenes is not even close to getting that job done over all those thousands of pages.

The show does a better job balancing the ratio, and hence has at least twice as many Other-relevant scenes (eg, Jon spies one taking a baby, and there's the infamous never-in-canon baby transformation scene, and then there's the scene where Rast spies water freezing before that). The problem there isn't one of balance, but... er... doubtful invention on the part of the show-runners.

As I said above in the analysis there's no doubt that the show told the story in its own way, but it was their version of what GRRM wrote. The real problem, I feel, is that important though those passages/scenes are, the fact that GRRM has chosen not to pad out their limited appearances as he has done with everybody else is precisely because there is a secret about them which can't yet be revealed.

If, just for the sake of argument we were to rotate the geography of Westeros and cast the Wall as a barrier against the Dothraki, it would be possible to build up what's a pretty straightforward threat throughout the course of the story with multiple clashes, multiple POVs and so on. Yet we don't get that with the Others, we're fed tidbits like Craster's sons, but otherwise nothing and its their very mysteriousness which breeds the suspicion that there's a game-changing reason for this secrecy which GRRM is unwilling to reveal until he's good and ready.

[JNR]

As I said above in the analysis there's no doubt that the show told the story in its own way, but it was their version of what GRRM wrote. The real problem, I feel, is that important though those passages/scenes are, the fact that GRRM has chosen not to pad out their limited appearances as he has done with everybody else is precisely because there is a secret about them which can't yet be revealed.

Oh, yes, here we completely agree... and when we read about it in (I imagine) the last book, you're going to owe me a little money. :cool4:

What D&D did, quite simply, is take the blunt statement of Craster's wife on the left and build their development of the Popsicles on that basis, beginning in season two. All the noncanonical scenes, such as the one in which Jon sees a Popsicle taking a baby, stem from that decision on their part.

It's not much of a secret that Craster's wife said that, or what she meant by it. To me, it's even more obvious than the premise of R+L=J, which is something no character directly suggests at any time in the series.

[Urrax2]

..What D&D did, quite simply, is take the blunt statement of Craster's wife on the left and build their development of the Popsicles on that basis, beginning in season two. ..

Well, I'm not sure that the notorious sequence showed a baby being changed into a popsicle. What it was meant to be showing I'm not sure. Withdrawal and storage of life force in some way, maybe?

[JNR]

Well, I'm not sure that the notorious sequence showed a baby being changed into a popsicle.

It's not certain, but there is that interview in which Benioff said that they were illustrating something suggested in the books.

We love the idea that there was one last baby that Craster had fathered before he died, and it’s a moment that, while not in the books, is kind of suggested by the books and a moment that we thought would be really fun to illustrate in a kind of horrifying way.

I take that as a reference to Craster's wife's statement as found in Black Crow's sig.

Of course there is not, anywhere in the books, anything about there being exactly thirteen Others at the HoW, who are led by one who has a spiky head and who may be the Night's King. All that seems to be the producers' imagination at work.

[wolfmaid7]

It's not certain, but there is that interview in which Benioff said that they were illustrating something suggested in the books.

I take that as a reference to Craster's wife's statement as found in Black Crow's sig.

Of course there is not, anywhere in the books, anything about there being exactly thirteen Others at the HoW, who are led by one who has a spiky head and who may be the Night's King. All that seems to be the producers' imagination at work.

Yeah it was,this along with another interview they did (see guide for links) shows that this was something they gleaned from their reading and understanding of what "lefty wife" said.Which is "lefty wife" said they were Craster sons,so it must be.

Again how they know this is still beyond me and to me this type of conclusion is the same reason we argue about R+L=J being "so solid" there are things that ask us to take it on faith when there is clearly not only ambiguity but just plain wrong reasoning on the part of the characters.Which i think is GRRM's point.

[JNR]

Again how they know this is still beyond me and to me this type of conclusion is the same reason we argue about R+L=J being "so solid" there are things that ask us to take it on faith when there is clearly not only ambiguity but just plain wrong reasoning on the part of the characters.Which i think is GRRM's point.

:agree: :cheers:

[Black Crow]

Oh and just to say I saw 'The Ice Dragon' in a bookshop and the blurb said that it was set in Westeros. I know GRRM doesn't have a say in what the blurb says, but I thought it ws interesting.

Perhaps its the Westeros of the black basalt architecture and the maze-walkers - before the seasons got screwed :devil:

[Bryaugh]

Oh, I'm taking it somewhere for sure. Just gathering my notes. ;)

And welcome to Bryaugh as well, cheers. You're so lucky to have found this thread so early here, unfortunately I suffered elsewhere first. This is the absolute best thread to hear alternate theories, and the absolute best thread to express them.

Welcome to heresy. Yes I'm with Flagons in simply regarding it as a metaphor, but one specifically relating to the starry blue eyes of Craster's boys and the wights, so perhaps Eddard isn't as ignorant of such matters as he appears to be

Thank you! I have been reading on here for quite some time, had another account at one point but never used it.

Bryaugh, as a newbie (welcome!) you may not be aware that by "Craster's boys" Black Crow means the Others. Not all of us agree with that.

Thanks Urrax. I'm not that much of a noob though. B)

It's not certain, but there is that interview in which Benioff said that they were illustrating something suggested in the books.

I take that as a reference to Craster's wife's statement as found in Black Crow's sig.

Of course there is not, anywhere in the books, anything about there being exactly thirteen Others at the HoW, who are led by one who has a spiky head and who may be the Night's King. All that seems to be the producers' imagination at work.

It's interesting they chose to do that scene the way they did. We'll see how it plays out for real.

[King of Winters]

Perhaps its the Westeros of the black basalt architecture and the maze-walkers - before the seasons got screwed :devil:

Yeah, I still don't like the idea of an ice dragon in Westeros, but if it does appear there's nothing I could do. It would just feel out of place and would have to have a ton of explanations to follow it.

And since we're touching on the Night's King scene again, I found this picture showing the Night's King behind the scenes, which clearly shows a crown of horns, as opposed to antlers as suggested at first, and also the fingers look almost like its frostbite.

[JNR]

Yeah, I still don't like the idea of an ice dragon in Westeros, but if it does appear there's nothing I could do. It would just feel out of place and would have to have a ton of explanations to follow it.

One interesting thing on this point is that the World book apparently establishes that these mythical ice dragons were made of living ice and had blue eyes, and furthermore, if they were killed, they melted.

Now, that melting business is not something Westeros seems to remember about the Popsicles any more, as far as we've been told.

So if it's remembered about mythical ice dragons, it seems likely that the dragons are either

1. Very distorted memories of the Popsicles themselves

2. Real, and remembered quite accurately

[Bryaugh]

Yeah, I still don't like the idea of an ice dragon in Westeros, but if it does appear there's nothing I could do. It would just feel out of place and would have to have a ton of explanations to follow it.

And since we're touching on the Night's King scene again, I found this picture showing the Night's King behind the scenes, which clearly shows a crown of horns, as opposed to antlers as suggested at first, and also the fingers look almost like its frostbite.

I think the references to the ice dragon in ADWD and WoIaF are mostly just nods to his previous work, but it is strange that the dragon comes from "the Land of Always Winter" and the fact that when the dragon comes "it brings the cold or when then cold comes it brings the dragon." I know this has been touched here a lot and since there is no new info regarding the ice dragons I'll shut up.

It's interesting how D&D decided to depict this "Knights King" character and The Others. Nothing like I pictured either of them. Thanks, D&D, for not sexually assaulting my mind and make me think of this imagery when I read. :read: :whip:

[Black Crow]

And since we're touching on the Night's King scene again, I found this picture showing the Night's King behind the scenes, which clearly shows a crown of horns, as opposed to antlers as suggested at first, and also the fingers look almost like its frostbite.

Its a good picture, a lot clearer than what we saw in the show itself and to my mind very much looking not as if he has a crown of horns but rather looking very like a weirwood on legs

[Urrax2]

... Of course there is not, anywhere in the books, anything about there being exactly thirteen Others at the HoW, who are led by one who has a spiky head and who may be the Night's King. All that seems to be the producers' imagination at work.

Or the producers using information GRRM has shared with them but not with us.