Nennymoans and merlings; more Patchface tinfoil

[LmL]

3 hours ago, Little Scribe of Naath said:

*sees that @LmL has praised post*  

*fangirling* 

Thanks, LmL! I've read a lot of your essays and loved them.  Have to still read the Grey King one! 

Awww shucks, come on now, you're making me blush.

3 hours ago, Little Scribe of Naath said:

Up until TWOIAF, I was thinking that the only non-human races we'll see in the series are the Children and the Others....but TWOIAF changed all that. The Deep Ones are definitely making an appearance.

I hope so. I am curious to see how George will fit them in without it being to weird of a distraction. "Dead things in the water" might be the creepiest line in the series, and as you said, the description of the mermaids in the Shivering Sea sound like mer-wights. I had some comments above about the Deep Ones, some of which address your points here.

3 hours ago, Little Scribe of Naath said:

Now, on rereading the series, it's quite clear that Patchface, all along, was GRRM dropping hints on what lies "under the sea" (so sly he is!)

Not too tough, this one:  The Deep Ones are going to devour humans.

 DG sacrifices of young boys, just like Craster's sacrifices to the "cold gods".

Yep, we are in agreement here...

3 hours ago, Little Scribe of Naath said:

Previously, in the thread, I had speculated if the IB saying is connected to the Others.To expand on this idea,i f we consider that the Others have a hierarchy (let's say the Great Other, WW and his wights) - could this unseen Great Other actually be the Deep Ones to whom these "young fish" are sacrificed, to be reborn "harder and stronger" as Others?

Could be; Martin leaves us clues about these connections but sometimes we don't have enough info to do much more than speculate as to the details of these connections. 

3 hours ago, Little Scribe of Naath said:

Is this how the DG tradition of giving newborns to the sea originated?

In AGOT, Bran has a dream, where:

Was this "north and north and north of the Wall" the White Waste, where he saw the Heart of WInter? 

Curtain of light?

If this was indeed the place Bran saw, GRRM drew another possible link between the Others and Deep Ones here, while describing the Shivering Sea:

This is what lies North of the world: The White Waste, where the Heart of Winter is, presumably, bounded by the Shivering Sea, where the Deep Ones live...

Elementally, this fits too. Ice is frozen Water, after all. Or rather, Ice + Fire gives Water....

Yes, I'm with you on all that. Curtain of light = demon mother of ice giants = northern lights. Not only is ice frozen water, but the armor of the Others ripples like the reflection of a pond surface. The only quibble I have is that we can't assume we know where the Deep Ones live. Just... Underwater, that's all we can say. 

3 hours ago, Little Scribe of Naath said:

As many others have said in this thread, this clearly refers to the Deep Ones' practice of mating with humans. Patchface is probably talking about his own survival story here.

@LmL, your idea that this refers to the Sea Dragon, brilliant - "scales for feathers", after all!. For context, Patchface gives this quote when Cressen is trying to show Shireen the white raven. Is there a connection here - Sea Dragon - COTF - weirwood - Ravens? The biggest enemy of the DG is the Storm God, after all, whose minions are ravens.

Yes. Euron has a drowned crow in his shoulder - that's the drowned tree / drowned stag man / drowned greenseer again. That indicates the subversion of the greenseer magic, to me. White raven = white meteor, quite possibly, and the sea dragon is of course tied to the white bones of Nagga's hill. 

3 hours ago, Little Scribe of Naath said:

Context: Patchface gives this quote when Jon is discussing the expedition to Hardhome. A clue from GRRM that this is what Cotter Pyke's "dead things in the water", refers to?

A very interesting quote in this light, from ADWD Jon IX:

 

 

 

The most mysterious of all Patches' prophecies:

Why is it all upside down, under the sea? Or is it a metaphor for something else?

 

[LynnS]

1 hour ago, LmL said:

Yes, yes, and yes. I agree, she has a ton of sea dragon imagery about her, and that's the same thing as the drowned god / goddess. She was born on a rock in the sea, while a storm raged. She drowns herself in the Womb of the World in a scene where the actual moon floats on the water, "shattering and reforming" as the reflected image on the water is broken by the ripples. Dany is a drowned moon maiden, in other words, and yes, she's reborn in the Dothraki "Sea." Euron definitely sees her as a new Amethyst Empress, whose power he wants to usurp and steal in all likelihood. 

Care to expand on your thoughts about the Crone's lantern?

Sure.  When Khal Drogo died; Dany effectively became one of the crones of Vaes Dothrak.  Normally she would have been taken to them and inducted into their mysteries.  Vaes Dothrak is the high holy place where the crones essentially rule.  No weapons allowed, all Khals are one, etc.  Dany has yet to fulfill Quaithe's riddle, but she is on her way:

To go forward, go backwards; pass beneath the shadow and touch the light. 

This is the shadow beneath the Mother of Mountains at Vaes Dothrak; so described the first time Dany goes there with Drogo.  She has to go back to Vaes Dothrak before she can proceed. 

There is another vision in the HoU relating to the crones:

Beneath the Mother of Mountains, a line of naked crones crept from a great lake and knelt shivering before her, their grey heads bowed.

A line of crones representing time; going back through the generations giving reverence to Dany who stands above them,  the Mother of Mountains.

While praying to the seven, Catelyn describes the crone as carrying a lantern.  This is someone who brings the light, or lightbringer if you will.  The light represents wisdom, knowledge and truth.  Dany is the seeker of truth and the slayer of lies.

Dany was also reborn amidst smoke and salt during MMD's ritual; smoke of the fire and salt tears.  It's possible that she died during childbirth and the life that was saved was her own.  I say this because when Beric is questioned about the other side; he says there is nothing but blackness and he awakes to the taste of ashes in his mouth.  Before Jorah takes Dany into the tent everything goes black and there are no stars in the sky.  She also wakes with the taste of ashes in her mouth.  

[Equilibrium]

@LmL Hear what I have thought out based on your excellent summary of our discussions and your take on Deep Ones.

First I thought having third class of changed greenseers would change the trinity theme, since there would be fire, water, ice and vanilla greenseers then. 

But then I got it, there is AA and his three sons, so 4 of them, it makes sense all to be different. And Baratheons, we have three bros we crammed in fire/ice/green trinity, but we also have their father, Steffon Baratheon, who drowned. Maybe order is somewhat mixed, but it can make sense.

To our greatest symbolism pieces, three Forks of Trident form one river Trident, after all and our symbolism extravaganza sigils of House Strong and House Massey (interplay of red, green and blue) have white background.

Maybe first greenseers were somehow connected with sea.

[LmL]

7 hours ago, Equilibrium said:

@LmL Hear what I have thought out based on your excellent summary of our discussions and your take on Deep Ones.

First I thought having third class of changed greenseers would change the trinity theme, since there would be fire, water, ice and vanilla greenseers then. 

But then I got it, there is AA and his three sons, so 4 of them, it makes sense all to be different. And Baratheons, we have three bros we crammed in fire/ice/green trinity, but we also have their father, Steffon Baratheon, who drowned. Maybe order is somewhat mixed, but it can make sense.

To our greatest symbolism pieces, three Forks of Trident form one river Trident, after all and our symbolism extravaganza sigils of House Strong and House Massey (interplay of red, green and blue) have white background.

Maybe first greenseers were somehow connected with sea.

Hey EQ, glad to see you over here on this thread! It's a cool one, huh? Props to my man @hiemal. 

Good call on Steffon being drowned. That was the same event Patchface drowned in, so we have a stag man drowning and then one coming from out of the water. Patchface was said to sing songs, speak in many tongues, and perform magic before he was drowned... sounds a bit like cotf stuff, right? He is a stag man after all. 

I think we need to look harder at the connection between the sea and the trees. Someone upthread pulled the quote where Jon is looking down at the Haunted Forest and thinking that it like a green sea and that anything at all could be moving around beneath the surface or whatever. Then there i the Wayward Bridge chapter, where Asha compares the trees to the ocean in several different ways - comparing the sighs of the trees to the lapping the waves, something about the trees being like a green tide, etc. Another scene that makes me scratch my head is when Cat sees her reflection in Renly's armor and sees herself as a drowned woman. Obviously this foreshadows Cat's drowning (and Cat is basically an undead Nissa Nissa figure, NN reborn as a zombie), but it also associated Renly's green with the sea. Really also drowns on his own blood (that is the actual wording) and his blood flow is a dark, evil tide. And as I pointed out in my essay, AA is said in at least one version of the prophecy to be reborn in the sea. 

That's why I was saying that it's difficult to separate out the various stag man and clearly associate them with one element. And which of the Baratheons is the icy stag man? Really says "cold" when he's cut by the shadowsword, but that's about it. I guess Stannis, since he's gone to the north and is playing NK in certain ways. His sword is repeatedly remarked to be not hot, I've wondered if the symbolism of his Lightbringer refers to Dawn as the original Ice - a cold sword which is bright. Light, but no heat, in other words. Maybe that's the idea. Black fire, bright ice, you know my thinking on that. 

Anyway, I haven't spent as much time looking at tree - ocean links, but there are a few lying around. The obvious connection, in light of my own ideas, is that Greenseers broke the moon, which caused the floods, but there may be more to it that that. 

[hiemal]

On 9/17/2016 at 2:10 AM, LmL said:

In a wilder moment of tinfoil, another friend and myself speculated that there were two types of mer-folk, and that before the Arm of Dorne was broken, the two were essentially cut off from each other. We have selkie and merling legends in northern Essos and the Shivering Sea, and also on the east coast of Westeros (think of Driftmark belonging to the Merling King, or the Sisterton people, Crackclaw legends of squishers, etc.). On the west coast, we have those Deep One motherfuckers. When the Arm was broken, the wall came down, and underwater race war ensued. The result was a bunch of zombie merlings with blue eyes in the Shivering Sea like TWOIAF says there is. Dead things in the water.

/crackpot

Alternately, we know from Lovecraft and ASOIAF that meteors can be evil and toxic and whatnot. If one landed in the sea... maybe it triggered a mutation of the Deep Ones, causing them to come ashore and have their way with the pitiful humans. I by have their way, I mean... yeah, like that. Squish squish. Sorry, that was gross. Anyway. Point is, maybe the sea dragon meteor affected the Deep Ones. 

Ooooh, another new bit of tinfoil for my collection!

Squish squish, buzz buzz!

[LmL]

2 minutes ago, hiemal said:

Ooooh, another new bit of tinfoil for my collection!

Squish squish, buzz buzz!

Under the sea, all pots are cracked, I know I know, oh oh oh!

[hiemal]

On 9/17/2016 at 2:40 AM, LmL said:

 

 

 

..aaand that's what I mean about color symbolism. A motherfucker. Sooooo subjective. 

No black stone in Mantarys that we know, btw, unless I am missing something.

I have wondered about the connection between the GEotD and Deep Ones, because there is evidence of it... but it's just so speculative, we don't have enough to go on. Clearly there is a tie between oily black stone and deep ones, and Asshai is built of oily black stone, so... there something there. 

I am supposing its presence based on the high rate of mutations. Sometimes I oversell....

And Yeen, which if my tinfoil on shifting continental focus holds water, was the capital of the Deep One surface empire a couple catastrophes ago.

 

 

[LmL]

Kidding aside, I'm glad to see you like the Deep Ones civil war idea. I was a bit proud of myself after I conjured it up in my noggin, it's probably the best tinfoil I have ever come up with. The only other good tinfoil I have is that Ned's Ice is the original Lightbringer, not a Valyrian sword at all. This can happen one of two ways: after Azor Ahai defeated the Others or whatever happened, his sword was kept in the crypts of WF, read in case the ice demons come again. It was kept there for millennia, until V Steel appeared in the seven kingdoms and the Starks could bring out their sword and pass it off as V Steel. 

The other way is that the Valyrians have been keeping the original LB since the LN, and all their attempts to make V Steel are basically just attempts to copy LB, which was made with sacred fire and blood sacrifice. Then one day Ned's great-great-granddaddy shows up to buy a sword, and some stupid intern sells him Lightbringer by mistake! Oops! The intern was eaten by a dragon as punishment and now the Starks have LB.

[hiemal]

On 9/17/2016 at 3:35 AM, Pain killer Jane said:

oh I wanted to point out Ser Marlon Manderly with his grey beard, grey eyes, Merling King helmet and his silver armor that has flowing seaweed etched on it.

 

!

Nice catch!

[LmL]

2 minutes ago, hiemal said:

I am supposing its presence based on the high rate of mutations. Sometimes I oversell....

And Yeen, which if my tinfoil on shifting continental focus holds water, was the capital of the Deep One surface empire a couple catastrophes ago.

 

 

What do you think of the comparison between Yeen and Moat Cailin? Both made of huge, like really huge square cut blocks of black stone. Both in the jungle / swamp. Yeen is said to be oily black stone, while Theon observes MC after a rain in ADWD and think that the black basalt blocks appear to be coated in some fine black oil. I do not think the FM could have built MC - the cottage sized blocks are stacked up 50 high to make a curtain wall, well beyond ring fort technology, you know? And across the midsection of Westeros, we find traces of the aquatic religion of sea and sky gods - Ironborn, Sisterton, Durrandon myth, and the froggy crannogmen also suggest possible fishy ancestry. MC was likely built before the Neck was a samp, or else how do you lift blocks? You need said ground for leverage, unless the answer is just magic.  Could Yeen and MC have been built by the same people, or fish people?

[hiemal]

1 minute ago, LmL said:

Kidding aside, I'm glad to see you like the Deep Ones civil war idea. I was a bit proud of myself after I conjured it up in my noggin, it's probably the best tinfoil I have ever come up with. The only other good tinfoil I have is that Ned's Ice is the original Lightbringer, not a Valyrian sword at all. This can happen one of two ways: after Azor Ahai defeated the Others or whatever happened, his sword was kept in the crypts of WF, read in case the ice demons come again. It was kept there for millennia, until V Steel appeared in the seven kingdoms and the Starks could bring out their sword and pass it off as V Steel. 

The other way is that the Valyrians have been keeping the original LB since the LN, and all their attempts to make V Steel are basically just attempts to copy LB, which was made with sacred fire and blood sacrifice. Then one day Ned's great-great-granddaddy shows up to buy a sword, and some stupid intern sells him Lightbringer by mistake! Oops! The intern was eaten by a dragon as punishment and now the Starks have LB.

That's kind of an unsettling thought, for some reason. I need to ponder that one for a while.

[LmL]

3 minutes ago, hiemal said:

!

Nice catch!

In some scenes, I have wondered if "merlons" as in crenelations on the tops of walls is a double-entendre for merlings. Certainly "Marlon" Manderly is suggestive. And yeah this was a fantastic catch.

[LmL]

1 minute ago, hiemal said:

That's kind of an unsettling thought, for some reason. I need to ponder that one for a while.

The tower of Joy might be a historical parallel. The King of Winter comes south, defeats the SOTM, leaves the white sword (original Ice in this scenario) in the south, ready in case dragon people invade again (as AA did at Battle Isle), and returns north with the black sword, ready to battle the Others. I for one suspect Dawn might be for slaying dragons, just as the black swords are for slaying Others. So basically we had a sword switcheroo, with the icy sword being left in the south and the fire sword in the North.

Consider things from the perspective of archetypes. We first Ned executing Gared with Ice, and in Ned's second scene, he is cleaning Ice in the WF black pond. Ned is the King of Winter archetype, why is he presented to us with a black dragon sword? Perhaps because iron and bronze are "dark metals to fight the cold," and that's what the KoW is all about, with his warm castle in the middle of the frozen north - fighting against cold. With dark metals, dragon-forged if possible. 

To be honest I do not consider this entirely crackpot. Ned's sword is the most important one in the series, not Dawn. It's the one we care about, the one that has been with us from the start. From a narrative point of view, it should be the most important sword, so why shouldn't it be Lightbringer? Perhaps not the old LB, perhaps it's the new one (thinking of Oathkeeper here). You see my point though. 

[hiemal]

On 9/17/2016 at 11:13 AM, Little Scribe of Naath said:

 

 

Why is it all upside down, under the sea? Or is it a metaphor for something else?

That's one of my million dollar questions- the inversion effect. My best explaination is the Patchface-as-the-anti-Ariel tinfoil I have detailed elsewhere (basically Patchface is a mythic combination of Shakespeare's Ariel (a spirit of the air from the Tempest) and the Little Mermaid (Disney's more than Denmark's for the song). Sea+Air=storm/ and the inversion is a representation of the waterline seen from below, perhaps?

Ariel's Song

" Full fathom five thy father lies;
Of his bones are coral made;
Those are pearls that were his eyes;
Nothing of him that doth fade,
But doth suffer a sea-change
Into something rich and strange.
Sea-nymphs hourly ring his knell:
Ding-dong.
Hark! now I hear them — Ding-dong, bell. "

...William Shakespeare

(Doesn't that sound like Patchface describing Steffon's drowning to Stannis?)

" ...Under the sea
Under the sea
Nobody beat us
Fry us and eat us
In fricassee
We what the land folks loves to cook
Under the sea we off the hook
We got no troubles
Life is the bubbles
Under the sea (Under the sea)
Under the sea (Under the sea) ..."

Written by Howard Ashman, Alan Menken • Copyright © Walt Disney Music Company, Universal Music Publishing Group

[hiemal]

8 minutes ago, LmL said:

The tower of Joy might be a historical parallel. The King of Winter comes south, defeats the SOTM, leaves the white sword (original Ice in this scenario) in the south, ready in case dragon people invade again (as AA did at Battle Isle), and returns north with the black sword, ready to battle the Others. I for one suspect Dawn might be for slaying dragons, just as the black swords are for slaying Others. So basically we had a sword switcheroo, with the icy sword being left in the south and the fire sword in the North.

Consider things from the perspective of archetypes. We first Ned executing Gared with Ice, and in Ned's second scene, he is cleaning Ice in the WF black pond. Ned is the King of Winter archetype, why is he presented to us with a black dragon sword? Perhaps because iron and bronze are "dark metals to fight the cold," and that's what the KoW is all about, with his warm castle in the middle of the frozen north - fighting against cold. With dark metals, dragon-forged if possible. 

To be honest I do not consider this entirely crackpot. Ned's sword is the most important one in the series, not Dawn. It's the one we care about, the one that has been with us from the start. From a narrative point of view, it should be the most important sword, so why shouldn't it be Lightbringer? Perhaps not the old LB, perhaps it's the new one (thinking of Oathkeeper here). You see my point though. 

I can see that- Dawn is a sword of chivalry (which has proven time and again to be ultimately artificial and ineffective), while Ice is a primal force.

[hiemal]

20 minutes ago, LmL said:

What do you think of the comparison between Yeen and Moat Cailin? Both made of huge, like really huge square cut blocks of black stone. Both in the jungle / swamp. Yeen is said to be oily black stone, while Theon observes MC after a rain in ADWD and think that the black basalt blocks appear to be coated in some fine black oil. I do not think the FM could have built MC - the cottage sized blocks are stacked up 50 high to make a curtain wall, well beyond ring fort technology, you know? And across the midsection of Westeros, we find traces of the aquatic religion of sea and sky gods - Ironborn, Sisterton, Durrandon myth, and the froggy crannogmen also suggest possible fishy ancestry. MC was likely built before the Neck was a samp, or else how do you lift blocks? You need said ground for leverage, unless the answer is just magic.  Could Yeen and MC have been built by the same people, or fish people?

Indeed, but were the fish people fishy at that point? If the Deep Ones are characterized by mutation it could be that they became acquatic only after being driven into the sea by the Children- a metamorphosis echoed by Patchface's transfromation.

[Equilibrium]

37 minutes ago, LmL said:

Hey EQ, glad to see you over here on this thread! It's a cool one, huh? Props to my man @hiemal. 

Anyway, I haven't spent as much time looking at tree - ocean links, but there are a few lying around. The obvious connection, in light of my own ideas, is that Greenseers broke the moon, which caused the floods, but there may be more to it that that. 

Well you summoned me

Nice thread, I actually read the OP while ago, it's not until you presented your view that I got the connections.

There are plenty, driftwood mentions are common, there are flooded forests and so on.

One group of greenseers made a disaster, those close to water adapted to water (sea) and those close to the Pole adapted to the cold, it is most plausable interpretation so far.

Well I thought we agree Stannis is ice one, even thought they are not the same in all scenes, sometimes comparison is fluid.

[hiemal]

I reckon this might be a good point to bring up Lebor Gabala Erenn- the Irish Book of Invaders and my tinfoil equating the Deep Ones with the Fomorians, the CotF with the firbolgs, and the GeoDawnians with the Tuatha de Dannon. The successive conquerors just match so well...

The sinister Fomor were driven into the sea, but remain a powerful force championed at one point by Balor, the one-eyed god of drought and storm who slew the one-handed king of the Tuatha, Nuada of the sliver hand. Sounds like a confrontation between Euron and Jaime could be in the works. Balor is eventually killed by an arrow to the eye shot by Lugh the Shining One, another scion of the storms.

[LmL]

@hiemal and @Equilibrium, you both mentioned the idea of stag men being driven into the sea and then becoming aquatic. That's interesting, because it's opposite of traditional Deep Ones lore, which has then coming from the sea to rape and kill humans, hen returning to the sea. Mermaid legends involve mer-folk luring humans into the sea, or making humans fall in love with them and come down into the ocean. Occasionally we get the mermaid trying to be human (Ariel), but this is almost always impossible. The idea that the sea creatures came from the land is counter to that, but by no means out of the question, given the Fomorian tale. 

[The Fattest Leech]

35 minutes ago, LmL said:

@hiemal and @Equilibrium, you both mentioned the idea of stag men being driven into the sea and then becoming aquatic. That's interesting, because it's opposite of traditional Deep Ones lore, which has then coming from the sea to rape and kill humans, hen returning to the sea. Mermaid legends involve mer-folk luring humans into the sea, or making humans fall in love with them and come down into the ocean. Occasionally we get the mermaid trying to be human (Ariel), but this is almost always impossible. The idea that the sea creatures came from the land is counter to that, but by no means out of the question, given the Fomorian tale. 

Just when I thought I couldn't love Wyman Manderly and Wylla any more This is them in story right now. I love this.

Oh, and I am finishing the last half of your Grey King cast today. I have tried twice and keep getting pulled away. Damn reality