"This land is old" -- spitballing the North

[Lady Barbrey]

4 hours ago, wia said:

Tormund roared. "Har! King o' My Hairy Butt Crack, more like. 

I just had to, I'm sorry.  

 

It's an incredibly interesting discussion for me as well!

 

I've been rereading by POV recently. I pick one and real all of the books chronologically. It's a different sort of fun and gives a new perspective.

That made me laugh too, no worries!  

I wonder if reading by POV would be more interesting to someone like me who hates re-reads.

[White Ravens]

On 10/10/2018 at 1:03 PM, Legitimate_Bastard said:

I think Ned is being literal. That is all.

Human activity in Westeros is quite ancient.

[wia]

19 minutes ago, Lady Barbrey said:

I wonder if reading by POV would be more interesting to someone like me who hates re-reads.

I think it would if you stick to your favourite pov characters. )

[Lady Barbrey]

4 hours ago, hiemal said:

If it weren't for all of the Lovecraft references peppering the Song, I could almost agree with you. But ultimately, whether foreign or domestic, the concept of invaders is central to the history of Westeros and to the North and central to the disputed timelines at the heart of the OP because all of these invasions seem to follow the same kind of script- one in which the invaders are better armed. Stone Age vs. Bronze Age vs Iron Age vs Valyrian Steel Age (?).

Yet the North bucks the trend to at least some extant by repelling the Andals... so...?

Another bit of tinfoil I've played with is that some of the issues with dates stem from problems with adjusting from a solar to a lunar calendar? I.e. If the seasons were once aligned "properly" but went out of whack at some point perhaps that threw calculations into confusion if previously years were measured from winter solstice to winter solstice, for example, instead of as twelve lunar months...

 

Gosh it is annoying using a tablet - I just lost another post I'd almost finished writing to you, hiemal cause a notification popped up and I hit it by accident!

I'm very careful about Lovecraft references.  The majority are in the World Book and the World Book is a retrofit, there to provide us with connections but not connections that take us too far from the in-text experience.  Oily black stone, for instance, is a nod to Lovecraft but not a nod to his aliens; it's a nod to the sinister nature of this oily black stone in conjunction with some kind of magical holocaust at Asshai.  I can't extrapolate to aliens in-text, but I can relate these ideas to George's own magic structure that he is slowly revealing in text, which includes life for magic and hybrid human-animals, another Lovecraftian theme.

I have no problem with the North bucking the trend.  They had the Neck and back then probably a concentrated number of skinchangers.

Your last question reminds me of something I just read that I wanted to refer you all @Rufus Snow @wia to.  Tor.com has a number of short essays written by Elio and Linda in 2011 and one's about the seasons. They confirm they also believe Sothyros is coming out of a Long Night to correspond with the Long Summer in the Northern Hemisphere.  They say something about the masters calculating seasons as well. Not hugely illuminating but at least a confirmation re the hemisphere.

 

[Lady Barbrey]

4 hours ago, Rufus Snow said:

I wouldn't accuse you of tinfoiling this issue, as I have diifciulties with it too. Given the tech level of the world at hand, there are really only two ways I can think of to measure 'years'. One you've mentioned, which is solstice-to-solstice. This clearly cannot work on GRRth because it measures - strictly speaking - a seasonal cycle, and the whole premise of the magical imbalance is that seasons have become detached from years.

The only other method is tracking the sun's apparent movement against the 'fixed stars' - we can't be 100% sure this is going to work either, because we don't know HOW the season-imbalancing works. I really do hope there's a mechanism that actually works, such as the planet's axis of rotation being tilted over, or something similar which makes sense physically. I know this is a fantasy series, but if it boils down to nothing more than 'because magic', I will be sorely disappointed. As it stands, the apparent pattern of long winters following long summers would be entirely consistent with the axis being pulled around by magical forces. It's obviously not just temperature changes alone, as the day length still changes between summer and winter...

No it's not going to boil down to it's magic in the sense of some random fairy dust. Magic as a force, with its own rules and structure, is entirely consistent with fantasy writing and nobody screams SCI-FI at the writers.  We can already see a lot of the structure of George's system but not everything makes sense because he hasn't revealed all the rules.  

[hiemal]

12 minutes ago, Lady Barbrey said:

Gosh it is annoying using a tablet - I just lost another post I'd almost finished writing to you, hiemal cause a notification popped up and I hit it by accident!

I'm very careful about Lovecraft references.  The majority are in the World Book and the World Book is a retrofit, there to provide us with connections but not connections that take us too far from the in-text experience.  Oily black stone, for instance, is a nod to Lovecraft but not a nod to his aliens; it's a nod to the sinister nature of this oily black stone in conjunction with some kind of magical holocaust at Asshai.  I can't extrapolate to aliens in-text, but I can relate these ideas to George's own magic structure that he is slowly revealing in text, which includes life for magic and hybrid human-animals, another Lovecraftian theme.

I have no problem with the North bucking the trend.  They had the Neck and back then probably a concentrated number of skinchangers.

Your last question reminds me of something I just read that I wanted to refer you all @Rufus Snow @wia to.  Tor.com has a number of short essays written by Elio and Linda in 2011 and one's about the seasons. They confirm they also believe Sothyros is coming out of a Long Night to correspond with the Long Summer in the Northern Hemisphere.  They say something about the masters calculating seasons as well. Not hugely illuminating but at least a confirmation re the hemisphere.

 

Interesting. If there is a "Long Night" equivalent in Sothoryos it seems to manifest somewhat differently because it seems to be associated with fevered and feverish fecundity rather than the cold death we are more familiar with. To immodestly toss in my own tinfoil, I have posited that Yeen (or somewhere around there) was the original Summer Pole. It's curse is cancerous growth rather than icy undeath and this is where dragons were created from wyverns, although I suspect they did not gain elemental fire until the Nagga Incident a cycle and a continent away.

[hiemal]

16 minutes ago, Lady Barbrey said:

No it's not going to boil down to it's magic in the sense of some random fairy dust. Magic as a force, with its own rules and structure, is entirely consistent with fantasy writing and nobody screams SCI-FI at the writers.  We can already see a lot of the structure of George's system but not everything makes sense because he hasn't revealed all the rules.  

I've always felt that magic in this setting is something alien in the sense that it doesn't belong on this world and that probably colors my thinking a bit. I'm not as convinced any particular race is alien or needs to be, but I can't shake the feeling that magic itself is intrinsically the problem rather than something natural that has been misused. I've started a couple threads on the subject a while back, "Pounding the Planet: thaumogenesis as fertilization" and another that compared to an infection, which I think is actually closer to what you are suggesting- only in this scenario magic itself is not the infection, but the planet/body's metabolism?

Aside from that one point, I think a lot of our ideas are in pretty close agreement and even I though lean towards the "magic as aberration" tinfoils I'm definitely open to this ideas as well.

[Lady Barbrey]

8 minutes ago, hiemal said:

Interesting. If there is a "Long Night" equivalent in Sothoryos it seems to manifest somewhat differently because it seems to be associated with fevered and feverish fecundity rather than the cold death we are more familiar with. To immodestly toss in my own tinfoil, I have posited that Yeen (or somewhere around there) was the original Summer Pole. It's curse is cancerous growth rather than icy undeath and this is where dragons were created from wyverns, although I suspect they did not gain elemental fire until the Nagga Incident a cycle and a continent away.

I should have been more clear, not THE Long Night, but almost a decade of cold and darkness to correspond with the almost decade of summer the North has just experienced.  Nobody has been to Sothyros current time in the books and I would imagine you'd have to travel fairly far down to experience the Long Night.  The top of Sothyros is likely more like Dorne in the way they experience seasons.

Yeen is definitely mysterious, cancerous growth not out of the question and dragons could have been originally made from Wyvwrns there, why not?  We definitely get a sense of cycles from the World Book, and Yeen could be left over from a cycle 20,000 years in the past.  To me  that oily black stone shouts 'great life-leeching magic was once performed here!"

[Lady Barbrey]

29 minutes ago, hiemal said:

I've always felt that magic in this setting is something alien in the sense that it doesn't belong on this world and that probably colors my thinking a bit. I'm not as convinced any particular race is alien or needs to be, but I can't shake the feeling that magic itself is intrinsically the problem rather than something natural that has been misused. I've started a couple threads on the subject a while back, "Pounding the Planet: thaumogenesis as fertilization" and another that compared to an infection, which I think is actually closer to what you are suggesting- only in this scenario magic itself is not the infection, but the planet/body's metabolism?

Aside from that one point, I think a lot of our ideas are in pretty close agreement and even I though lean towards the "magic as aberration" tinfoils I'm definitely open to this ideas as well.

Yeah I'm not in the magic is infection but the magic is infected camp.  Magic itself can't be destroyed as a solution to the seasons, in my view, because it is an intrinsic force that keeps the planet in motion.

In a way It's the way the Aztecs or the Vikings thought of the World, made real in George's vision.  Both believed the end of the World was inevitable, but that they could keep it going through blood sacrifice, or keeping toenail clippings! Aztec blood sacrifices were a necessity in their view because if they didn't sacrifice, the sun wouldn't rise, and the World and everyone on it would die.

Blood or life or life-force sacrifice is necessary in Westeros, because magic depends on it, and the World depends on magic to turn.

The Children know this.  Blood sacrifice seems to have been practiced for eons, and First Men got it from them.

But what happens if you practice magic on such a great scale that your sacrifices are not enough, and the magic keeps sucking life out of plants and buildings and people in an effort to maintain its own balance? That's my explanation for ghost grass, oily black stone, grey scale, the Doom, etc.  Magic overuse or misuse means unbalanced magic, and that leads directly to unbalanced seasons.

[White Ravens]

1 hour ago, Lady Barbrey said:

I wonder if reading by POV would be more interesting to someone like me who hates re-reads.

My wife and I are half way through a re-read of all chapters told from the perspective of female POV characters.  It has lead to some great discussions 

[Lady Barbrey]

1 minute ago, White Ravens said:

My wife and I are half way through a re-read of all chapters told from the perspective of female POV characters.  It has lead to some great discussions 

I am really really tempted!  I wish I had a friend or partner to discuss with that liked the books- you are very lucky!

[Rufus Snow]

1 hour ago, Lady Barbrey said:

I do think It's the horn from the fist because we have been so pointedly told that Sam still has it through thick and thin.  It's become Chekhov's gun to me, sooner or later It's going to go off.  It also just seems to have a little chip, so it should physically work; if it isn't working then other factors come into play like who is blowing it or if it needs magic to blow.

True, there is that Checkovian aspect... it's going to take me ages to get there now, but I wonder where it had got to by the end of the story-so-far? Was Sam still dragging it around? Would be bit of a shock if he accidentally brought down the Hightower or somesuch

...

Yes, agreed!  With everything!  But as with the older stories, his sidhe are dual-natured.  Not malevolent, though they can be, but with their own purposes and agendas that can be antipathetic to humans.  Most of the Lovecraftian allusions are meant to point out their most sinister side, if we want to call it that, and draw attention to Lovecrafts obsession with hybridity.  The Children are the greatest magic-users on Westeros, and one simple basic to Westeros magic is that it has a price: life, whether embodied in blood, Stannis's seed, Varys's testicles, Dany's fetus, human death, petrifaction/leeching of life in wood (Asshai) or flesh (greyscale) or grass (ghost grass). There are no children in Asshai because their life force as sperm or eggs or fetuses are used up in magic by all those magic users before they're even born. (This is my own interpretation, anyway).  

Those are good points - and that Asshai is inimical to reproduction is clear, but I hadn't delved into why. I had been thinking children were just too fragile to survive, but the life force getting used up/misdirected also rings true. I'm thinking dark tantra / kundalini.

The magic used at Asshai is still leeching the life out of things.  The magic used at the Rhoyne is doing the same because greyscale became a disease.  Any time we know of great magic being used, like the Arm of Dorne being broken, we can bet the sacrifice of life was huge. I've seen the Children described as hippy dippy little people, but they're really not, and the tales of the Sidhe tell us that too. The Children seem to have given up, but have they? Perhaps they've been humbled by the damage they themselves have done to the planet through creation of hybrids, and of course their goal is still to preserve the land and forests,  their Gods, but that really might come down to destroying humanity, and if so they'll do it.

lol - yes, it's easy to get that impression, but once you start paying attention they get that Unseely feeling, don't they? There does seem to be a thread of over-reaching, or hubris, attending all these great magical acts.

Not so much hippes as 'GRRth First!'.

 

I can't really offer it as a worked-out theory with evidence, just a spidey-sense feeling, but I suspect that Gorne's Way is just a small section of a far vaster cavern system, which I suspect will be found to connect - amongst others - BR's cave, Winterfell crypts and the Isle of Faces, maybe even Dragonstone (or the dragonglass veins below it...). Absolutely no evidence, of course, just a feeling.

That was infectious.  Now I have the same feeling!

......

 

Pure dilettante when it comes to history - I actually gave it up at school (too many sciences and languages, so it was history or geography that had to go, and I decided to keep geography...) A few decades later I realised how little history I knew and got fascinated all over again, especially where it intersects with mythology. And I guess living in a village that has iron age roots, a hybrid Brythonic/Danish name, Roman traces, a Norman church on a Saxon site and its own entry in the Domesday Book all helps pique the interest. (This land is old, har!)

That is fascinating!

And I didn't even mention all the Wars of the Roses connections round these parts - Richard III passed through, or very close, twice - once alive and once dead (ok, 3 times dead if you include the recent reinterment), and two queens of England lived within a couple of miles at various times....

I am jealous!  I would have become an archeologist if I lived in the UK.  In Canada there's too much tension because you're messing with the ancestors of a people your own ancestors colonized.  But since I'm all British descent, I could happily have dug up the whole of Britannia to my heart's content!

I've seen a very small part of Canada (Vancouver up to Williams Lake and back) and, yes, the history is... complex is probably the safest word. That land is also old, but not everyone would want to engage with that in quite the same way ....

 

1 hour ago, Lady Barbrey said:

 

Perfect!  I am just a little further on.  PM when you see something you think has relevance, or if you just have something you want to hammer out, any topic!  I too am going slow, but It's because I hate rereading.  Spent too many years doing English lit, so it feels like work not fun.

Ah, well I grew up seeing reading as fun, and it let me make the claim I was 'doing something'

Sounds like a plan I'll drop a PM when there's something worth sharing, or if I need a different perspective without sticking my neck out publicly.... and feel free to do the same.

[White Ravens]

Regular text, bolded text, blue text? Who wrote what?  Who quoted who?

[Lady Barbrey]

8 minutes ago, White Ravens said:

Regular text, bolded text, blue text? Who wrote what?  Who quoted who?

Ha, my fault White Ravens, I've just returned to the forum after years so have been doing it the old way.  I will figure out the new system.

I am black bolded and the red bolding is what Rufus Snow wants to highlight in my text.  The blue text is his thoughts.

Obvious limitations here cause I can't figure out how to respond now.  And what colour should I use?

[White Ravens]

6 minutes ago, Lady Barbrey said:

Ha, my fault White Ravens, I've just returned to the forum after years so have been doing it the old way.  I will figure out the new system.

I am black bolded and the red bolding is what Rufus Snow wants to highlight in my text.  The blue text is his thoughts.

Okay.  I've been posting here for years myself and I was unaware that that there was an old way of quoting vs a new system. 

[Rufus Snow]

6 minutes ago, White Ravens said:

Regular text, bolded text, blue text? Who wrote what?  Who quoted who?

It's late on sunday night, I'm feeling lazy... and it's not that hard to work out if you're genuinely interested

[Lady Barbrey]

1 minute ago, White Ravens said:

Okay.  I've been posting here for years myself and I was unaware that that there was an old way of quoting vs an new system. 

That's what I remember.  Hey, just noticed you're on the island too!

[White Ravens]

1 minute ago, Rufus Snow said:

It's late on sunday night, I'm feeling lazy... and it's not that hard to work out if you're genuinely interested

Call it grumpy old man syndrome or some such if you want.   Why should I work out your special way of interacting with each other rather than you just following along with how everyone else follows quote/respond format regardless of the day of the week? 

I didn't even notice the bolded red bits that Lady Barbrey mentioned in her response to me.

[White Ravens]

10 minutes ago, Lady Barbrey said:

That's what I remember.  Hey, just noticed you're on the island too!

Maybe we are neighbors.   I had no idea that you live on the Vancouver Island until just now.  I live in Victoria.

[Lady Barbrey]

2 minutes ago, White Ravens said:

Maybe we are neighbors.   I had no idea that you live on the Vancouver Island until just now.  I live in Victoria.

Born and bred in Vic, then moved to Van for over twenty years, now living in Sidney.  I shouldn't age myself accurately though or you might accuse me of grumpy old woman syndrome, and you might not mind but I would! But in my case, It's not grumpiness It's this tendency for tangents, and I'm on one again.  Apologies, Rufus Snow.