Heresy 224 Whitey Snow and the Winter Hill Gang

[LynnS]

I do like Black Crow's theory that the WW are powerful skinchangers who construct their own shell out of ice.  Which brings me to ice spiders... if the WW can construct their own form; does that limit them to a specific form.  When Old Nan speaks of the WW riding their ice spiders, are the spiders a separate construct of ice or an extension of the WW itself?

[LynnS]

3 hours ago, Matthew. said:

On the bolded, I believe that theories of certain characters (Jon, Bran, or Stannis) eventually commanding the Others are an attempt to fix what has been a perpetual problem for the overall narrative--in a series that has been so driven by "gray" characters and their arcs, the Others stand out as lacking in nuance, an intentional lack of nuance that is meant to protect the mystery surrounding them.

For my tastes, there's really no fixing this, and I feel that the Others have suffered the narrative consequences of a gimmicky mystery being dragged out overlong, especially with the story "growing in the telling."

Reveals and twists are a fleeting sugar high, and once the high is over, we're left with the substance of what has been on the page all along, and what's actually on the page, for more than five books, is that the central threat of the final arc has only appeared "on screen" twice, and have never behaved in a way that outwardly distinguishes them from a generic high fantasy evil army--they slaughter, and they raise the dead.

So we wait one book, two books, three books, four books, and then five... (and we're still waiting), all while the Evil Army never operates in a way that matches the complexity of the human antagonists, all for the moment where the author shouts "Surprise! The Others were secretly interesting all along!"

Meanwhile, characters like Tywin Lannister and Joffrey Baratheon don't need some Shyamalan-style last minute twist to retroactively fix their character arcs--they are, from the very outset, interesting characters. The more that time passes, the more that I get the sinking feeling that the series peaked with the Wo5K.

To be frank; I'm just tired of waiting.  It's becoming more difficult to maintain any level of interest at this point.  This reminds me of Jean Auel's last book.  I waited twenty years for it and in the end was so disinterested, I didn't finish it.  

However, I am finding a re-read enjoyable.  There are things I didn't notice before.  For example:

Quote

A Clash of Kings - Davos II

"And for Renly?" The words were out before Davos could stop to consider them.

For a long time the king did not speak. Then, very softly, he said, "I dream of it sometimes. Of Renly's dying. A green tent, candles, a woman screaming. And blood." Stannis looked down at his hands. "I was still abed when he died. Your Devan will tell you. He tried to wake me. Dawn was nigh and my lords were waiting, fretting. I should have been ahorse, armored. I knew Renly would attack at break of day. Devan says I thrashed and cried out, but what does it matter? It was a dream. I was in my tent when Renly died, and when I woke my hands were clean."

Ser Davos Seaworth could feel his phantom fingertips start to itch. Something is wrong here, the onetime smuggler thought. Yet he nodded and said, "I see."

 

There seems to be a kind of psychic connection between Stannis and his shadow-self.  Something he experiences in a nightmare-ish dream state from which can't be roused. 

Which makes me wonder if the thing that animates Lady Stoneheart is her shadow-self.  The thing that would deal out vengeance, death and destruction. 

[JNR]

9 hours ago, Black Crow said:

Its relevance here is not what was hidden in the crypts but that the finding of it depended on working out the long forgotten meaning meaning of the words and the other clues.

Yes, well said.  We all do instinctively seem to realize, reading the ASOIAF canon, that it is full of such mysteries. 

So a term drawn from the Holmes canon to describe the overarching puzzle of the Starks is very apt.

Many if not most book-readers just somehow miss that basic concept... I suppose because it's very unusual to find complex mysteries in fantasy as a genre, so they just aren't even looking.  

I wonder when the rest of you realized this -- that GRRM was fundamentally different in this area? 

Was it all at once, or gradual?

5 hours ago, Matthew. said:

the central threat of the final arc has only appeared "on screen" twice, and have never behaved in a way that outwardly distinguishes them from a generic high fantasy evil army--they slaughter, and they raise the dead

True.  I don't think we'll ever get that kind of twist about them, meaning one that makes them appear varied and human. 

As GRRM said, they don't like us very much, and as he also said, he isn't even sure they have a culture.  All the same, I'm sure there are serious twists coming that involve them. 

Hmmm... perhaps it would be fair to say the Popsicles are more like a mirror, than like a human shown in a mirror's reflection.  A mirror is simple enough, isn't it?  Yet it can reveal much.

[Black Crow]

2 hours ago, JNR said:

Hmmm... perhaps it would be fair to say the Popsicles are more like a mirror, than like a human shown in a mirror's reflection.  A mirror is simple enough, isn't it?  Yet it can reveal much.

This can point to a resolution of the issue referred to above about a seeming conflict between a cast of richly drawn characters on the one side and a faceless enemy on the Other.

We've discussed how in this particular version of the Musgrave Ritual it may turn out that the walkers were once human wargs [and in particular perhaps Starks]; if so, like Tolkein's Nazgul who they resemble, while they get to live forever they are shut out from everything they once loved and while obviously hostile, far from having a "culture" they are a mirror to the living, reflecting so much of their living relatives, but yet different and wrong.

[LynnS]

6 hours ago, JNR said:

Was it all at once, or gradual?

I just haven't read a lot of fantasy.  LOTR and a crack at the Wheel of Time, which I didn't finish.  My reading has been extensively sci-fi and historical fiction.  I think I was hooked when I realized that there multiple complex puzzles presented in GoT.   Plus I loved the story and the characters, Tyrion in particular.  But I don't have anything to compare.   

[LynnS]

4 hours ago, Black Crow said:

We've discussed how in this particular version of the Musgrave Ritual it may turn out that the walkers were once human wargs [and in particular perhaps Starks]; if so, like Tolkein's Nazgul who they resemble, while they get to live forever they are shut out from everything they once loved and while obviously hostile, far from having a "culture" they are a mirror to the living, reflecting so much of their living relatives, but yet different and wrong.

The Stark words: There must always be a Stark in Winterfell (because) Winter is coming.  To wit, Jojen tells Bran:
 

Quote

A Clash of Kings - Bran V

"You will never find the eye with your fingers, Bran. You must search with your heart." Jojen studied Bran's face with those strange green eyes. "Or are you afraid?"

"Maester Luwin says there's nothing in dreams that a man need fear."

"There is," said Jojen.

"What?"

"The past. The future. The truth."

 

[JNR]

5 hours ago, LynnS said:

I think I was hooked when I realized that there multiple complex puzzles presented in GoT.

But how and when, as a reader, did you realize that?

It's just not common for F/SF.  Asimov and Wolfe are two standout exceptions, and Wolfe, we know, was a primary influence on GRRM.

[Melifeather]

Since I think Jon Snow will become the Nights King reborn and that I suspect the Children are trying to undo history to right a past wrong, I think one of the major things that needs to occur is to return Winterfell to it's original family - and it ain't the Starks, but it ain't the Boltons either. It's some wildling family and I have a feeling that it might be the Thenns.

Alys Karstark seems to be a stand-in for both Arya and the Starks. Recall that the Karstarks are a cadet branch of House Stark and descendants  of Karlon Stark. Alys's marriage to the Magnar of Thenn seems to be an inverted repeat of the historical marriage between the Lord Commander and the "Other". The Lord Commander was a bastard brother to the Lord of Winerfell and he married a wildling woman known historically as the "Corpse Queen". Reversing that event could entail that the female would be a "Stark" from south of the Wall and "sister" to the Nights King. The groom would be a male wildling descended from the original family of Winterfell who I posit were the Thenns.

I wonder if there actually weren't any white walkers during the Long Night? The Thenns and the other families that supported them were "otherized" in order to justify what the Starks did to them. Then the stories grew in the telling and they became the monsters. 

When Mance met Dalla she must have told him that white walkers could actually be manufactured with magic. Why not bring to life the caricatures and become like the creatures in the tales in order to breach the Wall?

 

[Black Crow]

On 7/9/2019 at 4:37 PM, JNR said:

 

On 7/9/2019 at 4:37 PM, JNR said:

Howland Reed certainly knows at least some of the answers to this. He sent his children to drop a couple of hints and then lead Bran into the Heart of Darkness

This I'm not so sure of.  As Jojen says,

On 7/9/2019 at 4:37 PM, JNR said:

so much is forgotten, and so much we never knew

 

Perfectly true up to a point, but if course it was Howland Reed and what he knows I was talking about. And that point I was making is that he does know things about the eldritch side of the world. If he's not one of the Green Men then he certainly knows people who are.

What I was actually saying is that he provides a good example of issue-driven assumptions. GRRM says he knows too much about the central mystery. The disciples of R+L=J instantly assume that means he will reveal all about their boy on account of being at the tower of joy. In actual fact he certainly knows about the Starks, of Ice and Fire and so much is forgotten, and so much we never knew.  Is it not more likely that this is the central issue rather than Jon Snow's parentage?

[LynnS]

2 hours ago, JNR said:

But how and when, as a reader, did you realize that?

It's just not common for F/SF.  Asimov and Wolfe are two standout exceptions, and Wolfe, we know, was a primary influence on GRRM.

When I read Bran's coma dream. 

[LynnS]

45 minutes ago, Black Crow said:

The disciples of R+L=J instantly assume that means he will reveal all about their boy on account of being at the tower of joy.

Not just the ToJ, but the tourney at Harrenhall a well.  Jojen and Meera may also be used to reveal some of this history, since Meera defers to story of Lyanna to another day.

[Melifeather]

22 minutes ago, LynnS said:

Not just the ToJ, but the tourney at Harrenhall a well.  Jojen and Meera may also be used to reveal some of this history, since Meera defers to story of Lyanna to another day.

I think the reason why Meera and Jojen are so sad is that they knew her death was directly related to the lightning-event that reset the wheel of time. The Children are trying to undo a past wrong, but magic is a double-edged blade without a hilt. There was no safe way to grasp it. Leaf said the direwolves would outlast everyone, but undoing the past came at a high cost. Lyanna died and Jon is doomed to become an undead creature. Perhaps that is the real reason why in the end he ends up heading north of the Wall? The direwolves were sent (then) to minimize the damage to the Starks from the worst of the side effects and enabled Jon to survive at all.

Up until I had worked through the parallel with Alys and the Magnar, I had thought Jon as the Nights King would be against the wildlings, but now I'm not so sure. Instead of the Lord of Winterfell and the King Beyond the Wall teaming up against the Nights King, perhaps it'll be the Nights King teaming up with the King Beyond the Wall to defeat the Lord of Winterfell? The only reason why Jon would give up claim to Winterfell would be because he becomes an undead creature and therefore an outcast to human society. It's also the reason why the dead in the crypts tell him that it's not his "place", because he won't be able to stay dead.

Sansa may end up staying in the Eyrie and could pose a threat to Alys and the Magnar keeping Winterfell, but without a direwolf she's the one that could end up losing that fight.

I believe @PrettyPig has theorized that Wyman Manderly is not to be trusted and that sending Davos to find Rickon was self-serving and basically a power grab. I wasn't serious about hopping onto that idea before, but it's beginning to look more and more plausible. Wyman is an "oily" whale that may be too slippery to trust. 

[Black Crow]

1 hour ago, LynnS said:

Not just the ToJ, but the tourney at Harrenhall a well.  Jojen and Meera may also be used to reveal some of this history, since Meera defers to story of Lyanna to another day.

And Harrenhall also has a double meaning in that the faithful immediately associate Howland Reed with a disguised Lyanna, while it actually links him to the Isle of Faces and the Green Men

[Melifeather]

4 minutes ago, Black Crow said:

And Harrenhall also has a double meaning in that the faithful immediately associate Howland Reed with a disguised Lyanna, while it actually links him to the Isle of Faces and the Green Men

Agreed. He prayed for "a way to win".

[LynnS]

14 minutes ago, Feather Crystal said:

I think the reason why Meera and Jojen are so sad is that they knew her death was directly related to the lightning-event that reset the wheel of time. The Children are trying to undo a past wrong, but magic is a double-edged blade without a hilt. There was no safe way to grasp it. Leaf said the direwolves would outlast everyone, but undoing the past came at a high cost. Lyanna died and Jon is doomed to become an undead creature. Perhaps that is the real reason why in the end he ends up heading north of the Wall? The direwolves were sent (then) to minimize the damage to the Starks from the worst of the side effects and enabled Jon to survive at all.

Up until I had worked through the parallel with Alys and the Magnar, I had thought Jon as the Nights King would be against the wildlings, but now I'm not so sure. Instead of the Lord of Winterfell and the King Beyond the Wall teaming up against the Nights King, perhaps it'll be the Nights King teaming up with the King Beyond the Wall to defeat the Lord of Winterfell? The only reason why Jon would give up claim to Winterfell would be because he becomes an undead creature and therefore an outcast to human society. It's also the reason why the dead in the crypts tell him that it's not his "place", because he won't be able to stay dead.

Sansa may end up staying in the Eyrie and could pose a threat to Alys and the Magnar keeping Winterfell, but without a direwolf she's the one that could end up losing that fight.

I believe @PrettyPig has theorized that Wyman Manderly is not to be trusted and that sending Davos to find Rickon was self-serving and basically a power grab. I wasn't serious about hopping onto that idea before, but it's beginning to look more and more plausible. Wyman is an "oily" whale that may be too slippery to trust. 

Oh!  Um, my thoughts were much simpler.

How will Howland Reed make an appearance in an upcoming book?  Perhaps indirectly through Meera and Jojen who may tell the story of the ToJ and the sad story about Lyanna as told to them by their father.

What part will the green men have to play.  I suspect this will have something to do with Euron's plan to invade the God's Eye.

What are the green men? Have they already made an appearance in the story under another guise?  I'm thinking of Brienne's encounter with Septon Meribald who guides her through the path of the faithful so she doesn't sink in the boggy conditions.  I'm reminded of that Howland can 'run on leaves' essentially avoiding the quicksand and other traps of Greywater Watch.

How did Rob get a message to Howland if conventional means can't be used? Is it possible that travelling Septons like Meribald carry messages to them?  Have the green men infiltrated the Faith of the Seven?  Is the High Sparrow a green man?
 

Quote

 

He is a small, thin, hard-eyed, grey-haired man with a heavily lined face. Unlike previous High Septons, he does not wear rich robes or elaborate crowns of crystal and spun gold. Instead, he wears a simple white wool tunic that goes to his ankles. The man is truly devout to his faith and has an iron will.

Little is known of the history of the current High Septon. He claims to have been a septon who walked all over the realm. His heavily callused feet support this claim; they are black, gnarled and hard as tree roots. He often came upon villages that were too small to have their own septs and performed the traditional duties of a septon, such as naming newborn children, absolving sins and performing marriages.  

 

If the seven are one god and the old god is the many-faced god; there wouldn't necessarily be any religious conflict posing as a septon or even high-septon.  But it does allow for free movement across the land and access to the rich and poor.

Is Howland Reed the High Sparrow?  LOL

[Melifeather]

38 minutes ago, LynnS said:

What part will the green men have to play.  I suspect this will have something to do with Euron's plan to invade the God's Eye.

What are the green men? Have they already made an appearance in the story under another guise?  I'm thinking of Brienne's encounter with Septon Meribald who guides her through the path of the faithful so she doesn't sink in the boggy conditions.  I'm reminded of that Howland can 'run on leaves' essentially avoiding the quicksand and other traps of Greywater Watch.

Old Nan says the green men ride elks, so if Coldhands is a green man then green men are undead creatures different than greenseers.

[Melifeather]

51 minutes ago, LynnS said:

What are the green men? Have they already made an appearance in the story under another guise?  I'm thinking of Brienne's encounter with Septon Meribald who guides her through the path of the faithful so she doesn't sink in the boggy conditions.  I'm reminded of that Howland can 'run on leaves' essentially avoiding the quicksand and other traps of Greywater Watch.

How did Rob get a message to Howland if conventional means can't be used? Is it possible that travelling Septons like Meribald carry messages to them?  Have the green men infiltrated the Faith of the Seven?  Is the High Sparrow a green man?
 

I agree that Septon Meribald seemed to know his way around a bog which makes him a candidate for possibly being Howland Reed, but his stated physical size of being six foot in height would be in conflict since Meera described her father as being small.

Didn't Robb send a message to Howland using a raven? Apparently ravens can find Greywater Watch!

51 minutes ago, LynnS said:

If the seven are one god and the old god is the many-faced god; there wouldn't necessarily be any religious conflict posing as a septon or even high-septon.  But it does allow for free movement across the land and access to the rich and poor.

Is Howland Reed the High Sparrow?  LOL

I guess anything is possible. The High Sparrow's physical appearance would be closer to Howland since he's described as small and thin. What would be his purpose in this disguise? I can see a purpose for being Meribald - making a circuit around the Riverlands every year ministering to the small folk would keep Howland closer to home and allow him to gather intelligence. Being the High Sparrow is more militant. I think the Faith is planning on gaining control of the Iron Throne, and their Faith of the Seven is at cross-purposes with undoing history and returning Westeros to a pre-Andal condition.

[LynnS]

12 minutes ago, Feather Crystal said:

I agree that Septon Meribald seemed to know his way around a bog which makes him a candidate for possibly being Howland Reed, but his stated physical size of being six foot in height would be in conflict since Meera described her father as being small.

He's actually too tall, but the High Sparrow is not. 

So if you know that your High Holy Place (The Isle of Faces) will come under attack, then mobilizing an army makes some sense.  

The business of Howland saving Ned's life and perhaps causing the death of Arthur Dayne; makes the Dawn sword available to one who is worthy of wielding it.  That person could lead the Faith Militant into battle when needed.  I don't think it's a coincidence that Brienne has been shown the path of the faithful; where only the faithful can pass.

So far the words of House Dayne have been kept from us because they reveal too much.  My bet is on:

Quote

A Feast for Crows - Cersei VI

"Seven save His Grace. Long may he reign." The High Septon made a steeple of his hands and raised his eyes to heaven. "Let the wicked tremble!"

 

[LynnS]

12 minutes ago, Feather Crystal said:

Didn't Robb send a message to Howland using a raven? Apparently ravens can find Greywater Watch!

I don't recall but the method was unconventional.  If he sent a raven, perhaps it was to a place where it could be collected and delivered on foot? The Quiet Isle perhaps?

[redriver]

6 hours ago, Feather Crystal said:

Since I think Jon Snow will become the Nights King reborn and that I suspect the Children are trying to undo history to right a past wrong, I think one of the major things that needs to occur is to return Winterfell to it's original family - and it ain't the Starks, but it ain't the Boltons either. It's some wildling family and I have a feeling that it might be the Thenns.

Alys Karstark seems to be a stand-in for both Arya and the Starks. Recall that the Karstarks are a cadet branch of House Stark and descendants  of Karlon Stark. Alys's marriage to the Magnar of Thenn seems to be an inverted repeat of the historical marriage between the Lord Commander and the "Other". The Lord Commander was a bastard brother to the Lord of Winerfell and he married a wildling woman known historically as the "Corpse Queen". Reversing that event could entail that the female would be a "Stark" from south of the Wall and "sister" to the Nights King. The groom would be a male wildling descended from the original family of Winterfell who I posit were the Thenns.

I wonder if there actually weren't any white walkers during the Long Night? The Thenns and the other families that supported them were "otherized" in order to justify what the Starks did to them. Then the stories grew in the telling and they became the monsters. 

When Mance met Dalla she must have told him that white walkers could actually be manufactured with magic. Why not bring to life the caricatures and become like the creatures in the tales in order to breach the Wall?

 

A lot of literary gymnastics going on there....