Heresy 224 Whitey Snow and the Winter Hill Gang

[Black Crow]

4 hours ago, JNR said:

I think the most recent thing I've heard is that he's inviting punishment from fan if he's not done in a year (Worldcon 2020). 

Promising, but as usual for him, vague and ambiguous.

Yes.  Imagine, for instance, that in TWOW he's going to roll out Jon's parentage and it isn't RLJ.

Well, that means he has to deal proactively in the text with all the objections from all the fans worldwide who

1) Are absolutely convinced of RLJ

2) Saw the show as absolute and final confirmation of RLJ, and who

3) Will see anything else as a turd on their doorstep

That's just one issue, involving one mystery, and barely scratches the surface of the total challenges he's facing in not only turning out a book that meets his own expectations but sets up the seventh book so well, it really can be the final book.

And that -- accomplishing all his goals inside a target max wordcount -- strikes me as the area where he is least skillful as a writer.  I don't envy him the complexity of that challenge, and I hope he accepts whatever qualified help comes his way, if there is any.

As to disappointing the faithful you have but to look at at a certain other thread; the bewildered anguish at the outcomes of the Mummers' version - largely told to them by GRRM but botched in the execution - leaving them to stick their fingers in their ears and go la la la...

However going on from there. If we were to accept the fan-fiction GRRM shouldn't have a problem. All it takes is for Mel to resurrect our boy in time to see Howland Reed emerging triumphantly from the crypts, bearing a dusty parchment, Rhaegar's harp and a Targaryen wedding cloak. A dragon will alight at Jon Snow/Aegon Targaryen's feet, Longclaw will start to glow with an unnatural light, all Westeros will bow before him and the darkness will flee away. Sorted. It may take a few thousand words to wrap up the loose ends but spring has sprung and House Targaryen is triumphant.

On the other hand...

If this story is really about the Starks as GRRM told us right at the very beginning, and Jon Snow truly a son of Winterfell, if the answer to the Musgrave Ritual lying in the crypts is that the Starks are indeed connected to Winter and that the Others are not alien beings with alien technology from the planet Zog, but were once themselves men and were the Stark Kings of Winter, then there we are moving towards what is at once a far more ambitious story than the paltry R+L=J version and at the same time a far more horrendously difficult one to write.

[St Daga]

8 hours ago, Feather Crystal said:

I haven’t explored the Royce’s as being a possible candidate for a defeated family from Winterfell, but there does seem to be something there. That being said I think they may be too geographically removed and yet still south of the Wall to be from Winterfell. House Royce are vassals of the Arryn’s, but I do think they are ancient enough to have existed during the Bronze Age, and their words “we remember” seem to imply that they have perhaps kept records.

i think the marriage between Alys Karstark and the Magnar of Thenn is intended to be an inverted parallel to the marriage between the Nights King and the Other - the implication being that the female Other may have been a Thenn.

The next step in the theory has to do with the idea that the wildlings are descendants of a defeated foe and that the winner got Winterfell. Ygritte eludes to this when she tells Jon that the wildlings couldn’t hunt, fish, or live off the lands south of the Wall and were forced behind the Wall, because they wouldn’t follow the rules and kneel. “Magnar” is the Old Tongue word for “lord” which seems to link to the idea of a displaced lord of Winterfell. I think it’s telling that the Thenn’s are the only tribe that recognize a lord.

If you are looking for this displaced family to be north of the wall, then the Thenn's make the most sense, based on their social structure. But as to a family displaced further to the south, we already know the the Stark's ran the Blackwood's out of the Wolfs Wood in the North, and the Blackwood's then moved south of the neck to become Kings in the Riverlands. It would not be so unusual if we found out that the Stark's did this to the Royce's as well. Drove them south into the Vale. If the Royce's were forced out by sea, then their area in the Vale lies between the Finger's and Gulltown, both easily reached from the north by sea, so I think the Royce's could have reestablished themselves and became Kings in the vale, with all their bronze and black iron imagery.

As far as the Thenn's go, I wonder why they would not name themselves kings in the new area they settled, if they were forced out of their original homes. Because a lord is somewhat inferior to being a king. I do see how the inversion is possible, though. The Stark's are south of the wall on the White Knife while the Thenn's are north of the wall and live along where the Milk Water begins. Both rivers named after a whitish coloration, perhaps. The way the Thenn's obey their lord like a god, which gives them more organization than most of the wildling clan's does seem to fit the idea of organized feudalism from south of the wall. Styr, the Magnar of Thenn, has bronze armor and rules with an "iron fist", another nod to bronze and iron imagery.

But I do question just how the Thenn's survive so far to the north? It must be very cold, all of the time. Perhaps there is some hot springs inversion of Winterfell that lies to the north? Who is the dour warrior in fur and amber that leads some wildlings north to the valley of the Thenn after Mance's defeat by Stannis that Varamyr tells us about? Doesn't going north now seem like suicide? And why do the Thenn's consider themselves the last of the First Men? What does that mean, anyway? Aren't pretty much all of the wildlings of first men descent?

 

[St Daga]

8 hours ago, sweetsunray said:

Their swords according to George are made of something like ice, and they can do stuff with ice we cannot imagine. I speculate those Others' swords are made of carbon monoxide. The chemical reaction of blood to carbon monoxide is that it becomes cherry red. People who die of carbon monoxide look very livelike because of this (not pale). Hence the fiery red blood that Will sees. Anyway, an ice sword is not a metal one. They destroy the sword because of the extreme low temperature of the ice sword. In order for carbon monoxide to be solid, and not a gas, it needs to be in the range of less than -200 °C. As the metal comes into contact with it, laws of entropy make it exhcnage heat and thus the metal becomes colder and colder. That's why the blade becomes "frosted" (as do the horses they ride, and thus why they only ride dead animals). The metal becomes too brittle and thus gets destroyed. According to legend they destroyed the Last Hero's sword as well.

The idea of carbon dioxide is interesting, for certain, because I think it fit's with the idea we get in the prologue about how nothing "burns like the cold". Dry ice is noted for it's intense cold and ability to cause damaging "burns", causing frost bite. It make me look into people who we know have lost body parts to frostbite, and makes me wonder if they have crossed the blade of an Other before. Styr, Magnor of Thenn, has lost both ears, Craster has lost an ear to "the cold", and then there is Gared. Gared ears and toes and fingers seems to be frostbite, although he does tell a tale of his brother freezing clean solid with a smile on his face, so that was some intense cold. If the blade of the Other's is only solid at -200C or about-337F, that is pretty damn cold. Colder than the coldest day even possible on Mars. Honestly, I don't know how a human in close contact with such cold doesn't just freeze to death, Waymar for instance, or Samwell. But if not, let's look at the ability of a blade so cold in could burn, like frostbite, pieces of human flesh off, such as with Craster or with Styr. Perhaps they both have encountered an Other's blade before, and lost an ear or two for their troubles?

But if the Other's and their blades have to be so specifically cold, how to they maintain this cold temperature on their journey south? Although, if the Other's themselves are made of carbon dioxide/dry ice, then the one that turns to steam when Sam stabs it with obsidian does make some sense. 

 

8 hours ago, sweetsunray said:

They destroyed the sword, the cloak and the man, but they have no use of it. I think the Others essentially are the ice spiders, or their queen is. The male ice spiders were almost all killed off during the first long Night, so she used something like a glamor to remake soldiers for herself, using human seed and souls. The ice spiders sort of survive as these mixed Others, using human seed and sould to give themselves a shape, but essentially they just don't think anywhere like humans: they're some intelligent spider species struggling to survive. That's why they don't claim the body, the cloak and the sword. Destroying it is enough. If they believed they caught the guy, and his sword and cloak, and destroyed it, it absolutely makes sense they left it at that.

Where can I read more of your idea's about a queen and the Other's as ice spiders? 

[redriver]

9 hours ago, Feather Crystal said:

I haven’t explored the Royce’s as being a possible candidate for a defeated family from Winterfell, but there does seem to be something there. That being said I think they may be too geographically removed and yet still south of the Wall to be from Winterfell. House Royce are vassals of the Arryn’s, but I do think they are ancient enough to have existed during the Bronze Age, and their words “we remember” seem to imply that they have perhaps kept records.

i think the marriage between Alys Karstark and the Magnar of Thenn is intended to be an inverted parallel to the marriage between the Nights King and the Other - the implication being that the female Other may have been a Thenn.

The next step in the theory has to do with the idea that the wildlings are descendants of a defeated foe and that the winner got Winterfell. Ygritte eludes to this when she tells Jon that the wildlings couldn’t hunt, fish, or live off the lands south of the Wall and were forced behind the Wall, because they wouldn’t follow the rules and kneel. “Magnar” is the Old Tongue word for “lord” which seems to link to the idea of a displaced lord of Winterfell. I think it’s telling that the Thenn’s are the only tribe that recognize a lord.

That would be such a pleasing denoument-Winterfell reverts to its original owners,the Thenns.I think every right minded fan is secretly clamouring for this,already sewing the banners and drinking secret toasts.

Not.

But if your inverted mirror is pointing that way,who are we to argue?Perhaps if you tilted it at 45 degrees instead of 180 we'd get a different outcome?

[LynnS]

4 hours ago, Black Crow said:

If this story is really about the Starks as GRRM told us right at the very beginning, and Jon Snow truly a son of Winterfell, if the answer to the Musgrave Ritual lying in the crypts is that the Starks are indeed connected to Winter and that the Others are not alien beings with alien technology from the planet Zog, but were once themselves men and were the Stark Kings of Winter, then there we are moving towards what is at once a far more ambitious story than the paltry R+L=J version and at the same time a far more horrendously difficult one to write.

This is still far more likely to me. 

[alienarea]

4 hours ago, Black Crow said:

...

On the other hand...

If this story is really about the Starks as GRRM told us right at the very beginning, and Jon Snow truly a son of Winterfell, if the answer to the Musgrave Ritual lying in the crypts is that the Starks are indeed connected to Winter and that the Others are not alien beings with alien technology from the planet Zog, but were once themselves men and were the Stark Kings of Winter, then there we are moving towards what is at once a far more ambitious story than the paltry R+L=J version and at the same time a far more horrendously difficult one to write.

That were the story I would have wanted to read and expected to read, but unfortunately GRRM butchered it for Daenerys and Tyrion.

Because, IMHO, the story of House Stark and the Others doesn't need Daenerys, Tyrion or dragons and is powerful enough on its own with direwolves, warging and the Others. Sometimes less is more.

[LynnS]

13 hours ago, Feather Crystal said:

I am familiar with that quote. She basically told George to get a new bucket and paint himself out of the corner and then paint the hallway behind him. 

Which character did he kill off that he still needs? I don't recall who was killed off or rather so many have been killed off.   What's your pick and why?

[Lord Aegon The Compromiser]

16 hours ago, Black Crow said:

My, its moved on a bit since I last looked in.

I really can't get behind the notion that the pack of walkers who scragged Ser Waymar were actually looking for Jon Snow. The timing is way off. Leaving aside my suggested connection between the six white walkers and the six direwolf pups, the fact of the matter is that Ser Waymar got his somewhere beyond the Wall before Gared and the direwolf tooled up near Winterfell. You then need to add another period of time after that to allow for the direwolves to grow up into young dogs before Jon even talks about coming north.

But, what if the Others, some years ago, saw Lord Commander Jon Snow in a vision? 

Some amount of time passes and they come upon Waymar looking similar to their vision. They may not have been actively hunting Jon Snow at the time, but they had to investigate Waymar and his sword just in case.

[sweetsunray]

4 hours ago, St Daga said:

But if the Other's and their blades have to be so specifically cold, how to they maintain this cold temperature on their journey south? Although, if the Other's themselves are made of carbon dioxide/dry ice, then the one that turns to steam when Sam stabs it with obsidian does make some sense. 

Well, it's carbon monoxide, not carbon dioxide. It's not just the blades that are so cold. The theory proposal I worked out with KIssdbyfire and theFattestLeech proposes that the Others are likely made up of these elements:

solid nitrogen, solid methane, fluid hydrogen (the blue blood), and carbon monoxide. All these require below -200 °C body temperatures. The liquid hydrogen speculated to also contain antifreeze ingredients works like "fridge fluid"... to maintain a cold body temperature, instead like our blood helping to maintain a warm body temperature. However, even then the difference to ambient temperatures is so big that heat exchange with environmental temperatures would make it impossible to preserve that low a body temperature on Planetos. So, they have a protective magic spell to prevent them from melting basically. 

If they can maintain this temperature then that would explain how they "bring the cold". Grouped together they could disturb the pressure in their surrounding environment, with snow formation as a consequence. They don't need a magic spell for that. It would be natural consequence of entropy. 

Certainly the frosting of Waymar's blade, the frosting of the dead horse that the Other rides in Sam's encounter and Grenn trying to pick up the obsidian dagger and exclaiming "damn that's cold" and dropping it match entropy impact. And yes, we known liquid nitrogen can flash freeze/burn: it's used to cool superconductors and to deal with warts. And that is liquid nitrogen, not even solid nitrogen.

The reason why I call them Plutonian is because these are the exact elements that are solid on the surface of Pluto: nitrogen, methane, hydrogen and carbon monoxide. Pluto conceptually matches the chthonic theme for anything north of the Neck: also an underworld deity and far colder in attitude than say Hades. It doesn't mean I think they "come from Pluto", but that George sort of picked these elements as they match extreme cold and the chthonic theme. Normal "ice" from water could never do what these Others can accomplish. And George explicitly remarked those swords aren't just "normal" ice. 

Especially nitrogen and carbon monoxide have major death symbolism ties. Nitrogen comes from greek and means "suffocating" or "choking". This is one of the two major methods that the wights use to kill a target: strangle them. Carbon monoxide is deadly to red blooded life, for the hemoglobin cannot release carbon monoxide as it can with carbon dioxide. So, the monoxide stays glued to the hemoglobin, hence the bright red color of the blood. This is called "poisoning" and one of the major symptoms of carbon monoxide poisoning is nausea, vomiting and messing up the bowels. The second major MR of wights is disembowelment. On top of that the characteristic of carbon monoxide in an oxidation process (such as when burning) is a "blue flame". The swords give of a blue light. So, no matter what you think the origin is of the Others, our proposal on what type of "ice" the swords and their body is made of hits several important marks. 

And yes, once the cold-preservation spell is broken, and their body temperature would rise, these elements would cause "white fumes" (the nitrogen) and formation of water with the oxygen in the air. Hence you have white fumes and Mr. Puddles as a result of Samwell striking the Other with the obsidian dagger.

4 hours ago, St Daga said:

Where can I read more of your idea's about a queen and the Other's as ice spiders? 

The queen stuff isn't worked out yet, but the Others as ice spiders can be read here on my blog: https://sweeticeandfiresunray.com/2019/05/28/the-plutonian-others/

And I also posted a redacted version for the forum where people discussed the idea: 

The redacted version pulled out much of the show-books discrepancy (NK vs N'sK and the Others' language). Both at least mention the spider goddess and the Corpse Queen of history, and in the discussion some of the early ideas that could follow from it are mentioned. 

[sweetsunray]

Regarding the ice seeing, in contrast to Jon's avoidance of being near ice in the Skirling pass and while with the wildlings we have...

• Samwell, who mostly traveled along rivers and lakes on his flight to the Wall with Gilly. The text suggests that at least parts of either were still liquid, but we can safely assume that the rims and parts of it were ice. Hence the Others were able to use ice to locate the fat man who managed to kill one of theirs. They sent wights after him. Luckily he was at a village with a weirwood tree so Coldhands and BR could find him easily to come to his protection. 
• Bran, who snuck north of the Wall through the weirwood gate, and thus unseen via ice, but journeys across an iced lake in his first chapter of aDwD

 

Quote

 

"You'll stay. The boy must be protected. There is a lake ahead, hard frozen. When you come on it, turn north and follow the shoreline. You'll come to a fishing village. Take refuge there until I can catch up with you." [...] 

They came upon the promised lake not long after, and turned north as the ranger had bid them. That was the easy part.

The water was frozen, and the snow had been falling for so long that Bran had lost count of the days, turning the lake into a vast white wilderness. Where the ice was flat and the ground was bumpy, the going was easy, but where the wind had pushed the snow up into ridges, sometimes it was hard to tell where the lake ended and the shore began. Even the trees were not as infallible a guide as they might have hoped, for there were wooded islands in the lake, and wide areas ashore where no trees grew.

 

The elk went where he would, regardless of the wishes of Meera and Jojen on his back. Mostly he stayed beneath the trees, but where the shore curved away westward he would take the more direct path across the frozen lake, shouldering through snowdrifts taller than Bran as the ice crackled underneath his hooves.  (aDwD, Bran I)

 

 

While they stayed only one night there, and likely had been undetected so far (they do cross a river earlier), this explains why the Others could not send wights or themselves on time to go after Bran, but with Coldhands and the elk as their guide, the Others could have guessed where they would be going, and sent a wight ambush ahead to catch them near the cave. 

[Melifeather]

There are a lot of elements in the Plutonian Others that I like and agree with, all except that the Others are alien-like monsters. To me that strays too far into science fiction territory and doesn’t seem to fit in with the rest of this fantasy world. I have read the Skin Trade and I do see some recycling of ideas, but the skinners did live most of their lives as humans even if they could turn into wolves. 

GRRM once tweeted a Faulkner quote that the only thing worth writing about is the human heart in conflict with itself, and I think ASOIAF is exemplary in demonstrating this. None of our main characters are all bad or all good. We are persuaded to root for the Starks as the good guys, but I think we’re about to learn that they have some deep-down “dark” and ugly secrets.  

I’m not the first to suspect some type of battle over Winterfell. I believe Black Crow suggested it many years ago. I’ve only added my ideas to it.

[Melifeather]

1 hour ago, LynnS said:

Which character did he kill off that he still needs? I don't recall who was killed off or rather so many have been killed off.   What's your pick and why?

I don’t know that I have a pick right now. This would require some thoughtful consideration, but my first instinct is to look at characters old enough to know what happened prior to the Rebellion.

[St Daga]

1 hour ago, sweetsunray said:

Well, it's carbon monoxide, not carbon dioxide. It's not just the blades that are so cold. The theory proposal I worked out with KIssdbyfire and theFattestLeech proposes that the Others are likely made up of these elements:

Ah, I thought you meant a dry ice substance, which makes sense to the "nothing burns like the cold" idea presented in the prologue. While carbon monoxide poisoning can lead to the appearance that you are talking about, carbon dioxide is also used in the packing industry to help preserve meat. It's a process called "gassing" where carbon dioxide and oxygen are gassed into meat, which will give it a cherry-red appearance, sometimes called "red bloom". It's called MAP, or modified atmosphere packaging. And of course, carbon dioxide, when frozen, gives us dry ice, something people might be quite familiar with on our planet, with knowledge of being "burned" when skin comes into contact with this pure substance, and it also has a bluish tinge to the ice. I can see how this would work for carbon monoxide as well.  As a nurse, I have taken care of several carbon monoxide poisonings, and they have never had cherry-red coloration to their skin, although they had terrible headaches and confusion and nausea. Not so much vomiting, although these people might have been caught early, treatment still required hours of monitoring and 100% oxygen to regulate the blood cells. 

 

1 hour ago, sweetsunray said:

However, even then the difference to ambient temperatures is so big that heat exchange with environmental temperatures would make it impossible to preserve that low a body temperature on Planetos. So, they have a protective magic spell to prevent them from melting basically. 

If they can maintain this temperature then that would explain how they "bring the cold". Grouped together they could disturb the pressure in their surrounding environment, with snow formation as a consequence. They don't need a magic spell for that. It would be natural consequence of entropy. 

So their physical body (as much as that get's) would be encased in like an exoskeleton of a sort? A suit that looks like icy reflective camoflauge which protects them, and serves as a mobile deep freeze in the area (not trying to be facetious here, that's just how it makes sense to me). This would make sense to why they appear to have no faces, since a mask is covering that area of them, as well as the rest of their bodies.  What about the blue eyes? I'll have to read your essay and perhaps that will be addressed.

 

1 hour ago, sweetsunray said:

The queen stuff isn't worked out yet, but the Others as ice spiders can be read here on my blog: https://sweeticeandfiresunray.com/2019/05/28/the-plutonian-others/

Thanks for the link.

ETA:

1 hour ago, sweetsunray said:

While they stayed only one night there, and likely had been undetected so far (they do cross a river earlier), this explains why the Others could not send wights or themselves on time to go after Bran, but with Coldhands and the elk as their guide, the Others could have guessed where they would be going, and sent a wight ambush ahead to catch them near the cave. 

Meera swears they are traveling in circles at this point, across the same river several times. This has always made me think that Coldhands was killing time for some reason. Why would he do that if he was trying to protect Bran from the Other's finding him?

 

[St Daga]

4 hours ago, alienarea said:

That were the story I would have wanted to read and expected to read, but unfortunately GRRM butchered it for Daenerys and Tyrion.

Because, IMHO, the story of House Stark and the Others doesn't need Daenerys, Tyrion or dragons and is powerful enough on its own with direwolves, warging and the Others. Sometimes less is more.

Unless Daenerys and Tyrion turn out to have some Stark blood... I admit I see some potential for this in Dany's story, but not really in Tyrion's. 

[JNR]

9 hours ago, Black Crow said:

the bewildered anguish at the outcomes of the Mummers' version - largely told to them by GRRM but botched in the execution - leaving them to stick their fingers in their ears and go la la la...

Oh, I agree they're in a state of denial on many topics, and have been for many years now, but am not at all sure GRRM "largely told" the HBO people anything about those last, post-canon seasons. 

He certainly never told them to put a Dark Lord into their show, for instance.  They just did their own, silly Hollywood thing, there as so many other critically important places.

And I note GRRM had not a single word of praise for that finale in his blog. 

The cast, absolutely.  He loves the cast like he loves Jersey pizza.  The script... he had zero to say.

9 hours ago, Black Crow said:

If we were to accept the fan-fiction GRRM shouldn't have a problem.

I wish that were so, but I think he would struggle endlessly to write out any conclusion in two more books, even if they're giant books. 

Consider that he understood what he was doing with the plan for book one of his "trilogy" quite well. 

But lo and behold, those ideas became 2.5 huge books: what we know as AGOT, ACOK, and the first half of ASOS.  This is what he always does, given any package of ideas.  The garden grows insanely in all directions.

It's just not apparently in his repertoire to think in terms of narrative limits and structure his tale to fit, except in doing relatively tiny Hollywood scripts. 

We'll see if he can pull it off with ASOIAF, but without help from a natural architect? I wonder.

[Lord Aegon The Compromiser]

18 hours ago, Feather Crystal said:

Yes, I had read that as well and I might add that GRRM said he wanted to avoid splitting it. Maybe his goal now is to actually find the break in the story between Winds and Spring? Maybe he's written way too much "winter"?  

It wouldn't surprise me if he releases two 1000+ page books as Winds and is working on finding the breaking points for both. 

[Lord Aegon The Compromiser]

17 hours ago, sweetsunray said:

This ain't from GRRM himself, more like hearsay, but the author of Outlander mentioned less than a year ago I think on a video where she was talking about "writing" how her friend George mentioned during lunch he had written himself in a corner, because he had killed a character and now he needed him. Her joke was that she didn't have that as a problem commonly (laughter by the audience), but that as the master of his world he could always write someone in or something.

That's interesting. Is this saying he killed a character in TWOW?

[Matthew.]

5 hours ago, alienarea said:

That were the story I would have wanted to read and expected to read, but unfortunately GRRM butchered it for Daenerys and Tyrion.

Because, IMHO, the story of House Stark and the Others doesn't need Daenerys, Tyrion or dragons and is powerful enough on its own with direwolves, warging and the Others. Sometimes less is more.

I guess this goes toward personal taste, as the Lannisters are my favorite part of the story by far, with Jaime and Tyrion being my favorite POVs; with the Starks, OTOH, I consider Bran to be among the least enjoyable POVs, I didn't care for Jon's arc until ADWD (when he was actually put into a position to make interesting choices), and I'm lukewarm on Sansa--Arya's chapters are good though, or they were, until Braavos.

I 100% agree about Dany, though. She really stands out as an outlier, right from the beginning, as we're introduced to most of the other principal characters at Winterfell--meanwhile, Dany is experiencing her own side story half a world away, trapped in a state of perpetual wheel spinning and filler arcs until the rest of the narrative is 'ready' for her invasion arc to begin; however, far from getting closer to Westeros, we instead have several characters of Westeros moving eastward, getting sucked into the black hole of her filler stories. 

[sweetsunray]

1 hour ago, St Daga said:

Ah, I thought you meant a dry ice substance, which makes sense to the "nothing burns like the cold" idea presented in the prologue. While carbon monoxide poisoning can lead to the appearance that you are talking about, carbon dioxide is also used in the packing industry to help preserve meat. It's a process called "gassing" where carbon dioxide and oxygen are gassed into meat, which will give it a cherry-red appearance, sometimes called "red bloom". It's called MAP, or modified atmosphere packaging. And of course, carbon dioxide, when frozen, gives us dry ice, something people might be quite familiar with on our planet, with knowledge of being "burned" when skin comes into contact with this pure substance, and it also has a bluish tinge to the ice. I can see how this would work for carbon monoxide as well.  As a nurse, I have taken care of several carbon monoxide poisonings, and they have never had cherry-red coloration to their skin, although they had terrible headaches and confusion and nausea. Not so much vomiting, although these people might have been caught early, treatment still required hours of monitoring and 100% oxygen to regulate the blood cells. 

Interesting you mentioned meat packing: carbon monoxide is used to redden meat before it showing it in stores. 

The skin is not cherry-red, the blood is. So, the skin would appear "healthy"  on patients (rather than skin looking cherry-red), and the dead more lifelike that the pale-yellow/grey tinge corpses have. 

1 hour ago, St Daga said:

So their physical body (as much as that get's) would be encased in like an exoskeleton of a sort? A suit that looks like icy reflective camoflauge which protects them, and serves as a mobile deep freeze in the area (not trying to be facetious here, that's just how it makes sense to me). This would make sense to why they appear to have no faces, since a mask is covering that area of them, as well as the rest of their bodies.  What about the blue eyes? I'll have to read your essay and perhaps that will be addressed.

Well, I think the armor at least is an exoskeleton, not sure about the "flesh", but yeah something like that. And the blue blood is the "cooling fluid" on the inside of the body. I'm not so sure they "don't have faces". Will does at some point say "faceless", but I find that ambiguous. In any case, Will says they look twins to each other, and at least I think their faces are expressionless. But good idea: might be masks. Would fit nicely with those 6 Brazen Locusts in Meereen that I tend to see as a reverse parallel. 

Not sure about the blue eyes. Perhaps because of the fluid hydrogen for blood? It certainly would make for inhuman blue. I don't get the impression that it's the same blue as the swords. 

1 hour ago, St Daga said:

Meera swears they are traveling in circles at this point, across the same river several times. This has always made me think that Coldhands was killing time for some reason. Why would he do that if he was trying to protect Bran from the Other's finding him?

Yeah, that's rather weird of Coldhands. And actually in the second chapter, when he orders them to go for the cave and directs them to a certain area to cross, that's exactly where they were ambushed. That's also the first time they encounter wights. Did he want to prove a point? Maybe a part of him can't help it? 

[sweetsunray]

30 minutes ago, Lord Aegon The Compromiser said:

That's interesting. Is this saying he killed a character in TWOW?

I rather got the impression it might be a character he killed before tWoW