Heresy 226 of wolves, dragons and other familiars

[Melifeather]

3 minutes ago, redriver said:

No offense caused.I'm just attacking your theory because I think it's wrong.

Not you,your theory.

It sure sounded personal. You said I've declared myself the champion of symbolism and metaphor. I took that as a slight, but after thinking about it, there might be a nugget of truth in there. I do gravitate to symbolism and metaphors. They seem to jump right off the page to me like one of those three dimensional pictures where you have to allow your focus to relax before the image appears. I've been studying symbolism so long that its become second nature, but its difficult to prove. The only way I can prove my interpretations are after the fact, so unfortunately I will have to wait until Winds is released to see if any of my predictions come true.

[redriver]

I think we can agree on that.

[Melifeather]

48 minutes ago, redriver said:

I think we can agree on that.

I had a thought about this...I'm going to see if I can find any symbolism or metaphors in Thrones or Clash that have already come true in a subsequent book. Will report back later!

[The Sunland Lord]

.

[LynnS]

Well, Mel says the rubies are slaved right here:

Quote

A Dance with Dragons - Melisandre I

The wildling wore a sleeveless jerkin of boiled leather dotted with bronze studs beneath a worn cloak mottled in shades of green and brown. No bones. He was cloaked in shadows too, in wisps of ragged grey mist, half-seen, sliding across his face and form with every step he took. Ugly things. As ugly as his bones. A widow's peak, close-set dark eyes, pinched cheeks, a mustache wriggling like a worm above a mouthful of broken brown teeth.

Melisandre felt the warmth in the hollow of her throat as her ruby stirred at the closeness of its slave. "You have put aside your suit of bones," she observed.

"The clacking was like to drive me mad."

Its interesting to see how she sees the glamor working. Also that the ruby detects the slaved ruby by warming up.    Mance's eyes change color with the pulsing of the ruby:

Quote

A Dance with Dragons - Melisandre I

Does he dream of death? Could the enemy have touched him? Death is his domain, the dead his soldiers. "You shall have work for your steel soon enough. The enemy is moving, the true enemy. And Lord Snow's rangers will return before the day is done, with their blind and bloody eyes."

The wildling's own eyes narrowed.

Grey eyes, brown eyes; Melisandre could see the color change with each pulse of the ruby.

 

Which lends some strength to the idea that Qyburn is using a glamor.  To Jaime, Qyburn's eyes are brown and to Cersei, they are blue.    

[JNR]

On 8/20/2019 at 2:01 PM, corbon said:

My comfort zone is wherever the logic takes me.

It's not really logic; you just believe whatever suits you, assign it 100% probability, and then proceed to draw other conclusions on that basis.  That's the general approach on this site -- or perhaps I should say the General approach.

Heresy's always been different in acknowledging areas of uncertainty and admitting that concepts taken for granted elsewhere probably don't deserve the usual level of confidence.

So as a case study, let's consider this:

On 8/20/2019 at 2:01 PM, corbon said:

That the prophecies use the same markers show that its the same prophecy, not that it must be the same person that fits those markers that fulfills two independent prophecies. 

Show me the actual prophetic text in canon where the two prophecies are written out. 

Once you do that, we can create a complete list of markers, and analyze these markers to see if they are "the same."  Surely that'd be the logical approach.

Unfortunately you can't show me any such thing, because GRRM never gave us the prophetic text in either case.

What you've cited, instead, is what the canon does provide: half-assed discussion about the prophecies by various characters who, like us, may only have heard about it.

This is what scientists would call anecdotal evidence.  Not quite worthless, but pretty shaky turf on which to build anything.

(It's also very much like the situation with Rhaegar and Lyanna's missing time in the Rebellion -- a thing we've heard of, in various ways from various people, but about which we have zero direct information.  Yet most fans can't stop themselves from jumping to conclusions and expressing those conclusions as if they were absolute truth.)

So here's a prophecy of my own. If ASOIAF is ever finished, we will learn that what people said about X is not always worth a damn, and rarely if ever justifies drawing absolute conclusions about X.

Quote

 

"I know that some men are saying that Tormo Fregar will surely be the new sealord," she answered. "Some drunken men."

"Better. And what else do you know?"

 

 

[Black Crow]

Or as I say to acquaintances picking up the book for the first time [there are a few] "Nothing is as it seems"

[alienarea]

In some years we will learn that GRRM finished exactly as he wanted to finish - after five books, with a bittersweet ending.  Everything else was just hype for the show.

[Black Crow]

20 hours ago, alienarea said:

In some years we will learn that GRRM finished exactly as he wanted to finish - after five books, with a bittersweet ending.  Everything else was just hype for the show.

I don't know about the States, but there are a couple of British newspapers which still maintain a strong interest in A Game of Thrones or to be more exact the Mummers' version. On the one hand this largely takes the form of breathless theories plucked from Reddit anent "clues we all missed" by people who have never read the books, but it also includes quotes from GRRM expressing his sense of liberation now that the incubus [my word - his sentiment] of the Mummers' version has been lifted from his back, and confirming that he's still heading for his original ending.

[alienarea]

1 hour ago, Black Crow said:

I don't know about the States, but there are a couple of British newspapers which still maintain a strong interest in A Game of Thrones or to be more exact the Mummers' version. On the one hand this largely takes the form of breathless theories plucked from Reddit anent "clues we all missed" by people who have never read the books, but it also includes quotes from GRRM expressing his sense of liberation now that the incubus [my word - his sentiment] of the Mummers' version has been lifted from his back, and confirming that he's still heading for his original ending.

What I was aiming to express is that, though it is not finished, it is maybe perfect as it is.

Because GRRM manages to create a fascinating snapshot of a fantasy world that has all kinds of people speculating, theorizing, arguing and so on. We would not do that as long and enthusiastic as we do if the story had been finalized by now. Most of us would have moved on to the next story.

It has become more of an Iliad than a Lord of the Rings. In the Iliad, we get a snapshot of a longer battle, and the end is told in prophecies but not in the story itself.

We do not know, if there has been a Trojan war, and if Achilles, Agamemnon, Priam, ... were based on real people, but we have various contradicting sources of "how events really went down" and "what really happened after".

This is more or less what ASoIaF is right now. Of course, we know that these events never happened, but we have incredibly detailed characters that feel "alive": Ned, Catherine, Tyrion, Tywin, Daenerys, ...

And, as of now, we have different possible endings we can discuss, speculate and theorize on for years to come.

I am unsatisfied as the story does not have an end and a lot of things have not been explained or are contradicting. But, isn't that a perfect simulation of real life?

 

[Black Crow]

2 hours ago, alienarea said:

What I was aiming to express is that, though it is not finished, it is maybe perfect as it is.

Because GRRM manages to create a fascinating snapshot of a fantasy world that has all kinds of people speculating, theorizing, arguing and so on. We would not do that as long and enthusiastic as we do if the story had been finalized by now. Most of us would have moved on to the next story.

It has become more of an Iliad than a Lord of the Rings. In the Iliad, we get a snapshot of a longer battle, and the end is told in prophecies but not in the story itself.

We do not know, if there has been a Trojan war, and if Achilles, Agamemnon, Priam, ... were based on real people, but we have various contradicting sources of "how events really went down" and "what really happened after".

This is more or less what ASoIaF is right now. Of course, we know that these events never happened, but we have incredibly detailed characters that feel "alive": Ned, Catherine, Tyrion, Tywin, Daenerys, ...

And, as of now, we have different possible endings we can discuss, speculate and theorize on for years to come.

I am unsatisfied as the story does not have an end and a lot of things have not been explained or are contradicting. But, isn't that a perfect simulation of real life?

 

Its an attractive idea, but although JNR disagrees, I feel that the ending has been partially revealed by the Mummers' version and that he revealed the end of certain character arcs in that meeting in Santa Fe a few years back. The Mummers then quite spectacularly botched it because GRRM hasn't yet written how those arcs got where they did.

I don't want to fart about with spoilers or with my own fan fiction, but this can be most obviously seen in the story of Jon. The Mummers obviously bought into the R+L=J scenario, but to the palpable distress of the believers, true or not it never amounted to a hill of beans. 

So far as your suggestion goes, I'm content [perhaps even a little smug] that so much we've discussed here on Heresy has been justified and I can reconcile what we think with the otherwise incoherent endings in the Mummers' version, but I would still like to read GRRM's version.

[corbon]

On 9/1/2019 at 4:00 AM, JNR said:

It's not really logic; you just believe whatever suits you, assign it 100% probability, and then proceed to draw other conclusions on that basis.  That's the general approach on this site -- or perhaps I should say the General approach.

I see you are the expert on both logic and the thought processes in my head. 

There are very few things that I assign 100% probability.
But for the purposes of deduction and understanding, things which come close are often treated as 100%, true. Its so very very tiresome to write out in full the disclaimers every time.
As far as I am concerned, there is almost nothing that cannot be changed by GRRM with future text. But there are a great many things I consider the chance of being changed as less than 1%. 

On 9/1/2019 at 4:00 AM, JNR said:

Heresy's always been different in acknowledging areas of uncertainty and admitting that concepts taken for granted elsewhere probably don't deserve the usual level of confidence.

So as a case study, let's consider this:

Show me the actual prophetic text in canon where the two prophecies are written out. 

Once you do that, we can create a complete list of markers, and analyze these markers to see if they are "the same."  Surely that'd be the logical approach.

That particular level of logic, perfect, absolute logic, does not exist in relation to an uncertain and undefined universe such as Westeros inhabits. 
If you insist on following only that, there is no point being here.
But there is still human logic in GRRM's work. Which we can use to make the best deductions and understandings we can.

On 9/1/2019 at 4:00 AM, JNR said:

What you've cited, instead, is what the canon does provide: half-assed discussion about the prophecies by various characters who, like us, may only have heard about it.

Its not all half-assed. We have to assess it in context with all the other information we have.

On 9/1/2019 at 4:00 AM, JNR said:

This is what scientists would call anecdotal evidence.  Not quite worthless, but pretty shaky turf on which to build anything.

Its the very best we have. And its not necessarily shaky.
In this case, we have a significant number of unique (in that they are clear and specific, amongst all the infinity of possibilities) markers that are in common to both prophecies, as believed by the most learned available witnesses who have specific interest and the best resources in this area.

When I say there are too many matching markers for the prophecies not to be the same, or at least the same origin, I don't mean that it is literally impossible that there could be two differing prophecies from differing sources using those exact same unique markers... just that that possibility is so vanishingly, ridiculously, small, that we can reasonably dismiss it from consideration. And phew, that was painful to write out.

If character A tells another character about a prophesied hero that will arise from the South during a time of Hurricanes, borne by wood, with Jade lightning and a Lion...
And Character B tells another character about a foretold saviour from the South, with a fleet of wooden ships, arriving during a great hurricane with a Jade Lighting banner and a great Cat at his side...
It is both logical and reasonable to understand that there is one root to these two prophecies. There are two many unique markers in common for these too be two unrelated prophecies.

Thats exactly what we have here.

On 9/1/2019 at 4:00 AM, JNR said:

(It's also very much like the situation with Rhaegar and Lyanna's missing time in the Rebellion -- a thing we've heard of, in various ways from various people, but about which we have zero direct information.  Yet most fans can't stop themselves from jumping to conclusions and expressing those conclusions as if they were absolute truth.)

So here's a prophecy of my own. If ASOIAF is ever finished, we will learn that what people said about X is not always worth a damn, and rarely if ever justifies drawing absolute conclusions about X.

 

It very much seems like your only purpose here is to kill conversation.

[Lady Rhodes]

I am woefully behind on reading these, so if what I am about to say has already been stated elsewhere, I’m sorry in advance. 

I am of the opinion that looking on the “hit” points of the show, as in D&D saying we have to hit these points because GRRM told them to us, they won’t change for the most part. Martin’s blog post after the finale seemed to indicate as much; however, the rationale behind them, what leads up to them, the order they occur, etc. will be different enough to make us feel differently as a whole about the ending. (I have always been a person that can appreciate the show and still eagerly await to devour the books. That said, I was so disappointed, so part of my inklings are wish fulfillment.) 

My main theory pertains to the burning of King’s Landing. Tellingly, the episode was called the Bells. I think Jon Con’s chapters in Dance indicate heavy foreshadowing that Dany won’t burn King’s Landing to take it away from Cersei but from Aegon(fake or real). Jon Con’s scant few chapters note multiple times how he is haunted by the Battle of the Bells. I think he is going to be the eyes on the ground when KL burns.

[LynnS]

34 minutes ago, Lady Rhodes said:

I am woefully behind on reading these, so if what I am about to say has already been stated elsewhere, I’m sorry in advance. 

I am of the opinion that looking on the “hit” points of the show, as in D&D saying we have to hit these points because GRRM told them to us, they won’t change for the most part. Martin’s blog post after the finale seemed to indicate as much; however, the rationale behind them, what leads up to them, the order they occur, etc. will be different enough to make us feel differently as a whole about the ending. (I have always been a person that can appreciate the show and still eagerly await to devour the books. That said, I was so disappointed, so part of my inklings are wish fulfillment.) 

My main theory pertains to the burning of King’s Landing. Tellingly, the episode was called the Bells. I think Jon Con’s chapters in Dance indicate heavy foreshadowing that Dany won’t burn King’s Landing to take it away from Cersei but from Aegon(fake or real). Jon Con’s scant few chapters note multiple times how he is haunted by the Battle of the Bells. I think he is going to be the eyes on the ground when KL burns.

I'm not clear what the three hits were in actuality. I don't have cable, so I didn't see the show.  I know we have discussed it, sort of, but I completely forget.  One of them was the death of a dragon?  I think I see that coming in Meereen now that Dany is awol with Drogon and the other two are on the loose.  Dany dies?  What are the other possibilities again?

[Lady Rhodes]

2 minutes ago, LynnS said:

I'm not clear what the three hits were in actuality. I don't have cable, so I didn't see the show.  I know we have discussed it, sort of, but I completely forget.  One of them was the death of a dragon?  I think I see that coming in Meereen now that Dany is awol with Drogon and the other two are on the loose.  Dany dies? 

I wasn’t referring to those particular hit points, though I understand why you thought that. I meant that there are various plot points that were given but the key information as to how they got there was left ambiguous. Like, had the books not been written and GRRM was pitching this story to producers, points from early seasons may be that the protagonist (Ned) dies, the Red Wedding etc. but without the context for these events, things got messed up.

[LynnS]

22 hours ago, Black Crow said:

I don't know about the States, but there are a couple of British newspapers which still maintain a strong interest in A Game of Thrones or to be more exact the Mummers' version. On the one hand this largely takes the form of breathless theories plucked from Reddit anent "clues we all missed" by people who have never read the books, but it also includes quotes from GRRM expressing his sense of liberation now that the incubus [my word - his sentiment] of the Mummers' version has been lifted from his back, and confirming that he's still heading for his original ending.

I haven't seen much about it in Canada either.  Although I think one or two journos visit Westeros.  The bit about missing all the clues is hilarious.  I can well imagine that GRRM feels liberated now that the albatross isn't hanging around his neck anymore.

[Black Crow]

19 hours ago, corbon said:

It very much seems like your only purpose here is to kill conversation.

Its just his way, you'll get used to him 

[Black Crow]

3 hours ago, LynnS said:

I haven't seen much about it in Canada either.  Although I think one or two journos visit Westeros.  The bit about missing all the clues is hilarious.  I can well imagine that GRRM feels liberated now that the albatross isn't hanging around his neck anymore.

Some of them are indeed truly hilarious, but it also underlines the gulf between the Mummers' version and GRRM's version. It seems obvious that we book readers are in a minority by comparison with those who not only know only the Mummers version but have no interest in reading the real thing, for them the Mummers' version is the true version.

[alienarea]

52 minutes ago, Black Crow said:

Its just his way, you'll get used to him 

And I haven't irritated you yet either, as far as I know.

[Melifeather]

5 hours ago, Lady Rhodes said:

I wasn’t referring to those particular hit points, though I understand why you thought that. I meant that there are various plot points that were given but the key information as to how they got there was left ambiguous. Like, had the books not been written and GRRM was pitching this story to producers, points from early seasons may be that the protagonist (Ned) dies, the Red Wedding etc. but without the context for these events, things got messed up.

Are the “high notes” the same as “hit points”? We had discussed possible high notes a couple months back, such as Jon learns his true parentage, and the Wall is breached. The devil is in the details and I think GRRM left it up to the mummers to fill in the story the way they thought it would go.