Heresy 238 The Song of Sansa the Snow Queen

[LynnS]

8 hours ago, LadySage said:

"Vortex" was the term that first popped into my mind...

That's an interesting way to think about it.  A vortex has eddies and currents. The river of time could contain vortices, eddies and currents.  It also calls to mind Tyrion's trip past the Bridge of Sorrows and returning to a previous point on the river.  And also, the bar sinister, the hurricane where he finds himself in the eye of the storm.... vortices have an "eye".  

[alienarea]

6 hours ago, LynnS said:

That's an interesting way to think about it.  A vortex has eddies and currents. The river of time could contain vortices, eddies and currents.  It also calls to mind Tyrion's trip past the Bridge of Sorrows and returning to a previous point on the river.  And also, the bar sinister, the hurricane where he finds himself in the eye of the storm.... vortices have an "eye".  

Can we place the Bridge of Sorrows on Jon's timeline?

Just wondering whether Jon dies from his wounds, then the Bridge of Sorrows happens ("reset") and Jon fights off the attackers?

And how does Bran know where the reset button is?

 

[LynnS]

45 minutes ago, alienarea said:

Can we place the Bridge of Sorrows on Jon's timeline?

Just wondering whether Jon dies from his wounds, then the Bridge of Sorrows happens ("reset") and Jon fights off the attackers?

And how does Bran know where the reset button is?

 

I don't think they are concurrent events.  I'm not sure Bran hit a reset button or if the boat was moved magically or was subject to eddies and currents of the river.  They were surrounded by fog and mist.  

[asongofheresy]

Is it possible for bridge of dreams to complete a time loop? Like maybe up until that moment the world was getting ready for era of heroes to happen, the prophecies were told, and after the bridge was crossed the plans were set into the motion and we have to track the path in the opposite direction? 

[Tucu]

While we are still on the Snow Queen thread, here are some references to the gods and demons of snow: Sam praying to gods and demons before Ser Puddles shows up; Sam discussing snow demons with Melisandre and Stannis; 3 quotes attributing the blizzard to the old gods

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This was where the old gods ruled, the nameless gods of the trees and the wolves and the snows. "Mercy," he whispered then, to whatever might be listening, old gods or new, or demons too, "oh, mercy, mercy me, mercy me."

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The ones you call the Others are something more."

"Demons made of snow and ice and cold," said Stannis Baratheon. "The ancient enemy. The only enemy that matters." He considered Sam again. "I am told that you and this wildling girl passed beneath the Wall, through some magic gate."

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"The gods have turned against us," old Lord Locke was heard to say in the Great Hall. "This is their wroth. A wind as cold as hell itself and snows that never end. We are cursed."

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"What has your southron god to do with snow?" demanded Artos Flint. His black beard was crusted with ice. "This is the wroth of the old gods come upon us. It is them we should appease."

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A raven was perched atop one, pulling at the tatters of burned flesh that clung to its blackened skull. The blowing snow had covered the ashes at the base of the pyre and crept up the dead man's leg as far as his ankle. The old gods mean to bury him, Asha thought. This was no work of theirs.

And one from the Wolf Den in which maybe they sacrificed the slavers to thank the olds gods when a cruel winter fell and they were freed:

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"Then a long cruel winter fell," said Ser Bartimus. "The White Knife froze hard, and even the firth was icing up. The winds came howling from the north and drove them slavers inside to huddle round their fires, and whilst they warmed themselves the new king come down on them. Brandon Stark this was, Edrick Snowbeard's great-grandson, him that men called Ice Eyes. He took the Wolf's Den back, stripped the slavers naked, and gave them to the slaves he'd found chained up in the dungeons. It's said they hung their entrails in the branches of the heart tree, as an offering to the gods. The old gods, not these new ones from the south. Your Seven don't know winter, and winter don't know them."

 

[Melifeather]

On 10/24/2021 at 8:36 AM, LynnS said:

I watched the movie "The Green Knight" the other day.  Did anyone else see it? Comments?

That was just...weird. The worst Christmas game ever!

[Melifeather]

On 10/24/2021 at 10:53 AM, asongofheresy said:

So today I have learned a lem is someone who repeats what others say instead of having original thoughts, this reminds me Sansa in KL, repeating flattery to stay alive, and being called a bird by Sandor, Sansa of course loves lemoncakes. Can we tie it to lemon tree from Daenerys' childhood, is she just repeating words of Viserys, "Darry", etc that she is a Targaryen princess? Lem also means soiled in Vietnamese, Septa Lemore is a soiled Septa, is Lem Lemoncloak a soiled knight like Arys then, are they also repeating the false identity/roles given to them? 

Like lemmings?

[asongofheresy]

13 hours ago, Melifeather said:

Like lemmings?

I thought of them too, lemmings are rodents are they not, like the little mice used by Varys? 

Plus lem is an amalgam of Elm, and Mel, an Elmore is a river bank with elm trees, could a Lemore be a river bank with lemon orchads? 

BTW I am tempted to have another rereading, read a nice thread that made my belief of Ned being Jon's father firmer, I am sadly not sure about the candidate for the mother. 

[Black Crow]

15 hours ago, asongofheresy said:

Is it possible for bridge of dreams to complete a time loop? Like maybe up until that moment the world was getting ready for era of heroes to happen, the prophecies were told, and after the bridge was crossed the plans were set into the motion and we have to track the path in the opposite direction? 

I think that focussing on the bridge itself may be misleading. Surely its the Fog which is important? Passing the bridge twice tells us that the boat and its passengers are shifting through time and space carried not by the current of the river but by the Fog.

[asongofheresy]

41 minutes ago, Black Crow said:

I think that focussing on the bridge itself may be misleading. Surely its the Fog which is important? Passing the bridge twice tells us that the boat and its passengers are shifting through time and space carried not by the current of the river but by the Fog.

I am glad you point out the fog because the bridge is indeed misleading, but still did the shift through time complete a cycle or not? 

Plus an interesting tidbit for a different subject, when Ned and Robert talks in AGOT, Robert guesses Merryl and Aleena as names of Jon's mother, Merryl means Star of the Sea, and Aleena is a form of Helen, and one of its variant is Lyna, was Robert/GRRM hinting at Ashara and Lyanna as possible mothers of Jon? 

[LynnS]

14 hours ago, Melifeather said:

That was just...weird. The worst Christmas game ever!

LOL! Not the Arthurian Tale or hero that I was expecting.

[Melifeather]

4 hours ago, asongofheresy said:

I thought of them too, lemmings are rodents are they not, like the little mice used by Varys? 

Plus lem is an amalgam of Elm, and Mel, an Elmore is a river bank with elm trees, could a Lemore be a river bank with lemon orchads? 

BTW I am tempted to have another rereading, read a nice thread that made my belief of Ned being Jon's father firmer, I am sadly not sure about the candidate for the mother. 

Could you point me towards that thread about Ned? I thought I was quite alone with my belief that Ned is Jon's father. I think Ashara is his mother and that she is still alive living in her father's home as Wylla - a parallel to Sansa's Alayne.

2 hours ago, Black Crow said:

I think that focussing on the bridge itself may be misleading. Surely its the Fog which is important? Passing the bridge twice tells us that the boat and its passengers are shifting through time and space carried not by the current of the river but by the Fog.

I quite agree. The fog is a magical air just as the magic is carried on the high winds north of the Wall.

[LongRider]

1 hour ago, Melifeather said:

I quite agree. The fog is a magical air just as the magic is carried on the high winds north of the Wall.

Some aspects of the physical world do seem to manifest into magic.  Beyond the Wall the wind and mist has been looked at.  

The wind is interesting as it can bring sounds; a skirling wind, perhaps cold and the Others. 

The fog also is noted in Bravos in the Mercy chapter.  Is the fog in the South and wind in the North bringers of magic? 

[asongofheresy]

1 hour ago, Melifeather said:

Could you point me towards that thread about Ned? I thought I was quite alone with my belief that Ned is Jon's father. I think Ashara is his mother and that she is still alive living in her father's home as Wylla - a parallel to Sansa's Alayne.

I quite agree. The fog is a magical air just as the magic is carried on the high winds north of the Wall.

https://asoiaf.westeros.org/index.php?/topic/157847-the-others-the-nightfort-the-lords-right-and-the-toj/

This thread, it isn't necessarily about Ned being Jon's father but the information about Nightfort, first night, and child sacrifice made me think if Starks are different because they don't sacrifice their Snows or sent them away? 

[Tucu]

29 minutes ago, LongRider said:

Some aspects of the physical world do seem to manifest into magic.  Beyond the Wall the wind and mist has been looked at.  

The wind is interesting as it can bring sounds; a skirling wind, perhaps cold and the Others. 

The fog also is noted in Bravos in the Mercy chapter.  Is the fog in the South and wind in the North bringers of magic? 

Spirts can go into the fog/mist and then be transported by the wind? Here is Varamyr being carried by the wind:

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The white world turned and fell away. For a moment it was as if he were inside the weirwood, gazing out through carved red eyes as a dying man twitched feebly on the ground and a madwoman danced blind and bloody underneath the moon, weeping red tears and ripping at her clothes. Then both were gone and he was rising, melting, his spirit borne on some cold wind. He was in the snow and in the clouds, he was a sparrow, a squirrel, an oak. A horned owl flew silently between his trees, hunting a hare; Varamyr was inside the owl, inside the hare, inside the trees. Deep below the frozen ground, earthworms burrowed blindly in the dark, and he was them as well. I am the wood, and everything that’s in it, he thought, exulting. A hundred ravens took to the air, cawing as they felt him pass. A great elk trumpeted, unsettling the children clinging to his back. A sleeping direwolf raised his head to snarl at empty air. Before their hearts could beat again he had passed on,

 

[LynnS]

Fogs and mists at Ramsey's wedding:

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A Dance with Dragons - The Prince of Winterfell

The mists were so thick that only the nearest trees were visible; beyond them stood tall shadows and faint lights. Candles flickered beside the wandering path and back amongst the trees, pale fireflies floating in a warm grey soup. It felt like some strange underworld, some timeless place between the worlds, where the damned wandered mournfully for a time before finding their way down to whatever hell their sins had earned them. Are we all dead, then? Did Stannis come and kill us in our sleep? Is the battle yet to come, or has it been fought and lost?

Here and there a torch burned hungrily, casting its ruddy glow over the faces of the wedding guests. The way the mists threw back the shifting light made their features seem bestial, half-human, twisted. Lord Stout became a mastiff, old Lord Locke a vulture, Whoresbane Umber a gargoyle, Big Walder Frey a fox, Little Walder a red bull, lacking only a ring for his nose. Roose Bolton's own face was a pale grey mask, with two chips of dirty ice where his eyes should be.

Above their heads the trees were full of ravens, their feathers fluffed as they hunched on bare brown branches, staring down at the pageantry below. Maester Luwin's birds. Luwin was dead, and his maester's tower had been put to the torch, yet the ravens lingered. This is their home. Theon wondered what that would be like, to have a home.

 

[Melifeather]

We've discussed Tyrion's repeated voyage through the Sorrows before. IMO the main takeaway is that if you use magic to mess with time, sometimes repeating history has drastic and more dangerous outcomes. It highlights the comment about magic being a two-edged sword without a hilt and no safe way to grasp it. 

Tyrion (along with the rest of the gang on the flatboat) passes under the bridge with the Stone Men twice in short order. Each pass under the bridge has a different outcome. The first time through the Stone Men moaned and muttered, but other than that they took no more notice than if the boat were a log. The second time through the Stone Men were pointing down at them, and three jumped down to molest them. One of them made for Young Griff, but Tyrion drove him over the side of the boat. 

I know I've brought up Dr Strange many times, but for the uninitiated I'd like to bring it up again.

Dr Strange defeats Dormammu by casting a spell over time itself, creating a continual time loop using the Eye of Agamotto. No matter how many times Dormammu killed Dr Strange, he always came back to the beginning frustrating Dormammu until he gave up. I believe GRRM has also inserted a time loop into ASOIAF as evidenced by the extended seasons where winters and summers last up to 9-10 years long and Springs and Falls are shorter. Tyrion's trips twice through the Sorrows is intended to bring the reader's attention to these loops.

During these time loops life continues for humans even if the seasons move very slowly. Theoretically a one year spring, plus a 9 year long summer, plus a year long autumn, plus a 9 year long winter would technically be one 20-year-long time loop. Bloodraven teaches Bran that you cannot change the past, so if there are time loops, then his intention is to change the future. The trees remember and show events from the past to Bloodraven and Bran, but they cannot change the events. The people living during this 20-year-long time loop would repeat whatever happened during the previous loop. 

Whoever is manipulating time did so in order to change a future outcome. It's a delaying tactic until the right people are in the right place to deal with the future. With each time loop Bloodraven looked for Bran, resetting time until he was born. It seems likely that Bran is needed as a greenseer in order to remove the time loops, restore the seasons to normal, and allow history to move forward.

Bran was born at the beginning of the current or latest summer in 290. He was 8 or 9 years old when Jaime pushed him from the tower. Old Nan called him “my sweet summer child”. Bloodraven may have extended summer so that Bran could grow up, but he was running out of time. He's fading into the weirwoods fast and he needed Bran to come quickly. He sent Jojen greendreams so that he and Meera would fetch him. 

There are two characters that seem to provide some insight into the time loops: Tyrion and Howland.

Tyrion

Tyrion was born in 273. The estimated year when Tyrion was at the Wall was 298 which would make him approximately 25 years old at the time. He told Mormont he’d seen 8 or 9 winters, but Mormont commented that the current summer had lasted 9 years, so Tyrion would have seen his 8-9 winters by the time he was 15 years old and each winter couldn't have been more than a year or so apiece. Mormont's comment about summer lasting 9 years with a 10th “soon upon us”, suggests that summer was extended. Circling back to Bran, this latest summer does indeed correspond with Bran's age. Also worrisome is that an extended summer typically leads to an extended winter. 

Howland

Howland spent the winter on the Isle of Faces, but when spring broke he left. This was the year of the False Spring. Winter returned two months after the Harrenhal tourney. It was our first clue that time is being reset. Did Howland’s prayer for a way to “win” have anything to do with this reset? 

I see the Harrenhal Tourney as ground zero for a reset, with a second change occurring when Dany's dragon's hatched. The wording that describes how the eggs hatched seems to imply that the dragon hatching caused the wheel to be "broken" in three steps:
 

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 She heard a crack, the sound of shattering stone. The platform of wood and brush and grass began to shift and collapse in upon itself. Bits of burning wood slid down at her, and Dany was showered with ash and cinders. And something else came crashing down, bouncing and rolling, to land at her feet; a chunk of curved rock, pale and veined with gold, broken and smoking. The roaring filled the world, yet dimly through the firefall Dany heard women shriek and children cry out in wonder. 
  
  Only death can pay for life. 

  And there came a second crack, loud and sharp as thunder, and the smoke stirred and whirled around her and the pyre shifted, the logs exploding as the fire touched their secret hearts. She heard the screams of frightened horses, and the voices of the Dothraki raised in shouts of fear and terror, and Ser Jorah calling her name and cursing. No, she wanted to shout to him, no, my good knight, do not fear for me. The fire is mine. I am Daenerys Stormborn, daughter of dragons, bride of dragons, mother of dragons, don’t you see? Don’t you SEE? With a belch of flame and smoke that reached thirty feet into the sky, the pyre collapsed and came down around her. Unafraid, Dany stepped forward into the firestorm, calling to her children. 

  The third crack was as loud and sharp as the breaking of the world.

After the eggs hatched, historic events began occurred in reverse. It is interesting that Tyrion's second pass under the Bridge of Sorrows seems to coincide with an end to summer. Summer had been delayed until Bran arrived and the seasons moved forward just as Tyrion happened to be on the Rhoyne. The second trip through is evidence of the wheel being allowed to move to the next season.

 

[Melifeather]

1 hour ago, asongofheresy said:

https://asoiaf.westeros.org/index.php?/topic/157847-the-others-the-nightfort-the-lords-right-and-the-toj/

This thread, it isn't necessarily about Ned being Jon's father but the information about Nightfort, first night, and child sacrifice made me think if Starks are different because they don't sacrifice their Snows or sent them away? 

I'd be more interested in how this information would help convince you that Ned is Jon's father rather than Lyanna being his mother? If you have your thoughts posted elsewhere, just provide another link. We are wrapping up the Sansa thread and the discussion seems to be moving towards the magical fog. I do hope BC keeps that (or time loops) as the topic of 239.

[Melifeather]

5 hours ago, Black Crow said:

I think that focussing on the bridge itself may be misleading. Surely its the Fog which is important? Passing the bridge twice tells us that the boat and its passengers are shifting through time and space carried not by the current of the river but by the Fog.

Perhaps the fog is just an indication that something magical is occurring or is about to occur?

[Black Crow]

39 minutes ago, Melifeather said:

Perhaps the fog is just an indication that something magical is occurring or is about to occur?

That's also possible, ultimately the fog is cloaking what's happening. Perhaps another way of looking at it is to ask who or what is messing with things under cover of a fog, and why?