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Heresy 241 A Winter Rose


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Comets again and foreshadowing of the return of Khal Drogo?

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A Dance with Dragons - Daenerys X

The sun was only just coming up. A few bright stars lingered in the cobalt sky. Perhaps one of them is Khal Drogo, sitting on his fiery stallion in the night lands and smiling down on me. Dragonstone was still visible above the grasslands. It looks so close. I must be leagues away by now, but it looks as if I could be back in an hour. She wanted to lie back down, close her eyes, and give herself up to sleep. No. I must keep going. The stream. Just follow the stream.

 

Dawn and the return of the red comet?

"When you bear a living child, then you will see him again and not before."

So it's a ways off then.  Perhaps in A Dream of Spring.

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4 hours ago, LynnS said:

Does it remind you of the House of Undying and the room with the blue heart?

Yes, a little. It was all an illusion to keep her there. She never actually saw the corruption, but she sensed it, because she had heard of the story where people in the past had starved to death and were found naked. She was only released when she threatened to break the window that was the source of the illusion. You know GRRM has another short story called Skin Trade where werewolves use mirrors to teleport and prey on the living. 

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Interesting to review this early interview:

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How did you come up with the Wall?


The Wall predates anything else. I can trace back the inspiration for that to 1981. I was in England visiting a friend, and as we approached the border of England and Scotland, we stopped to see Hadrian’s Wall. I stood up there and I tried to imagine what it was like to be a Roman legionary, standing on this wall, looking at these distant hills. It was a very profound feeling. For the Romans at that time, this was the end of civilization; it was the end of the world. We know that there were Scots beyond the hills, but they didn’t know that. It could have been any kind of monster. It was the sense of this barrier against dark forces – it planted something in me. But when you write fantasy, everything is bigger and more colorful, so I took the Wall and made it three times as long and 700 feet high, and made it out of ice.

The free folk being the Scots.  LOL.  So he says it here: a barrier against dark forces.

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Then in 1991 he began A Game of Thrones, primarily a story about power and family, about the disastrous nature of both war and the human heart, and so far it has shown nobody – including the audience – any mercies.

'Game of Thrones' Author George R.R. Martin: The Rolling Stone Interview - Rolling Stone

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@Phylum of Alexandriacalls this to our attention:

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“For millennia beyond counting they have dwelled in tranquility and peace beneath the seas of this world. They are a slow, thoughtful, philosophic race, and they lived side by side in the billions, each linked with all the others, each an individual and each a part of the great racial whole. In a sense they were deathless, for all shared the experiences of each, and the death of one was as nothing. Experiences were few in the unchanging sea, however. For the most part their long lives are given over to abstract thought, to philosophy, to strange green dreams that neither you nor I can truly comprehend. They are silent musicians, one might say. Together they have woven great symphonies of dreams, and those songs go on and on.

“Before humanity came to Namor, they had had no real enemies for millions of years. Yet that had not always been the case. In the primordial beginnings of this wet world, the oceans teemed with creatures who relished the taste of the dreamers as much as you do. Even then, the race understood genetics, understood evolution. With their vast web of interwoven minds, they were able to manipulate the very stuff of life itself, more skillfully than any genetic engineers. And so they evolved their guardians, formidable predators with a biological imperative to protect those you call mud-pots. These were your men-of-war. From that time to this they guarded the beds, while the dreamers went back to their symphony of thought.

“Then you came, from Aquarius and Old Poseidon. Indeed you did. Lost in the reverie, the dreamers hardly noticed for many years, while you farmed and fished and discovered the taste of mud-pots. You must consider the shock you gave them, Lords Guardian. Each time you plunged one of them into boiling water, all of them shared the sensations. To the dreamers, it seemed as though some terrible new predator had evolved upon the landmass, a place of little interest to them. They had no inkling that you might be sentient, since they could no more conceive of a non-telepathic sentience than you could conceive of one blind, deaf, immobile, and edible. To them, things that moved and manipulated and ate flesh were animals, and could be nothing else.

“The rest you know, or can surmise. The dreamers are a slow people lost in their vast songs, and they were slow to respond. First they simply ignored you, in the belief that the ecosystem itself would shortly check your ravages. This did not appear to happen. To them it seemed you had no natural enemies. You bred and expanded constantly, and many thousands of minds fell silent. Finally they returned to the ancient, almost-forgotten ways of their dim past, and woke to protect themselves. They sped up the reproduction of their guardians until the seas above their beds teemed with their protectors, but the creatures that had once sufficed admirably against other enemies proved to be no match for you. Finally they were driven to new measures. Their minds broke off the great symphony and ranged out, and they sensed and understood. At last they began to fashion new guardians, guardians formidable enough to protect them against this great new nemesis. Thus it went."

 

Dreamsongs of Ice and Fire Pt 4: A Secret Sci-Fi? - General (ASoIaF) - A Forum of Ice and Fire - A Song of Ice and Fire & Game of Thrones (westeros.org)

I think this is a close as we can get to the nature of the weirnet. the cause of the first long night and first appearance of white walkers.

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So if the Wall is a dam that regulates the seasons and the weirnet or Gseers control the dam;  why are the seasons so long?

Because Gseers/weirwood experience time differently from men?

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A Dance with Dragons - Bran III

"A man must know how to look before he can hope to see," said Lord Brynden. "Those were shadows of days past that you saw, Bran. You were looking through the eyes of the heart tree in your godswood. Time is different for a tree than for a man. Sun and soil and water, these are the things a weirwood understands, not days and years and centuries. For men, time is a river. We are trapped in its flow, hurtling from past to present, always in the same direction. The lives of trees are different. They root and grow and die in one place, and that river does not move them. The oak is the acorn, the acorn is the oak. And the weirwood … a thousand human years are a moment to a weirwood, and through such gates you and I may gaze into the past."

 

Years are a moment to the weirwood.

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Another fascinating essay:

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The imagery is there, uncharacteristically obvious for an author prone to keeping readers stumbling in the fog through subtlety and writerly sleights of hand. It’s the Catholic rite of pardon for one’s sins whose elements and symbology Martin has borrowed for Sandor, namely: conversion, confession, penance, forgiveness, and reconciliation. They don’t necessarily follow in this order, as it depends on individuals, but they all are present in whichever order an individual case unfolds, and Martin, a cultural Catholic, is certainly familiar with the rite, not to mention that the Faith of the Seven is just Fantasy Catholicism with fewer bells and whistles.

PAWN TO PLAYER | A Rethinking Sansa Stark Resource (wordpress.com)

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In ASOIAF, the ultimate forgiveness mechanism for crimes is the Night’s Watch. The entry fee is giving up all claims to anything of worldly value, all allegiances and connections and riches, and the post entry reward is selfless service. So, following this in-world model, we already have established that Sandor met the first requisite (give up anything of value) when he broke away at Blackwater, so the forgiveness implied by the results of the trial by combat and Arya’s choice there was earned well before their last scene at the Trident plays out. So, what remains is the second requirement to reach forgiven status.

Could it be that Sandor turns out to be the perfect knight?

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The Elder Brother is simply following the “old man” vs “new man” religious phraseology when he makes this Sandor vs Hound distinction that Brienne doesn’t grasp. With the inclusion of this scene between the EB and Brienne that serves no other purpose than to let readers know the fate of Sandor Clegane, Martin has written him to be the only character in ASOIAF that is surrounded by the imagery of forgiveness from three major religions, a fact that isn’t accidental but has to serve a plot purpose. You don’t simply have a character be forgiven by Rh’llor, the Old Gods, and the Seven (and the God of Many Faces for additional pathos) for no reason and no future completion at all. 

 

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1 hour ago, LynnS said:

The Elder Brother is simply following the “old man” vs “new man” religious phraseology when he makes this Sandor vs Hound distinction that Brienne doesn’t grasp. With the inclusion of this scene between the EB and Brienne that serves no other purpose than to let readers know the fate of Sandor Clegane, Martin has written him to be the only character in ASOIAF that is surrounded by the imagery of forgiveness from three major religions, a fact that isn’t accidental but has to serve a plot purpose. You don’t simply have a character be forgiven by Rh’llor, the Old Gods, and the Seven (and the God of Many Faces for additional pathos) for no reason and no future completion at all. 

This is becoming really interesting.  Essentially Sandor has been reborn amidst salt (saltpans) and smoke (smoking beehives).  I ha the distinct impression that Sandor was the 6th of Rhaegar's rubies but I was confused by the concept of Rhaegar's rubies.  Could it be that the rubies are a reference to the salt and smoke part of the prophecy that consumed Rhaegar?  Is it possible that we can expect 7 characters to be reborn amidst salt and smoke?

So far we have Sandor and I would add Jon, born amidst salt (tears) and smoke (smoking blood).  What about Tyrion?  Was he reborn in the eye of a hurricane on the Smoking Sea? 

So not talking about the place a character is born, but the place where a character is reborn spiritually. 

Dany has undergone spiritual rebirth amidst salt tears and smoke.

That's four characters, I can think of and the 7th is yet to be reborn.  Are there two others that could be considered reborn?  What about Davos and Theon?

 

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6 hours ago, LynnS said:

This is becoming really interesting.  Essentially Sandor has been reborn amidst salt (saltpans) and smoke (smoking beehives).  I ha the distinct impression that Sandor was the 6th of Rhaegar's rubies but I was confused by the concept of Rhaegar's rubies.  Could it be that the rubies are a reference to the salt and smoke part of the prophecy that consumed Rhaegar?  Is it possible that we can expect 7 characters to be reborn amidst salt and smoke?

So far we have Sandor and I would add Jon, born amidst salt (tears) and smoke (smoking blood).  What about Tyrion?  Was he reborn in the eye of a hurricane on the Smoking Sea? 

So not talking about the place a character is born, but the place where a character is reborn spiritually. 

Dany has undergone spiritual rebirth amidst salt tears and smoke.

That's four characters, I can think of and the 7th is yet to be reborn.  Are there two others that could be considered reborn?  What about Davos and Theon?

 

Theon should be the fifth character, I guess he will be reborn in the beginning of TWoW as hinted at in the preview chapter when he is about to get executed/sacrificed.

Davos could be considered reborn because of his faked death, or maybe he will be reborn while searching for Rickon. But I would prefer characters featured more prominently in the first book.

Jaime?

And the 7th (missing ruby) should be Bran. 

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7 hours ago, LynnS said:

This is becoming really interesting.  Essentially Sandor has been reborn amidst salt (saltpans) and smoke (smoking beehives).  I ha the distinct impression that Sandor was the 6th of Rhaegar's rubies but I was confused by the concept of Rhaegar's rubies.  Could it be that the rubies are a reference to the salt and smoke part of the prophecy that consumed Rhaegar?  Is it possible that we can expect 7 characters to be reborn amidst salt and smoke?

So far we have Sandor and I would add Jon, born amidst salt (tears) and smoke (smoking blood).  What about Tyrion?  Was he reborn in the eye of a hurricane on the Smoking Sea? 

So not talking about the place a character is born, but the place where a character is reborn spiritually. 

Dany has undergone spiritual rebirth amidst salt tears and smoke.

That's four characters, I can think of and the 7th is yet to be reborn.  Are there two others that could be considered reborn?  What about Davos and Theon?

 

I think we will have more than 7 reborn heroes (salt and smoke are probably red herrings). Two additional heroes that went through a death-rebirth cycle:

Ser Piggy Lord of Ham, now known as Sam the Slayer, went through a transformation (and assumed dead) from the Fist to Craster's Keep and to the Wall where he let one of the possible wonders of the new age cross.

Brienne the Beauty died at the Inn of the Crossroads and went through the Underworld to be judged by Lady Stoneheart.

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16 hours ago, Tucu said:

The game has Six Domains, not Seven Kingdoms. The assassins are a covenant not a cult.  Completely different ;-)

Its actually a pretty fundamental issue. Given that GRRM has spent his career revisiting and refining themes, why should Ice and Fire be regarded as unique, rather it ought to be seen as a development of those earlier ideas

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17 hours ago, LynnS said:

So if the Wall is a dam that regulates the seasons and the weirnet or Gseers control the dam;  why are the seasons so long?

Because Gseers/weirwood experience time differently from men?

Years are a moment to the weirwood.

We've discussed this before. Human concept is that time moves forward into a future, but what if we're only on a raft being carried downstream? If you're a rock (or a tree) time flows past while you're stuck eternally in place. You know what was in the past, because you were there. The present is inside and outside the flowing stream while at the same time you can see the future. Time is relative to your existence. It's a measurement based on external factors like planet rotation, but if you're not on the surface of a planet? Would time even exist?

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6 hours ago, Melifeather said:

We've discussed this before. Human concept is that time moves forward into a future, but what if we're only on a raft being carried downstream? If you're a rock (or a tree) time flows past while you're stuck eternally in place. You know what was in the past, because you were there. The present is inside and outside the flowing stream while at the same time you can see the future. Time is relative to your existence. It's a measurement based on external factors like planet rotation, but if you're not on the surface of a planet? Would time even exist?

Trees grow, get old and die (in our world). They may live longer and don't move, but they cannot see the future.

Rocks can be moved, and are slowly grinded to sand in time.

If you are not on the surface of a planet or in an orbit but for example a rock in deep space, it may look like that's it. However, if our universe expands or contracts, this might change one fine morning.

"So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past."

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Arya and Sansa could be considered as ‘underground’ as for both of them their true identities and selfs are being hidden and suppressed. 
When their true selves are reasserted, it will be interesting to see how they have changed. 
edt: I agree that salt and smoke are red herrings.  

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On 1/6/2022 at 5:28 PM, LynnS said:

Essentially Sandor has been reborn amidst salt (saltpans) and smoke (smoking beehives).

Sandor reborn of course, we know that already. If one insists on salt and smoke, I'd suggest smoke from the Battle of Blackwater and his tears shed when Sansa sang to him in her room before he deserted.  

edt; he also shed tears when confessing to Arya that Sansa never gave him a song, he stole it.  Quite the emotional one, that Sandor.  

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46 minutes ago, LongRider said:

Sandor reborn of course, we know that already. If one insists on salt and smoke, I'd suggest smoke from the Battle of Blackwater and his tears shed when Sansa sang to him in her room before he deserted.  

edt; he also shed tears when confessing to Arya that Sansa never gave him a song, he stole it.  Quite the emotional one, that Sandor.  

Curious fact: Sandor and Arya are the only two characters in the books that have explicitly eaten a smoked sausage (during his first dinner+confession to Arya)

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The wood they gathered proved too wet, though. Nothing he tried was enough to make the spark catch. Finally he kicked it all apart in disgust. “Seven bloody hells,” he swore. “I hate fires.”

They sat on damp rocks beneath an oak tree, listening to the slow patter of water dripping from the leaves as they ate a cold supper of hardbread, moldy cheese, and smoked sausage. The Hound sliced the meat with his dagger, and narrowed his eyes when he caught Arya looking at the knife. “Don’t even think about it.

“I wasn’t,” she lied.

He snorted to show what he thought of that, but he gave her a thick slice of sausage. Arya worried it with her teeth, watching him all the while. “I never beat your sister,” the Hound said. “But I’ll beat you if you make me. Stop trying to think up ways to kill me. None of it will do you a bit of good.”

She had nothing to say to that. She gnawed on the sausage and stared at him coldly. Hard as stone, she thought. “At least you look at my face. I’ll give you that, you little she-wolf. How do you like it?”

“I don’t. It’s all burned and ugly.”

Clegane offered her a chunk of cheese on the point of his dagger. “You’re a little fool. What good would it do you if you did get away? You’d just get caught by someone worse.”

“I would not,” she insisted. “There is no one worse.”

 

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Greetings, first post but I've been reading for months.

We have been assured many times that it's okay to bring up older stuff, and something caught my eye awhile ago, but it took this long for it to connect to ssomething.

Please forgive me, I don't remember who it was talking about the NK, the Stark of Winterfell, and Joramun, the King Beyond the Wall.

The subtext was trying to divine who the WF Stark was, but that they believes that that Stark had given Bear Island to Joramun who went on to found the Mormonts of Bear Island.

What do we know of Rodrick Stark, buried in the crypts and spoken of right after Brandon the Burner?

GoT Bran VII:

"He looked at the passing faces and the tales came back to him. The maester had told him the stories, and Old Nan had made them come alive. “That one is Jon Stark. When the sea raiders landed in the east, he drove them out and built the castle at White Harbor. His son was Rickard Stark, not my father’s father but another Rickard, he took the Neck away from the Marsh King and married his daughter. Theon Stark’s the real thin one with the long hair and the skinny beard. They called him the ‘Hungry Wolf,’ because he was always at war. That’s a Brandon, the tall one with the dreamy face, he was Brandon the Shipwright, because he loved the sea. His tomb is empty. He tried to sail west across the Sunset Sea and was never seen again. His son was Brandon the Burner, because he put the torch to all his father’s ships in grief. ***There’s Rodrik Stark, who won Bear Island in a wrestling match and gave it to the Mormonts.*** And that’s Torrhen Stark, the King Who Knelt. He was the last King in the North and the first Lord of Winterfell, after he yielded to Aegon the Conqueror. Oh, there, he’s Cregan Stark. He fought with Prince Aemon once, and the Dragonknight said he’d never faced a finer swordsman.” They were almost at the end now, and Bran felt a sadness creeping over him. “And there’s my grandfather, Lord Rickard, who was beheaded by Mad King Aerys. His daughter Lyanna and his son Brandon are in the tombs beside him. Not me, another Brandon, my father’s brother.

 

A wrestling match could be one way of phrasing "threw down the Nights King with the King Beyond the Wall".

my apologies if someone else has already spotted this, and this forum really us my favorite space to go and just read for sheer pleasure.

Thanks for all this work you've done for years!!!

 

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9 hours ago, Tucu said:

She had nothing to say to that. She gnawed on the sausage and stared at him coldly. Hard as stone, she thought. “At least you look at my face. I’ll give you that, you little she-wolf. How do you like it?”

Is she thinking about the sausage or Sandor? What's the other quote?

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