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Random Thoughts About ASOIAF


The Bard of Banefort
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Here’s another meta one: we all know there are parts of this fandom that care more about plot twists than themes and who have a theory for why everything written on the page is actually a misdirection for something much more convoluted (Preston Jacobs is arguably the most well-known example of this type of fan). At the same time, I feel like fans/bloggers like Race for the Iron Throne and Poor Quentyn go too far in the other direction. For example, the bloggers who are convinced that the brother Bloodraven loved was Daemon, not Daeron, because that’s “more poetic.” Sure, it’s poetic. It also doesn’t make any sense—Bloodraven isn’t someone who feels honor-bound to follow the law like Stannis (in fact, the whole point of his character is that he’s willing to break taboos). He wouldn’t be siding with Daeron if he cared more about Daemon. Or that Tyene betrayed Arianne because that would be a “more compelling betrayal.” Okay, by why would she betray her in the first place, when they had the same goal? Or how Jaime will die a broken villain who achieved nothing because it will be a poignant reflection on the inaccessibility of redemption. Yeah, and it would also be an absolute waste of hundreds of pages of character development. 

I remember RftIT saying after season 7 how Dany sweeping in and easily defeating Cersei would be the perfect completion to her arc after sacrificing everything for power. Sure, and it would also be anticlimactic AF. The story isn’t about Cersei; events have to occur that move the plot forward and create tests for all the characters to overcome. Stories are supposed to have twists and surprises, and they’re supposed to excite the reader to one degree or another. It’s an epic, not an essay.

But perhaps the best example of this mentality was all the bloggers who were convinced that Bran was going to become a tree and the spend the rest of his life in that cave. Thematically, you could argue that it’s about the sacrifices needed to acquire magic and save the world. Narratively, it’s boring and lame.

I guess it comes down to a division between theorists and analysts, with extreme camps on each end. Both have their place, but neither fully “get” the story, in my opinion, to the extent that any of us can truly understand an unfinished story. Anyway, thanks for listening to my tangent :D

(For the record, I don’t have anything against any of these theorists/analysts personally, I just disagree with many of their conclusions).

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23 hours ago, The Bard of Banefort said:

I’m kind of thinking that maybe the linguistics should be it’s own thread.

One last one before I go, in Welsh rhygnu  means "to harp" and rhygarw means "stag, hero"  --Rhaegar fought the stag, and he played the harp.

And righre / rioghail means "king, prince, royal" in Gaelic. 

righeal means "the herb Robert"  (and many "rhaegar" words are next to "rob" words)

righ-nathair means "large serpent, basilisk"

riaghaire means "rogue" and ragair means "villain, rogue, deceiver, violent man"

ruaigean means "pursuit, chase, defeat" and is right above ruaille

ruagair means "pursuer, chaser" as well as "fugitive, outlaw, wanderer"

rug means "caught, overtook"

 

And in one of George's earliest stories was about R'hllor of Raugg, who was an exiled prince, and riagloir means "ruler" and rolloir means "rolling-stone" and rioghail means "prince" and ruagair means "wanderer, outlaw" and riaghaire means "rogue" and Rhaegar if he survived would be an exiled prince, who is instrumental (pun intended) in the prophecy of R'hllor. 

Rhaegar and R'hllor are pretty much synonymous. 

And raig is also spelled raid, for those Mance = Rhaegar theorists.

Edited by By Odin's Beard
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6 hours ago, By Odin's Beard said:

One last one before I go, in Welsh rhygnu  means "to harp" and rhygarw means "stag, hero"  --Rhaegar fought the stag, and he played the harp.

And righre / rioghail means "king, prince, royal" in Gaelic. 

righeal means "the herb Robert"  (and many "rhaegar" words are next to "rob" words)

righ-nathair means "large serpent, basilisk"

riaghaire means "rogue" and ragair means "villain, rogue, deceiver, violent man"

ruaigean means "pursuit, chase, defeat" and is right above ruaille

ruagair means "pursuer, chaser" as well as "fugitive, outlaw, wanderer"

rug means "caught, overtook"

 

And in one of George's earliest stories was about R'hllor of Raugg, who was an exiled prince, and riagloir means "ruler" and rolloir means "rolling-stone" and rioghail means "prince" and ruagair means "wanderer, outlaw" and riaghaire means "rogue" and Rhaegar if he survived would be an exiled prince, who is instrumental (pun intended) in the prophecy of R'hllor. 

Rhaegar and R'hllor are pretty much synonymous. 

And raig is also spelled raid, for those Mance = Rhaegar theorists.

Like I said before, you should make a thread specifically for this that you can update.

Edited by The Bard of Banefort
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9 hours ago, The Bard of Banefort said:

Or that Tyene betrayed Arianne because that would be a “more compelling betrayal.”

I'm actually quite open to that possibility, but more for practical reasons. Tyene is the only of Arianne's best friends who isn't there for the Queenmaker plot. If someone in her party betrayed her, they probably would have been captured before taking off with Myrcella.

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10 hours ago, The Bard of Banefort said:

we all know there are parts of this fandom that care more about plot twists than themes and who have a theory for why everything written on the page is actually a misdirection for something much more convoluted (Preston Jacobs is arguably the most well-known example of this type of fan)

Did you see his recent series on Time Traveling Bran?  I posted on here 3 years ago that I thought that Bran himself is the 3 Eyed Crow and he opened his own third eye (and Jon's) through the weirwood network from the future, and when I said that in his comments section he deleted it 3 times in a row.  Still peeved about that.

His piece was pretty poorly researched and he missed many of the major connections.  For example that the Voyage of Bran is a time-travel story about Bran visiting the Otherworld and being unable to return home.  Or that in H.G. Wells' The Time Machine (which is a retelling of the Voyage of Bran), falling is a metaphor for time-travel.  And he goes into the future and learns about the child-like Eloi (CoTF) and their brothers the Morlocks (the Others, who eat the Eloi), and the predatory manworm of the far-future.

Or that Bran's story directly parallels The Whisperer in Darkness (which itself parallels Voyage of Bran and the Time Machine), that Bran calls Bloodraven "the whisperer in darkness" and the name "Bran" is mentioned in text as an elder god like Cthulhu. 

The fungoid crabs (craob means "tree") are said to be the true fact behind the myths of magical Celtic Sidhe faeries that live in hollow hills.  And that the tree/fungus/crabs from Yuggoth steal people's brains and put them in jars that can travel forwards and backwards in time and visit other worlds and dark stars.  Bran is also spelled Brain.  And the CoTF are trying to steal his brain.  And Bran the Blessed had his head cut off, but it remained alive, and was buried in a hill, under a White Tower, and protects Britain from invasion.

 

The fungoid crabs worship the Black Goat of the Woods, and I just figured out why the crabs and the Old Ones from At the Mountains of Madness have star-shaped heads.  Baphomet is classically depicted with a pentagram on its forehead, and Baphomet's head is drawn inside a pentagram.  The crabs and the Old Ones are based on Baphomet/Black Goat, and their heads are shaped like five-pointed stars.  And Baphomet is associated with a black moon, and the crabs come from the black planet Yuggoth--which comes back to the Time Machine, as the human/crabs scene takes place when a wandering planet close to Earth eclipses the sun.

Which all fits in with my theory that the names and religious practices of all the Free Cities of Essos are supplying details about weirwoods, and Pentos is a Baphomet/Black Goat reference. 

 

Or that in gaelic braon / braonan means "icicle" and "drop" and Bran means "crow" and he has nightmares about a crow and falling onto icicles.  (also means "misfortune, wretchedness")  and brainnse means "branch"

One of the main points was about the time travel chess story Unsound Variations, and brannam means "chess"

 

 

Finally, in Robert E Howard's Bran Mak Morn stories, Bran is the king of the Picts, who are small hideous deformed creatures that live in caves, and are the First Men.  King Bran dies, but he awaits in a cave to be reborn and resume kingship, like Bran the Blessed.

In his story Children of the Night, in Britain before the Picts were small pointy eared, cat-eyed, cave dwelling creatures that abduct and eat humans (like Morlocks).  They are also called the Worms of the Earth, and in that story Bran steals their sacred black stone--which parallels The Whisperer in Darkness, where Akelely steals the Black Stone from the crabs--

The Worms of the Earth tunnel under a wall and make it collapse. 

And the Children of the Forest are the Children of the Night, and they are closely associated with the weirwood roots/white worms of the earth.

 

ETA: Forgot that the first Bran Mak Morn story was Kings of the Night, which involves a powerful king Kull of Valusia time-traveling into the future to fight in a war to help King Bran.  (And I think Bran will be the Night King)

Edited by By Odin's Beard
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1 hour ago, By Odin's Beard said:

Did you see his recent series on Time Traveling Bran?  I posted on here 3 years ago that I thought that Bran himself is the 3 Eyed Crow and he opened his own third eye (and Jon's) through the weirwood network from the future, and when I said that in his comments section he deleted it 3 times in a row.  Still peeved about that.

His piece was pretty poorly researched and he missed many of the major connections.  For example that the Voyage of Bran is a time-travel story about Bran visiting the Otherworld and being unable to return home.  Or that in H.G. Wells' The Time Machine (which is a retelling of the Voyage of Bran), falling is a metaphor for time-travel.  And he goes into the future and learns about the child-like Eloi (CoTF) and their brothers the Morlocks (the Others, who eat the Eloi), and the predatory manworm of the far-future.

Or that Bran's story directly parallels The Whisperer in Darkness (which itself parallels Voyage of Bran and the Time Machine), that Bran calls Bloodraven "the whisperer in darkness" and the name "Bran" is mentioned in text as an elder god like Cthulhu. 

The fungoid crabs (craob means "tree") are said to be the true fact behind the myths of magical Celtic Sidhe faeries that live in hollow hills.  And that the tree/fungus/crabs from Yuggoth steal people's brains and put them in jars that can travel forwards and backwards in time and visit other worlds and dark stars.  Bran is also spelled Brain.  And the CoTF are trying to steal his brain.  And Bran the Blessed had his head cut off, but it remained alive, and was buried in a hill, under a White Tower, and protects Britain from invasion.

 

The fungoid crabs worship the Black Goat of the Woods, and I just figured out why the crabs and the Old Ones from At the Mountains of Madness have star-shaped heads.  Baphomet is classically depicted with a pentagram on its forehead, and Baphomet's head is drawn inside a pentagram.  The crabs and the Old Ones are based on Baphomet/Black Goat, and their heads are shaped like five-pointed stars.  And Baphomet is associated with a black moon, and the crabs come from the black planet Yuggoth--which comes back to the Time Machine, as the human/crabs scene takes place when a wandering planet close to Earth eclipses the sun.

Which all fits in with my theory that the names and religious practices of all the Free Cities of Essos are supplying details about weirwoods, and Pentos is a Baphomet/Black Goat reference. 

 

Or that in gaelic braon / braonan means "icicle" and "drop" and Bran means "crow" and he has nightmares about a crow and falling onto icicles.  (also means "misfortune, wretchedness")  and brainnse means "branch"

One of the main points was about the time travel chess story Unsound Variations, and brannam means "chess"

 

 

Finally, in Robert E Howard's Bran Mak Morn stories, Bran is the king of the Picts, who are small hideous deformed creatures that live in caves, and are the First Men.  King Bran dies, but he awaits in a cave to be reborn and resume kingship, like Bran the Blessed.

In his story Children of the Night, in Britain before the Picts were small pointy eared, cat-eyed, cave dwelling creatures that abduct and eat humans (like Morlocks).  They are also called the Worms of the Earth, and in that story Bran steals their sacred black stone--which parallels The Whisperer in Darkness, where Akelely steals the Black Stone from the crabs--

The Worms of the Earth tunnel under a wall and make it collapse. 

And the Children of the Forest are the Children of the Night, and they are closely associated with the weirwood roots/white worms of the earth.

 

ETA: Forgot that the first Bran Mak Morn story was Kings of the Night, which involves a powerful king Kull of Valusia time-traveling into the future to fight in a war to help King Bran.  (And I think Bran will be the Night King)

He deleted your comment? That’s a jerk move. I found the “backlash” against him from other theorists to be funny because it was pretty obvious they were all just jealous that he had a bigger fan base than they did, but I still think most of his theories are insane. 
 

2 hours ago, Takiedevushkikakzvezdy said:

I'm actually quite open to that possibility, but more for practical reasons. Tyene is the only of Arianne's best friends who isn't there for the Queenmaker plot. If someone in her party betrayed her, they probably would have been captured before taking off with Myrcella.

But why would she rat out Arianne? What’s the motive?

I find Daemon Sand the most likely contender. He was also captured before they took off, so chances are he was probably originally in on the plan. What we’ve seen of him suggests that he’s very level-headed, and in the TWOW chapters he spends a lot of time pointing out how short-sighted Arianne is. He could probably see just how disastrous Arianne’s queenmaker plot was.

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1 hour ago, The Bard of Banefort said:

I find Daemon Sand the most likely contender. He was also captured before they took off, so chances are he was probably originally in on the plan. 

It's mentioned that Arianne and Daemon haven't been very close since they broke up, so we can't be sure that he was it on it. But Tyene definitely was:

"Tyene and I are of an age and have been close as sisters since we were little girls. We have no secrets between us".

 

Edited by Takiedevushkikakzvezdy
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1 hour ago, The Bard of Banefort said:

I found the “backlash” against him from other theorists to be funny because it was pretty obvious they were all just jealous that he had a bigger fan base than they did, but I still think most of his theories are insane. 

I was skeptical of his dragon-hatching genetics videos, but I am reading the Witcher series and just last night in book 5 there was an exhausting discussion about the Elder blood genetics, and that Ciri is the last carrier of an super-rare, super-powerful genetic mutation, that was brought about by genetic engineering, and how it was transmitted down the female descendants of Lara Dorren to Ciri through multiple generations, with the help of mages influencing who mated with whom and altering peoples' fertility to affect that end.  Which is almost exactly what his theory was.

 

Ciri is a silver-haired orphan, and she gives prophecy, and she is the prophesied savior.  And Dany is silver-haired orphan, and gives prophecy, and she is the princess that was promised (targair means "prophecy" and tairngearach  means "Prophesied One, messiah").

Ciri is the "flame that will set the world alight" and "the seed that will burst into flame" and she is leaving a trail of destruction wherever she goes.  And she is either death or life, destruction or rebirth, chaos or order.

There is a world-ending White Frost coming and Ciri is the only one that can stop it.  Dany is the only one that can stop the White Walkers, world-ending ice age. 

The demons of the Wild Hunt that will accompany the White Frost have glowing blue eyes and they are ghastly corpses riding skeletal horses across the sky--sounds like White Walkers.  And they call Ciri Death and they want her to join them.

 

In book 3 there is a council of Kings that decide to assassinate Ciri, just like Robert's council that decides to assassinate Dany.

Also, ciriya means "swallow" and "valuable prize" in Hindi. 

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Whoa, major breakthrough.  Ciri means "swallow" in Hindi, and Ciri is called "the Swallow" but it is a play on words!  gras means "to swallow" and "eclipse"--to swallow the sun! and Early in book 1, Geralt says "winter's coming" and then he and Stregobor talk about an eclipse apocalypse led by women born during the eclipse, then the demon Lilit will come back to eradicate humanity.  And Ciri is a genetically engineered super-soldier that was supposed to eradicate humanity for the Elves and her name is synonymous with "eclipse".

siuir means "day of judgment" in Gaelic

Also gahni (Jon) means "eclipse" and "mooncalf" and the women born during the eclipse were supposed to be mutated and deformed.  But what if that is just a misreading of the prophecy, that rather a mutant will cause the eclipse apocalypse?  (also, Dany passing under the Shadow)

 

1,500 years ago there was an event called the Conjunction of the Spheres, where two planets got close enough that the beings from both planets were able to move from their homeworld to the other planet, and that why dragons, elves, and humans are all mixed up together on the planet they did not all evolve on. [this is the plot of Vance's The Dragon Masters, and also very close to George's Tuf Voyaging series in which a huge black spaceship drifting through the solar system can plague a planet with monsters]  I was looking into the phenomenon of the Conjunction of the Spheres, and found that in the video games they describe it as follows:

 

"Imagine, dear reader, that our world is a ship sailing on a great sea. From its deck we can see other, distant vessels – those are the stars. These vessels each bear their own goods and their own crews. They usually pass us at some distance, barely visible specks, even views through a spyglass. Once every few thousand years, however, a storm breaks above this cosmic sea, a storm so strong it tosses the ships towards one another, making them sail cheek by jowl. Part of the crew of one ship can, at such times, move to another, and some of the cargo from one ship's hold can spill onto a neighboring vessel. When the weather calms, the ships separate once again and sail their separate, invariably different ways.

The so-called "post-Conjunction beings," namely monsters such as ghouls and basilisks, are precisely such passengers from another vessel. And we humans are castaways, flung against our will from somewhere far away onto a world previously inhabited by the Elder Races. Once here, we learned the arcane mysteries of magic. unbeknownst to us before.

Could the worlds collide once more? Perhaps. Can this cataclysm be avoided, or the opposite – hastened?  Some scholars believe there are beings who have mastered this skill, who possess rare genes [which] allow some to seize the helm of our vessel and steer us... to safer waters, or to our doom."

 

They describe a planet as a ship, and say that a person with the right genetics could steer that ship, and either cause or avert a global cataclysm (just like the Long Night, which I have long proposed was cause by steering a planet into eclipse formation and parking it there)

 

And when Ciri is in a trace she gives a prophecy: Va'esse deireadh aep eigean

And in Dwelly's Gaelic

ess = "Ship, vessel, death"

deireadh = The End, stern of a ship

eigean = "ice" "cry, death-watch"

 

Ciri can steer the "ship of death" planet that causes the White Frost/Conjunction of Spheres/Long Night

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4 hours ago, By Odin's Beard said:

Did you see his recent series on Time Traveling Bran?  I posted on here 3 years ago that I thought that Bran himself is the 3 Eyed Crow and he opened his own third eye (and Jon's) through the weirwood network from the future, and when I said that in his comments section he deleted it 3 times in a row.  Still peeved about that.

what a major douche . what ... ? is there a reward reserved for him , if he'd be the first to come up with theories?! <_<

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14 hours ago, SeanF said:

Preston Jacobs comes out with some odd stuff.

But he did come up with expression “The Bran 9000.”

He surprised me with his thematic analysis of Brienne. His stuff usually sends me up a wall, since he typically opts for the most thematically disconnected (and almost almost paranoiac, "something seems fishy to me") interpretation possible. So kudos to him for showing another side.

Also, while I tend to disagree with his predictions, his argument in favor of outlandish plot twists based on their abundance in GRRM's earlier works is sound--as long as we assume that those outlandish plot twists are embedded within thoughtfully considered character arcs in the service of broader themes.

Edited by Phylum of Alexandria
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1 hour ago, Phylum of Alexandria said:

His stuff usually sends me up a wall

What I find frustrating about him is that he seems like a genuine fan of the series. He has obviously thoroughly read the books, and his videos are pretty good per se, but he reaches absolutely bonkers conclusions every time. For some strange reason.

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Lemongate was hilarious. All these people getting their panties in a wad because he said that lemons don’t grow in Braavos, only for GRRM to get all coy when a fan asked him about it and hint that there is some kind of story behind the lemon tree.

3 hours ago, Phylum of Alexandria said:

He surprised me with his thematic analysis of Brienne. His stuff usually sends me up a wall, since he typically opts for the most thematically disconnected (and almost almost paranoiac, "something seems fishy to me") interpretation possible. So kudos to him for showing another side.

Also, while I tend to disagree with his predictions, his argument in favor of outlandish plot twists based on their abundance in GRRM's earlier works is sound--as long as we assume that those outlandish plot twists are embedded within thoughtfully considered character arcs in the service of broader themes.

There were already analyses of Brienne that had come to the same conclusion though. Preston’s a lot of fun and he’s a good communicator (plus he has a great eye for detail), but most of what he discussed in that video series had already been said by other people.

His Brienne series is, however, what convinced me that even though I enjoyed Brienne’s chapters, I do not believe she had an arc in AFFC. Everything she experienced, from sexism to the cost of war, were things she already knew and understood. She never even really accepted that she was in love with Jaime.

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4 hours ago, Phylum of Alexandria said:

He surprised me with his thematic analysis of Brienne.

So in George's The Way of Cross and Dragon, Lukyan Judasson is a Liar, and he invents a religion based on Judas having been a Conqueror and Dragon-king of Babylon, who raises the last 4 dragons on Earth and uses them to establish and empire from Spain to India.  He tries and convicts a trouble-making prophet named Christ and has his legs cut off.  But then Judas repents and carries Christ on his back.  But while Judas is away spreading the gospel of Christ, Peter betrays Christ, and gets him crucified.  When Christ dies the sun goes dark at noon.

In Old Norse, mordr means "marten" and "Judas"  Martin = Judas.  And leika means "to fool, to play a trick on" and Leikn/Leikn means "prophet, ogre"  and amadan means "fool" in Gaelic, and the Judas cult is in the city Ammadon on Arion.  arian means "to honor"

Lukyan Judasson is a false prophet who fools people, he is a Liar that invents a new religion. 

 

Bran is the legless Christ, and he gets carried on someone's back.  The names Bran/Brienne are very similar, and tarrth means "savior" and tuarth means "foreshadowing, ominous"

Brienne is obsessed with trying to save Sansa and Arya.  I think Bran and Brienne aren't just parallel characters, I think Bran might be occupying Brienne's body and that is why she feels like she was born in the wrong body, and why she orbits the Starks.  And then Brienne carrying Bran's consciousness around would be like carrying the legless Christ, because he could not walk himself.

 

Dany is Judas the Dragon-king Conqueror, who raises the last dragons and forms an empire in the middle east.

Peter (Petyr) is the betrayer.

The dead of Christ/Bran is accompanied by the sun going out-->The Long Night

 

In the real world, St. George kills the dragon, and the story ends with dragons becoming extinct on Earth.  And I think dragons are spaceships and the story ends with a spaceship named Dragon.

 

Also, in Old Norse Sea Serpent / Sea Snake means "ship of war"

Edited by By Odin's Beard
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2 hours ago, Takiedevushkikakzvezdy said:

Is there any forestation on the Iron Islands? My impression is that it's just rocks, but if that's the case, how did they manage to build their fleet?

Three possibilities:

1.  There are forests on the Iron Islands but they haven't been prominently mentioned or we have forgotten about them.  I, for one, have paid little attention to the area, especially its geography. 

2.  They get timber from isolated areas of the North and Far North.  Plenty of those. 

3.  Sloppy worldbuilding.  Westeros is not a real place, and worldbuilding is not GRRM'S strong suit.  Hey, the guy can't think of everything - and hasn't.  Speaking for myself, I read the books mainly for the characters and plotting, so that kind of thing isn't too bothersome to me. 

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