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Squishers


Mrs.Grumpy

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Lord Godric Borrells physical description is somewhat similar to what nimble dick said...

"Godric is a big, fleshy, ugly man with massive shoulders. Coarse white hair grows from his cheeks and chin. He is bald on the top of his scalp, with a lumpy red-veined nose and webbing between his three middle fingers." Woiaf

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  • 8 months later...

I think we are going to see something more from GRRM about sea monsters before the story is over.  While I have not compared the stories or taken the time to think it through when reading the books I was wondering if Squishers have anything to do with Patchface's story and songs.  Has anyone looked into any connection between what happened to Patchface and Squishers?

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“Best we keep a watch tonight, m’lady,” Crabb told her, as she was struggling to get a driftwood fire lit. “A place like this, there might be squishers.”
“Squishers?” Brienne gave him a suspicious look.
“Monsters,” Nimble Dick said, with relish. “They look like men till you get close, but their heads is too big, and they got scales where a proper man’s got hair. Fish-belly white they are, with webs between their fingers. They’re always damp and fishy-smelling, but behind these blubbery lips they got rows of green teeth sharp as needles. Some say the First Men killed them all, but don’t you believe it. They come by night and steal bad little children, padding along on them webbed feet with a little squish-squish sound. The girls they keep to breed with, but the boys they eat, tearing at them with those sharp green teeth.” He grinned at Podrick. “They’d eat you, boy. They’d eat you raw.”
“If they try, I’ll kill them.” Podrick touched his sword.
“You try that. You just try. Squishers don’t die easy.” He winked at Brienne. “You a bad little girl, m’lady?”

 

~ Borrell may meet some of the criteria but, in my book, Biter is a closer fit for the more nightmarish aspects.

 

* (CoK)  Biter is enormous and bald, with soft, doughy flesh. His tongue had been cut and he does not speak, except to hiss. His teeth have been filed into points. 

* (SoS) Rorge tells Jaime that Biter chewed the breasts and nipples off of a septa sometime during their foraging and pillaging as part of the Brave Companions. 

* (AFFC) At the Sack of the Saltpans, Biter crushed his victims with his weight and—as he often does—tore flesh out of them with his sharpened teeth. A witness states a woman had been raped a dozen times, before she was given to Biter, who ripped her breasts apart with his teeth. 

* (AFFC)  At the inn at the crossroads, after Rorge duels with and is slain by Brienne of Tarth, Biter quickly overpowers Brienne and begins savagely eating her face.

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POI, others described as being fish-like in appearance include Mandon Moore and Falyse Stokeworth.

 

There is also mention in the Lannister section of the World Book about something called a "selky", which were driven back into the sea by some early Lannister king.

 

I adore Selky stories! The selkies are Scottish lore. They are supposed to be seal-like skinchangers who can come onto land, shed their animal skin, and take on human form. If you hide the skin, they remain in human form.

The stories usually go: selky longs for the sea, lover/husband/wife relents and returns the skin (or their children find it and the selky gets it) and selky returns to the sea. Sometimes one of more of the children follow the selky or are stolen later.

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I'm so glad someone cleared up what a Selkie is. :) I'm another big fan of these stories. 

 

Interestingly it seems to me at least that GRRM is too. Maidenpool has echo's of the Swanmaids to me a folk tale in which invariably involves beautiful maidens spied bathing and then some brothers stealing their Swan skins in order to capture them and make them their wives. 

Now we don't know an awful lot about Florian and Jonquil, other than that Maidenpool is where he first spied her bathing with her sisters, and that there is a Tower their called Jonquils tower, and a gate called the fools gate, of course we know Florian was supposedly a fool. 

 

So whilst we only have scant information it does seem to me at least that we have a nod to the swan maidens, and there are various versions of this folk tale all over Europe. Selkies being one of them, and one I particularly love.  Another time I feel this folk tale allegory is used in ASOIAF is with Lyanna and Rhaegar, when Meera Reed relays the story to Bran, she refers to Lyanna as the she wolf, and the Croatian version of this tale involves a she wolf, when the male protagonist observes the the beautiful maid she is bathing in a mill pond, with her wolf skin hanging from a nail on the wall of the mill, he of course takes her skin and makes her his wife, getting a son on her. And in the tale of the tourney of Harrenhall Rhaegar goes to find the Knight of the laughing tree but reports back that all he discovered was a shield hanging in a tree in a grove.

 

To me this harks to the skin hanging up whilst the beautiful maid is observed, and I am convinced that Rhaegar spied Lyanna changing out of her armour and as in the folk tales fell madly in love. 

 

Now as to Squishers, Yup I think they are real, I think it is likely they indeed are an ancient race and that the webbed fingers of lord Borrell come from interbreeding way back. 

Since TWOIAF I am inclined to place weight in most legends in ASOIAF tbh. 

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I like the theory that Biter was a squisher/merling, and that his teeth weren't filed, they were naturally that way.  Do we ever hear Varys' teeth described or hear it mentioned he smiled broadly or anything like that?  I think if Varys is not Illyrio's wife, he's probably a merling.  Remember, he told Tyrion that he'd be very surprised what would happen if he was thrown in the bay.

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I like the theory that Biter was a squisher/merling, and that his teeth weren't filed, they were naturally that way.  Do we ever hear Varys' teeth described or hear it mentioned he smiled broadly or anything like that?  I think if Varys is not Illyrio's wife, he's probably a merling.  Remember, he told Tyrion that he'd be very surprised what would happen if he was thrown in the bay.

 

Varys often smiles. It's been described with a lot of words but most often as simpering, unctuous, thin, sly or slimey,

 

I think this is the exchange your thinkng about.

 

ACoK: Tyrion II

"Then why do I have this bitter taste in my mouth?" He pressed his fingers into his temples. "I told them to throw Allar Deem into the sea. I am sorely tempted to do the same with you."

 
"You might be disappointed by the result," Varys replied. "The storms come and go, the waves crash overhead, the big fish eat the little fish, and I keep on paddling. Might I trouble you for a taste of the wine that Lord Slynt enjoyed so much?"
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I agree with all the hints that Biter is something more than or other than human. Seemingly-human origins don't necessarily conflict with this given reputed squisher reproductive habits, and possible Innsmouth inspiration.

Nobody has mentioned Lord Manderly yet in this context. He is the king of a house with the merman as its sigil, his nickname is "Lord Lamprey" (after a needle toothed sea creature). His skin is assuming a grey and unhealthy palor, and he has recently undertaken cannibalistic behavior that seems to foreshadow (by analogy with the story of the Rat King) his transformation into a monster.
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