Heresy 53

[Black Crow]

Did indeed and corrected accordingly :dunce:

[Sharf]

All things are possible, but given that reference to him running through the forest and wondering where his next meal's coming from would suggest that he's far from dead - which is of course exactly what GRRM's earlier "you think he's dead do you?" implied.

What's the reference to Jon running through the forest being chased? I've seen it come up a few times, but I must have missed the explanation.

[Tyryan Lannister]

What's the reference to Jon running through the forest being chased? I've seen it come up a few times, but I must have missed the explanation.

From a recent interview with Martin describing his writing style (e.g. Tyrion chapters 1, 2, 3, 4; then switch to Bran for a bit; then switch to Cersei; then switch to Arya; then back to Tyrion; then to Jon, etc.) wherein he said something to the effect of "I'm down in King's Landing doing this and that with Cersei and then all of a sudden I've changed gears and am with Jon running through the forest wondering where his next meal's coming from". Very much a paraphrase but that general sense.

[Black Crow]

GRRM interview:

http://www.newrepubl...artin-interview#

When we spoke, Martin was at home in Santa Fe, working “on the 747 things that I’m late on.” A Song of Ice and Fire, of course, is still unfinished, and the show’s producers are among the only people in the world whom Martin has told the answer to the biggest question surrounding his books: who will ultimately win the Iron Throne. With the HBO show, he often feels, he said, like “I’m laying track for a railroad and I can hear the locomotive coming up behind me and I can see the smokestack, so I better lay the rails faster.” The television production, the publishers and the editors with their deadlines, the fans clamoring for answers—it is a daily struggle to drown out the noise. So Martin tries to focus on the characters, plotting their triumphs and their ends. “You have to turn on the computer, and just look at the scene,” he said, “and suddenly Jon Snow is in the forest and there are enemies after him and what is he gonna eat and what is your next sentence, what is your next word?”

[Sharf]

hmm...my gut tells me not to put too much weight on those words. It sounds more like he's just creating an example, not referring to a specific event. But then again, he's so good at piling hints into everything he does that it might very well have been a drop!

[Tyryan Lannister]

hmm...my gut tells me not to put too much weight on those words. It sounds more like he's just creating an example, not referring to a specific event. But then again, he's so good at piling hints into everything he does that it might very well have been a drop!

I feel that it was one of those rare moments where he slipped up--yes, he was going for just creating an example, but the example he came up with off the top of his head was one of the things that he had just been writing. We will only know for sure once Winds comes out in five years where we can see if there is a chapter where Jon, alone, is being chased through the woods.

[Black Crow]

Annoying, isn't it :cool4:

[Hrafntýr]

I'm still inclined to think of her as not UnMel, but flesh-made-fire, or a flesh-and-blood vessel for fire.

I agree with the difficulty of finding the right terminology. Lately I've taken to calling it fire-flesh (and ice-flesh).

[King Tyrion VIII]

I feel that it was one of those rare moments where he slipped up--yes, he was going for just creating an example, but the example he came up with off the top of his head was one of the things that he had just been writing. We will only know for sure once Winds comes out in five years where we can see if there is a chapter where Jon, alone, is being chased through the woods.

Don't say that :P I'm still nursing the hope that TWOW will be out by Spring 2015.

[Sharf]

What are the Heresy thoughts on the Moonsingers religion that founded Braavos? The development with Vals bone knife, as well as her all white attire and the fact that the moonsingers fled the fires of Valarya seem very much connected. Are the Moonsingers the counterpart to the red priests?

[Lord Martin Sheol]

Don't say that :P I'm still nursing the hope that TWOW will be out by Spring 2015.

:agree: Also hoping for that :P And then, by the time GRRM is about 75, he might finally end it with the 7th. He's 65, isn't he? (1948?)

[Shaggy Rickon]

I feel that it was one of those rare moments where he slipped up--yes, he was going for just creating an example, but the example he came up with off the top of his head was one of the things that he had just been writing. We will only know for sure once Winds comes out in five years where we can see if there is a chapter where Jon, alone, is being chased through the woods.

Seriously?! Five years?! That is messed up.

[Shaggy Rickon]

:agree: Also hoping for that :P And then, by the time GRRM is about 75, he might finally end it with the 7th. He's 65, isn't he? (1948?)

11 yrs for two books. That is truly dis heartening

[King Tyrion VIII]

11 yrs for two books. That is truly dis heartening

I can see ADOS out by 2018. I doubt GRRM will get bogged down like he did with AFFC and ADWD.

[Tyryan Lannister]

What are the Heresy thoughts on the Moonsingers religion that founded Braavos? The development with Vals bone knife, as well as her all white attire and the fact that the moonsingers fled the fires of Valarya seem very much connected. Are the Moonsingers the counterpart to the red priests?

That the Moonsingers are a Braavos only thing. Martin has expressly said so.

[Black Crow]

This may not be entirely true given that we have the Mountains of the Moon and the Moon Door in the Eyrie, which suggests a moon-worship tradition in the Vale. However as I recall the context, GRRM was more specifically denying a connection between Val and the Moonsingers of Braavos.

As to Val herself then I think its safe to conclude that her white robes represent winter; snow, weirwood and bone. The point being that she's working for Ice rather than Fire.

[Toccs]

That the Moonsingers are a Braavos only thing. Martin has expressly said so.

Not so, the Moonsingers of the Jhogos Nai were one of the groups that Mirri Maz Duur learned from.

[Ahri Adaran]

I wouln't say that this was re-inventing the wheel. We have discussed a lot of this before - including the concept of the king going into the ground - but its always useful to get a fresh angle on it. The King and the Land concept also comes out quite nicely in the form of John Uskglass, the Raven King in Susanna Clarke's Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell. The timing is probably wrong for influencing GRRM, in the early stages at least, but it reinforces the reference as a strong existing concept which GRRM has taken up and used.

ETA: while I'm talking about John Uskglass, there's another interesting point in that he is a changeling, released from Faerie with a Sidhe army at his back to successfully reclaim the Kingdom of the North. Sounds intriguingly like somebody we know. as I say it was published long after the first couple of books in the Song of Ice and Fire so they're not directly connected, but it does suggest a common root in folklore.

I thought so, however I think it might be a good idea to look down the rungs a bit to not only the kings but the lords as well, as their demographics and patterns of holdings don't make much sense unless something strange is going on (unless the answers is just that GRRM is just being unrealistic, like how distances in Westeros don't make sense).

As far as John Uskglass that goes that does sound like Jon, him being the new Night King and leading an army of Others would be an interesting idea. I'd probably lean against it due to his role in Melisandre's visions but it certainly sounds more likely than "Jon and Dany marry and their dragons toast all of the Others before they reign as king and queen of a restored Targaryen dynasty, the end."

How long are timelines usually in fantasy? I've only read two fantasy series so far. I find the generally accepted timeline in real life to be incredibly condensed. Basically everything has happened since 3,500BC, when you can certainly piece together evidence of human civilization being scattered by The Deluge around 11,000BC, human civilization activity, including other scatterings around 24,000-26,000BC, and also make a case for civilization arising as early as 74,000-78,000BC.

Well very often fantasy timelines would make more sense if you divided all of the numbers by ten. Stuff like the Starks reigning in Winterfell for 8,000 years which doesn't make sense unless it's inflated or connected to something supernatural (or both, as seems to be the case). Some examples off the top of my head:

-In the WoT series the Seanchan were separated from the main Randland continent for 2,000 years before invading again. As a result of 2,000 years of linguistic drift they have a slight accent (bwah?).

-One fantasy book whose name I forget were hit by a magical apocalypse 3,000 years ago and they still remember all of the details of it, are still ruled by the same social system that they had before and they still have the old magical bunkers they used to ride it out.

-In Goodking's SoT series (ugh, I know, the guy comes from my home town so I read them in HS) the division between the Old World and the New World happened 3,000 years ago. People still seem to remember what's on the other side IIRC.

In general fantasy worlds have social and political change happen ridiculously slowly. GRRM seems well enough aware of that to have revisionist maesters poking at the timeline and saying how it doesn't make sense to say that all of these things in the legends happened so many thousands of years ago.

[Sunny D]

if the time lines are actually that long >1000 years. then we have to assume the "history" we are told is probably skewed in some direction.

so any facts about the CotF and AA and the Long Night etc can never be taken as fact. And any information about the history or creation myth or whatever is meant to lead you in one direction. but at the end of the saga the real truth will be revealed.

In most epic fantasy the main story line, in the end, is a result of something that happened a long time ago. authors seem to like to make it 300,000 thousand years or whatever simply because it seems more epic. and to add catharsis to the conclusion they wrap up all those threads of history that they left throughout the main storyline. But usually it is not how you think.

[King Tyrion VIII]

Thanks guys. I understand what you mean now :)