Post by voice on Jan 4, 2017 9:59:06 GMT
Time for Part 2
Dagnabit! I never even posted my own part two. You've lapped me!
Yesterday, I would have agreed with this statement 100%. However, having just reread Laren Dorr and The Plague Star, now I'm not so sure. Both feature a small crown made of some dark metal that protects the wearer. In Laren Dorr, Sharra the protagonist is wearing it, and she is surprised that Laren was able to heal her wounds despite this. He explains to her that the crown only prevents others (presumably only magical beings, since she was scratched up when she arrived) from harming her, not from helping her.
In TPS, Rita Dawnstar (how do you like that name! lol) wears it to control the T-rex. She says the Eco Engineers used these crowns for that purpose, that the weaponized predators were altered to give them psi abilities, and somehow the crown made them not harm the wearer (sound familiar?) and, in some cases, obey them.
So that sounds quite a bit like the dragon horns, for example. In theory, if you have one, dragons will obey you instead of eating you.
I agree that many other symbols are probably not really imbued with any real power, but I think there are at least a few exceptions.
True, true. I guess the dragonhorn always seemed like a cheat to me. A hack.
Contrast that with Dany's familial bond with her dragons... the Stark's familial bond with their pups... Siblings & children, vs 'entranced by a horn'.
I definitely agree that they have real power, and that they are modeled after men. The Tuf series is really pulling me toward the angle of genetic engineering though, which makes me wonder if men didn't create them after all.
That's what my Weirwood Ghost is all about!
In Laren Dorr, it seems an established fact that some "men" (or gods, if you will) have certain powers. These include Laren himself and his flying castle, Sharra who travels between worlds, and her lover whose name I have already forgotten, but who had red hair and "fire in his eyes". Sharra tells Laren that this man was more powerful than herself. So within the 1000 worlds universe, some people have certain abilities that are not further explained in those stories. However, in Tuf Voyaging and to a lesser extent in some other stories, we learn exactly how such individuals could be created by their fellow men.
Laren Dorr = King of the Nightfort
Sharra = his queen
The weird races of humans on planetos seem perfect examples of engineered people, especially the ones in coastal regions with webbed hands, the Valyrians with their (relative) heat resistance and bond with dragons, and any of the skinchangers whose spirit animals are probably engineered as well. (Long ago, of course, and probably forgotten after that).
But I digress...
Possible, but many of those characteristics are exaggerated and seem more like stereotypes than actual phenotypes. Not all people in coastal areas have webbed fingers, most Targaryens react quite normally to heat (Dany was an exception, not the rule), and many First Men and Essosians are quite, well, normal.
These weirwoods sound soo much like the mudpies in Guardians. Except the COTF and FM have found a way to enter this collective consciousness and thereby access its information.
So did Tuf's cat... with eyes like small golden lamps.
Her eyes were queer—large and liquid, gold and green, slitted like a cat's eyes.
-Bran II ASOS
DAMN. It never even occurred to me that they would look different than they are described by neKroll. But of course, that's not only possible but likely. Great catch!
Thanks.
I was just taking your technological mind-control idea an extra step, and adding a dash of Star Wars hologram to the Glass Candles.
I am starting to agree with this line of thinking. In fact, I am starting to wonder if neither the COTF nor the weirwoods had anything at all to do with creating the Others. They may be in the story partly as a red herring, and partly to allow Bran to learn what really occurred in the time around the LN.
Well to explain my thoughts on that, I would have to repeat my entire OP, and subsequent arguments from Weirwood Ghost, and our fingers are already working overtime.
To paraphrase that thread though, I would argue that cotf are merely stewards of trees that they themselves do not fully comprehend. But, they know enough to not put them to sword and flame. The First Men created a miasma because they didn't.
This 'miasma', in my mind, would be analogous to what I think is the 'genetic engineering' in your own. In my opinion, it is what GRRM has called the "Heart of Winter" in ASOIAF, and what he called "Ecological Engineering Corps" in Tuf.
And just think about that phrase... "ecological engineering..."
Sure sounds like "miasma" to me.
[Agreed. We'll discuss them over there. I have to add, though, that bronze is also heavily featured in the House of the Worm - we have bronze knights and bronze torch holders, for example. Despite their ancestors having had technology for fusing obsidian and building spaceships... ]
[Oh snap! A great point. And...I need to reread In the House of the Worm now. LOL]
Blue flowers that can't be plucked... Do we know for sure if they even "grow"? Could they be made of plastic? That would be funny. But I haven't reread that one yet, so I have no idea.
It seems like they did grow... but I can't remember now. :/ In any case, I'm 100% convinced that blue flowers = deceit. They do not occur in nature, are seen as the holy grail of florists, and are nearly synonymous with trickery.
If the Bitterblooms yields none, and we need an artificial flower that cannot be plucked, there is also The Glass Flower. I need to make a thread for that one still.
As for magic being science that we don't understand - that's exactly how I am starting to view ASOIAF. I think in his mind, GRRM created a sci fi world, but he is keeping this from the reader so that it feels like fantasy. He wants us to experience events the way they are experienced by the primitive interregnum civilization that the story is about. Dragons are a typical fantasy element, for example, but they could also be engineered. [Cool aside: the Eco Engineers on the Ark wore green and gold suits - just like the dragon riders in The Ice Dragon. Coincidence?]
I see it very similarly actually, but am less certain Planetos is an actual scifi/1000-world.
I mean, I guess I do see it as one, but I still think Planetos will be under magical rule, rather than scientific law. Hard to say.
I guess I see interregnum and the Thousand Worlds as the seed from which ASOIAF grew, but I want it to be different. I want it to be a fantasy series, and to stay magical. That isn't much of an argument for it being the case though, I know.
I doubt I'll have the time in the near future, but I really really want to attempt to explain the magic in ASOIAF using only the "technology" we've seen in the 1000 worlds stories. And see if I can arrive at a coherent story. B/c I'm starting to think it's possible...
Because really- what are the chances that GRRM spends his whole life writing sci fi, and then for his magnum opus he writes a fantasy story? Which just so happens to feature quite a few elements from his earlier works? We're starting to catch on to repeated themes and preferred settings; clearly, GRRM doesn't reinvent the wheel every time he comes up with a new story...
That would be a fascinating OP. And you're right, it would make more sense if GRRM's magnum opus were indeed a scifi novel.
And no, the more one reads of his earlier works, the more you see just how many stories, places, "magics", and characters in ASOIAF are not at all new.
You're probably right. I doubt the Ironborn are the ones who have seen the light and will lead the others away from false gods. But I do view them as separate from other FM, and that may end up being important.
[As for the similarities between the Ironborn and the Dothraki, yes I agree. In fact, the Dothraki are against farming (it harms the earth), and the Greyjoy words are We Do Not Sow. Well, if one does not farm, one must pay the iron price for what one needs... giving rise to violent cultures that are feared by their neighbors.
I'm not sure the Ironborn "fear" the land; rather, they know their strength is at sea. Similarly, Dany does manage to get her handful of Dothraki into the ships, even though they hate it. Both cultures, however, fear the trees, which is another very interesting parallel...]
Definitely seems like the Ironborn are important. As markg171 is wont to remind me, the first few novels only introduced us to GRRM's world. It is the latter ones that we should be paying closer attention to. Eddard feels like a main character, for example, but he really wasn't. Theon is more relevant today, which feels odd.
I have no idea who is whose parent anymore, but after these latest rereads I am warming up to the idea of the Daynes being truly important players. Sharra in Laren Dorr had Lyanna's grey eyes, but her hair was black with red highlights. Kind of like Darkstar has black hair with a silver streak. There is also the obvious similarity in names (along with Adara in the Ice Dragon, which really shouldn't be ignored).
Big time. Sharra is a fascinating character to me. I wish he had told us more of her story. And between Adara and Sharra, I think we should wonder if Ashara didn't die of a broken heart after all after some tragedy befell her beloved.
He is a man of the Night's Watch, she thought, as he sang about some stupid lady throwing herself off some stupid tower because her stupid prince was dead.
-AFFC, Cat of the Canals
That sure sounds like A-Sharra Dayne. (paging SlyWren !)
I sadly didn't love Tuf Voyaging, but it has strong educational value for me. I love learning about the ship, both its construction (I have a new theory that the House of the Worm consists partly of a spaceship, buried in the sand after many millennia) and what it can do. We learn a lot about the Eco Engineers (EE) and their abilities, which is really cool. I don't particularly like Tuf, though, and I find the actual plot a bit lengthy/tedious at times. But then, maybe I just disapprove of people playing god.
I disapprove of people playing god too, but I thought Tuf's lofty idea of himself was pretty funny. We learn his origin in Plague Star, and he wasn't exactly a saint. Yet here he is, serving as judge, jury, and executioner for entire ecosystems/cultures/religions.
Makes you wonder just how much power Varys might truly possess.
I agree that Dying of the Light is probably the most emotional of the 1000 worlds stories; Laren Dorr was just too short for me to build a true connection to the characters, though it's certainly a tragic story.
I liked the poetry of Laren Dorr the most I guess. And the world itself. It was interesting to learn a bit about the character of the Seven themselves, and a bit about why beings like Bakkalon are worshipped as gods.
I still need to reread Bitterblooms, and while I loved much of Nightflyers, I found the end a bit disappointing. It does have some great parallels though, so it'll be on my reread list as well.
How can anyone be disappointed by a Volcryn? LOL
LOL. We all have our favorite elements on planetos that we hope will be "good" in the end. As long as your trees aren't controlling my Others, we can all get along.
Still haven't reread ASFL... I'll get on that.
I don't think the trees are controlling the Others per se.
In my mind, the Others themselves are quite autonomous. Just as we create specialized antibodies without even realizing it, so too have the trees given man's consciousness to Others, without even realizing it.
It is hard to imagine life from the point of view of an antibody. Just imagine how insanely alien the lives of those cells must be compared to our own routines. I think Martin has done it though, and rather than tell us the story from their point of view, I think he has tricked us by arranging the antigens themselves as interesting protagonists.
Guardians does fit your miasma theory perfectly. And I am fairly certain that the trees did mount a defense against the FM, as a result of being attacked and burned. I am just starting to lean toward them using a resource that was already available - the COTF - to be their "guardians", rather than creating a whole new race. The COTF did, eventually, negotiate the Pact, which should have given the trees what they wanted. Creating the Others after that just seems like overkill, IMO, and (while I understand your point about tree time) seems a little unfair to the FM who by that time had fallen into line and had been worshiping the trees for a thousand years. If the creation of the Others was simply a misunderstanding ("sorry, FM, we're in a different time zone"), then Man is no longer responsible, is he? B/c by that time, he had changed his ways and was living sustainably.
Here's where I go down the rabbit hole a bit more than usual. Trees do make use of existing forms of life, in the real world. Birds, lizards, insects, mammals, even fungi... trees use them all, rewarding some, and repelling others. But over a long enough period of time, the trees can indeed completely alter the world, the flora, the fauna, and the very atmosphere.
They created the dinosaurs (higher O2 levels), and then they created the mammals that would one day climb down from their branches and elect Donald Trump. LOL
Their absence is causing sea levels to rise (Hammer of the Waters) and the climate to change (Long Night).
If Others were to come wipe everyone out, the antigen will have been erased. The wights will be still (and fertilizer). And the heart trees of Westeros would thrive, enjoying the things BR said they understand: Sun and Soil and Water.
The flipside of those things which weirwoods happen to understand? Darkness and Wind and Ice.
Regarding the cotf, I think they were rewarded with trippy oatmeal in exchange for repelling giants.
The cotf negotiated the Pact based on their interpretation of what the trees wanted. They forgot, or in their naivety, could not comprehend the implications of what what Bloodraven explained to Bran:
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.
If we consider human immigrants to Westeros, in the stead of oak trees, we get a very scary sentence:
The First Man is the Targaryen, the Targaryen is the First Man.
You see, while the cotf might have had wonderful intentions, thinking crisis might be averted if only they could stop First Men from harming the trees, they did not realize that the trees were seeing the Men who signed the Pact as the same Men who had cut and burned them. And, in spite of the reverence of Ned Stark, the trees were right to reach such a conclusion.
After the Pact, Men did not stop cutting and burning weirwoods. To the contrary, you might say the slaughter of Westeros' sentient mudpots only increased and became more effective after the Pact.
The oak is the acorn, the acorn is the oak = Love is Sweet, dearest Ned, but it cannot change a man's nature.
More men came, and those men were the same as the (pre-Pact) First Men. They cut the trees with iron and steel, and burned them.
The oak is the acorn, the acorn is the oak = Love is Sweet, dearest Ned, but it cannot change a man's nature.
And then the lords came mounted on dragons, creating fields of fire and burying wildfire caches.
Man's nature cannot change, for the oak is the acorn, the acorn is the oak.
This is true, and the fact that the FM have all sorts of eye colors supports your point. I am slowly moving away from the weirwoods directly controlling Man; it seems more likely that they influence them more subtly via the greenseers. I'm not sure about the COTF though; like the Jaenshi, they all have golden eyes and most seem to live in proximity to weirwoods. It can't be the exact same type of control, of course, b/c Leaf for example does travel and presumably spent days/weeks without seeing a weirwood, but I still suspect the weirwoods (possibly via visions sent by greenseers, or via crow supervision) are the driving force behind most COTF actions.
I think Men control Men. Rather than control, I think weirwoods offer knowledge and consequence...
Genesis 2: The Planting of the Garden
8 And Jehovah God planteth a garden in Eden, at the east, and He setteth there the man whom He hath formed; 9 and Jehovah God causeth to sprout from the ground every tree desirable for appearance, and good for food, and the tree of life in the midst of the garden, and the tree of knowledge of good and evil.
For men, time is a river.
Weirs regulate rivers.
Pretty damned impressive indeed! Wow, I never thought of it quite that way.
Of course, something did occur in the current generation- they received direwolves. Although, as I have mentioned before somewhere, Bran's wolf dreams don't begin until the comet is in the sky. This is also the night the dragons hatch, so it does appear that "something's in the air".
The Volcryn.
Wow, yes, the Kings of Winter were all wargs! I wonder if we can pinpoint when the trait was "lost"?
I think I've done so, here. (And yes, I think about this stuff entirely too much. LOL)
It does seem as though the Starks are more "gifted" than most FM families. It also seems reasonable that there should be a weirwood throne underneath Winterfell. The only thing I'm not sure about is whether one tree is enough for a throne? It seems that in the cases of Bran/BR and Beric, as well as the cave Arianne finds in the Rainwood, greenseers usually live below whole groves of weirwoods. The Ghost of High Heart with her red eyes also lives among many weirwoods (albeit dead ones). So that's my only hangup about the throne beneath WF.
I have a hunch there were once many weirwoods around Brandon the Builder's heart tree. North of the Wall, it is rare to find one alone. South of the Wall, surrounded by "man-rock" we find an ancient, yet somewhat tamed godswood.
And speaking of those groves...those Starks have some interesting choices for beds...
The next day they rode to a place called High Heart, a hill so lofty that from atop it Arya felt as though she could see half the world. Around its brow stood a ring of huge pale stumps, all that remained of a circle of once-mighty weirwoods. Arya and Gendry walked around the hill to count them. There were thirty-one, some so wide that she could have used them for a bed.
And Theon experiences some odd dreams when sleeping in Eddard Stark's bed...
What's interesting about "there must always be a Stark in Winterfell" is that it seems that ANY Stark will do. So whoever first said this was apparently assuming that ALL Starks would have the gift. Which would be extreme, wouldn't it, if every Stark had the potential to be a greenseer?
Indeed. Yet, this extreme seems to be precisely what we are told:
"Will this make me a greenseer?"
"Your blood makes you a greenseer," said Lord Brynden. "This will help awaken your gifts and wed you to the trees."
"Your blood makes you a greenseer," said Lord Brynden. "This will help awaken your gifts and wed you to the trees."
Bran's blood is quite unique in the world, unless we're talking about Winterfell.
Targaryen loyalists have been barking up the wrong tree. Dragonblood doesn't make you special. Half the whores in Lys have Valyrian ancestry.
And...
The Starks were not like other men.
-Catelyn
Then there is the eye color dilemma. COTF greenseers have red eyes. BR has red eyes. But none of the Starks do, and neither does Euron, who apparently was also recruited. In fact, red eyes among humans are extremely rare in the story; the only example that readily comes to mind is Mel. And that can't be right. Lol.
There is Jon's wolf, but I agree. I think BR sought any Stark. Bran was uniquely qualified because he was:
1) paralyzed (sorry, but it's true).
2) a powerful skinchanger, able to even control a man as a thrall.
3) not wild/feral (like Arya and Rickon).
4) not severed from the gift (like Sansa)
5) not too old, and ignoring/denying the gift (like Robb and Jon).
I'd be curious to hear wolfmaid7 's take on this angle, as I recall she often argued that Bran was not the one meant for the cave of wonders.
I am bracing myself for some sort of tragic/dark reveal about House Stark. Yes they are magical, but those icy grey eyes don't say "greenseer" to me.
I definitely agree re: Stark eye color.
I would expect the descendants of Brandon "Night's King" The Builder to have eyes like grandpa.
BR is referred to as the last greenseer, so how likely is it that this is Bran's future?
I don't think BR, nor Bran, are "the last greenseer." There are other greenseers in those roots, they just aren't men.
For now, if I had to interpret the Stark in Winterfell rule, I would guess that Starks can hear/understand the heart tree, allowing greenseers to communicate with them.
Oh yes, this is a certainty, in my mind, and the origin of House Stark's authority (and maybe, their words). Mutual understanding between the Stark in Winterfell and the heart tree is absolute, imo:
At the heart of the godswood, the great white weirwood brooded over its reflection in the black pool, its leaves rustling in a chill wind. When it felt Bran watching, it lifted its eyes from the still waters and stared back at him knowingly.
-Bran III AGOT
And, this gets back to another pet theory of mine. LOL
I think Jon is being called to the roots of Winterfell's heart tree, and I believe they are only accessible from the crypts.
"No one. The castle is always empty." He had never told anyone of the dream, and he did not understand why he was telling Sam now, yet somehow it felt good to talk of it. "Even the ravens are gone from the rookery, and the stables are full of bones. That always scares me. I start to run then, throwing open doors, climbing the tower three steps at a time, screaming for someone, for anyone. And then I find myself in front of the door to the crypts. It's black inside, and I can see the steps spiraling down. Somehow I know I have to go down there, but I don't want to. I'm afraid of what might be waiting for me. The old Kings of Winter are down there, sitting on their thrones with stone wolves at their feet and iron swords across their laps, but it's not them I'm afraid of. I scream that I'm not a Stark, that this isn't my place, but it's no good, I have to go anyway, so I start down, feeling the walls as I descend, with no torch to light the way. It gets darker and darker, until I want to scream."
-Jon IV, AGOT
And, well, I think it's Lyanna's wolf-blood (see A Song for Lya) that is calling to Jon from that heart tree (hence the weirwood direwolf).
If I am right and the COTF/weirwoods are mainly an information repository, and have info about the FM/Other relationship, this would be a very relevant skill for the Stark in WF.
Beyond a doubt. Such knowledge of good and evil might lead a man to say "winter is coming."