Post by freyfamilyreunion on Dec 31, 2017 15:30:54 GMT
Searchlight makes me think of The Hightower in Oldtown. Or was their some type of beacon burning in the toj?
Ned's whole fever dream is a bit of a cloud of delusion.
I like the association with the searchlight and Hightower, didn't think of that. And of course there was a Hightower at the tower of joy, along with a fallen star, perhaps two of the images from the song. Perhaps another cloud of delusion is R + L
Mirror shatters in formless reflections of matter makes me think of the Game Prologue where Waymar Royce's sword shatters into "a hundred brittle pieces" like "a rain of needles".
I like this a lot too.
I believe the Grateful Dead are absolutely an inspiration behind the blue winter rose. The blue rose first appeared on the cover of a live Dead album called the Closing of Winterland. Winterland was a famous concert hall in San Francisco (it began as an ice skating rink, hence it's name) that hosted a number of big time rock concerts in the 60's and 70's. If you ever watched Martin Scorsese's documentary, The Last Waltz the concert took place in Winterland. The Grateful Dead played there a lot and they headlined the last concert that took place in Winterland before it closed for good. The concert took place on New Year's Eve in 1978, and of they played Darkstar. (of course they almost always played Darkstar in their live concerts). So it's not a huge stretch that Winterfell may be a bit of an homage to Winterland, both being represented by the blue rose.
The blue rose makes another appearance in a Grateful Dead song in 1992, So Many Roads:
From the land of the midnight sun
Where the ice blue roses grow
Along those roads of gold and silver snow
Howlin' wide or moaning low
So many roads I know
Where the ice blue roses grow
Along those roads of gold and silver snow
Howlin' wide or moaning low
So many roads I know
I think the Red Comet is described much like real world comets, in that it is remaining at a fixed location in the sky. It is slowly approaching, and so visibility is improving.
But it is not orbiting the planet daily.
My theory is actually inspired a bit from a Westeros poster, Lucifer is Lightbringer, or Lightbringer is Luciefer, can't remember which. He found a lot of pretty good imagery concerning an apocalyptic end to the series. The best of which, in my opinion, is this one:
“Pale moonlight slanted down through the hole in the dome, painting the branches of the weirwood as they strained up toward the roof. It looked as if the tree was trying to catch the moon and drag it down into the well.”
Old, LML, was also influenced a great deal by the Quartheen trader's tale of there once being two moons, but one moon wandered too close to the sun and cracked open.
LML's ultimate conclusion, however, left me cold (pun intended). LML believed that there was actually two moons, one being struck by a comet, which caused the first Long Night. His belief is that the comet will return, and strike the moon, destroying the moon which will then again rain down moonrocks into the planet.
The first problem I have with his theory, was that if there was indeed two moons way back when, wouldn't every culture have some type of story concerning the second moon in the sky? And I kind of doubt that Westeros or Planetos, would be in the condition it currently is, if in fact a second moon had shattered and rained debris down on the planet. It's highly unlikely anything survives that scenario. And if it happens a second time, it kind of moots George's title for his last alleged book, Dream of Spring. I don't think anyone is around to dream of anything in this scenario.
But it did make me think of another scenario that is still cataclysmic but a tad more realistic in terms of at least some survival. There is a theory in the real world, concerning a possible near extinction level event that occurred in North America around 12,900 BC, called the Younger Dryas impact. The theory being that an ice age was caused when a comet exploded either over or on the Laurentide Ice Sheet (an area in the Great Lakes). The theory being that this event triggered a mass of fire, and flooding in North America.
A more crackpot version of this theory actually was first concocted by Ignatius Donnelly, in 1883, his book, Ragnorak: The Age of Fire and Gravel. Where he theorized that a near impact by a comet was responsible for all of the flooding, and apocalyptic tales in the bible and other mythologies. While Ignatius Donnelly is not widely known, he is actually a pretty influential guy in literature. His first book dealt with his theories about Atlantis and is the source of many of the modern-day concepts of Atlantis (including, unfortunately, some of the Nazi's own beliefs).
This line of thinking led me to wonder, what if, in a land of magic, a spell was cast to try and basically grab a hold of a comet and bring it down into the planet? How would it work? Well in space, nothing really moves in a straight line, everything moves in a type of elliptical orbit. So, I wouldn't think that the comet would come straight down into the planet. However, if successful, the comet would change it's orbit and start to orbit the planet where it will ultimately descend. And each successive orbit would bring the comet closer and closer to the planet. And the orbits would not be uniform, but instead each orbit would take less and less time. So the comet would start to appear more frequently, and larger in the sky. Perhaps the comet that Rhaegar observed over King's Landing, back around 283 was the same red comet we see in the books, but further from the planet. And the roughly fifteen or so years that it took to see the same planet in the sky, was significantly less time than the time it took to orbit the planet before.
So the next pass would take a lot less than the fifteen years that it took previously. (I wonder if this was the reason that George first wanted a five year gap between ASOS and AFOC). But this time the comet either strikes the planet or gets so close that it causes widespread destruction, a la the Younger Dryas impact theory. And if you look at the path that the comet takes in ACOK, the comet passes right over the Frostfang glacier and over the "Heart of Winter".
So perhaps the first pass of the comet, is like a herald, or like a torch. But the second pass of the comet is more like a sword, perhaps AA's sword, stabbed into the Heart of Winter.
And as for LML's imagery of the moon falling into the planet, and the earlier myth of a second moon in the sky, it led me to think of what the definition of a moon really is. All a moon is, is a natural satellite orbiting a planet. If a comet starts to orbit a planet than in effect it becomes a moon, a second moon, and in this case a Red Moon.
So perhaps the Qartheen trader's tale, concerns an earlier comet that orbited the planet until it came too close and exploded in the atmosphere. That comet would technically have been a second moon. And if the scenario is repeating itself...
It also made me wonder if perhaps this ties into the destruction of Valyria. After all, in the books all magic seems to be powered by human sacrifice. That is one thing that Melisandre and Aemon seem to agree, that there is great power in the sacrifice of people with King's blood. So if someone, or someones or somethings
did conspire to try and create a second Long Night, to try and drag another comet into the planet, it would have undoubtably required a huge amount of human sacrifice, specifically of humans with magical bloodlines. I wonder if the destruction of Valyria was such a sacrifice.