PJ's New 1000 Worlds Series

Great! I'm glad someone is able to take advantage! I've only read the first one so far. Plus I had already read "A Song for Lyanna." I didn't know whether to post the links or not, but I figured PJ had already made them public in his posts.  I'm hoping he already addressed any copyright concerns for sharing the files.

ETA: Sorry to hear about the strep. Hope you're feeling better soon!

LMAO at the conversation with Brandon the Night's King.
I'm halfway through the books. Ran out of reading time during Fall break. Martin is definitely distopian, and not in the fun steam punky way either.

The video is up for Bitterblooms. Not much talk about the blue flowers surprisingly. He seemed much more focused on the seasons and Morgan LeFay.

Nah. PJ already did it for him.

I just finished reading "In the House of the Worm" and it has an excellent example of how Martin could easily turn the Others into something more than just monsters.





...SPOILERS...




Okay, in "In the House of the Worm" we have a character named Annelyn (male) who, for ease of mind's sake, looks like a Jaime Lannister & Daario Naharis combined together with the personality more along the lines of Jaime in general.

He is a member of a group of people called the "Yaga-la-Hai" who live on a world with a dying sun, in a complex system of burrows carved out of obsidian. Like their system, they live in a dying and decaying culture which spends most of its time partying, dancing, having sex, and philosophizing on things that matter little (like whether the sun is a coal). A sense that their culture used to be great before the decay is heavily implied. For as long as anyone can remember they have fought with the Grouns who live further below. Lately a person by the name of the "Meatbringer" has been the only one to bring back steady supply of killed Grouns for the Yaga-la-Hai to eat, while other Groun hunters go down and never return. But what upsets Annelyn is when the Meatbringer humiliates him in front of the rest of the Yaga-la-Hai but most especially in front of his preferred girl, Carolyn (I think that was her name--she's not as important to the story). This prompts Annelyn to journey down into the groun-infested lower burrows with a few of his friends with the intent of watching the Meatbringer do what he does (so he can learn his secrets) and then kill the Meatbringer.

Things go badly when Annelyn discovers (when one of his friends turns coward and tries to retreat) that what the Meatbringer is doing is playing both the Grouns and the Yaga-la-Hai off of each other by bringing meat to both of them. He kills Annelyn's cowardly friend and then runs into Annelyn and his friends and then reveals that he's not wholly Yaga-la-Hai, but is instead a half-Yaga-la-Hai and half-Groun hybrid--the next kind of evolution a "species III" which allows him to see in the dark just as well as a groun. He bullies the Yaga-la-Hai like he did to Annelyn, and bullies the Grouns by occassionally scaring them with a white worm--and the Meatbringer makes it clear that he considers both the Grouns and the Yaga-la-Hai as inferior beings, far beneath his concern. He also says that he has been sleeping with both the Yaga-la-Hai and Groun women in order to create more of his new kind of species. I feel I should also mention that he also has a Groun's sharp teeth. He murders the rest of Annelyn's friends, and Annelyn just barely makes his escape--but he gets lost in the process.

Annelyn wanders the darkness alone and by himself for an untraceable amount of time until he comes across a Groun which is just as scared of him as he of it--but most especially when Annelyn unknowingly tosses a white worm at it--which sends it fleeing. Annelyn then comes across a host of white worms that have taken over a room with a large Theta (just like the one on his shirt) on the wall. Annelyn knows he can't go back and risk the Groun returning, so the only way to go forward is through the white worms--which once he does they attack him immediately. He makes for one of the few doors left standing and gets through--not without getting injured in the process. In doing so he comes across a hall (again with a Theta) where several Grouns and white worms are on display on either side. And soon Annelyn begins to notice that while the worms are changed from something harmless & natural normal worms into something monstrous--he soon begins to notice that the Grouns used to be more like the Yaga-la-Hai. What we're left to infer is that Project Theta (an important organization in the 1000 Worlds, that's responsible for genetic mutation experiments) basically transformed some humans into Grouns for a purpose of digging in the darker tunnels. What clues Annelyn into their similarity is that on one of the Groun specimens is an old heat-vision helmet, and that particular Groun has human eyes like him. Project Theta is known for transforming humans in these manners, but it should be noted that they're still humans on a biological level--despite the mutations. In any case, Annelyn takes the helmet from the dead and half dissected Groun, and puts it on--suddenly he can see, and he makes his way further through the lower burrows, until he runs into another Groun--this one armed with a knife in one of its six legs. Suddenly getting an idea, Annelyn turns and speaks directly to the Groun, which startles it. After a bit of confusion, the Groun indicates or him to come with it. The Groun takes him to the home of the Groun where he's brought before a bunch of elder Grouns who question him whether he's a II or a III. Recalling what the Meatbringer said about being a III, Annelyn lies and says he's a III, and the Groun ease off and feed and tend to his wounds before showing him on his way out.

Annelyn finds his way back to the Meatbringer's lair, and with the heat-vision helmet, he easily beats the Meatbringer--killing him. He then returns to the Yaga-la-Hai--half-starved, gaunt, and no longer as much as a "pretty boy" as he once was--or for that matter as interested in Carolyn as he once was, but instead dedicated to spreading word about his experience in the tunnels. Which upset the elders of the Yaga-la-Hai, but they figure it's better to let him rave on than to crack down on what they clearly consider to be a mad man.

---

We get here two forces who are traditionally pitted against one another: the Yaga-la-Hai and the Grouns--with a third mindless race a plague to them both: the white worms--which discover they aren't so different after all, but have simply forgotten that they were once the same and have been killing each other senselessly. There's no grand reunification here, but the seeds for a change in perspective are being sewed by Annelyn--despite the dismissals of his elders. It's actually the middle man between them who is preying on both races for his own benefit that's the actual villain of the story. To some respect the Meatbringer reminds me of a Craster who "gets around" rather than "keeps it in the family" but I think the similarities are easily enough to draw. The similarities between Jaime's ASOS journey and Annelyn's is remarkable now that I think on it, and I actually rather liked some of the images Martin depicted in this story--what with the reflections of people dancing on the Obsidian walls.

I went back and added my own thoughts and analysis to my post about "In the House of the Worm". Just leaving this here as a note.