"No," said Bran, "no, don't," but they could not hear him, no more than his father had. The woman grabbed the captive by the hair, hooked the sickle round his throat, and slashed. And through the mist of centuries the broken boy could only watch as the man's feet drummed against the earth…but as his life flowed out of him in a red tide, Brandon Stark could taste the blood.
another day getting into arguments on the weirwood net. everyone keeps asking me if they can eat of the flesh of man and mate as wolf with wolf. buddy, they wont even let me fuck the wolf
I really shouldn't get sucked into this (and kinda related to my last post) but saying that pointing out that Bran is on quite a dark path is ableist requires a certain disregard for Hodor's personhood which isn't exactly gold standard disability rights advocacy.
Hi there, I have two questions regarding the following scene from Jon XII, ADWD:
“The skinchanger stopped ten yards away. His monster pawed at the mud, snuffling. A light powdering of snow covered the boar's humped black back. He gave a snort and lowered his head, and for half a heartbeat Jon thought he was about to charge. To either side of him, his men lowered their spears.
"Brother," Borroq said.
"You'd best go on. We are about to close the gate."
“You do that," Borroq said. "You close it good and tight. They're coming, crow." He smiled as ugly a smile as Jon had ever seen and made his way to the gate. The boar stalked after him. The falling snow covered up their tracks behind them.”
Firstly, do you think Greenseers and/or those who experience green dreams (E.g. Jojen Reed and Bran Stark) are considered part of the sort of loose brotherhood of Wargs and Skinchangers, in Wildling cultures beyond the Wall, as depicted here between Jon Snow and Borroq? Secondly, what exactly is Borroq smiling about in this scene?
Our first introduction to Borroq is from a gathering of skinchangers and wargs recounted in Varamyr's memory. Why they have meetings and what they discuss is not really clear. But it does seem like those born in that one-in-a-thousand chance are in the club. In First Men cultures that are less impacted by the Faith/southern culture, skinchanging, green dreams, green seeing, and magic are simply understood to be a thing and the gifted are both feared and honored. Being occasionally hunted and killed out of superstitious fears is probably a reason why they do network from time to time, maybe to keep tabs on each other, even if there can be bad blood among individuals or even if they disagree on some fundamentals. As we can see in Varamyr's POV, not every skinchanger plays by the rules Haggon lays out. Most seem to do their own thing.
Any kinship that extends to people with other gifts seems to be looser still, but they do intersect with each other occasionally. Jojen was visited by a three-eyed crow as he lay near death from greywater fever and was given the gift of green dreams. After Jojen tells his father, Howland Reed (who is described as an adept mage, but does not have prophetic visions), about his green dreams, HR sends his children to Winterfell to guide Bran as much as they can as his powers awaken. They are able to offer Bran some general knowledge about green magic/skin changing like you can't get sustenance by eating in Summer's body; however, they still must deliver Bran to an actual greenseer that can train him in the gifts they don't have. And we expect HR to reveal himself in the third act to do whatever it is he's going to do. High chance a mage that went to Isle of Faces University doesn't just exist to deliver paternity info.
As for Borroq himself, we simply don't know enough about him to really know what his deal is, but we might be able to infer some things to speculate. Tormund obviously has some contempt for him. Maybe not as much as he had for Varamyr, but seems he would rather not keep his company. Boars were among the animals Haggon warned Varamyr not to skinchange into because of how they can change a person. With that said, Borroq's boar is absolutely massive ("twice the size of Ghost") with sword-like tusks as long as a man's arm, indicating this is a fully mature boar that's been well-fed for many a season. It also hasn't had any predators or habitat constraints to stop it from growing so abnormally large. A normal-sized boar can fuck you up. This one is practically a forest god and it could probably mow through its enemies like a combine harvester. So it's safe to say Borroq himself might be as dangerous as his boar.
Why Haggon mistrusts keeping boars is only a guess. He could be absorbing some of his own wolf, Greyskin's, instincts toward other animals. Wolves do hunt smaller boars but may be mortally wounded trying to take on a larger one. Ghost is certainly going a little crazy with the scent of a prey animal nearby. Jon orders them separated or else a bloody fight could break out, one Ghost may not survive. But Haggon may have other reasons. Not only are boars so strong and fierce they've been known to kill many an experienced hunter, but they are also highly adaptable omnivores, and they can eat small animals, even carrion.
Okay, bear with me here while I indulge in a bit of speculation, and I promise I am making my way toward answering your question. Take this next part with a HEFTY amount of salt. Does Borroq's boar, or maybe Borroq himself, have a taste for carrion?
Until such time, Borroq had taken up residence in one of the ancient tombs beside the castle lichyard. The company of men long dead seemed to suit him better than that of the living, and his boar seemed happy rooting amongst the graves, well away from other animals. -- Jon XIII, ADWD.
Resorting to eating decaying flesh (sometimes even human) isn't unheard of in the harsh wilderness when the only choice is that or starve; however, boars are natural survivors because they can eat practically anything. The boar is shown to be rooting around the graves, which could be an attraction to the scent of decay. Bran relished eating bloody deer meat in Summer's skin, so I don't think the urge to eat whatever the animal naturally wants would be any different. If a skinchanger has eaten carrion often enough while inhabiting a boar, maybe when the circumstances are not quite that dire, it could change the man in ways others might find ghastly and disturbing, even if the flesh is animal and not human. Lots of hardened wildlings are inured by death, but Borroq gives off these morbidly cozy, comfy vibes being around the dead. Major goth edgelord shit there.
I'm not suggesting Borroq does the actual butchering of any people himself for the purpose of eating them, but being an occasional carrion-eater or nibbling on the recently deceased (instead of immediately burning them as custom strictly dictates) would certainly be enough to earn someone a bit of a ghoulish reputation, hence Tormund's reaction to his presence. Haggon makes this clear that if a skinchanger crosses the line into eating humans, he wouldn't be just gross, but fucking cursed.
"Men may eat the flesh of beasts and beasts the flesh of men, but the man who eats the flesh of man is an abomination."
I could be way off and being too literal here with the lichyard bit. There could be a multitude of reasons why Tormund dislikes Borroq. Spitting on the ground might just be a display of general contempt, but it is also commonly believed in many real-world cultures that spitting on the ground is an effective way to ward off The Evil Eye. GRRM could be borrowing that signifier. Like there's bad juju surrounding this guy. Wildlings do believe certain people are cursed for violating taboos like Craster is considered cursed for his blatant offense to the gods. So, I don't know. We'll see. Borroq does feel like a minor character that managed to distinguish himself when given the spotlight, and I suspect he'll be fleshed out more in TWOW.
Regardless, in the literary sense, he's aligned with death in this scene. He's like the specter of the Stranger, who is sometimes depicted as half-man, half-beast, just nonchalantly loitering around the tombs and graves. His boar is busy digging up a fresh hole in the ground like someone(s) is due to croak very soon...
Oh yeah. This is Jon XIII: the mutiny chapter. This would not be the first time in this series a very large boar was associated with an assassination and sudden regime change. It's also not the first time an agitated direwolf has been chained up (for everyone's safety ha!) while its warg got assassinated by men sworn to them. If Borroq and his boar are a portent of death, hidden in plain sight, then Jon is blind to it. Jon can only think "the last thing I need right now is Ghost savaging that boar," at a time when it would have been wiser to keep his direwolf close. In superstitious thinking, the howling of restless dogs is said to be a sign that trouble is near; Ghost is mute, however, but is still definitely flipping out. He's pacing around his confinement, bristling, bearing his teeth, and snapping at Jon. Even Mormont's raven is calling his name over and over like they are trying to get his attention. Yes, it's on account of that boar, but not the literal boar. The boar that means he's about to get the ol' heave-ho via knife. Repeated misunderstanding of this communication speaks to Jon being unable to read the signs orbiting around him. He's had a case of tunnel vision and has taken some things for granted like the continued obedience of the mutineers, who will decide new leadership is in order. He doesn't fully appreciate the extent to which his soon-to-be-assassins feel he has betrayed them and the mission of the Watch.
But back to Borroq. There's a dark ironic humor to Borroq calling Jon "brother." Jon is both a brother skinchanger and a black brother. Just a short time ago they were all still mortal enemies. Necessity has forced them all to the same side. Now wildlings are pledged to help defend the Wall against the Others, making them de facto brothers of the Night's Watch. The world's gone topsy-turvy. Those old hatreds do not get put aside so easily, and there is growing discontent within the NW over Jon's executive decisions. On second reading, his ugly smile and the "yup, close that gate up good and tight cause they're coming tee hee" feel like GRRM taking a bit of wicked glee in teasing what is about to happen. In many ways, Jon has invited the Stranger in through the front door, completely unaware he's sealed himself up inside with the more immediate threat.
In fact, it's Borroq's question that stirs up the controversial announcement that will drive the assassins into action only moments later. "And where will you be, crow?" Borroq thundered. "Hiding here in Castle Black with your white dog?"
"No. I ride south." Then Jon read them the letter Ramsay Snow had written. [Jon makes his plans clear and asks for volunteers to ride with him]
...
I have my swords, thought Jon Snow, and we are coming for you, Bastard.
Yarwyck and Marsh were slipping out, he saw, and all their men behind them. It made no matter. He did not need them now. He did not want them. No man can ever say I made my brothers break their vows. If this is oathbreaking, the crime is mine and mine alone.
And that's all we really see or know about Borroq, which is not much. We don't know anything about his backstory or what his motivations might be or what he will do in the wake of the mutiny. He certainly is a character that makes an impression. I do hope we get to see that boar go feral on a bunch of wights XD
One question and it's a little weird. I don't like the Jojen paste theory, nor do I particularly like it, but it is sort of related. Do you think that in ASOIAF cannibalism between magical humans (let's say skinchangers) is some form of power transfer? We know that Varamyr ate Haggons heart? Or is it just a case of #cannibalism *everywhere*? Thanks!
I don’t particularly like the Jojen Paste theory either, no worries. And no, I don’t think there’s any kind of power transfer via cannibalism. Varamyr ate Haggon’s heart while skinchanged into a wolf, not as a human being.
Had he sunk so low as to hunger after human meat? He could almost hear Haggon growling at him. “Men may eat the flesh of beasts and beasts the flesh of men, but the man who eats the flesh of man is an abomination.”
Abomination. That had always been Haggon’s favorite word. Abomination, abomination, abomination. To eat of human meat was abomination, to mate as wolf with wolf was abomination, and to seize the body of another man was the worst abomination of all. Haggon was weak, afraid of his own power. He died weeping and alone when I ripped his second life from him. Varamyr had devoured his heart himself. He taught me much and more, and the last thing I learned from him was the taste of human flesh.
That was as a wolf, though. He had never eaten the meat of men with human teeth.
–ADWD, Prologue
So technically it’s not even cannibalism everywhere, although the prologue’s wolf-POV descriptions of eating people probably count for the readers at least. (Bran’s next chapter tells us how delicious people are too. And Arya’s POV did it in ASOS and ADWD. ummm… thanks GRRM!)
According to Haggon there are three abominations relating warging: eating human flesh; mating with animals; and seizing another person's body. As people have pointed out at least two of Ned's children have eaten human flesh as their wolves, and Bran repeatedly wargs into Hodor, which raises the question...
Will TWOW and/or ADOS include an uncomfortable Summer sex scene?
Yes
No
Not a scene but it'll be mentioned
No, but it would have if there had been the 5 Years Gap
Who says it'll be uncomfortable?
Other (no "TWOW is never coming out" doesn't count)
Do you think it's fair to say that some aspects of magic with ASoIaF have been, or shown signs of being, systematized? I think skinchanging is the best example: we have a bunch of POV chapters from skinchangers, including Varamyr's prologue which is brimming with information on the subject.
I wouldn’t say so, no, sorry. Systematized magic is, well, you put 250 fluid ounces of water and 5 ounces of African sea salt in a silver beaker, add 10 drops of essence of wormwood with your right hand and then another 10 drops with your left hand, stir 10 times clockwise, heat at 200° for 15 minutes, etc, etc. If becoming a skinchanger required that a child from a certain race needed to be exposed to a certain animal by a certain age for a certain amount of time, with certain potions to drink to put him into the right state of mind for bonding, with specific magic words he needs to say to transfer into an animal’s head, with an established school that potential skinchangers were required to attend and read books about what animal should be assigned to which kind of person and learn the magic words and how to brew the skinchanging potions – and most importantly, if all these rules were not followed precisely, then skinchanging wouldn’t work – then, yes, it would be systemized.
Instead what we learn from Varamyr’s chapter is that a young boy from a wildling family started skinchanging with one of the family dogs by pure magical instinct, and after his abilities were discovered (after he used the dog to kill his little brother, and screamed when the dog was put down), he was abandoned by his parents and sent to a local warg, because he wasn’t fit for normal human society. The warg introduced him to other local wildling skinchangers, and endeavored to teach him what he knew about skinchanging by experience and lore: (a) what animals were easiest to bond with and which were the hardest, (b) that the animal you bond with affects your personality and therefore he didn’t think some animals were good to skinchange into, (c) the “abominations” that skinchangers hold are forbidden to do, and (d) what happens to skinchangers after they die.
But notably this is all custom and oral tradition, not rules. If a skinchanger does one of the abominations – say, stays inside their animal while it’s having sex – it’s not that skinchanging stops working, it’s that other skinchangers will think you’re a horrible person if they find out, and maybe the gods will think that too. Maybe it’ll affect your mind in some way, maybe you’ll change in ways you won’t like. (Maybe you won’t even realize how much you’re changing.) But the important word there is maybe. For all Haggon believed that skinchanging birds was the worst, that those who’d tried birds ended up staring at the sky all day only wanting to fly, we’ve encountered several bird skinchangers who appear to be quite centered and not “moony” at all.
There aren’t systemized rules for becoming a skinchanger – you don’t have to drink a potion or say magic words, you form a connection to an animal, feel their feelings (and they feel yours), and one day you just fall asleep and dream you’re the animal. And as you grow stronger, you can reach out and move into an animal’s mind deliberately, and later any animal, not just the one you originally bonded to. But how do you do it? You just do it. It just happens. It’s by acts of will and acts of instinct, not by a system. Some things make it easier – if an animal has been bonded before, if it’s a domesticated animal, if you have someone else guiding you and explaining things. But it could be someone would follow everything exactly and never be able to touch an animal’s mind, because they weren’t right for it, the magic wasn’t right for it, who knows. (And I wouldn’t doubt if some maester tried it and got nothing, and came away believing that skinchanging was never real in the first place.) It’s not a system, it’s not a science, it just is.
Hmm… I think the best comparison is to wizardry and witchcraft, per Terry Pratchett’s Equal Rites. Wizardry is very precise, very systemized, words and exact potions and stars and books and geometry, taught in a regimented hierarchal school with rules for entry. Witchcraft is instinctual, intuitive, emotive, recipes that are just a pinch of this and a drop of that (or just a colored water placebo), drawing on psychology and just knowing how people work, taught individually to an apprentice or just by picking things up all by yourself. (And notably, Granny Weatherwax’s “borrowing” is straight up skinchanging under a different name.) Skinchanging, all of the magic of ASOIAF, is far more like the latter than the former.
