The Drowning Theory - ASOIAF Theories
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- Опубликовано: 29 сен 2024
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ALSO WE GOT PUT IN A POKEMON GAME!!!! / pokemonbattlecity
WE HAVE A NERD POLL LIVE: forms.gle/hHpX...
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If, for some terrible reason, you want to submit fanart or theories you can do it at theinterestingnerdclub@gmail.com
Love the video and thanks for the shout out! Glad you liked the theory. I do think I will put together my own video dedicated to this topic but I want to let it stew for a bit now. I am having some fresh thoughts on an old topic now having heard this. This is the beauty of your format for this game. I have tried to wrangle this big mess of separate evidence into an entertaining theory video but the format of someone who doesn't know it asking the natural next questions and figuring it out with the audience just handles things like this so well. Much more fun to listen to than me solo laying out all the separate evidence ever could have been. A couple thoughts as I listened.
1 my brain is so broken from these books that despite kicking this idea around for a long time I never even would have thought to give a disclaimer for subject matter of this theory even though like the entire theory 100% needs one in any normal human context. When laid out like this it's a walking trigger warning list followed by a creepy horror story explanation. Like I'm so brain broken when discussing these books that it took you guys pointing out how weird and creepy this is for me to register "oh yeah this is actually pretty horrifying huh? Even by Westeros standards this is pretty bad."
2 I am mad that this literally just hit me now as I listened because it could have been evidence. Next to the heart tree in the Winterfell godswood there is a connection to the underground water via hotsprings which we see as pools but I think also are actually are in the walls of the castle itself as well and keep it warm.
From the wiki article on the winterfell godswood - "Across the godswood from the heart tree, beneath the windows of the Guest House, an underground hot spring feeds three small pools, with a moss-covered wall looming above them."
and - "The hot springs prevent the ground from freezing."
Also they are unusual because in Bran 1 ACOK "walder and walder had never seen hot water bubbling from the ground before"
Then in that chapter they play lord of the crossing in the pools for the only time, its the only time because when Rickon joins in the first time he gets hit with the stick Shaggydog mauls the walders for hitting him and "there was blood in the water" so more blood going into this water system snuck in by GRRM.
One of the first things we see Ned do is sitting by these pools to clean blood off of Ice and pray. Meaning this connection of wells or connections to the underground water feeding blood to the trees who are the old gods being fed by the old customs and traditions has actually been there since the very start of the story. Either by old ways customs or the intervention of a dire wolf as we see with the walders these pools are often filled with blood in one way or another, now in context with all the babies down wells quotes we get books later and magic needing blood sacrifice it all adds up.
In fact riffing on that fact and theory crafting as I type. I will probably build this into a video if it holds up and goes anywhere upon further research... Winterfell is kept nice and toasty warm by these hot springs that literally go through the castle walls and seem to have been built in to the design by bran the builder. There is also a source of water right in the middle of their sacred forest as was just mentioned. Let's say the wells of westeros are a source of magical sacrificial input of power... Could Winterfell and the hot springs the starks benefit from be a magical output of this power? Perhaps this magic power being fed to the wells magically charges the water or feeds the power source that somehow is what keeps winterfell warm. This massive magical water network connected to the weirwoods and their nature magic is like a magic web the starks are plugged into in a positive way because of some ancient magical connection by bran the builder or something. Probably an idea I will have to explore more.
3 Back to the start of the video my school made us take these online "accelerated reader" tests to earn points every quarter of the school year and usually you had to do a couple books a quarter. Then one year I looked at the chart of points the books were worth and found out the harry potter books were worth wayyyyy too many points and so I just read all 6 of those that were out at the time in a month or two and then pretended to have read them over like a year and a half and didn't have to read anything else. I just spaced out all the tests.
4 Also I didn't ever get a final favorite pokemon from Tom but just let me know. Your teams won't change until I upload the next update which will hopefully be sometime this spring but probably not this month or anything. Last update was around Christmas so they aren't super frequent.
I might have even more to comment on that I can think of so this may not be my only comment, but it is very late so this is all I have for now. I am sure I will listen back to this one a few times over. Well done guys and glad you liked the theory and it could lead to some good content!
Thank you so much for sending it in! I can't nerd out about your Aerion Brightflame video enough. Furthermore I FORGOT ABOUT THE POOLS THAT TOTALLY TRACKS
@@InterestingNerdClub Alternatively, maybe the heat source (whether thermal, magical, or radioactive) is what keeps Winterfell safe from whoever or whatever takes the children. It would explain why it was considered a good spot to build immediately after the Long Night.
@@InterestingNerdClub I actually also have to recommend you guys watch my own video called the revenge of the children of the forest. Having watched it back for the first time in probably 2 years after this I forgot how directly it covers all the same evidence and was a good look at where the theory was in my head at the time. I disagree with some of it these days and especially for book only lore I think the themes will play out differently. But the evidence does hold up. I forgot how little show lore it actually relied on. It covers other things as well but all of this stuff and more relevant things are there.
I decided to add you guys to the end screen recommendations on that video because it really makes a perfect pair to this video because you guys really drive home the wells aspect and the lack of sacrifices and breaking the pact, which I glossed over as a side tangent in my video and was going to go into more depth about at some point. But then I decided to wait 3 years and send it all to you guys instead. But if you check it out it really drives home the children being either evil or at least sketchy, which you guys seemed up in the air on.
If I had to make an argument video today focused on convincing you guys it is in fact the children who need and are taking these babies(which I might still do) it would be like a 60% word for word match with that video. That video covers other things and is focused around the idea of making sense of the end of the show as a premise but the evidence all lines up with this topic.
One quote from the wiki of ice and fire I used in that video and regret not sending as evidence, because it confirms the children do in fact need sacrifices to power their most powerful nature magic and have done it before. Proving the endless supply of kingsblood sacrifice babies would in fact have a use to them if they were living in secluded small groups underground like leaf and her small group do. This is from the page on the hammer of the waters
"According to legend, the greenseers of the children of the forest used dark magic to stop the migration of the First Men to Westeros. Hundreds of greenseers gathered, possibly at the Isle of Faces or Moat Cailin. Some stories claim they sacrificed a thousand captive humans to weirwoods, while others claim the greenseers used blood from their own youths."
The warm water flowing/being pumped around the interior of Winterfell, metaphorically or actually from the HEARTtree at its center is very much like blood in a body. So, the blood being sacrificed to the water is, in a sense, becoming blood again for the very stones of the North.
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Also, just for absolute clarity and explicitness, although I am highly confident that you were referencing this notion: Sacrifice, particularly blood sacrifice, seems to be what powers magic in this universe.
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I would be absolutely terrified to swim anywhere in Westeros now. And the kids playing in the pool should be too.
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All of this readily ties into all of the creepy stuff about Squishers, the Ironborn, Patchface, Rhoynar/Stone Men/water magic, the connected cave network of Westeros which is hinted at, and the Children of the Forest. Even to the point of parenting monstrous half-human children and so forth. This is definitely a horror thread which GRRM likes to pull (pool?). And, yes, the Children are majorly creepy/sketchy and anyone who is associated with them should be assumed to be so as well; their interests do not necessarily align with human ones.
Note too that the Children of the Forest at least once, but possibly multiply, use the Hammer of the WATERS in order to flood large portions of the continent. They have a strong connection to water magic (of which ice magic also may and probably should be an aspect - which then immediately connects to the Others, shadowbinding, darkness, and all of that scary stuff). The Isle of Faces might be another facet to this connection, given that it is surrounded by water which is central to Westeros (another centered pool), in or around which there has been much death and where bodies do disappear, and which may be very deep indeed.
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You all might want to check out some of Joe Magician's and the Disputed Land's theories. They have some good horror ones which mesh well with this conversation.
To this day, the bottomless wells in the Red Keep and what Maegor built fascinate me and confuse me.
There's bottomless wells in the Red Keep?? That fits so well!
@@InterestingNerdClub Yeap, there are bottomless wells everywhere. When I did my video about the wells, I found I don't even how many random bottomless wells and sinkholes.
I am thinking of doing a part two because there are even more, we have the bottomless pools next to the weirwood in Winterfell, where Ned was washing Ice, and not only
The pools and the weirwoods are connected. The caves are where the root systems are, and there is a black pool by the heart tree at Winterfell where Ned cleans the blood off his blade after executing people
THIS IS CORRECT. I HAD COMPLETELY FORGOTTEN.
Have you read the Sunless Sea Beneath the World theory by hollowaydivision?
Ok, great books: Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell
it was marketed as "Harry Potter for adults" but it's so much more than that. it's criminally unknown. I think it has one of the most interesting magic systems I've seen in a standalone book, and the characters are extremely human and smart/witty/flawed
I JUST GOT THIS RECOMMENDED THIS WEEK. ITS NEXT ON MY AUDIBLE LIST
@@InterestingNerdClub I just listened to it on audiobook for the first time a couple months ago, and it was great. But it's also worth checking out as a physical book, only because it has an excellent footnoting system (which the audio book does an excellent job of maintaining, but does feel slightly different when interacting with the physical book). Also, there is a BBC show adaptation which is excellent - but I think only if you've read the book, bc everything moves too quickly to be understood. But enjoy! It's a really really really good story.
@@InterestingNerdClub The best way I can describe it is if you took a big dash of the spirit of The Dark is Rising Series (Susan Cooper) and gave them the depth and stakes of GRRM characters (minus a lot of the offensive aspects) and added an academic librarian's love of footnotes, history, and internal consistency. Mix that with with some Dumas style characterizations and charm, and an Arthurian style love of English Magic.
Two shoutouts in one video! You guys are awesome. Also, I will not apologize for making Tom read a book about post apocalyptic bureaucracy because it is EPIC. Everyone else should also read The Stand (and don’t watch the 2020 miniseries because it’s told out of order which ruins the story)
THERES SO MUCH BUREAUCRACY AT THE END OF THIS BOOK
What was the book title?
an alternate theory: Westeros has been drinking baby soup for thousands of years and have since become adept at digesting human flesh. there are no white walkers in winter... just hungry and horrified men.
The Others being a dead man switch does remind me of the Mutually Assured Destruction doctrines with nuclear war, which would have been prevalent for GRRM, having grown up during the Cold War. It also explains why Craster and his practices exist: it is the last remaining source for the Children to prevent the Others from activating.
I have nothing to add to this one, so….. algormancy!
ALGOROMANCY!!
having different colored eyes can get babies thrown in the well in the old ways. so it makes sense it kept him out.
I ALSO read Andromeda strain when I was 14!
THREE OTHER PEOPLE HAVE TOLD ME THIS
@@InterestingNerdClub is Jurassic park actually worth reading? I was always under the impression it's one of the few instances where a meh book was adapted into a great movie
@@alexclark7473 oh for SURE. The movie is better but much different. The movie is way more lighthearted, and the book leans way heavier into the social and scientific commentary, but it's still very good. Heavy, but good.
Frist
My next RPG character.
Y’all are lucky you got stuff for reading over the summer. Our summer reading is 10% of the first quarter
Let's gooo
ahhh yes....impeccable timing
Don’t worry guys, I *personally* liked the Video.
Excellent, it was you I was talking to.
Good books
Enders game/ speaker for the dead
Heart of darkness
The shadow thief
are you serious? Ive never been a first view of any view. now I am :) Love you all, Tom's audio is closer this time. But it still feels in the background vs in the front of the speaker. Keep it up!
I'm SLOWLY moving closer to the mic
@@InterestingNerdClub if you like being away from the mic, that’s great, just increase your gain in post edit and add a little vocal compressor preset and that should put you “in front” in the speaker. You guys are awesome and I love your content.
It's such an interesting theory! Maybe the whole weirwood magic is not actually about the trees themselves, but it's all in the blood tainted water. The trees, and the whole root system would basically work as magic beacons and something like a pipe system to get the magic water going
Yeah, maybe the trees are just one conduit. Maybe the underground rivers are the real magic repository. Like an underworld rivers kind of thing.
When I was younger, I definitely fucked with the Percy Jackson books. I absolutely fell in love with the idea that the gods of ancient mythologies were real and had a ton of demigod children who fought legendary monsters. A somewhat less-known series was Ranger’s Apprentice, which is a great low-fantasy saga. Essentially, imagine if the Rangers from Lord of the Rings were secret agents for the king and your PoV is a young teenage apprentice to the coolest one.
love the show but can you balance the audio a bit? one of you is often way louder and it makes it difficult to listen to this, especially on the move
I'm glad you like it. I try so hard to make it balanced, it's so much better than it was before. t.t
It is a sleepy day
On second thought I won’t be sleeping much for the next few days
It is a sleepy few days
Wait I just realised, if the Others are returning because the old ways aren't being practiced anymore (which I think I'm totally sold on), that means Aegon's Conquest _causes_ their return. Which is super interesting given Aegon's Prophecy in HotD came from George and is probably book canon. A classic trying to avoid a prophecy actually causes it
I also read The Andromeda strain at 14. And depending on if my guess on your ages is close, we all read this book within a few years of each other. What a world 😂
I lied about so many books to get my free pizzas.
Never have I seen a more relatable comment
Calvin and Hobbes...eff you if you don't think that was a book when I was a kid...a...kid...kid...kid in high school...
Interesting that in a theory about drowning people, the Drowned God didn’t surface.
Also to maybe go a different genre for book rec King Solomon’s Ring by Konrad Lorenz.
Book recommendations:
Eaters of the Dead
Dune
Super Mario Bros Choose Your Own Adventure Book 3 Monster Mixup
Also also read Andromeda Strain at 14
I also read Andromeda Strain at about 14 (might have been younger) but I was disappointed by it in comparison to other Crichton books I'd already read. I actually read a lot of Crichton's books before realizing he wrote Jurassic Park.
The North and Riverlands used to have more kings too. Basically every lord was a king. So, if they were all Fist-Nighting and sacrificing the children, then there was a lot of king's blood and human sacrifice feeding into the network. As power consolidated, these magical resources may have literally dried up.
I don't know how exactly this ties into the theory above but all I could think about throughout this video was Elden Ring. Not sure if either of you have played it or looked into the very vague and twisted lore of that world but it reminds me of the Omen's.
I've not refreshed my memory on this but at a high level, the wealthy and powerful individuals the royal capital of Leyndell would throw their unwanted (because they were infected with a disease/curse) children into the Leyndell sewers. From memory I think children of lowbirth with the same affliction were typically just killed but I may be wrong there.
Anyway, it feels to me like this concept might have taken root from the same idea in GRRM's mind, with sewers not seeming too dissimilar to wells in theme at least. Note that the sewers in Leyndell were filled with abominations and there is one particular elevator shaft that goes extremely deep via an elevator - reminiscent of a well, to me at least.
At the bottom of that deepest part of the sewers there is a version of the boss Mohg, who is a sort of God of Blood or something along those lines.
Again, not sure exactly how to tie this all up but it feels very much related to me!
This is a cool parallel! Do we know if GRRM was involved in the writing of that plotline in Elden Ring?
@@InterestingNerdClub I don't think we have confirmation on how much/what storylines he contributed to unfortunately. It felt very GRRM to me at the time though!
@@InterestingNerdClub Call this 'additional tin foil' for the Elden Ring link but you also access a lost city/civilisation underground via a well - ruclips.net/video/eNZmD5ElqgE/видео.html
was it Grumpkins in real mythology that replace human babies with there own? perhaps the Grumpkins live in the wells and are usurping thrones
My three pokemon would be representativ of my 3 best friends an altaria, rutena or pandrago and lopunny.
Representative of me it would be a cubone, espurr and absol
A magical book series no one but me seamed to know is the guardians of time by Marianne curly.
Teens with powers, time travel, the struggle of true love it was very formative for me in how I perceive love and it does this funny thing where each book is told by two people, but those change with each book. So you get to know this wise eternally young mentor that can't do sròn, only to be in his mind in the next book to find he is just as much of a mess as the teens he tries to protect.
Oh, my family never needed to do anything to get me to read, I got payed to go running, so I then could by books as a reward. I got a books at every occasion possible. My parents read to us before bad, my teacher read to us during meal time, whenever we where on long car drives we listened to an audio book since I lack the time to read for fun at the moment, I fill every moment of cooking, house cleaning and walks from one place to the other with audio drama podcasts or well RUclips theories
Wells are where horses go
Excuse me. Do you know where horse go?
Let us hope that every sick baby in the world get well soon...
i really REALLY like this theory, but i have to get a little meta to say why i don't quite buy it as Michael talks about stuff suggested
I honestly can't see GRRM as a person ever writing out a situation where "huh maybe if the powerful lords had been allowed to keep raping their subjects everything would have worked out better"
like the guy goes to VERY VERY dark places a lot. but it's never ever portrayed as anything but the horror it is. having such evil be in any way the "good option" just doesn't sit right (and yes i know humanity being stuck in such a horrific pact isn't a good thing or portrayed as such at all but i'm sure you see where i'm coming from)
I agree if it's framed like a good thing, but if it's framed with that sense of inevitably that he loves so much, do you think that might make it workable?
Either way the mystery around the babies is really something interesting
I actually agree with this and getting the theme to work for this theory was actually one of the harder parts, but I think it does work. I didn't fit many thoughts on the thematic points into evidence for them to talk about so I will do it here. I think the evidence says this is why the others are coming back but you are right the theme seems off. Because I agree it has to make some sense on that level and as you say it goes against a lot of GRRMs world view when said like that.
But if you want to make the theme fit that gets easier when you consider that perhaps bloodraven and bran and the specific group of children he is with now are bringing about the end of the old ways and actually causing the others attack now because they will inevitably attack as soon as the babies stop anyway and they can be defeated now. With the terms of the old pact only once the others have attacked and been beaten can a new pact be formed or a new balance found where you don't need the constant sacrifice and horrible old ways.
On a thematic "what does this say about the world" level, if by the end Bran's personal growth is the recognition that "the old ways" he was raised to live by and old gods he was raised to worship are pretty bad and brutal actually and he should try stop that way of life even though it gives him personal power. He should even do it when the backlash from making progress is possibly a threat to the entire world, then that is actually a super progressive message. The others in that case would be like the looming very powerful backlash from the established power structure that comes with the world is making good progressive changes. We see it in real life with the backlash to feminism and general human rights and in westeros there is the same thing in an icy magic form.
Alyssane doing a feminism at the wall and ending the first night sparking massive backlash by throwing off the order of society that has held for thousands of years is can actually be read as a feminist critique of how the messed up society of westeros literally couldn't handle basic human rights without massive backlash. Much like how we see a lot of that in real life any time anyone gets some new rights there tends to be a fight over it. Westeros was basically a magically backed super patriarchy. That fact along with all the old ways could be ending by the end of the books.
It remains to be seen how the books end if that is the route it goes but it is one possible explanation that if I make a video about the topic today I would likely mention.
I will say however the fact that bran becomes king in the bad dragon show might undermine some of the idea that the old ways are going away or that he is not in it for personal power. I made a whole video about is bran evil. He still might be to be fair, but these days I tend to believe that his evil vibes in the show came mostly from being outside his head. But if we are inside his head and he is recognizing the power he holds and we see the human heart in conflict with itself as he sheds the brutal old ways and even at times causes the death of those he loves and weakens his own power source and perhaps weakens his family forever since they benefited from the old ways magic, all in an effort to make the world better in the long run then it could work really well.
As I said a lot remains to be seen so I would never claim this is all firm. Just a few random thoughts I have had on the topic thematically since I realized I kinda think this is a thing.
@@InterestingNerdClub I went into it in detail replying to them but I really think it is the age old theme in ice and fire, it's the same with Rhaenyra being the heir causing the dance of the dragons, as it is with Dany trying to become queen probably causing some shenanigans, as it is with Alysanne trying to end the first night causing the old ways spells to weaken and the others to attack. Someone nice tried to do a feminism once and westeros lost their damn minds over it so hard the backlash nearly destroyed the whole country. The only difference is this time the backlash to progressive social change is magically backed and very powerful. But the lesson of the story and perhaps why bran with all this power is still allowing the others attack is that the inevitable backlash just needs to be faced down and dealt with.
Westeros under the pact was a magically backed super conservative society where the same lords families ruled for thousands of years under the same brutal customs. If the final books are done in a certain way and this theory is true we are seeing a story of the need for progressive social change even in the face of massive possibly world ending backlash. Brans growth will be to learn that "the old ways" he was raised with actually suck and need to go. We will be in his head as his new ways are built if he becomes king. Answering on some level GRRMs what was Aragorn's tax policy question on a very wide societal level.
@@michaeltalksaboutstuff ....and just like that i am SOLD! man thank you for that it was such a great read
I did the same eragon book report! It was 6th grade!!
I pressed the button! Please dont come for me! 😂
40:42 Theo threw Septon Shale down the well
This is creepy enough for me to buy it.
Cholera connection: John Snow.
Love this theory!
you can tone down the self censoring a bit, ytb is bad you can chill out a bit instead of going this far, and anyone who likes dark fantasy series wouldnt need a warning about messed up content
We try to err on the side of caution cause we don't always know what people are going through, and you'd be surprised how many people in the fandom haven't read the books, so they don't know how rough it can get lol
To be fair, I’m pretty sure neither one of you have looked directly into the camera and said anything. I mean I’ll like anyway, but just saying…
I do look directly into my webcam every time I say that lmao
Ah I miss my ability to read. In 7th ish grade I read Warriors Cats and I went through a book in a day. Last year the only book I read was the Song of Achilles and I didn't even finish it. Partly bc I know the story of the Trojan War (I didn't read the Iliad, are you crazy?) so I know it's gonna be sad
But also I think I read much slower now and even tho _when_ I'm reading it's hard to put it away, it's also really hard to just get in the right headspace to start
I FORGOT ABOUT WARRIORS
i meen this is bad dragon show crackpot but the others take crasters babies to make wight walkers
so why would they stop at those expressly given to him
This tracks really well. But how would the Others be getting the babies if they can't get past the wall?
I mean this could just be GRRM not knowing about this.
This is always an acceptable answer
An Interesting Book Club channel in the discord would be neat
This is honestly a great idea
Wellsteros
This has the drowned god written all over this
YES. SQUISHERS.
This is such a fun way to present theories
I love this format so much, it's so good.
I liked Inkheart and Inkspell so much that I read the two (~330000 words) in a weekend after getting them in a Scholastic bundle. Didn't love Inkdeath and the movie was horrible so I reread the first two and still loved them.
Hunkering down + book love reminded me of this and now I'm thinking about rereading them and maybe giving Inkdeath another chance.
I think the Preston Jacobs series this is related to is Secrets of Crasters Keep?
Edit: yep it is, in part 3. He also mentions Dunk thinking about throwing baby Walder Frey in a well and Theon sacrificing Winterfells Septon in a well
A wonderful thoughtful book, that sadly kinda betrays its own message in the end... The elegance of the hedgehog. Main characters are a extreamly well read and bright concierge from a luxery apartment complex, who hides behind what people expect her to be and a little girl who lives there, shares her brightness but is completely desilusioned by the world and thinks about suicide. They start to befriend each other as a new tenent arrives both are drawen towords for their shared love of Japanese culture.
regarding book recommendations, I've been reading the Locked Tomb series by Tamsyn Muir (Gideon the ninth, Harrow the ninth, and Nona the ninth) and man they are so good. It's got body horror necromancy, a sci-fi setting, cool sword fighting, memes, religious trauma, a plethora of excellent queer characters, creepy blond twins, and really strong narrative voice that changes in each book. the majority of the second book is written in the second person and it's just *chefs kiss*. there's gonna be a fourth book out in the next year or so and I'm so excited to get my hands on it
You guys need to read the Prince of Nothing and The Aspect-Emperor series by R Scott Bakker. The lore is crazy
This is a fascinating thing to think about, thanks a lot for sharing, I love it!!!