#the mummers

[gwydionmisha]

     2023 Fralinger String Band - "Scream Acres"    

[franzkafkagf]

to aegon, 300 years from now.

[hira492]

Something I made for my Environment Design Class✨🧡

I designed Mummers House from Rainbow Rowell's book, Carry On!

In the book, Simon says that Watford was built around the 1500s so, according to that date and the fact that it's UK, the architecture I used is Tudor Architecture! It was really fun investigating about it and applying that to what is told to us about the building on the book!

I went for a more bricks and stone look of the Tudor style than with a wood and sharp black lines look because of what's described in the book by Simon!

I took extra time designing the turret Simon and Baz have their room in and figuring out how to fit it into the style while maintaining the overall silhouette!

[willtheweaver]

Details below:

Mari Lwyd- Likely a holdover from Wales’s Celtic past, Mari Lwyd is a skeletal horse who goes door to door, challenging people to a duel of verses. Should the homeowner run out of poetry, they must let Mari Lwyd in and treat the specter to the best booze.

Yule Goat- This lone wanderer of Nordic origins takes the form of a goat and travels from house to house, telling rude stories, and hard truths about the people inside. The Yule goat and their ill words can be removed from the house with an offering of food and drink. Today most people will only encounter straw goat effigies, such as the Gavlebocken( which will likely not burn this year, but it is currently being devoured by birds)

Mummers- Masked vagabonds, Mummers communicate either with mumbles, or in song and rhyme. They would ‘entertain’ homeowners with music, or by playing rigged games (gambling with loaded dice is a popular option). These shadowy characters can be placated with food and drink.

Wren hunters- seeing a pattern here? Many of these figures associated with Christmas have their roots in Europe’s pagan traditions. These figures often are associated with death and darkness-two things in abundance in winter. Offerings are made in hope that they and all bad things will go away, and that brighter times will come .The wren hunters are no exception. Coming from Ireland, this would be a group of people who go out hunting for the ‘king of birds’. Afterwards, they go door to door singing and begging for a penny, and (you guessed it), food and drink.

Lord of Misrule- Enough with all the dark thoughts; this last Christmas figure is much more cheerful. Medieval and Tudor England had the tradition of appointing one individual to be in charge of the celebrations. Everyone, from the royal court to the humblest village would have a Lord of Misrule, and being appointed was a great honor (not to mention naughtily subversive in a time where the social hierarchy was strictly enforced)

[madcat-world]

Mummers - IrenHorrors

[crowlixcx]

Broadchurch | S2EP5 | Alec Hardy’s Wettest Moments (Part 57)

[visenyaism]

A Uquiz and iatc secret sansa present for @muppettullys! asoiaf has many many exciting and engaging careers for side characters such as: unnamed braavosi mummer dead in a canal, and turncloak. Which one are you?

[satellitesunset]

I attribute the belief (that's mostly present on tiktok) that the story a song tells must be solely rooted in nonfictional events that occurrd to the songwriter to taylor swift. it's not only abt her strictly autobiographical approach (it's natural for your art to be derived from personal experience). but rather the the culture (that she created !); from speculations to who they're abt to. to attempting to work them into the story/timeline she constructed. that is det​ri​men​tal to music (and on a larger scale literature) analysis. it convinced most that is the norm and every record must be 100% based on a true experience.

[emprcaesar]

daenerys being the secret daughter of ned and ashara and she’s the mummers dragon is easily the craziest asoiaf conspiracy i’m talking crazier than tyrion being danys time traveling baby.

[slymreddwyne]

Howd it take me so long to realize "The Bear and the Maiden Fair" is about Jaime and Brienne at Harrenhal?

Brienne is the Dancing Bear

Jaime is the Maiden Fair

Harrenhal (site of a significant tourney/fair) is the Fair

Vargo Hoat is the Goat

And the Bloody Mummers with him were the Three Boys

[atopvisenyashill]

thoughts on the grand northern conspiracy theory?

it makes some points but i think most of it is deeply silly and relies on far too many leaps in logic and characters acting in a way they would never act all to push a “jon will be king” theory, which as i’m sure everyone knows, i am a big hater of.

The basis of the theory is that the Northern lords are purposefully playing Stannis & the Bolton/Freys against each other so they can take each other out, and free the North up for a Stark King & Northern Independence. That, on its face, I fully believe. It’s the details in the theory that I don’t fully buy into.

It’s basically canon that the Northern lords & ladies are really taking advantage of the chaotic politics & lack of a real centralized leader at the moment to make their own political moves. Some examples here include:

Arnolf & Cregan Karstark are explicitly doing this, something Alys comments on and something several other lords point out: "My uncle declared for Stannis, in hopes it might provoke the Lannisters to take poor Harry's head. Should my brother die, Karhold should pass to me, but my uncles want my birthright for their own." They don't really care about Stannis, they want Harry dead so they can have Karhold.

Alysane Mormont is potentially working off orders from her mother, when she says here, "Five, we were. All girls. Lyanna is back on Bear Island. Lyra and Jory are with our mother. Dacey was murdered." Even though as far as we know before that, all of Maege's girls were at Bear Island (except Dacey, who was with Maege in Robb's campaign).

There's the Umbers refusing to fight each other while picking two different sides, and this theory here that it was likely a plan between Mors and Hother to keep the Greatjon alive.

The Manderly Of It All re: very obviously using his granddaughter's anger as a cover for his own brutal plans for revenge and a Stark restoration.

The North is all clearly playing the game & attempting to oust the Boltons & Freys from power. I also don’t think the grumbling for Northern Independence would have died down since Robb died - if anything, after their King is brutally, viciously murdered, his mother’s corpse made a mockery of, his little Queen now a prisoner, and his sisters married off to enemies & humiliated, I imagine the calls for Northern Independence have gotten louder. This is a people that has suffered not just death and violence, but a lot of humiliation on top of that, and all of that is the perfect recipe for some sort of nationalist call for independence.

But the theory has. Some points that I just cannot co-sign because they make absolutely zero sense to me.

The idea that the only thing stopping Jon from being king is Jeyne being pregnant or the witnesses of Robb’s will being dead is just silly. He isn’t Ned Stark’s son, he is Lyanna’s! That puts Robb’s entire will in question, and you can bet your ass that there will be some grumbling or discussion about whether Winterfell should bypass Ned‘a line despite him having TWO true born sons and TWO true born daughters still alive, or whether it goes to Lyanna and therefore to Jon. The succession question is just NOT as simple as the meta makes it out to be because it completely ignores that Jon is, I cannot stress this enough, NOT actually Ned Stark’s son.

The meta is right that it’s likely Maege & Gallbart got a message to Howland because Theon notes that there’s been attacks by craggoman. But. Howland is one of - possible thee only - person left alive that knows Jon is Lyanna’s son. There is just no way he doesn’t have a strong opinion on whether Jon should inherit winterfell without knowing the truth.

Irrelevant but it’s really mean to Jeyne Westerling. Whatever role she may have - even if it’s to die in the prologue of TWOW - her life and her death are important regardless of whether she’s pregnant! She is the widow of a King, and if she dies by LSH’s hand, it’s going to be a huge point in showing us the violence in the Riverlands. Maybe the continued breakdown in the Riverlands, Lady Stoneheart’s anger, and Jeyne’s defiance of her family is not relevant to the King Jon pushers, but it IS thematically relevant to the plot thank you very fucking much. THE GIRL IS JUST AS IMPORTANT AS THE BOY.

More relevant to this point is there’s just no way in fuck that Lady Stoneheart is trying to crown Jon. “oh she has bigger problems” she is going to crown one of her children if she crowns anyone, likely Arya, not her husband’s bastard who she fucking hated & asked to be banished to a glorified penal colony. Look at Brynden’s comments about Jon:

The Blackfish narrowed his eyes. "Did your father arrange for that as well? Catelyn never trusted the boy, as I recall, no more than she ever trusted Theon Greyjoy. It would seem she was right about them both.

Cat hates that kid so much she wrote letters to her uncle talking shit about him but we are supposed to believe this is proof she wants to crown him? When she's so far gone she's willing to kill Podrick and Brienne off a perceived slight against her? When she's heard several rumors that her daughters may still be alive and well? No. Don't buy it even a little.

Also, Brynden is flying Robb’s banner bc Robb was his family, because he loved Catelyn, and because what else is he supposed to do when he’s in the middle of a siege?? This point is silly and nonsensical.

Harwin as the Hooded Man - i mean. there’s nothing for or against this really, but also the Theon Durden theory aka Theon is the hooded man and doesn’t realize bc he’s having a psychotic episode, is much more believable to me & much more in line with everything that’s happening in theon’s chapter.

So like. Yes, the basic premise of “the northern lords are desperately looking for a stark, any stark, to make king/queen in the north, bc they are tired of All This Bullshit” is something i completely agree with. I do think it’s likely Maege has been in contact with her daughters, & that she and Gallbart made contact with Howland, who is about to enter the scene in a big way. But all that ish about LSH, the BWB, and Blackfish? Absolutely not. LSH is about Arya’s story (and Brienne & Jaime’s), not Jon. Stoneheart doesn’t care about the politics in Westeros; she cares that she followed all the rules and it got her family killed, so now she will break every rule there is to get revenge for her slaughtered children. she is Alyssa Arryn except she has the power to cause a lot of suffering before her tears drown her. she is not wasting her second life crowning jon snow!

[rherlotshadow]

Mummers' Play: Green Man Festival

Bradford on Avon, Wiltshire

[daenystheedreamer]

what exactly is the illyrio and varys backfire/conspiracy fandom theory again? i feel like im not deep enough into the lore to understand the implications

ok. so. VERY basic explanation is 'young griff', the kid who joncon is running around with and claiming is rhaegar's son aegon, is maybe actually a descendant of the blackfyre cadet branch of house targaryen. has implications for his legitimacy and what legitimacy even means and more broader world building.

alt shift x video on the topic that also dives into the varys and illyrio connections

@wafflehousegothic's post on the subject which features they Lysene connection

and our google doc blackfyre conspiracy for dummies

why is it important. it would be cool. also has implications for varys' character and loyalties, gives daenerys more philosophical battles, and just adds cool world building. it's also just more historical flavour about pretenders, like the Jacobites or Perkin Warbeck (gets a direct reference in the Dance but clearly an inspiration for Young Griff, having been a supposedly murdered young son)

"When the smith's son was an old man, a bastard son of the fourth Aegon rose up in rebellion against his trueborn brother and took for his sigil a black dragon. These lands belonged to Lord Darry then, and his lordship was fiercely loyal to the king. The sight of the black iron dragon made him wroth, so he cut down the post, hacked the sign into pieces, and cast them into the river. One of the dragon's heads washed up on the Quiet Isle many years later, though by that time it was red with rust."

[agentrouka-blog]

This evening, I was searching synonyms for “actor” in a personal writing project. I came across the term “mummer”.

https://www[.]merriam-webster[.]com/thesaurus/mummer

an actor in a story performed silently and entirely by body movements

Who is entirely silent? Ghost. Interesting.

I’m sure it’s nothing! The mummer’s dragon is clearly Young Griff/Aegon and it couldn’t possibly be anyone else!

That's a great observation! Adds a new layer to this aspect of Ghost!

One thing that encourages the misinterpretation of Aegon as the mummer's dragon is the option of making him a wholly false dragon ("f!Aegon") to eliminate the factor of Dany necessarily becoming a dreaded usurper. Because by the time he has reached Westeros, Aegon certainly isn't silent and hidden anymore, making this descriptor fairly nonsensical from Dany's end. Unlike the Sun's (Elia's) son.

Of course, all of this hinges on entirely ignoring the far bigger bombshell that is Jon's true parentage. Why would GRRM waste that description on anyone but him? But oh, bad, because it makes Jon someone Dany needs to be warned about...

[zetaaa]

Two nights passed in silence before the wench finally found the courage to whisper, “Jaime? Why did you shout out?” “Why did I shout ‘sapphires,’ you mean? Use your wits, wench. Would this lot have cared if I shouted ‘rape’?” “You did not need to shout at all.” “You’re hard enough to look at with a nose. Besides, I wanted to make the goat say ‘thapphireth.’ ”He chuckled. “A good thing for you I’m such a liar. An honorable man would have told the truth about the Sapphire Isle.” “All the same,” she said. “I thank you, ser.” ASOS, Jaime IV (grazie/thank you @ancientoctagon for the remind)

[fallbabylon]

The Ragadaziow (forefathers) Guisers performing the trial of the Beast of Bodmin- a mock trial in the style of a mummers play dating back to 1549. The Bodmin Play (An Gwary Bosvenna) sees the beast captured and paraded in the streets- St Petroc’s Ossery Casket watching over the event.

The Beast of Bodmin is not just a recent cultural reference but refers to the local tradition of a dragon at Halgavor. Legend states that St. Petroc removed a splinter from the creature’s eye and thus tamed it. Historical records of Riding Day Revels refer to people being tricked into searching for and fighting the dragon. - Bodmin, Kernow