Slayer of Lies
(continued from Part 1)
So, let’s go through all these and try to give them meanings.
three fires must you light . . . one for life and one for death and one to love . . . Her own heart was beating in unison to the one that floated before her, blue and corrupt . . . Glowing like sunset, a red sword was raised in the hand of a blue-eyed king who cast no shadow. A cloth dragon swayed on poles amidst a cheering crowd. From a smoking tower, a great stone beast took wing, breathing shadow fire. . . . mother of dragons, slayer of lies . . .
In this framework of connecting the original triple threes descriptions to their vision counterparts all three images are of course false dragons in some sense, antagonists to our heroes and their pale shadows — Mr Writer talks of dragons as a manifestation of fire, "fire made flesh" in the story, "and there's something magical about the fire" in the bts for House of the Dragon, and the true fire beats the false ones.
After all, why would the Undying from their eternalist perspective see these three key fires she lights as especially noteworthy, what do they do in the great chain of cause and effect as seen from above time itself?
They slay lies.
So they show her lies as a suggestion of her three key fires, helpfully.
Fire for life... Glowing like sunset, a red sword was raised in the hand of a blue-eyed king who cast no shadow.
Mr Writer is fucking with us the readers by throwing the "red sword" in there, like how he likes to switch from literal to symbolic meanings back through literal here and there — it's a fairly literal description of Stannis that stands for an archetypical paperback fantasy-style image of Azor Ahai that gets subverted by Daenerys a bit earlier in the story than Stannis himself appears, and once you click the whole shadows=dragons=a flaming sword connection together, yeah, it's about dragons, too, the fire needed to live out the Winter, and she slays the lie of him by lighting the pyre under the red comet that gives life to her true red sword, “mother of dragons”.
three mounts must you ride . . . one to bed and one to dread and one to love . . . The voices were growing louder, she realized, and it seemed her heart was slowing, and even her breath. . . . Her silver was trotting through the grass, to a darkling stream beneath a sea of stars. A corpse stood at the prow of a ship, eyes bright in his dead face, grey lips smiling sadly. A blue flower grew from a chink in a wall of ice, and filled the air with sweetness. . . . mother of dragons, bride of fire . . .
The “three mounts must you ride, mother of dragons, bride of fire” connection shows us how these work; again, Mr Writer likes to switch between the meanings so no threes are exactly the same — there we have a horse, a wooden horse, and no horse at all but simply a suggestion of Jon Snow with the “blue flower”, Jon Snow, who is, of course, a reincarnation of Lyanna Stark and a half-wolf half-dragon. So it stands to reason each of the three fires must be of a different kind, too, some literal, some metaphorical. Some for life, and some...
Fire for death... A cloth dragon swayed on poles amidst a cheering crowd.
A cloth dragon is Aegon VI a false Targaryen promised prince, a typical character of historical fiction, and let’s say she slays the lie of him by proving him a Blackfyre. But this second fire is “the fire for death”, which sounds rather more literal than that and does not spell anything good for the pretender prince as he sets his sights on a city sitting on top of a giant stash of green wildfire, a hidden legacy of his purported grandfather.
"A mummer's dragon, you said. What is a mummer's dragon, pray?"
"A cloth dragon on poles," Dany explained. "Mummers use them in their follies, to give the heroes something to fight."
And perhaps once upon a time Mr Writer really did want to clash Daenerys with a pretender character directly, as juicy as it sounds, but the way “A Dance With Dragons” is arranged suggests to me this is no longer in the cards, as it spends a lot of time setting up a deadly, long dragonfight between the characters of Euron Crow’s Eye, Cersei Lannister, Young Griff/Jon Connington, and the Martells, replacing the original sprawling game of thrones from the first three books with a multitude of echoes of the Dance of the Dragons and all the Blackfyre Rebellions and the Sack of King’s Landing all rolled into one and layered on top of each other like a big, rotten onion — and directly teasing the boy’s sad final fate.
“And everywhere the dragons danced the people died."
But Daenerys would still consider herself the cause of all this and feel responsible if the fire for death is set off by any of her stolen dragons, the green one in particular.
Mother of dragons, Daenerys thought. Mother of monsters. What have I unleashed upon the world? A queen I am, but my throne is made of burned bones, and it rests on quicksand.
The dragons are an extension of her, as she herself as the Mother of Dragons is a three-headed dragon in her own right, and it would be a bitter sting of the decades-long pay off to her long lingering stay in Essos to fight for freedom (and Mr Writer entangling himself in the Meereenese Knot, and then adding Volantis’ plea for her to come and help on top of it, just like how the Wolf King pleaded to her once in these very same visions of the Undying) if she had finally returned home to find a ghost city, as she does at the beginning of “A Clash of Kings”, and a throne standing atop the burned bones and ash, Ozymandias-style.
(a lesser known bts tidbit is D&D took full credit for the idea of the Iron Throne’s destructuon for themselves in the same documentary where they claim the entirety of the Breaking Bad-ish throne room scene concluding the TV show as their own invention and their final glory, so perhaps Mr Writer does actually want the Throne to remain, for times to come, “Round the decay, of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare...”)
(the scene at the beginning of “Clash” where Rakharo journeys to one of the three ends of the Red Waste and finds the old bones of an immense dragon feels like another Ozymandias riff to me)
Fire to love... From a smoking tower, a great stone beast took wing, breathing shadow fire...
And the last one is a twisted dragon, which, way, way before FeastDance I'd say the wording conjures up an image of the Tower of Joy with a bunch of connections to the Azor Ahai Reborn prophecy, smoke-stone-fire, Daenerys slaying the lie of Jon Snow being simply “Jon Snow”, lighting his fire, the images suggesting him hatch out of his own secret origin story. But Mr Writer has made a lot of effort since then to connect the vision very directly to Euron Crow’s Eye, going to Oldtown to leap from a very tall tower and be reborn to fly, a very Lovecraftian image where the dragon is so unrecognizable it looks like a beast — and there’s a precedent for Mr Writer using an eerily similar wording when describing dreams of things to come in his other Westerosi-set work:
"You said that at the inn."
"Did I? Well, it's so. My dreams are not like yours, Ser Duncan. Mine are true. They frighten me. You frighten me. I dreamed of you and a dead dragon, you see. A great beast, huge, with wings so large they could cover this meadow. It had fallen on top of you, but you were alive and the dragon was dead."
"Did I kill it?"
Now would you look at that, a dead dragon! So perhaps she slays Euron by somehow "lighting a fire" to the truth of Jon Snow, half-dragon half-wolf represented by the blue flower, the king of the damned who dreams of crypts where there’s no place for him, as he dies and rises once more like Daenerys did before him walking into her fire for life, who then beats the blue-lipped undead king of the drowned that damns the whole world to Winter to prove he is above all gods? Prometheus-style, fire as knowledge (and, heh, the Citadel is there) — and fire as love.
"Fire to love", the fact that Mr Writer changed it to "to" all those years ago suggests to me he felt he knew exactly what he wanted to do back then — and him talking about it like, "fire is love, fire is passion, fire is sexual ardor", this makes "fire to love" a tautology, "love to love", a person to love.
“Three fires must you light, mother of dragons, slayer of lies.” So we have a pyre, a wildfire, and love — red, green, blue — cleansing the lies of a paperback fantasy Azor Ahai, a histfic pretender prince, and a Lovecraftian twisted dragon.
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One thing I love about this series is that it infuses reality. The animators scatter things and places to make it believable like Easter eggs. It also resonates the sentiments of the characters to the audience.
1) Takahashiya Mall could be Takashimaya. The red emblem is the clue. It is a luxury store that can be likened to Selfridges where only branded items are sold. I assume they went to the Nihombashi Tokyo branch. Which gives us the impression that knowing Kazuki, this was his favorite place to buy his clothes, etc. Until Anna Hanyu told him of the wonders of the discount stores.
2) I can’t believe they put “smock” in quotations. And Rei meant it was a cookie. What a Schmuck. Understandable as the two of them didn’t have any experience with it. I wonder if they wanted us to search for the etymology of the word which is women’s undergarment.
What it is and what is it really
3) The list of items a child needs in the daycare center is not absurd actually including placing the child’s name on every item. I’ve heard this from acquaintances who are kindergarten pedagogues about the reason it is important to write your child’s name on their things. The number of items that are lost or taken unintentionally is an everyday occurrence in these institutions (kigas, schools, etc.) bc often a child doesn’t care especially if the pieces of clothing are not written with the owner’s name. They also discourage the parents not to dress up their children in branded clothes. The number of complaints they get when the children come back home with dirty clothes is far too many. Good for the Japanese childcare system for having a foresight.
Also, I realised that there are a couple of types of childcare institutions in Japan that even the natives get confused. In the series Kazuki claimed that yōchien (幼稚園) and hoikuen (保育園) are the same. (“It’s the same thing with a different name.”) They were talking about hoikuen the whole time. Not sure if it was the writer’s intention. Although Kazuki got the fish difference correctly.
Hoikuen are legally defined as a child welfare institution and are subordinate to the Ministry of Health, Labour and Social Affairs, MHLW for short. Their focus is on the care of children whose families cannot take care of them during the day. That's why they are also the first point of contact for families where both parents work. Hoikuen therefore have long opening hours and accept children under one year of age. If they fulfil the requirements of the Child Welfare Act, they will receive a state license.
…
So-called yōchien kindergartens, on the other hand, are defined as schools under Japanese law and resemble preschools. For this reason, they are also subordinate to the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology, MEXT for short. Yochien only accept children from the age of three. Since they usually only offer half-day care, they are favoured by families where one parent does not work or works part-time. ( x )
Another source…
First of all, let’s define the word “daycare.” You might call it daycare or nursery school, but daycare in Japan is hoikuen (保育園) and is reserved for babies 56 days old up to 6 years old.
This is not to be confused with kindergarten (幼稚園 | yōchien), which is exclusively for kids 3 years old until they enter first grade. ( x )
4) Kazuki’s attempt to fit in on Miri’s first day at the daycare was not so far from the truth really.
Somewhere is a Louis Vuitton shopping bag
Believe it or not, Japanese mothers put a lot of effort on their choice of clothing on the day of the kindergarten interview. Kazuki had probably searched for those things and encountered the webpages where mothers gave advices on what to wear on this occasion. Take a note from this social content creator who used to work as a kindergarten teacher in Japan and is also a mum.
There is an “unofficial” dress code for these events, which is one step up from a funeral and a few notches down from an entrance ceremony. Take a look at what parents (mainly moms) should wear! ( x )
Too bad they exaggerated it on Miri’s first day. I cannot entirely blame Kazuki though. Him being an orphan who had witnessed poverty and being ostracized because of it, I guess, his opinion on how the people are treated based on their outside appearance bears unpleasant memories that he strives away from. Though it was a bit unfair to point out Rei’s social standing when K is not entirely privy to his friend’s traumatic past.
5) If the forged document below contains a bit of some facts (very important for writing fan fiction): Kazuki was born on the 16th of May, 1994. A Taurus. Miri, on the other hand, was born in 2018 November 8. They live in Naka Ward, apartment 801, 2-chōme (city district) Natsuyoshi (<<— I don’t think that really exists) Yokohama Prefecture. That is if there were some truths in it.
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