Game of Thrones Meta: The Power of Telling Stories

The dragons are gone, the giants are dead, and the children of the forest are forgotten..

There is no magic in the world any more, only stories

- Master Lleuwynn to Brann, Game of Thrones

We live in a world without magic but stories...stories that we often forget the power of.
How they can hold us, take hold of us, captivate, and control us. Bewilder, befuddle,
and alter perception. Stories are who we are. Where we've been and where we are going.
We are in the end nothing but the written and unwritten stories on the fabric of time and
the woven tapestry of existence. Stories are the most powerful magic there is.

Power is a trick of the light, who you perceive that has it, and who casts
the longest shadow. A little man can cast a mighty large shadow.

-Varys, the Spider to Tyrion Lanniser, Game of Thrones

Been thinking about stories. I think sometimes we never really know each other until we learn each other's stories. And stories are the one thing that we have that has existed the longest...since the days of cave paintings, and are the only things that last...Ozymandias look at my mighty works..and yet they are nothing but dust wrapped inside a story told as poem in a book.

Finished reading The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern recently. It's a Young Adult novel, but quite innovative and different and with decidedly adult themes and concepts.
It's a narrative that wraps around itself. The end is the beginning and back again. And the narrative is about the magic of storytelling, how a story...words can become a circus that engulf the reader, or viewer, obsess the dreamer. So the story takes you over and becomes your world.

"You tell stories?" the man in the grey suite asks.

"Stories, tales, bardic chronicles," Widget says. "Whatever you care to call them. The things we were discussing earlier that are more complicated than they used to be. I take pieces of the past that I see and I combine them into narratives. It's not that important-"

"It is important," the man in the grey suit interrupts. "Someone needs to tell those tales. When the battles are fought and won and lost, when the pirates find their treasures and the dragons eat their foes for breakfast with a nice cup of Lapsang souchong, someone needs to tell their bits of overlapping narrative. There's magic in that. It's in the listener, and for each and every ear it will be different, and it will affect them in ways they can never predict. From the mundane to the profound. You may tell a tale that takes up residence in someone's soul, becomes their blood and self and purpose. That tale will move them and drive them and who knows what they might do because of it, because of your words. That is your role, your gift. Your sister may be able to see the future, but you yourself can shape it, boy. Do not forget that."

-The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern

The Power of Stories Depicted in Episode 2.3 of Game of Thrones
( spoilers for episode 2.3 of Game of Thrones )

Be careful of the stories you tell...for they will change your reader. Be careful how you listen...for they change the stories you have yet to write. Mold and twist them, alter and shape them. A romance may now become a nightmare, or a nightmare could twist itself into a dream. Stories have power, no matter the teller. The power is in the listener, how we twist them inside ourselves, how we listen, and what we pull from the fabric of the tale.