#squishers

GRRM is often very restrictive with his descriptions of people; we often get only a handful of key features, and so -- especially in the case of someone as particularly odd as Biter -- it's worth assuming that the handful of descriptors that we get are carefully chosen.

Biter being "inhuman":

The first look at Biter that we get is through Arya's eyes, in ACOK Arya I:

...gross fat bald one with the pointed teeth and the weeping sores on his cheeks had eyes like nothing human.

Seeing "nothing human" in his very first description certainly could be a clue for what we're meant to look out for, but it's of course not definitive. It could be simply a metaphor (though I believe GRRM is quite selective with his metaphors). I'm going to return to the weeping sores on his cheeks later, also.

Arya suggests that he is not human again, later, in ACOK Arya IX:

Rorge and Biter could be demons he called up from some hell, not men at all.

It just seems notable that Arya repeats this train of thought. Sure, they are inhumanly horrible, but is Biter inhumanly horrible?

Going back in time to ACOK Arya II, when she interacts with Biter for the first time:

The bald one opened his mouth and hissed like some immense white lizard.

Again, Biter in direct comparison with something inhuman, specifically lizardlike. The hissing repeats a lot. There are several mentions of him hissing, in ACOK Arya II, III, and IX, as well as AFFC Brienne VII, but they all just say things along the lines of "Biter hissed", so I'm lumping them in here. It is notable that Biter cannot speak any human tongue, he can only hiss.

Biter's strange mouth:

Speaking of "tongues", to continue in Arya II:

...he opened his mouth wide and waggled his tongue at her, only it was more a stump than a tongue.

I've seen other point out that this makes for an interesting bookend to Biter's story, because the image of Biter's gaping mouth and unusual "tongue" is called back to later, in AFFC Brienne VII, when Biter is eating her:

Biter threw back his head and opened his mouth again, howling, and stuck his tongue out at her. It was sharply pointed, dripping blood, longer than any tongue should be. Sliding from his mouth, out and out and out, red and wet and glistening, it made a hideous sight, obscene. His tongue is a foot long, Brienne thought, just before the darkness took her. Why, it looks almost like a sword.

It does make for a cool mirrored moment, of opening his mouth wide and sticking out his "tongue". Obviously, we later learn that this is not a tongue, it's Gendry's spear. However, it's interesting that on a close read, we could almost have "proof" that it can't be his tongue, because his tongue is unnaturally short, not unnaturally long. In either case, though, there's this focus on his mouth and its unnatural appearance, both literally and metaphorically. In ACOK, when his "stump" tongue is mentioned the first time, the only purpose seems to be to illustrate how unlike a tongue it is. Perhaps how unlike a human tongue it is.

Returning to the same scene in ACOK Arya II:

Biter hissed at her again, displaying a mouthful of yellowed teeth filed into points.

Arya interprets this as a human with filed teeth and poor dental habits, but Cersei believes that her handmaids are shrinking her dresses, so I think in this instance it's important to stick to things that are facts and not interpretations. His teeth are notably pointed, and notably yellow.

Biter's strange body:

He lunges at her, and we get this description of his exertion:

Huge pale hands groped for her while veins bulged along Biter's arms, but the bonds held, and finally the man collapsed backward. Blood ran from the weeping sores on his cheeks.

A repeat of the mention that his size is remarkable, a repeat of the mention that his paleness is remarkable, and a repeat of "weeping sores" specifically on his cheeks.

All of these descriptors are repeated again in AFFC Brienne VIII when Brienne recalls the memory of Biter's attack:

...it was Biter facing her, huge and bald and maggot-white, with weeping sores upon his cheeks. Naked he came, fondling his member, gnashing his filed teeth together.

Overlarge, hairless, unnaturally pale, with pointed teeth and "weeping sores upon his cheeks". This is all we ever get about how Biter looks.

We do get one more piece of information, though: how he smells. Arya notes it in ACOK Arya X:

Biter gave off a stench like bad cheese, so the Brave Companions made him sit down near the foot of the table where he could grunt and hiss to himself and tear his meat apart with fingers and teeth.

And Brienne notes it right before he starts eating her alive:

His breath stank like cheese gone rotten.

Again, identical descriptors.

Comparing to the Squishers:

Now, yes, all of these things are possible while if Biter is only human. He may have filed his teeth, and he may not be able to speak because his tongue was cut out, making it a stump. His paleness and stench may both be due to some Flea-Bottom chronic disease.

However, all of these together seem particularly notable in comparison to the concise visual description of the Squishers that Nimble Dick gives Brienne in AFFC Brienne IV:

They look like men till you get close, but their heads is too big, and they got scales where a proper man's got hair. Fish-belly white they are, with webs between their fingers. They're always damp and fishy-smelling, but behind these blubbery lips they got rows of green teeth sharp as needles. ...padding along on them webbed feet with a little squish-squish sound.

They look like men, except not when you get close; Arya assumes Biter is a man, but his eyes are like "nothing human". Their heads are too big; Biter's large size is consistently noted. Squishers have scales instead of hair, and Biter is "bald". They are "fish-belly white", Brienne calls Biter "maggot-white" -- both similar and notably inhuman levels of pale. They are always damp and fishy smelling -- Biter has "weeping sores", indicating a level of dampness, and smells like rotten cheese. Squishers have rows of sharp green teeth, and Biter has sharp yellow teeth.

We only get a handful of descriptors of both Biter and the Squishers, but they are nearly identical descriptors. The only missing feature of the Squishers in Biter is the webbed hands and feet -- and much has been made of other web-fingered characters for that association. However, considering that every other feature is the same, I think that the implication that Biter is a Squisher still stands.

Also, I will add a theory of my own to the mix:

"Weeping sores on his cheeks", which is repeated three times, is a very specific image. When I first read this, I thought that perhaps he had some disease which caused weeping sores. But even when Brienne pictures him naked, and during every other description of him, we never see weeping sores anywhere else on his body -- only on his cheeks.

I believe that's because Biter has gills, only no one can make sense of it when they look at him.

Additional significance for Brienne:

Ultimately, it doesn't necessarily add too much to the story whether or not Biter is ever actually revealed to be a Squisher. He's dead now, anyway.

However, if we accept that Biter is a Squisher, then that gives a lot more narrative context for Nimble Dick's long explanation to Brienne about what Squishers are. In retrospect, it means that the reason Brienne (and the reader) has to learn all of this is because her final, climatic fight in AFFC will be fighting a Squisher. From AFFC Brienne IV:

"If they try, I'll kill them." Podrick touched his sword."You try that. You just try. Squishers don't die easy." He winked at Brienne. "You a bad little girl, m'lady?"

It's almost like a classic Martin foreshadowing moment, similar to Sansa wishing some hero would throw Slynt down and behead him, and then Jon eventually does just that. With foreshadowing rules like that, this Nimble Dick line could set up an eventual Pod-Squisher or Brienne-Squisher fight scene, which is exactly what I believe happens. Nimble Dick's warning that they "don't die easy" ends up being incredibly, horrifically true.

In addition, the relationship between that conversation and Brienne's fight with Biter makes for an interesting multilayered gender moment for Brienne, if Biter is a Squisher or even a half-Squisher:

The girls they keep to breed with, but the boys they eat, tearing at them with those sharp green teeth.

_

In advance of counter-arguments ("but this one GRRM quote said...")

Whenever this topic has been brought up before, somebody references the unpublished backstory of Rorge and Biter which GRRM revealed in person at a Canadian Broadcasting Corporation book-signing event, in Vancouver, in January 2006. People reference this as though it is proof that Biter is just some unfortunate human raised inhumanely. I do not believe that GRRM has said anything which suggests that Biter is necessarily human.

The interview was not recorded verbatim, but a report was uploaded to So Spake Martin two times.

This is the report:

At the first event, the CBC radio interview, a girl asked him about Biter. She said most of his characters are somewhat grey, not totally evil.. but that there was something about Biter, and she had suspicions about him. Martin seemed to love the question, and laughed about it, and then he told us the as-yet-unwritten backstory to Biter! Here it is, if you want to know, but I guess it's SPOILERS!: Rorge owned a pot shop or bar in Flea Bottom, the really bad part of King's Landing. Rorge would stage rat fights, and dog fights, bear cub fights, etc., and make money of these fights. At some point he found young Biter, a big ugly kid with no parents or something like that, and took him in. Rorge starting putting Biter into the fights, fighting mastiffs and bear cubs, etc. And then he said something like "And all of this led to his winning personality! So there you go, that's the backstory for Biter that I haven't written yet, but I might!"

First, literally, Rorge finding Biter as a "big ugly kid with no parents or something like that" does not mean that Biter is human. From Rorge's perspective, no matter his origin, he would have looked like a big ugly kid, and would not have had any parents. No humanity necessary.

In fact, Biter's origin being King's Landing might even add credence to the idea that he is a Squisher, as the Squishers are a local story of Crackclaw Point, suggesting their presence in the area, and King's Landing lies against the bay directly south of Crackclaw Point. If he were a Squisher and literally from under the waters, he could have washed up through Blackwater Rush and made his way into the city.

Second, Martin seemed to love the question and laughed about it. It certainly sounds like he enjoyed the fact that people were suspicious about there being more to Biter -- which, to me, sounds like he means for there to have been more to Biter. That interpretation may be entirely speculative, but it seems in character with Martin's other good-humored dodgy answers about other in-world mysteries.

Finally, even if we say that Biter was born in King's Landing, and that Rorge did take him in when he was an orphan with no parents, he might still be a Squisher, or at least half-Squisher. Because that's the other thing about Squishers, returning to that Nimble Dick warning:

They come by night and steal bad little children ... The girls they keep to breed with ...

And is possibly corroborated in The World of Ice and Fire - Oldtown:

...queer, misshapen race of half men sired by creatures of the salt seas upon human women. These Deep Ones, as he names them, are the seed from which our legends of merlings have grown...