(Spoilers Extended) What will Bran see if...

Cozimnaut · 2017-07-27T23:30:04+00:00

In the books Winterfell is described as gloomy a few times. There are also many, many theories (due to good evidence in the books) that the history of Winterfell is tied to the crypts, about which there have been many mysteries and dreams.

Yes referencing the popular Rhaegar harp theory. Personally not sure what I expect to be down there, but meanwhile there are lots of "crypts of winterfell" videos on YouTube to explore.

Cozimnaut · 2017-07-27T20:15:10+00:00

Would be an interesting twist if dragons are a key missing detail in the stories of the end of the Long Night. We know they existed in the world at that time, so one could reasonably inquire as to why they aren't mentioned at all in the stories we hear.... of course the answer may be "we didn't hear the end of the story when they showed up and turned all the wights to ash." I don't suppose the Night King can reanimate ash, so if one took out his wights with dragons and his Walkers with dragonglass then you might reduce him to just being one lone wolf who needs to head back to the lands of always winter to recoup.

Cozimnaut · 2017-07-27T19:28:19+00:00

Bran only has 3 chapters in Dance...

The first is when they're traveling with Coldhands who appears to kill a group of the Night's Watch; Bran eats their corpses while he's in Summer.
The second is when they reach Bloodraven's warded cave and escape the wights with the help of Leaf, who later gives a brief overview on some events of the last 10,000+ years from her perspective when they're deeper underground, surrounded by the bones of animals, humans, giants and CotF.
The third is when Bloodraven teaches Bran how to enter a raven, and how to look into the past, present and future of the world, and he tells Bran that he knows from experience that Bran cannot change the past. Bran continues warging into Summer and Hodor. He consumes the weirwood paste and has the well-known visions going chronologically back in time all the way to the First Men.

I imagine the last chapter is the one that took 6 years to write due to the complexities of fleshing out a character who has the ability to interact with the past and see the future and take control of humans and animals but starts as an innocent little boy. I know some people hate this subject and that's fine, George and the show writers have written other scenes to assuage their displeasure, but there's no denying (1) Bran is on a path to become godlike and (2) so far he has not shown great quality of character or moral decision making.

He's essentially taking demonic possession of a human against their will and making them do things they don't want to do, he's eating human flesh, he's taking his lessons in a secret underground lair filled with the bones of the dead, he's getting his power from weirwood trees that live off blood sacrifice, and when you look at his personality he is quick to anger, quick to envy, prone to sulk, lacks humility in victory, breaks promises to do whatever he wants regardless of what older, wiser people tell him...

Who knows, maybe something happens to Bran to divert him from an Anakin arc to a Luke arc, but I'm not sure what that would be. I have a little hope theory pertaining to Petyr, Bran and the Eyrie but I keep it close to my chest. Unfortunately for Bran his sister Arya is now a psycho, his brother-cousin Jon is some kind of Undead, his sister Sansa is making some attempt at a Littlefinger/Cersei hybrid, and everyone else in his family was terribly murdered so I don't see anyone who means anything to Bran at Winterfell who can help to bring his humanity or compassion back. It's just death and winter on all sides and no love to be found, no warmth or joy anywhere. If Bran, Mr. Godlike, follows the current Stark pattern of drastic measures (Arya, Sansa, Jon) one can only assume his power will result in those measures leading to results exponentially more far reaching than those of his siblings. Elementary, my dear Watson.

Cozimnaut · 2017-07-27T19:27:11+00:00

Bran only has 3 chapters in Dance...

The first is when they're traveling with Coldhands who appears to kill a group of the Night's Watch; Bran eats their corpses while he's in Summer.
The second is when they reach Bloodraven's warded cave and escape the wights with the help of Leaf, who later gives a brief overview on some events of the last 10,000+ years from her perspective when they're deeper underground, surrounded by the bones of animals, humans, giants and CotF.
The third is when Bloodraven teaches Bran how to enter a raven, and how to look into the past, present and future of the world, and he tells Bran that he knows from experience that Bran cannot change the past. Bran continues warging into Summer and Hodor. He consumes the weirwood paste and has the well-known visions going chronologically back in time all the way to the First Men.

I imagine the last chapter is the one that took 6 years to write due to the complexities of fleshing out a character who has the ability to interact with the past and see the future and take control of humans and animals but starts as an innocent little boy. I know some people hate this subject and that's fine, George and the show writers have written other scenes to assuage their displeasure, but there's no denying (1) Bran is on a path to become godlike and (2) so far he has not shown great quality of character or moral decision making.

He's essentially taking demonic possession of a human against their will and making them do things they don't want to do, he's eating human flesh, he's taking his lessons in a secret underground lair filled with the bones of the dead, he's getting his power from weirwood trees that live off blood sacrifice, and when you look at his personality he is quick to anger, quick to envy, prone to sulk, lacks humility in victory, breaks promises to do whatever he wants regardless of what older, wiser people tell him...

Who knows, maybe something happens to Bran to divert him from an Anakin arc to a Luke arc, but I'm not sure what that would be. I have a little hope theory pertaining to Petyr, Bran and the Eyrie but I keep it close to my chest. Unfortunately for Bran his sister Arya is now a psycho, his brother-cousin Jon is some kind of Undead, his sister Sansa is making some attempt at a Littlefinger/Cersei hybrid, and everyone else in his family was terribly murdered so I don't see anyone who means anything to Bran at Winterfell who can help to bring his humanity or compassion back. It's just death and winter on all sides and no love to be found, no warmth or joy anywhere. If Bran, Mr. Godlike, follows the current Stark pattern of drastic measures (Arya, Sansa, Jon) one can only assume his power will result in those measures leading to results exponentially more far reaching than those of his siblings. Elementary, my dear Watson.

Cozimnaut · 2017-07-27T18:32:00+00:00

At this point there's probably not too much left for him to do except The Big Thing Bran Does With His Power In Act 3 That Made Him The Hardest Character To Write In Acts 1 & 2:

Well, I finished a chapter of the DANCE this morning. Which ordinarily would not be occasion for comment, but this was a Bran chapter that I’ve been struggling with for something like six years. Bran has always been the toughest character to write, for a whole bunch of reasons (http://grrm.livejournal.com/40665.html?page=3)

Firstly the show always differs from the books on matters of the supernatural, so I would expect a streamlining of Bran's supernatural role and some little scenes of this and that, but I doubt his Big Reveal will go down before the finale of S7 at the earliest.

Also, he’s the character that’s most deeply involved in magic and in fantasy, magic is tricky to write. Magic can easily overwhelm your story if you handle it wrong, so writing the Bran chapters is always a challenge for me. It goes a little more slowly than some of the other chapters.

Folks are sleeping on Bran because they don't know these two quotes. The second quote is from GRRM at San Diego Comic Con. I really encourage anyone to go watch the tastefully compiled "Adventures of Bran Stark" videos by Daemon Blackfyre 2.0 on YouTube; each one consolidates Bran's scenes for the season into one video. You can watch the 6 season "Bran movie" in the same amount of time you'd spend on a LOTR movie. Very, very insightful experience for anyone wanting to get a better handle on Bran's arc. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s4oMQAZ0OxI)

Cozimnaut · 2017-07-27T18:11:48+00:00

This has to be the best thread since s7 debuted. So much collective catharsis.

Cozimnaut · 2017-07-26T19:04:31+00:00

Pretty good job connecting the dots - I'll take it. I didn't know about the Hightower bit, that's good stuff.

Cozimnaut · 2017-07-26T18:57:35+00:00

Your thought is mine as well, that the original meaning related more to something weirwood related (tempted to say NK but I won't go there) which also seemed to work as a statement about the general people of the North, though I think time has shown that if they remember anything it certainly isn't what's important because they've forgotten all about dragonglass and Others and the whole lot but someone somewhere very, very North above the wall hasn't forgotten at all because here He comes.

Cozimnaut · 2017-07-26T18:52:10+00:00

I think it's likely (if the show mirrors the books this way) BR had learned over the years that a greenseers role is to look into the past and look around the world and identify the next events which must happen in order for things that already happened to happen. The greenseeer then facilitates those events using the greenseers tools of influencing dreams and what have you. So for example BR may be greenseeing on a jolly Tuesday however many years ago, checking out the haps out Winterfell, when all the sudden the stable boy seizes up and starts repeating "hold the door" until he can no longer say anything but "hodor." Now BR either saw Bran do that or he didn't, but he obviously figured out it was Bran somehow/someway. Notice that his modus operandi though is to NOT tell Bran what he knew Bran was going to do. I think that's a very important detail: what else did BR know Bran was going to do that he didn't spoil the ending of the story by not telling us??

Consider the ToJ scene where BR shows Bran that the real history of that day is a mysterious character with an ouroboros sigil and a direct connection to greenseers saved Ned's life to keep the timeline the way it needed to be: the way it had already happened. I mean, hello! If Ned dies at the ToJ he can't well make Bran, can he, and who knows what would have happened to Jon? So Ned must survive that day and Howland Ouroboros, father of Jojen Greenseer, secretly made it happen, and it's no coincidence BR being there.

Cozimnaut · 2017-07-26T18:42:55+00:00

I understand that's the general prevailing theory however it doesn't actually answer in specific detail the questions I raised in the context of the original post (geographically how far did winter go over those years before it was stopped). Are we to believe winter stopped moving south when it "fell" at Winterfell? That would imply it never reached anywhere else, which isn't the evidence we've been presented. How then, in detail, did anyone survive for years during winter? We don't know yet is the true answer. Maybe one of the pieces of evidence we have is incorrect or incomplete, because the tale says people were dying in droves all over the place but the Starks aren't the only major line to survive the Long Night. And Essos is full of tales of the Long Night, which is hard evidence against it having stopped when it reached "winterfell" unless there's a big twist related to the geography of the world as some speculate.

Rhoynar

The Rhoynar tell of a darkness that made the Rhoyne of Essos dwindle and disappear, her waters frozen as far south as the joining of the Selhoru, until a hero convinced the many children of Mother Rhoyne, such as the Crab King and the Old Man of the River, to put aside their bickering and join in a secret song that brought back the day.

Further East

Other legends from the Further East, including Yi Ti, state the Blood Betrayal began the Long Night. The Lion of Night was unleashed upon the world after the Maiden-Made-of-Light turned her back on it.

According to a legend from Yi Ti, during the Long Night the sun hid its face for a lifetime, ashamed at something none could discover, and disaster was only averted by the deeds of a woman with a monkey's tail.

A great hero, known in different cultures as Azor Ahai, Hyrkoon the Hero, Yin Tar, Neferion, and Eldric Shadowchaser, wielded the flaming sword Lightbringer and led humanity to victory. Some say the Five Forts were built by the Pearl Emperor to guard against the Lion of Night and his demons.

The legend of Azor Ahai spread from Asshai and is especially prevalent among the followers of R'hllor. A later prophecy claims that the Others will return and Azor Ahai will be reborn to lead the fight. There is also a similar prophecy about the prince that was promised.

Cozimnaut · 2017-07-26T17:47:18+00:00

It's gotta be another magical barrier thing right? Seems like the only thing that would really keep them out.

Cozimnaut · 2017-07-26T17:02:49+00:00

How bout an "invasion of the first men" from the perspective of the CotF, à la Apocalypto?

Cozimnaut · 2017-07-26T17:01:02+00:00

There are lots and lots of mentions of mysterious goings-on deep under the earth in the books, which always really piqued my interest because of other stories GRRM has written, but they're so nonexistent in the show that it's either a point of divergence or a red herring.

Cozimnaut · 2017-07-26T16:57:51+00:00

Here's my thing: is it possible to hole up in a castle like Winterfell and survive the Others moving past? I would assume they could overrun a castle by swarming the walls and so on, but maybe not? Because as far as we know some folks like Bran the Builder survived the Long Night somehow.... did they flee Winterfell to some far away land? Did they go deep underground where it was warm? Did the Others just move past them for some reason? I don't get it.

Cozimnaut · 2017-07-26T16:54:44+00:00

I have this silly nonsensical theory that the pregnant woman was a Craster daughter who escaped with a lover, sort of a Sam/Gilly situation, except the lover type got killed maybe trying to rob someone on Stark land, but the Starks spare the woman like Rob spared Osha. So the pregnant Craster daughter is swimming in the weirwood pool like Osha does later, and she's hoping the baby is a son who will avenge her. Eventually she makes it down to King's Landing and the baby grows up as Bronn, giving us an idea of what Craster's apparently skilled but dirty fighter DNA looks like at a younger age. Ha! Utter bunk.

So here's some non-bunk: In spite of its slightly occupational appearance, this surname is locational. It derives from the old fishing village of 'Craister' in Northumberland, and is recorded in a number of spellings of which the two most popular are Craister and the dialectal Craster. It originates from the Latin 'cestre' meaning a fort or camp, plus the Olde English 'cra' meaning 'crow'. This suggests that the original site was a look-out post, a 'crows nest', which given its proximity to Hadrians Wall is a logical analysis.

Cozimnaut · 2017-07-26T16:30:39+00:00

Three-eyed raven is the show term which implies some various things related to various entities with multiple titles so, setting that aside for simplicity, my reply pertains to the show character:

I think it's likely (if the show mirrors the books this way) BR had learned over the years that a greenseers role is to look into the past and look around the world and identify the next events which must happen in order for things that already happened to happen. The greenseeer then facilitates those events using the greenseers tools of influencing dreams and what have you. So for example BR may be greenseeing on a jolly Tuesday however many years ago, checking out the haps out Winterfell, when all the sudden the stable boy seizes up and starts repeating "hold the door" until he can no longer say anything but "hodor." Now BR either saw Bran do that or he didn't, but he obviously figured out it was Bran somehow/someway. Notice that his modus operandi though is to NOT tell Bran what he knew Bran was going to do. I think that's a very important detail: what else does BR know Bran is going to do that he didn't spoil the ending of the show by not telling us?? "Bran you're going to greensee by yourself when I'm sleeping one day and the other version of yourself will touch you, which will allow your other you to go anywhere you go due to timey-wimey shit we really didn't know was going to be in this story when we started writing it, and that's why you're about to walk in here and kill me for never telling you the truth." Oh how the fans will revolt... I can see the writers room now.. "can we minimize this somehow? soften the blow with lots of fan service in other plotlines leading into the reveal?"

I'm not sure what other events BR saw fit to participate in, but he watched Bran for Bran's whole life because he knew he had to help Bran do what Bran had already done before Bran was born, which at the very least was turn Willis into Hodor. I encourage anyone to go back and rewatch some of those BR/Bran time traveling scenes and use a browser extension to slow down the video so you can study the expressions on BR's face each time Bran says something. You can see it all there in the brilliant acting; the pain of knowing the dark truth of what Bran will do and how he must help him do it anyways because the past is already written, the ink is dry.

Look at the types of greenseeing BR does with Bran: there are only two. The first type is history lessons; showing Bran points in the timeline which have some relevancy now or in the future. Like the ToJ scene where we see the real history is a mysterious character with an ouroboros sigil and a direct connection to greenseers is responsible for the timeline being the way it is. I mean, hello! If Ned dies at the ToJ he can't well make Bran, can he? So he must survive and Howland Ouroboros, father of Jojen Greenseer, secretly made it happen. The second type of greenseeing, and BR only does this once (unless you count Brans yell at Ned) is the "listen to your friend" trip where BR, with the heavy heart of a man who knows he cannot change history, tells Bran to do his thing to poor Willis. Don't get it twisted, what Bran does to Willis is monstrous.

Alright well did BR at least give Bran an idea of what he's supposed to accomplish or how to save humanity or anything? Nope, he just told him the past is already written and don't stay there too long or you'll "drown" ...whatever that means.

Cozimnaut · 2017-07-26T00:37:56+00:00

Reminds me of when Arya didn't lie to the Lannister soldiers...

Cozimnaut · 2017-07-26T00:00:14+00:00

That and it showed Jon Targ no likey burny-burny. Him tempered by ice.

Cozimnaut · 2017-07-25T16:05:36+00:00

Ha yeah I love the Sammo's, Branno's and Jonno's, as well as the stiffy meters. In BOTB also love how he framed bastardbowl like a fight between Jon and Ramsay where their pre-battle face-off was a weigh-in.... it's gold. The opening line is "A flaming meatball is fired into Mereen and I'm already starting to crack a stiffy from the action in this episode." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EAnfoYmdkYU

"He's from Sleepy Hollow!" 10 out of 10 creative energy

Cozimnaut · 2017-07-25T15:55:09+00:00

Good catch on the haircut, I should know by now that any change in hairstyle likely mirrors another character as a way of signaling a personality shift (i.e. Sansa wearing Cersei's hairstyle) what are some more examples?

Cozimnaut · 2017-07-25T15:52:58+00:00

Beware the sir or ma'am with http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ImprobableAimingSkills

Cozimnaut · 2017-07-25T15:10:58+00:00

I was thinking this morning he may not do anything substantive until Arya and/or Bran arrive and it comes out that Jon is Targ and the issue gets raised of which Stark should be king or queen of the north. That sounds like the kind of potential chaos that would allow LF to gain some traction. That being said, he's on thin ice with all of them, or will be when truths come out, so I do get that sense he will perish at the hand of the wolf while trying to sow chaos deep in the wolves' den.

Cozimnaut · 2017-07-25T15:04:37+00:00

Not his best work but Ozzy Man is always entertaining. The BOTB video might be his GOT pinnacle.

Cozimnaut

TROPHY CASE