An Old Nan comment jumps out at me. Thoughts on Brans arc. And a cracking idea on Bran from another poster!

[Lord of Raventree Hall]

On 10/1/2016 at 4:16 AM, Little Scribe of Naath said:

Yeah, actually it's an idea that I think is way too out there, and in general relates to discussions of Bran's arc and his powers. The actual idea by itself is complete speculation, that's why I didn't open a seperate thread for it, but put it in the flow of a discussion on Bran.

I want to start by saying most of the theories I hear on this sight sound stupidly ridiculous to me especially if they have the words 'Secret Targaryen' or 'Tyrion' in them. However, you theory sounds spot on! Bran being the reason for emotion on the weirwoods faces and the cause of the lauging tree seems too good to not be true. I am not really on board for time travel, but this kind of simple form of going to the past and perhaps changing the faces on the weirwoods seems really cool and in the vein in which Martin seems to be headed. Genius, thank you for actually presenting a theory that seems to know Martin's writing style and the way the series actually is written.

[Macgregor of the North]

1 minute ago, Lord of Raventree Hall said:

I want to start by saying most of the theories I hear on this sight sound stupidly ridiculous to me especially if they have the words 'Secret Targaryen' or 'Tyrion' in them. However, you theory sounds spot on! Bran being the reason for emotion on the weirwoods faces and the cause of the lauging tree seems too good to not be true. I am not really on board for time travel, but this kind of simple form of going to the past and perhaps changing the faces on the weirwoods seems really cool and in the vein in which Martin seems to be headed. Genius, thank you for actually presenting a theory that seems to know Martin's writing style and the way the series actually is written.

@Little Scribe of Naath

I knew there would be more just like me on here who thinks your theory is the Bombay! You don't give yourself enough credit for how great an idea this one actually is, for all the reasons LoRH has pointed out above.

[YOVMO]

18 minutes ago, Macgregor of the North said:

Yup, I get the anger in Manderly. 

So the Weirwood is mimicking its Lords anger?

Are you meaning that the tree perhaps had a different expression at another point in time but is showing its anger now? What are you implying exactly my friend, talk frankly 

 

Actually I don't have it all worked out...not by a long shot. At some point I want to look at Weirwood face descriptions along side the face of the Lord descriptions. I know the heart tree at winterfell is solemn. 

 

If if I had some kind of luck I would find two descriptions of the same tree from different time periods coorosponding to two different lords.

right now I'll I'm implying is that some lords seem to bear striking resemblances to the faces on their heart tree and that MAY be significant 

[Macgregor of the North]

I wanted to insert something here and pose the question. What does Old Nan mean with the bolded part.

"The old woman smiled at him toothlessly. "My stories? No, my little lord, not mine. The stories are, before me and after me, before you too."

After her? Has Old Nan ever told Bran a story of a time after her? They are all about the 'past' aren't they? No future stories from Old Nan I know of I don't think.

Could this possibly be a hint at one, or multiple stories of hers having parts of involvement that are 'after' her, as in, 'future' involvement. I know just writing that will make people roll their eyes.

This goes back to the stable time loop thing and how Bran could be the cause of an event of the 'past' by his actions much later in 'time'. Not changing it, but Infact being the cause of it. Much like the Kotlt example.

Or... I've just misunderstood Old Nan which is possible knowing me lol.

[Macgregor of the North]

12 minutes ago, YOVMO said:

Actually I don't have it all worked out...not by a long shot. At some point I want to look at Weirwood face descriptions along side the face of the Lord descriptions. I know the heart tree at winterfell is solemn. 

 

If if I had some kind of luck I would find two descriptions of the same tree from different time periods coorosponding to two different lords.

right now I'll I'm implying is that some lords seem to bear striking resemblances to the faces on their heart tree and that MAY be significant 

Could be something man. An interesting thing worth looking into. The tree certainly seems to share Manderlys inner anger.

[Seams]

5 hours ago, Macgregor of the North said:

I always thought the passage in red was a direct reference to the outside world being set in stone(well no, iron I suppose) as in it is a solid repetitive cycle day to night etc, but it is much different to below in the cave, where the possibilities of acting outside of those iron circles is ever present.

I've always thought there was something significant about people falling in holes or finding passages into lower levels - maybe even just going up or down stairs or mountains. Now we know that time is supposed to move in a different way when the moon and stars are hidden from view. Or am I overstating or misinterpreting? Are characters on "story time" when they are in a cave? (In Australia, I suppose it might be called "Dream Time"?)

Does Story Time always work in the same way in each cave, dungeon or basement room? Or is a basement scene (or an iron circle) just a signal to the reader that a character is reliving a segment of an old legend?

In Narnia, the children grew to young adulthood during their trip through the wardrobe and then came back through and became little kids again, right? I think that's the Celtic idea of the underworld - that time in the Underworld moves more quickly than time in the regular world.

[Little Scribe of Naath]

@Lord of Raventree Hall @Ser Walton Thank you !  The idea originated as crackpot in my head but now with all the discussion about time travel possibilities in the series it might very well happen.

[Ice Queen]

On 9/30/2016 at 6:38 PM, Seams said:

 

I've been pulling together some thoughts for a new entry in the Puns and Wordplay thread, but it matches up so well with some of this discussion that I'll try it out here, half-baked though it may be. Actually, this draws on ideas from a lot of other threads and may explain some seemingly unrelated details in the books.

Iron / Noir / Rhoyne

I think there is built-in wordplay using "Iron" and the french word "noir," meaning black. But french adjectives change with the gender of the noun they modify, so "noir" is the same word as "noire," and that got the overactive wordplay area of my brain thinking about the river Rhoyne, also known as mother Rhoyne. (Different letters, but a sort of anagram.)

What do Iron and noir and the Rhoyne have in common? I'm still not entirely sure, but I think the mysterious loop the Shy Maid experiences might be the key. I think there is an oxbow that has reconnected to the river to create a complete loop. The passengers on the boat didn't notice that they had looped around an oxbow because they were arguing, so they believe they have magically traveled back in time to undergo a second attack by the stonemen.

Oxbows can come and go. It was on the thread discussing inns that we discussed that the inn at the crossroads used to be right on the riverbank, but the river had shifted 70 years ago so the inn was no longer right on the water. @deja vu posted a great link to a time lapse image of the shifting course of a river.

These next bits are still largely at the stream-of-consciousness stage:

So the river Rhoyne is like iron and noir - black iron? - and it has a loop. What else has black iron loops? Maester's chains. The link for ravenry is iron and, according to the wiki, black iron on the chain represents warfare. Steel is an alloy that includes iron, and Valyrian steel on a maester's chain represents magic.

Ravens deliver messages - which are made up of words - but are also associated with the ability to fly through the door that separates life and death. (Crones can peer through that door, which is probably why Nan has such good insights through her stories.) Of course, ravens are also strongly associated with Bloodraven, Bran and Jon. (With a side order of Sam Tarly and some other characters.)

Warfare usually involves swords. There is a "words" and "swords" pun, and Tywin tells us that words and swords are both weapons that can win wars. So swords and ravens are linked in that sense. Also, I have been searching on belts because characters seem to carry both blades and messages in their belts. Wait a minute - belts? There's another loop. One that humans put around themselves. Sort of like Maester chains. But I'm not sure if this is just a digression.

There is another important black iron loop: the ancient crown of the Kings of Winter. Iron and bronze, "metals of winter," as Catelyn describes them.

And this all comes back to "noir," possibly, because of the endless loop of sunrise and sunset and the cycle of day and night.

On your good "Thoughts on Bran/Brandon the builder" thread, you figured out that the phrase "a thousand years ago" or even just "a thousand years" was a signal that the reader could expect a reference to an ageless archetype or legend come back to life. I think there may be another signal. This signal that takes the form of an iron ring. When Catelyn, Robb, Greywind and Theon arrive at Riverrun, there is an iron ring in the stone wall where their boat is pulled up. There are iron rings in the ceiling of Davos's dungeon cell at White Harbor. Tyrion wears iron shackles when Jorah Mormont takes him captive. Could the iron ring be a hint that we are about to read about an event that will repeat somewhere else in the story, or that echoes something from a legend (such as Nan's repeated stories)?

What would it mean for Bran's story that the time loop takes the form of an iron loop? Is he helping to forge a chain; one that stretches back to Bran the Builder?

What does this mean for the giant chain that Tyrion commissioned for the harbor at King's Landing?

And here's a time travel random thought that I can't tie into any of this unless words and swords have a special ability to transcend time: What if Tyrion IS Mushroom? We know what he's been carrying around in his shoe ever since he dined with Ilyrio . . . What if his writings could travel back in time, somehow?

ETA: I meant to mention, too, that Tyrion sleeps with his head on a coil of rope while on board the Shy Maid. So I may be overestimating the importance of iron loops. Maybe all loops are important.

One more: I also meant to mention tree rings. How trees keep track of time. So the Ironwood tree (and, perhaps, the Yronwood family) take on a new importance.

Sorry, I know I'm a little late to the party, but I just wanted to comment on the loops and rings.

You're getting at the Ouroboros, the dragon (or serpent) eating its own tail. We get our symbol for infinity from it. Cultures from the Ancient Egyptians onward (and it may be older than the AE), including the alchemists and Renaissance magicians and occultists, have used it as a symbol of life, death, and re-creation. The motif is found in mythology from all over the world, and Jung called it a universal archetype. 

The dragons are, simply, symbols of eternal time and cyclical time. All of this has happened before and it will happen again. Not only that, but the Ouroboros is also associated with the Tree of Life. I keep coming back to Norse myth with these books. The dragon Nidhogg chews at the roots of the World Tree Yggdrasil (Bloodraven's Tree, and now Bran's) because the roots of the tree are keeping it from the world. The serpent Jormungandr the Midgard Serpent is the Ouroboros itself, He is so large he encircles the world and eats his own tail. In other words, he is the Ouroboros. 

 

[Seams]

Another possible "iron circles" quote, fwiw:

     The greatest castle of the North is Winterfell, the seat of the Starks since the Dawn Age. Legend says that Brandon the Builder raised Winterfell after the generation-long winter known as the Long Night to become the stronghold of his descendants, the Kings of Winter. As Brandon the Builder is connected with an improbable number of great works (Storm's End and the Wall, to name but two prominent examples) over a span of numerous lifetimes, the tales have likely turned some ancient king, or a number of different kings of House Stark (for there have been many Brandons in the long reign of that family) into something more legendary.

     The castle itself is peculiar in that the Starks did not level the ground when laying down the foundations and walls of the castle. Very likely, this reveals that the castle was built in pieces over the years rather than being planned as a single structure. Some scholars suspect that it was once a complex of linked ringforts, though the centuries have eradicated almost all evidence of this.

(The World of Ice and Fire - The North: Winterfell)

 

"Linked rings" sound like another reference to a maester's chain. So Brandon the Builder "forged a chain" when he built Winterfell.

[Roose on the Loose]

Early in GOT, Ned is cleaning his sword in front of the Winterfell heart tree. (Yummy blood.)  If Bran could just say "Ned, it's the Old Gods, tell Robert to go fuck himself."  that could save a lot of drama, but I don't think Bran would do that.  

In that timeline, Bran grows up happy and content, and never opens his third eye.  Furthermore, If Ned stays in the North, he's likely to make war on the Free Folk, making the victory of the Others all but certain.

[Angus Thermopyle]

Gives new meaning to the exchange "So it begins; No , now it ends . " 

[Macgregor of the North]

16 hours ago, Angus Thermopyle said:

Gives new meaning to the exchange "So it begins; No , now it ends . " 

Care to elaborate?

[Angus Thermopyle]

@Macgregor of the North Perhaps I wrote this on the wrong thread . Wasn't there one that you were involved with where the general consensus was that all we have read is a cycle that keeps repeating ? 

[Macgregor of the North]

10 hours ago, Angus Thermopyle said:

@Macgregor of the North Perhaps I wrote this on the wrong thread . Wasn't there one that you were involved with where the general consensus was that all we have read is a cycle that keeps repeating ? 

I think it's possibly this thread you mean, it took quite a few twists and turns. This was when I was trying to get a grasp of the possibilities of Brans arc.