Timetravel

[Legitimate_Bastard]

Who among you think that timetravel will feature in the story before it is all said and done? If it does have a place in the story - which characters will it revolve around? 

 

[the Other Wolf]

Speaking of timetravel is offensive to some here.  So be ready for the arrows.

[Bael's Bastard]

12 minutes ago, Legitimate_Bastard said:

Who among you think that timetravel will feature in the story before it is all said and done? If it does have a place in the story - which characters will it revolve around? 

Time travel in what sense?

We know that greenseers like Bloodraven and Bran can gaze into the past using their talents and the weirwoods.

It seem plausible that Bran might discover a way to communicate with people this way, whether that be communicating with people who are still alive in the current time, or going back and communicating with people who are dead in the current time at a time when they were still alive.

But I don't think it is possible in this world for a character to be completely transported, including their body, from the present to the past, or from the past to the present. And I don't see someone like Bran ever being capable of skinchanging anyone he sees in the past.

[Legitimate_Bastard]

13 minutes ago, Bael's Bastard said:

Time travel in what sense?

We know that greenseers like Bloodraven and Bran can gaze into the past using their talents and the weirwoods.

It seem plausible that Bran might discover a way to communicate with people this way, whether that be communicating with people who are still alive in the current time, or going back and communicating with people who are dead in the current time at a time when they were still alive.

But I don't think it is possible in this world for a character to be completely transported, including their body, from the present to the past, or from the past to the present. And I don't see someone like Bran ever being capable of skinchanging anyone he sees in the past.

In the sense of complete transportation from one era to another. 

I know technically Glass Candles could  be considered time travel but more something like could Bran the Builder be the Bran in the current story? ( I hate to even reference that theory but can't think of another good example) Would GRRM do that?

[Loose Bolt]

I suspect that it is almost impossible to use any time travel without creating some kind of paradox. So I  would not use any. But luckily it is not I who is writing the books

[Makk]

I like a good time travel story but introducing that this late would feel like a genre switch that would invalidate thousands of pages of carefully crafted writing. I don't think it will feature in the story other than the possibility that whatever Bran does has already taken effect on what we have seen.

[Bael's Bastard]

2 minutes ago, Legitimate_Bastard said:

In the sense of complete transportation from one era to another. 

How would you suggest that happening?

I don't think there is anything introduced in the story thus far that makes that a realistic possibility.

3 minutes ago, Legitimate_Bastard said:

I know technically Glass Candles could  be considered time travel but more something like could Bran the Builder be the Bran in the current story? Would GRRM do that?

I don't think so. As far as I can recall, the most informative description of a glass candle is as follows: "What feeds a dragon's fire?" Marwyn seated himself upon a stool. "All Valyrian sorcery was rooted in blood or fire. The sorcerers of the Freehold could see across mountains, seas, and deserts with one of these glass candles. They could enter a man's dreams and give him visions, and speak to one another half a world apart, seated before their candles. Do you think that might be useful, Slayer?"

So it isn't even indicated that glass candles can be used to gaze into the past, as the weirwood can by a greenseer, let alone that it can in any way be used for time travel in the sense of, as you say, "complete transportation from one era to another."

[Ser Leftwich]

0% chance

[Legitimate_Bastard]

1 minute ago, Bael's Bastard said:

How would you suggest that happening?
 

Magic.

 

What I mean about Glass Candles, just the fact that one can use them to communicate across crazy far distances instantaneously, makes them a sort of time travel device. Since they allow the user to literally bend space/time in a way that is not possible via any other means. I articulate poorly, as you can tell.

[Legitimate_Bastard]

2 minutes ago, Ser Leftwich said:

0% chance

I hope so.

 

Reason I mentioned it at all is because I have been reading too much of what may as well be fan fiction. Way too many people are convinced that the end will be centered around time traveling back to the long night blah blah blah.

 

I just hope it doesn't end like that. The TV show can do what it wants, but bloody hell I hope the books don't go that way.

[Bael's Bastard]

I don't think any vehicle for time travel has been introduce or hinted at in the books.

It remains to be seen whether Bran will discover a way to communicate with the people in the past he is able to see through the weirwoods, or be able to affect or influence them into doing things that will have a "butterfly effect" through the years or ages.

That, if it turns out to be possible, is about as close as I think anything will get to "time travel."

But I don't see Bran or any other character being able to transport to, or even skinchange someone in, the past, or in any way time travel in any meaningful sense.

[Euron III Greyjoy]

If time travel was to be a thing, I presume it would involve Bran. 

[Clegane'sPup]

3 hours ago, Legitimate_Bastard said:

Who among you think that timetravel will feature in the story before it is all said and done? 

Personally I think it boils down to Bran's dreams in the first book and Bran reaching his or the three eyed crows goal in the last book.

I read Bran's magical, mystical ability's and the third eye to to see, hear and feel what has been, what will be and what is come as mysticism not time travel.

No, I dunna think that there is time travel involved in ASOIAF. I equate time travel stuff to shows and movies like Dr. Who and Back to the Future.

As Jojen, the crannog green dreamer boy tells Bran:

A Clash of Kings - Bran IV  "You have three. The crow gave you the third, but you will not open it." He had a slow soft way of speaking. "With two eyes you see my face. With three you could see my heart. With two you can see that oak tree there. With three you could see the acorn the oak grew from and the stump that it will one day become. With two you see no farther than your walls. With three you would gaze south to the Summer Sea and north beyond the Wall."/

As the reader knows Bran has already seen stuff in the first book.

A Game of Thrones - Bran III      He lifted his eyes and saw clear across the narrow sea, to the Free Cities and the green Dothraki sea and beyond, to Vaes Dothrak under its mountain, to the fabled lands of the Jade Sea, to Asshai by the Shadow, where dragons stirred beneath the sunrise.     Finally he looked north. He saw the Wall shining like blue crystal, and his bastard brother Jon sleeping alone in a cold bed, his skin growing pale and hard as the memory of all warmth fled from him. And he looked past the Wall, past endless forests cloaked in snow, past the frozen shore and the great blue-white rivers of ice and the dead plains where nothing grew or lived. North and north and north he looked, to the curtain of light at the end of the world, and then beyond that curtain. He looked deep into the heart of winter, and then he cried out, afraid, and the heat of his tears burned on his cheeks.    Now you know, the crow whispered as it sat on his shoulder. Now you know why you must live./

Then of course we get into the weirwood paste and other stuff in book five.

 

 

 

[kissdbyfire]

4 hours ago, Legitimate_Bastard said:

Who among you think that timetravel will feature in the story before it is all said and done? If it does have a place in the story - which characters will it revolve around? 

 

I don’t, and it won’t. But many subscribe to the idea. 

[Lord Varys]

The way things are set up speaking/acting through time and space might be a thing for power greenseers.

That could mean that Brandon Stark is not only going to see the (distant) past but also influencing and shaping it.

He could be Brandon the Builder, he could be the true 'Last Hero' telling the guy who earned all the glory what to do, he could be the one sending the direwolves to himself and his siblings, etc.

Whether George is going to explore any of that, taking the story in that direction we cannot really say at this point. But it is on the table as a possibility, a possibility George kept in the air when he actually had Ned react to something Bran seemed to do/say while looking through the weirwood's eyes.

Not to mention Bran actually tasting the blood that's sacrificed through the weirwood. That indicates a very direct/immediate connection throughout all those years rather than Bran merely accessing memories the weirwood stored.

At this point we have no reason to believe that Bran could not reach people in the past the way he reached Theon in the present - if it was present and not future Bran who addressed Theon in ADwD.

George has actually written a time travel story about a guy who can go back into his own personal past by mentally traveling into his own past. That is exactly what the greenseers can do by attaching themselves to a weirwood. They travel into the past of those trees.

[Free Northman Reborn]

I think Bran is all the legendary Brandon the Builders. Thus explaining how Bran the Builder supposedly influenced so many events across a large span of time, from Oldtown to Storm’s End to the Wall.

Bran skinchanged into certain individuals in his past Stark bloodline, exercising his knowledge through them into the past.

[The Mother of The Others]

Babylon 5 was a big deal idea-wise in the 90's when this ice & fire thing got conceived, right?  So sending Bran back in time to be the historical Builder Bran could be George's homage to how Captain Sinclaire (B5 spoiler) went into the past to become the mysterious minbari war hero "not born of minbari."    

Bran knows where every brick of winterfell would need to be placed... and he's started feeling his way into the past.   He'd maybe give the Children the psi-power to control the giants who built the Wall?    Eh.

[Darion Storm]

Unless it involves Bran doing things through Weirwoods then no.

[LynnS]

6 hours ago, Lord Varys said:

The way things are set up speaking/acting through time and space might be a thing for power greenseers.

I agree.  I think we see an example in CoK when Jon encounters Bran as the weirwood sapling:

Quote

A Clash of Kings - Jon VII

A weirwood.

It seemed to sprout from solid rock, its pale roots twisting up from a myriad of fissures and hairline cracks. The tree was slender compared to other weirwoods he had seen, no more than a sapling, yet it was growing as he watched, its limbs thickening as they reached for the sky. Wary, he circled the smooth white trunk until he came to the face. Red eyes looked at him. Fierce eyes they were, yet glad to see him. The weirwood had his brother's face. Had his brother always had three eyes?

Not always, came the silent shout. Not before the crow.

This occurs at the Skirling Pass before Bran has crossed the Wall and joined Bloodraven.  Bran is still hiding the crypts of Winterfell but has a dream that he touched Ghost and spoke to Jon.  Jon experiences these events in reverse order- Bran spoke to him and then touched Ghost.  I don't think this reversal is a mistake on GRRM's part.  Some have suggested that the moment Bran's third eye opened he was able to communicate with Jon.  But Bran's appearance as a weirwood tree growing in front of Jon's eyes; suggests to me that this occurs after Bran is wed to the tree.  So this is perhaps an example of a future Bran contacting Jon in the past at the Skirling Pass.  If that's not too confusing.  Therefore, Bran's dream of Jon (in the crypts), a vision of the future.   

 

[Legitimate_Bastard]

3 hours ago, Darion Storm said:

Unless it involves Bran doing things through Weirwoods then no.

Oh I think the Weirwoods are key to it.

Quote

A Dance with Dragons - Bran III

"You saw what you wished to see. Your heart yearns for your father and your home, so that is what you saw."

"A man must know how to look before he can hope to see," said Lord Brynden. "Those were shadows of days past that you saw, Bran. You were looking through the eyes of the heart tree in your godswood. Time is different for a tree than for a man. Sun and soil and water, these are the things a weirwood understands, not days and years and centuries. For men, time is a river. We are trapped in its flow, hurtling from past to present, always in the same direction. The lives of trees are different. They root and grow and die in one place, and that river does not move them. The oak is the acorn, the acorn is the oak. And the weirwood … a thousand human years are a moment to a weirwood, and through such gates you and I may gaze into the past."

"But," said Bran, "he heard me."

If Ned did hear Brans voice - it is a form of time travel.

Although it isn't typical sci-fi time travel. I think GRRM wants us to be torn about the idea because right after this passage Bloodraven shuts it down.

Quote

"He heard a whisper on the wind, a rustling amongst the leaves. You cannot speak to him, try as you might. I know. I have my own ghosts, Bran. A brother that I loved, a brother that I hated, a woman I desired. Through the trees, I see them still, but no word of mine has ever reached them. The past remains the past. We can learn from it, but we cannot change it."

So as of this point in the story time travel is not quite a thing. But I do think it could be, if Bran is as powerful as I think he is.

 

8 hours ago, Free Northman Reborn said:

I think Bran is all the legendary Brandon the Builders. Thus explaining how Bran the Builder supposedly influenced so many events across a large span of time, from Oldtown to Storm’s End to the Wall.

Bran skinchanged into certain individuals in his past Stark bloodline, exercising his knowledge through them into the past.

I could see this happening - although I would be disappointed.

Is it really time travel if you are tapping in to the memory of something that is still alive? I guess you can argue either way that it is or isn't.