Poll: Did Jojen Die Off-Page in DANCE?

[Faera]

1 hour ago, kissdbyfire said:

Indeed he does. A paste of weirwood seeds. After all, he's being wed to the trees. A bowl of Jojen paste might be helpful if he were being wed to Jojen. 

"This will help awaken your gifts and wed you to the trees Jojen."
Bran did want to be married to a tree Jojen…but who else would wed a broken boy like him? A thousand eyes, a hundred skins, wisdom deep as the roots of ancient trees. A greenseer.
He ate. "Can't I have a bowl of Meera paste instead?"

Sorry, @kissdbyfire - I'm bored. 

1 hour ago, Tucu said:

Yep, the red thing is just weirwood sap  ...

Yep, it was just weirwood sap. If you want to believe that the sap itself has blood in it from thousands of years of sacrifice before it then be my guest. But Jojen's blood ain't part of it.

Not yet anyway. 

26 minutes ago, zandru said:

Jojen doesn't even want to try to go home? What could possibly explain that? Maybe it's the wights who are still stationed around the entrance to the cave? Maybe it's the Others? Maybe it's the even colder cold of actual Winter, which has finally arrived, the difficulty of travel, the lack of food, Jojen's general weakness? No convenient transportation since they ate the elk?

 

Yeah, when you put it like that I'd want to go home too.

27 minutes ago, zandru said:

We need to be a little careful about grabbing onto a pet theory and considering no other alternatives! My humble opinion, of course.

No truer words written.

[zandru]

2 minutes ago, Faera said:

No truer words written. 

Okay, I might have lied a little about the "humble" part...

[Faera]

1 minute ago, zandru said:

Okay, I might have lied a little about the "humble" part...

You are right, though. Jojen could just... want to go home and be lamenting over the fact that he's away from it. I mean, we don't even know if his "fate" necessarily relates to his death or that the green dream Meera is referring to has anything to do with Jojen dying or something else that is going to happen. Like, to do with the underground river (which I suspect Jojen first dreamed about back at the Nightfort) or something like that. 

Frankly, it would be nice to write a post about Jojen beyond the Wall and in the cave that doesn't end with "...and then he dies." 

[chrisdaw]

11 hours ago, Faera said:

Yes, it is nitpicking but if one is trying to make the argument that Jojen was killed and was in the paste at the end of ADWD, Bran III then it's an important point and I think it would be more clear. Hell, blatant if Jojen had died. Kill him off-page and you lose a key character moment for Bran.

No, because we are in Bran's POV and Bran doesn't know, or is being wilfully ignorant.

And interpreting the line how you and others are does not align with what is happening. Jojen is not preparing to go home to meet his fate while Meera is attempting to talk him out of it. What is happening is Jojen is withdrawing and doing nothing and Meera is upset at that.

[Faera]

Just now, chrisdaw said:

No, because we are in Bran's POV and Bran doesn't know, or is being wilfully ignorant.

But it's not just "Bran's POV". It's Meera saying something to Bran. Besides, we can't detach the character from the author. No matter which way you slice it, Jojen's death would be more impactful if Bran is aware of it than if it is off-page.

Quote

And interpreting the line how you and others are does not align with what is happening. Jojen is not preparing to go home to meet his fate while Meera is attempting to talk him out of it. What is happening is Jojen is withdrawing and doing nothing and Meera is upset at that.

Fine, but it still doesn't mean he's preparing for death. He could be withdrawing because he's away from home and wants to return there, whether it is to die peacefully or just see his parents again (no death needed), but is struggling to find the way back. The fact he spends most of his time at the cave entrance staring out;

Jojen had even taken to climbing up to the cave's mouth when the day was bright. He would stand there for hours, looking out over the forest, wrapped in furs yet shivering all the same.

This could be him wistfully longing for home (Meera's statement that he wants to go home follows on from this description) or, something a friend of mine suggested a little while ago in an IM discussion, is that is is anticipating something coming, emerging from those forests. 

[Three-Fingered Pete]

7 minutes ago, Faera said:

 

Jojen had even taken to climbing up to the cave's mouth when the day was bright. He would stand there for hours, looking out over the forest, wrapped in furs yet shivering all the same.

This could be him wistfully longing for home (Meera's statement that he wants to go home follows on from this description) or, something a friend of mine suggested a little while ago in an IM discussion, is that is is anticipating something coming, emerging from those forests. 

 

I've always felt that between this scene and Jojen's reluctance to talk about the details his death, that in his dreams Jojen had seen himself as a wight and that he doesn't like it, but he feels that there is nothing that can be done. Now he's just waiting for something bad to happen and is vacillating between the anguish of the wait and just wanting to get it over with already. Just my take on it.

[chrisdaw]

Just now, Faera said:

But it's not just "Bran's POV". It's Meera saying something to Bran. Besides, we can't detach the character from the author. No matter which way you slice it, Jojen's death would be more impactful if Bran is aware of it than if it is off-page.

Fine, but it still doesn't mean he's preparing for death. He could be withdrawing because he's away from home and wants to return there, whether it is to die peacefully or just see his parents again (no death needed), but is struggling to find the way back. The fact he spends most of his time at the cave entrance staring out;

Jojen had even taken to climbing up to the cave's mouth when the day was bright. He would stand there for hours, looking out over the forest, wrapped in furs yet shivering all the same.

This could be him wistfully longing for home (Meera's statement that he wants to go home follows on from this description) or, something a friend of mine suggested a little while ago in an IM discussion, is that is is anticipating something coming, emerging from those forests. 

More impactful (debatable, this slow play and the reveal not being they're going to kill Jojen but he's already dead and Bran ate him will drop like a hammer) and inconsistent with the COTF's and BR's desires. They need Bran, they brought him here to awaken his powers so that he can save the world. They need to train him and so need him to listen and follow what they say. Openly killing Jojen and attempting to feed Jojen to him would turn Bran against them and the gig would be up, game over for the world.

Yeah Jojen could be withdrawn for any number of reasons, including having seen his death and believing it is inevitable and knowing that it is soon, as makes sense of everything in text and is carried in the theme.

[kissdbyfire]

37 minutes ago, chrisdaw said:

And interpreting the line how you and others are does not align with what is happening.

There’s a ginormous difference between “does not align with what is happening” and “does not align with my interpretation of what is happening”. 

[chrisdaw]

19 minutes ago, kissdbyfire said:

There’s a ginormous difference between “does not align with what is happening” and “does not align with my interpretation of what is happening”. 

No-one has offered anything to support the interpretation that he intends to go home and that his will to head home is what is causing Meera's distress. Because there is nothing to support it.

One can choose to interpret it that way, but it is an interpretation in a vacuum.

[Faera]

1 minute ago, chrisdaw said:

Openly killing Jojen and attempting to feed Jojen to him would turn Bran against them and the gig would be up, game over for the world.

I'm not saying they would openly murder him necessarily slap, bang in front of him. You're right that if Jojen were in the paste revealing that after Bran has eaten it is a dark turn worthy of Titus Andronicus. What I'm saying that if Jojen Paste had happened, the revelation (and maybe Bran's reaction) should have come at the end of the chapter rather than being left for presumably the first chapter of TWoW. This is the impasse for me when it comes to "swallowing" the Jojen Paste theory or that Jojen flatout died at the end of ADWD. The impact of having Bran realise Jojen is dead and he's just eaten him would have been a better way to end his ADWD plot... rather than it being so ambiguous none of us can agree as to what is going on with Jojen point blank.

43 minutes ago, Three-Fingered Pete said:

I've always felt that between this scene and Jojen's reluctance to talk about the details his death, that in his dreams Jojen had seen himself as a wight and that he doesn't like it, but he feels that there is nothing that can be done. Now he's just waiting for something bad to happen and is vacillating between the anguish of the wait and just wanting to get it over with already. Just my take on it.

Hmmm... I don't necessarily agree right off the bat but I must admit that's an interesting idea. It definitely goes well with the notion that Jojen's depression is because he knows something bad is on the way and they can't avoid it (and Jojen would probably rather be sacrificed or cannibalised over becoming a wight.)

[Clegane'sPup]

21 minutes ago, chrisdaw said:

No-one has offered anything to support the interpretation that he intends to go home and that his will to head home is what is causing Meera's distress. Because there is nothing to support it.

There is nothing to support that Jojen blood is mixed in the ground up weirwood paste either except weirwood sap being describe as looking like blood.

Someone mentioned this before. The paste tasted bitter. Not coppery. Acorn paste tasted bitter. Do weirwood trees have nuts/fruit that when toasted get ya high?

[chrisdaw]

12 minutes ago, Clegane'sPup said:

There is nothing to support that Jojen blood is mixed in the ground up weirwood paste either except weirwood sap being describe as looking like blood.

And Jojen not being seen again, the text twice noting his absence. And the chapter ending with Bran seeing a person executed/sacrificed and tasting their blood.

[kissdbyfire]

13 minutes ago, chrisdaw said:

And Jojen not being seen again, the text twice noting his absence. And the chapter ending with Bran seeing a person executed/sacrificed and tasting their blood.

You dismiss any interpretation that differs from your own, but feel totally comfortable and confident in providing as “evidence” something you made up? 

Brilliant.

ETA: ah, you’re talking about the vision, fine. Still, the way you presented it made me think you were talking about Bran actually seeing someone being executed in real time, instead of seeing it in a vision.

[chrisdaw]

1 minute ago, kissdbyfire said:

You dismiss any interpretation that differs from your own, but feel totally comfortable and confident in providing as “evidence” something you made up? 

Brilliant.

No. You seem to be having comprehension trouble.

The alternative interpretation is that Meera is upset that Jojen will not fight the fate that awaits him at home. I am asking for people to support this narrative. What in the text, besides the debated interpretation of Meera's sentence itself, supports this interpretation?

[Clegane'sPup]

15 minutes ago, chrisdaw said:

And the chapter ending with Bran seeing a person executed/sacrificed and tasting their blood.

Bran had a vision. Was it because the weirwood paste got him high?

 

[Platypus Rex]

48 minutes ago, kissdbyfire said:

You dismiss any interpretation that differs from your own, but feel totally comfortable and confident in providing as “evidence” something you made up? 

Brilliant.

ETA: ah, you’re talking about the vision, fine. Still, the way you presented it made me think you were talking about Bran actually seeing someone being executed in real time, instead of seeing it in a vision.

We've all read the chapter.  We all know what he was talking about.

[Clegane'sPup]

1 hour ago, chrisdaw said:

And the chapter ending with Bran seeing a person executed/sacrificed and tasting their blood.

I had to do a bit of scavenging to find Bran's vision.

Eddard's words were drowned out.

Bran's vision's after ingesting the paste were supposedly of  Lyanna & Benjen.

Then the visions came faster.

Bran saw a peggers woman who begged the old gods for a a son to avenger her.

Then came a girl who kissed a knight as tall as Hodor.

Then a youth who sliced limbs off a weirwood tree to fashion them into arrows.

Time moves further backward and Bran views some old lords. They too disappeared.

Then far far far back in time a bearded man forced a captive to his knees. An old white haired woman with a bronze sickle stepped forward.

Bran looked so far back in time the WF heart tree began to shrink.

Har de har --- she wolves of WF.  Please,, please mr martin.

A Dance with Dragons - Bran III
The rest of his father's words were drowned out by a sudden clatter of wood on wood.     Eddard Stark dissolved, like mist in a morning sun.    Now two children danced across the godswood, hooting at one another as they dueled with broken branches. The girl was the older and taller of the two.    Arya! Bran thought eagerly, as he watched her leap up onto a rock and cut at the boy. But that couldn't be right.    If the girl was Arya, the boy was Bran himself, and he had never worn his hair so long. And Arya never beat me playing swords, the way that girl is beating him. She slashed the boy across his thigh, so hard that his leg went out from under him and he fell into the pool and began to splash and shout. "You be quiet, stupid," the girl said, tossing her own branch aside. "It's just water. Do you want Old Nan to hear and run tell Father?" She knelt and pulled her brother from the pool, but before she got him out again, the two of them were gone.    After that the glimpses came faster and faster,    till Bran was feeling lost and dizzy.     He saw no more of his father, nor the girl who looked like Arya, but a woman heavy with child emerged naked and dripping from the black pool, knelt before the tree, and begged the old gods for a son who would avenge her.      Then there came a brown-haired girl slender as a spear who stood on the tips of her toes to kiss the lips of a young knight as tall as Hodor.     A dark-eyed youth, pale and fierce, sliced three branches off the weirwood and shaped them into arrows.     The tree itself was shrinking, growing smaller with each vision, whilst the lesser trees dwindled into saplings and vanished, only to be replaced by other trees that would dwindle and vanish in their turn.     And now the lords Bran glimpsed were tall and hard, stern men in fur and chain mail.     Some wore faces he remembered from the statues in the crypts, but they were gone before he could put a name to them.   Then, as he watched, a bearded man forced a captive down onto his knees before the heart tree. A white-haired woman stepped toward them through a drift of dark red leaves, a bronze sickle in her hand./

Please mr martin she wolves of WF. I'll buy it rather than check it out from the library.

 

[Therae]

FWIW, between tagging along with Summer for dinner on any number of occasions, and revisiting a sacrifice to the Winterfell heart tree, Bran certainly knows what blood tastes like. Following up @Clegane'sPup comment about Bran's description of mutable flavors of the weirwood paste not including (or alluding to) blood, if it didn't taste like blood, it wasn't blood. Also, there was no attempt to disguise it or blend it; Bran did not note that the red veins tasted any different than the white paste, which suggests it did not. That could all be magic, but it could also just be that weirwood seed paste and weirwood sap taste about the same: bitter, then better, then sweet, then honey, new-fallen snow, pepper, cinnamon, and his last kiss from Cat (the pepper seems kind of out of place, but who am I to judge?). But not blood.

And I really don't think that witnessing an execution-as-sacrifice and tasting the blood absorbed by the tree is quite cognate enough to constitute foreshadowing to not witnessing Jojen being killed on the downlow and not tasting his blood when it's actually fed to him.

I'm a no to Jojen-paste.

[Clegane'sPup]

@Faera

While I enjoy and appreciate your 

Leonard Peltier is still in jail and will probably stay there until he is 80.

He was convicted in 1977 of killing two FBI agents at Pine Ridge.

Depending upon where one stands with the information given and considering the era --- I say let him free.

He nuttin to do with martins tale.  I merely wanted to clarify native populations of whatever country have old gods not necessarily a christian one god deity.

[Three-Fingered Pete]

4 hours ago, Faera said:

Hmmm... I don't necessarily agree right off the bat but I must admit that's an interesting idea. It definitely goes well with the notion that Jojen's depression is because he knows something bad is on the way and they can't avoid it (and Jojen would probably rather be sacrificed or cannibalised over becoming a wight.)

 

I had never heard of Jojen Paste when I came to my conclusion, but knowing that he (and possibly Meera) would be killed and then consumed by Bran could cause the same trepidation in Jojen, but again, he feels trapped by fate. The passages about the elk and the other inferences of cannibalism are interesting, but it's going to have to be a pretty cool reveal to convince me that his (their) death wouldn't have been better presented in real time, even if it was after the fact in Bran's POV (hence my no vote). Waiting hundreds of pages to reveal such a bombshell makes it lose immediacy and impact; unless the man Bran saw being prepared for sacrifice was a Reed...

dum, DUM, dummmmm... The paste thickens!