Thursday, May 26, 2016

ASOIAF: What if Bran was the one who woke up the Others?

 I’ve worked up quite a spitball that needs hawking. (Sorry for that image: who came up with the term “spitballing,” anyway? Weird term.)
Because I’m really starting to wonder what other things in the past Bran has screwed up.
Now, I’m not so bold to suggest that this is the story George RR Martin is writing; I’m embarking on a Preston Jacobs-style journey. The thing I like about crazy theories is not that they are right: but they are interesting stories in their own right. Preston Jacobs is totally nuts; but his ideas would make fantastic books and he ought to write fiction instead of piggybacking his stories on GRRM’s.
After all, most fantasy novels and sci-fi too are pretty much based on tinfoil thinking.
So bear with me while I spin this tinfoil web.
In the books, Bran is an 8 year old—still definitely a child, despite his constant assertions that he’s “almost a man grown”— with massive powers he—and we—are only beginning to understand. (He’s older in the show, but that doesn’t matter really.)
In the show, at least, his mentor and teacher, a man who mastered the art of sorcery over an entire lifetime(in the books Bloodraven is 120 years old or so, in the show, The Three-Eyed Raven says he’s been waiting for a thousand years, at any rate he’s a good deal older than Bran.) Bloodraven/3ER is killed before Bran has completed his training.
All this is kind of par for the course for Bran’s type of hero journey—usually the trainee, cast into the world not fully trained, succeeds anyway. Luke Skywaker, ya dig? Though he failed, didn’t he? HIs father had to bail him out.
But here this is cast on his ear: Bran not being fully trained is different than Luke Skywalker not being trained: because Luke Skywalker is a mere Jedi. Bran is pretty much a time-travelling god able to possess other lifeforms and make them do his bidding—imperfectly.(Thus far only Hodor, but Bran’s powers are clearly more powerful than anybody’s estimated. There is spit in this ball, I recognize that.)
So now there’s Bran.
Able in some weird way he can’t fully control or understand to affect the past and present. Vast powers he has little grasp on. Like a toddler driving a Harley Davidson, you know there’s going to be problems. Was Smashing Hodor just the first thing he’s done?.
Is Bran responsible for the wonky seasons of the world? Is he responsible for Mad King Aerys’ madness? Did he make the first dragons? Is he the voice in Varys’ flames? Is the prophecies that Dany sees and hears in the House of the Undying direct messages from Bran?
Did he do something in the past? What else has he done?
Is the only solution to destroy Bran? Is the dark lord in our tale a small boy with powers whose implications he can’t grasp? Are the Others/White Walkers going after Bran with all their might to STOP him from screwing up the things he’s already screwed up?
Will Jon Snow, the Prince that Was Promised and Daenerys, ditto perhaps, combine forces to stop him?
Is that where this is heading? If not, I’m writing a fantasy novel of my own, because that is too awesome not to be written.

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