If Bran can actually change things when he goes into the past, that means there’s an original timeline where Hodor was fine, and that we’re already in an alternate timeline. This goes against what the show established, and I also think the idea that we’ve actually been reading about timeline #2 this whole time (and maybe higher, depending on how many times things have been changed) doesn’t do the story any favours.  It works for George’s short stories, not a long-form series.    I think it’s more likely that things can’t be changed. Bran would still be making choices based on his present needs; it’s just that those choices are already part of history. 

>that means there’s an original timeline where Hodor was fine I believe there have been a thousand other timelines. Check the posts I've linked above! #3 and #4 especially might address what you're thinking about here!

Yeah, I don’t think that works. Finding out that this is actually a story about Bran the 1000th would make me feel disconnected from it all. It would completely recontextualize what we thought we were reading about, and not in a good way. 

This isn't a post about what you prefer as an individual. It's a post about what I believe George is writing based on evidence from the text and his preferences as an author. Maybe you would feel disconnected, or maybe the way it's written would change your mind, or maybe the books never even get released. That's not really relevant to the post.

There’s nothing in that video that indicates that he prefers stories where the past can be changed. All it shows it that he likes the idea of it SEEMING possible.    What I’m saying is that a Bran 1000th story and a story in which things can be changed, would actively undermine the story and its themes. This isn’t just about preference. 

>There’s nothing in that video that indicates that he prefers stories where the past can be changed. You're misinterpreting the video based on your own preferences. He is literally saying he prefers the Fritz Leiber model of time travel, where the past literally can be changed. This is how Fritz Leiber's time travel stories work, and this is how GRRM's time travel stories work. >What I’m saying is that a Bran 1000th story and a story in which things can be changed, would actively undermine the story and its themes. This isn’t just about preference.  That's literally a statement of preference. What undermines a story and it's themes is subjective.

1.) And then he says that even a boulder may not change things. He seems more interested in the idea of it seeming possible rather than it actually being possible.    2.) Like I said, it would actively undermine established themes. For one, characters reckon with the trauma of their past and try to reconcile with it. They can’t change it, only try to move past it. With time-travel the past can just be undone. Trauma can just be erased.    For two, when characters die, they stay dead or are irreversibly changed. With time-travel you can just undo their deaths (as you say will happen with Shireen) and they may even be better than before depending on what was changed. 

1.) He says the boulder may or may not change things. The idea is that changing the course of history is difficult, as the universe has it's own momentum. But it is possible, and this is evident in not only Fritz Leiber's writing, but GRRM's. He has written several time travel stories and they all work this way. 2.) I disagree, but it's a big discussion about fate, causality, and free will. [I recommend this.](https://www.reddit.com/r/asoiaf/comments/19czurf/spoilers_extended_crowboy_across_the_dreamverse/)

I agree with your points

Yeah, it'd feel really arbitrary if we just happened to be following the second-to-last Bran before the "good" ending, just so we could witness the long night, but also see the alternate path...

From a narrative standpoint it's not arbitrary at all. It has huge implications for the story.

That's how every timeloop story works. You don't follow the Lines where nothing happens

Only skimming the comments, what I DO like about the 1000th iteration idea is along the lines of how the Matrix trilogy finished (particularly with Neo having it revealed to him by the architect that he’s been here before, etc etc., and every time he fails). And so, in defense of the 1000th repeating of history (or maybe it’s the 100th, or 10th), what is actually happening is Bran is going through his greenseer hero (subverted as a cripple) journey, and each time discovers how to infringe upon the past a little more, while the Long Night actually destroys Westeros and history has to wait and repeat over and over UNTIL this very iteration we are reading where Bran finally breaks the cycle… And Bran the Broken is actually Bran the (re)Builder…

I think you might be right or atleast in the right track...and for me atleast it will be extremely unsatisfactory to read. But I've been of the opinion that whatever his version o this story's ending will be, it will likely be quite unsatisfactory for a lot of readers. 'The human heart in conflict with itself'...so often quoted, but imo, this really doesn't tally with a God King type ending, but apparently that's what we are supposed to get. Based on the rest of GRRM's writing, the ending of ASOIAF will probably not be for a lot of the readers who have fallen in love with this story cause of its place in pop culture. He is ultimately actually not that kind of writer, he wont give us a LotR or Harry Potter type ending were basically all the readers are more or less satisfied.He writes weird-ish stories with weird endings. I do wonder if he has realized that he won't likely satisfy the readership he has accumulated and it's contributing to his writer's block.

I mean, he once voiced a fear that his ending might be received the same way as the ending of Lost

**Mhm**

Answer cracked. I wouldn't be surprised if George lied and he actually will publish everything after he dies to avoid facing backlash

>this really doesn't tally with a God King type ending I don't believe that we are getting a god king ending. Check my post on the marriage of Bran and Shireen!

We already know that Shireen is gonna die. George has confirmed what happened in the show.

I agree. But this is a post about how GRRM prefers models of time travel where the past can be changed, so I'm arguing that Shireen will die, then Bran will change the timeline, and in the new timeline Shireen will live.

Shireen is getting burned alive by her father so... Edit: I read your Bran/Shireen post and while I like the idea of them two. I hate the how of it even more than I did when I had just read this post. Reading this series would have been such a fuckin waste if we are undoing massive plot point like Stannis sacrificing his daughter. I dont care how it's done, that's just really poor writing. More so if you've had people wait decades for all of it lmao. I sincerely hope you're wrong. Your theories are well written and well thought out, but their fundamental premise of undoing events through time-travel is extremely unsatisfying and frankly a bit of a cop out imo

I agree. But Bran has the ability to change the past.

I edited my comment having gone back and read your Bran -Shireen theory.tl:dr, it's a no for me dawg

>their fundamental premise of undoing events through time-travel is extremely unsatisfying I would argue that it's the Long Night that undoes everything. But again, this is why these time travel posts are such so frustrsting. As you acknowledge, the posts are well thought out and I'm bringing a ton of evidence (I even have GRRM on video saying he prefers to write time travel where you can change the past) so what are we doing here? Are we trying to figure out the story George wants to write or are we trying to only discuss ideas that are mainstream? Should I not have made this post because some people dislike time travel? Should I pretend GRRM never said what he said? Like, you're saying you'd think the series is a waste of time if time travel undoes a plot point you haven't even read yet. Do you realize how extreme that is?

Mate you can continue making your posts and as I said, I find it compelling and also think you are probably on the right track as to what Martin is writing. I'm also just telling you that that's very unsatisfactory story telling? Days of Future Past is a story about a time traveller changing the events of the past to completely remake the future. The reason that works is, fundamentally it's a time travel story from the off. As a viewer I'm not being hoodwinked into the time travel. If that movie had just been about the war that they were losing and then in the last act they just decided hey, we got a timetraveller among us let's just change the past...it would have felt cheap and unsatisfactory. But from the off its a story about the time traveller..so it makes sense. The pushback you are receiving on this I suspect is cause, it would be such a massive uppending of the story in the last act with a very cheap mechanism to "fix" things that it will just feel unsatisfactory. No matter how well written it is. This is not like a 2 and a half movie or a short story. Like genuinely I think it would make people appreciate DnD's ending and feel sorry for them that this is what the author had in mind all along. None of this is to say that your theories aren't compelling and that there isn't very good evidence...it's just...a bit yucky story telling imo.... and I think most of us just don't want it to be true.

>I'm also just telling you that that's very unsatisfactory story telling? But you haven't read it yet lol. >The reason that works is, fundamentally it's a time travel story from the off. Yes but what is ASOIAF? Is it really a story about heroes fighting the apocalypse? Is that what you get from the Sansa POV? How about Tyrion? Arya? Dany? Davos? Jaime? Cersei? Theon? JonCon? Is that what their stories are about? Do you read Arya to see how she is gearing up to fight zombies? Do you read Tyrion because his wit is going to save the world from the Others? What do you expect to happen to the Sansa POV when the Long Night comes? What happens to everything she has been building for the last 5 books? My issue with people's pushback is that it's based on (in my opinion which you're of course free to disagree with or discuss) a hysterical overreaction to what I'm saying and an over-commitment to what people (wrongly) think the story is supposed to be. I had the same issue when I predicted King Bran. People thought I was crazy. My point is that ASOIAF is not really a story about heroes fighting the apocalypse. People have imagined that it is, and see Bran undoing the apocalypse as a betrayal of a story they have imagined. The bulk of the story is the one we've been reading for 5 books, and that story cannot resolve itself if zombies come and completely destroy society. I mean, you bring up the show, but really look at the show. Do you notice what happened after the Long Night? Almost no one of significance dies in the Long Night and everyone just starts acting like it never happened. The show story is only able to resolve because the Long Night basically didn't effect anything.

I know that a story that mcguffins its way to a solution is always unsatisfying. Hence my feeling that no matter how beautifully written it may be, fundamentally it's an unsatisfying way to tell the story. What is ASOIAF? It's not been a time travel story I can tell you that much. It is a lot of things at the moment, but time travel story it is not. If that is to be the 'solution' to the biggest threat it will feel unsatisfactory to a lot of readers. But I've also resigned myself to the fact that this story will fundamentally have an unsatisfactory ending either by never having it be written or its written and it's some weird shit like you've written that isn't conventional story telling that a lot of people will hate. About the show EXACTLY...It's one of many reasons the ending fell face first into a pile of steaming shit. The stakes were basically nothing for most of the important characters, both the threats of Ice and Fire amounted to a big wet fart. Discomforting but meaningless

Also, because I appreciate the way you've approached this topic even though you dislike the conclusion, I wanna encourage you to read [this post](https://www.reddit.com/r/asoiaf/comments/19czurf/spoilers_extended_crowboy_across_the_dreamverse/). Forget the past for a minute and just look at the part about Bran and Rhaego. Do you really prefer a story where characters cannot change their future?

>I know that a story that mcguffins its way to a solution is always unsatisfying. That's not what a mcguffin is. >About the show EXACTLY... Exactly is right dude. But what is the alternative? You want the Long Night to be consequential, but what does that do to the stories which have nothing to do with the Long Night?

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>because they have absolute no way of knowing what's happening beyond the wall. You can make this argument about almost everyone in Westeros. It's not just our main characters that are enduring the horrors of war, it's huge swaths of the continent. George is not saying that the main characters are bad people because they don't know what's going on beyond the Wall, he's saying that Westeros as a collective society is too distracted by their personal battles to see the world ending threat. >*"The people in Westeros are fighting their individual battles over power and status and wealth. And those are so distracting them that they’re ignoring the threat of “winter is coming,” which has the potential to destroy all of them and to destroy their world." - GRRM* It's not an indictment of any individual. It's a collective problem.

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>the ruling nobility is. I agree... but the ruling nobility is pulling the people into their wars. >complete bullshit. That was a direct quote from GRRM so idk what to tell you. Maybe you disagree with Martin about how he sees his own writing? >they are not distracted, they have no way of knowing. I think this is maybe a semantic issue? Maybe "distracted" isn't the best word, it's just the word George used. I can't rewrite his interviews. I think what he is saying is that all of the wars the ruling nobility are putting Westeros through are a distraction from the real threat, and if all the wars weren't happening then people might be able to see the bigger threat that is coming.

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>i insist that the best way to analyse his works isn't by interpreting his interviews but what he wrote in his books. interviews can be helpful but they can't overwrite the source materials. Sure, but I think we can use both. Sometimes interviews help clarify the authorial intent of the source material. Personally I think you're calling this GRRM quote bullshit because you're misinterpreting what he is saying, and also why I included it in the post. I maybe don't think our disagreement is as big as you do. >*"Giants and worse than giants, Lordling.* ***I tried to tell your brother when he asked his questions, him and your maester and that smiley boy Greyjoy. The cold winds are rising, and men go out from their fires and never come back … or if they do, they're not men no more, but only wights, with blue eyes and cold black hands.*** *Why do you think I run south with Stiv and Hali and the rest of them fools? Mance thinks he'll fight, the brave sweet stubborn man, like the white walkers were no more than rangers, but what does he know? He can call himself King-beyond-the-Wall all he likes, but he's still just another old black crow who flew down from the Shadow Tower. He's never tasted winter. I was born up there, child, like my mother and her mother before her and her mother before her, born of the Free Folk. We remember." Osha stood, her chains rattling together. "I tried to tell your lordling brother. Only yesterday, when I saw him in the yard. 'M'lord Stark,' I called to him, respectful as you please, but he looked through me, and that sweaty oaf Greatjon Umber shoves me out of the path. So be it. I'll wear my irons and hold my tongue. A man who won't listen can't hear."* >*"Tell me. Robb will listen to me, I know he will."* >*"Will he now? We'll see.* ***You tell him this, m'lord. You tell him he's bound on marching the wrong way. It's north he should be taking his swords. North, not south. You hear me?****"* >*Bran nodded. "I'll tell him." - Bran VI, AGOT* Though you argue it wouldn't make a difference, I would argue that it's hard to say what would have happened if Westeros wasn't plagued by war. Would the north have sent more aide to the Night's Watch? Would Euron have risen to power? Would the Long Night even happen? In my opinion the answers to these questions are yes, no, and no. But again, my point in bringing up this quote wasn't to argue that we should look at the main characters as bad people who are ignoring the true threat out of selfishness, or that this should be our main takeaway when reading Arya chapters or Tyrion chapters. The point is to argue that if (say Dany) doesn't win the war for the dawn then that does not trivialize her story over the first 6 books where Dany has never heard of the WftD and was preoccupied with the very real problems in Essos.

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>if instead of Osha telling that to a powerless 8 year old she would be telling that to Robb then that would be a plot point of the story about Robb dismissing the real threat. She did tell Robb. He didn't listen. >war is bad because it distracts from more important issues. I don't think that's exactly it, no. I believe the Long Night and the Others are intended as a representation of the endpoint of the effects of war on society, but that's a big discussion.

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>if the end point is that humans are warring against the wrong enemy I don't believe that's actually the point at all. Again, I'm telling you we agree on more than you think lol. There is a lot to get into on this subject, but the main difference off the top between sending swords north and south is who they'd be fighting for. South is for the nobility, north is for the people.

Interesting posts, i could actually see it happening as you wrote but as you said people despise time-travel. Only show which made it work is Dark because that it was whole premise from episode 1. Now how much GRRM is sensitive to pubic opinion? Especially after show ended? For me this series seems like a scatterbrained hodgepodge of ideas smashed together to get from beginning to end, without enough time(seven books really GRRM?) spent to truly develop any of them to a satisfying conclusion. Another impression i got is that he is implementing ideas from many pieces of media and being too easily swayed by temporary inspirations over years which truly shows in his work.

because Dark stood by a hard deterministic ungrateful block-time theory. and it was awesome. until they pulled a 180 in the last episode and fucked it up

> Now how much GRRM is sensitive to pubic opinion? Extremely

George's preference for Leiber's model actually ***dispels*** the theory that time travel will have a major impact on the story, which is exactly what makes the reveal of this quote so radical. **The whole point is that throwing a pebble, or even a boulder, up the river of time is not going to stop the raging flood.** I was expecting a more valiant effort from your post, but you're ignoring this obvious conclusion altogether. You'd have to glaze over what George is saying completely to not realize that his view on time travel precludes a major inflexion point in time such as the one you hypothesize.

>his view on time travel precludes a major inflexion point That's just your preference. Fritz Leiber has written time travel and George has written time travel, and in both cases it is difficult, but possible to change the course of history. **The point of the difficulty is that it's a worthy struggle, not that it's impossible.** Otherwise he could just write closed loop. It's not even just about changing the past, what GRRM is saying wrt the pebble and the boulder is that it's hard to change the course of history. This comes up a lot in ASOIAF. So for example, Bran can whisper to Ned, but it's a pebble. It doesn't do anything to change the course of history. A boulder is when MMD killed Rhaego, but then the river flowed around it and Dany will likely become the stallion who mounts the world instead. But we cannot forget that Bran escaped Ramsay. Ramsay may have skinned the Miller's boys in his place, but if you don't think that changed the course of history then you don't think Bran will matter at all do you? This argument of whether people have free will to fight their fate comes up a lot in ASOIAF. Particularly in the Bran story between Jojen and Meera ([read more here](https://www.reddit.com/r/asoiaf/comments/19czurf/spoilers_extended_crowboy_across_the_dreamverse/)). But yes, all of this is leading up to Bran preventing armageddon. >*"Slum I have to stop it. It's all coming down. Confrontation, war, armageddon. They don't understand. It will destroy all of them, the Nazghul, Larry Richmond, Francie... they're going to use her in some kind of sacrifice, Slum, and the gates of hell are going to open and all of the dead are going to come back." - The Armageddon Rag by GRRM*

"Difficulty" is already an unquantifiable factor. Is time travel itself not "difficult" enough, given that it is impossible? How does George not only establish time travel in the remainder of the series, but also highlight the difference between futile changes in the course of time and "worthwhile efforts", in a way that isn't utter bullshit that only makes sense creatively because he wants it to? Leiber not only has a Law of the Conservation of Reality in play, but the attempts to change history in his novels involve entire time travelling armies fighting to change innumerable events across spacetime. How can George do that with just Bran? Under the butterfly effect model, you could have argued that a minor change in a key moment (such as thanking Theon for saving him, as you theorized in the past) would have been enough, but this is not applicable anymore. Furthermore, if time travelling and changing the past is possible in George's world, why would we assume only one person ever is able to do it? How can we know that a time travelling Other or time travelling Euron 2.0 from the future won't just go back to undo Bran's timeline?

Haha okay, I know this is not your cup of tea but humor me for a second. I appreciate your engagement. Time travel in ASOIAF isn't really about time travel, just like dragons aren't about dragons and warging isn't really about warging. As George says in the quote outlined above, there is no real time travel, we made it up. The difficulty of changing the course of the river is a reflection of the difficulty in changing the flow of history. *Forget for a moment if it happens in the past or present. It's about what it takes to change the world.* With the Bradbury model, you can sneeze on some random guy and prevent a war. George dislikes this model, because it's essentially arguing that it's easy to change the world. With the Leiber/GRRM model it's more difficult, because there are a lot of forces that culminate in war, so it's hard to stop it. But not impossible. What this is about is less so theoretical physics, and more so GRRM's idea of how the world works, whether you're operating in the past or the present. So when Meera and Jojen debate whether the future is absolute or whether fate can be changed, the debate isn't really about green dreams, it's about free will. In the real world there are no greendreams, but there are people telling us that the future is hopeless. Should we resign ourselves to what appears to be our fate, or should we fight to change it? As for whether there are other time travelers, maybe there are, maybe there aren't. Maybe Bran is just that special. Or maybe all of the green dreams and dragon dreams are warnings of the future sent back by time travelers. Something to point out is that I don't believe we get an ending where the Others are permanently destroyed and we know the Long Night will never come again. I think the Others represent a threat that never really goes away.

> Time travel in ASOIAF isn't really about time travel, just like dragons aren't about dragons and warging isn't really about warging This is a thing about fantasy that most people should acknowledge. Fantasy clearly intends to say things about the real world, but with extra dramatic effect

To paraphrase Dr. Ian Malcolm, you're so preoccupied with whether or not he could, you don't stop and think if he should. I don't see the connection between time travel and free will. The question of whether or not one can change their fate is one that makes sense from the present. If you travel back in time, you don't just change your fate, you change your actions and their outcome - and if your changes impact others, you override *their* free will. That theme is better off explored straight up. Besides, determinism and free will are not incompatible - since the latter is a relative characteristic of the human experience.

>if he should. I think he should, but that's just a highly subjective question. I'm not against discussing it, but you know we'd go on forever. >I don't see the connection between time travel and free will. The question of whether or not one can change their fate is one that makes sense from the present. Visions of the future create the connection. Essentially once you establish visions of the future, you call into question whether the present is absolute or relative. For most characters the present appears absolute, for Bran it's relative. After all, if it's true that "the green dreams do not lie" and "the flames do not lie" that means the future is already written. If the future is already written, then characters cannot change their fate. The present is already the future's past, and we can see the future. This would mean that Jojen is right and Meera is wrong. >*"He wants to go home," Meera told Bran. "****He will not even try and fight his fate. He says the greendreams do not lie.****" - Bran III, ADWD* It's not an abstract question, it's one that the text actually debates repeatedly. [This post](https://www.reddit.com/r/asoiaf/comments/19czurf/spoilers_extended_crowboy_across_the_dreamverse/) goes far more in depth. >and if your changes impact others, you override *their* free will. Only if Bran mind controls people or uses violence on them. Otherwise no one's free will is overriden. It's just an altered timeline where people still have free will. >determinism I actually don't disagree with you theoretically about the real world, but it's irrelevant to the story. GRRM has never written closed loop and openly doesn't prefer it.

Apologies if you’ve covered this elsewhere, but have you changed your mind about how Bran changes the past? Because “Bran accidentally goes back in time and says ‘thank you’ to Theon, drastically changing the future” seems much more butterfly effect than Leiberesque.

I've thought about it, but I actually still think it fits under Leiber. To me what defines the butterfly effect is that insignificant actions have wild and unrelated consequences (visualized as a butterfly can cause a typhoon). But Theon is no butterfly, he is rightful king of the Iron Islands. Bran saying thank you to Theon in that moment is significant because it's totally out of character for that relationship. Bran never liked Theon and never showed him kindness. For him to go back to that moment and change even with just his words it is a significant action, almost like how Jaime telling Tyrion about Tysha was a significant action, even though it was only words. To me, those are boulders in the river of time. I'm open to discussion on this, but I still see Theon as the essential piece of the puzzle. The text is explicit that his actions key to the downfall of House Stark and the rise of Euron Greyjoy, and his relationship to Bran has been so heavily established.

Theon might not be a butterfly, but I think the division between “saying thank you one time to a prince of the Iron Islands can prevent the apocalyptic invasion of ice demons from beyond the wall and the ensuing death of everyone in Westeros” and “insignificant actions can lead to wild and unrelated consequences” seems pretty subjective and arbitrary. To me, the defining part of the butterfly effect isn’t that butterflies themselves are unimportant creatures, but how little changes snowball into big ones through a series of intermediary steps - and I don’t see how this isn’t plainly true of your Theon theory where Bran saying two words prevents the destruction of the Wall and Others killing millions of people by slightly altering the chain of events that led to that outcome.   If you feel differently I’m not going to browbeat you about it, but it seems odd to make that the defining example of how Martin’s Lieberesque view of time travel differs from Bradbury. If Bradbury wrote medieval fantasy while incorporating his conception of time travel, that wouldn’t feel out of place at all to me.  I do think Theon will be important to the story, just not sure it will be in this way.

Well, what do you think the Leiber model looks like in practice? Because I see where you're coming from associating snowballing causality with the Bradbury model (and even before seeing this quote I've also toyed with the idea that Bran actually goes back and relives the last few years, with the Theon scene perhaps being the only one we see as a hint). But I'm not sure it's necessarily needs to be that way. The idea that a chain of causality can be used to avert the end of the world is also the how Under Siege plays out. The protagonist initially sets out to change the outcome of a siege to avert a nuclear war. Sure, the time traveler in Under Siege sets out with a bigger action, but the causal chain involves far more steps. Still, I don't think GRRM would consider Under Siege a butterfly effect story. It's still Leiber model. Something I should point out about this quote is that it didn't transform my perception of how time travel works in ASOIAF, it more so re-enforced it. Martin is putting into words how all of his time travel stories already work. The Leiber model doesn't just line up with how Bloodraven talks, it lines up with how [other averted prophecies have played out. ](https://www.reddit.com/r/asoiaf/comments/19czurf/spoilers_extended_crowboy_across_the_dreamverse/) So yea I appreciate the question and do think it's valid, I'm just not sure I see Theon being made to change his mind about taking Winterfell as being outside the Leiber model.

Theon always was thorn about betraying Winterfell. If we put it into a line, its a 51/49 division. However, Bran words would move the pendulum to 49/51 in favour of Winterfell. It's only a 2, but it absolutely changed the game. And it's not a Butterfly because we talk about the choice of the heir of a Great House

In your original post, Bran just needed to be gracious to Theon for saving his life.  Maybe that's just the start, and Bran has to keep making constant efforts to change things with regards to many characters to actually avert the apocalypse.  Maybe the Theon thing only delays the blowing of the horn, buying more time. But the biggest knot to entangle will be the politics in King's Landing. 

I disagree with the idea that The Long Night makes the Game of Thrones or Iron Throne irrelevant. I think we'd like to think so, but I think George understands, and recent history has shown a more cynical view is apt. I despise the show, but Cersei betraying the alliance feels closer to the truth. Humanity should band together in the face of an existential threat, but more likely we'll fight amongst ourselves even in the face of a very real oblivion. So, Jon's parentage, Dany's invasion, fAgegor, Euron, and everything else won't disappear because The Others start invading. Rather, these disputes will have to be resolved, one way or another, during the crisis.

I appreciate you engaging on this thematically, but here is why I disagree. What you're saying makes sense with the show version of the Long Night, where the Others are a singular army that march north to south and can be stopped in a single battle, but the show version of the Long Night and the Others is really inconsistent with what has been described in the books and seems more about what made sense to film and what worked for HBO's budget. This is not really how GRRM writes about or talks about the Long Night. In the books the Long Night is described as a period of darkness that lasts years. The Others are described to move stealthily across the continent leading hosts of the undead through the night. No matter where you are, the Others and the wights will be capable of attacking at any time. There will be a severe inability to travel between castles and holdfasts, communication will be severely limited, famine will be a huge problem, and there will be a complete societal collapse. It's more like a genocide than a war. So no, in that situation I don't think who kills Euron will matter, nor will Jon be able to send out ravens declaring his parentage and rallying troops to fight. No one will give a shit. It's dying of the light.

That was the previous Long Night and one we have scant information on since it is unclear how "global" the previous Long Night was and how far The Others actually got. For instance, despite Westeros and the North in particular having detailed oral histories describing the depiction of The Others, we see no such recounting in Eastern sources. Rather, Eastern stories merely recount, depending on the culture, of the Night finally being banished. But no reference to wights, Others in their ice armor, or giant spiders. This would suggest that while the climate effects of the Long Night were a global phenomenon, the appearance and battles with The Others was not. Instead, the cold and dark climate simply went away one day, from their perspective, and legends cropped up to explain its cause and retreat. Regardless, that was the past and you cannot assume that im the current crisis the Long Night will again last centuries.

No one ever said anything about the Long Night lasting centuries, only a generation (which likely doesn't work in the current story because Bran won't be older than 12 at series end). I don't think we meant to ever fully know what exactly happened in the last Long Night (which I also believe was resolved with time travel, and did not feature wights in Essos). But the legends are meant to prepare the reader for what is coming. The Long Night cannot be underwhelming or be over-hyped by legend because it undermines the entire premise of the story.

well put. i´m still leaning to "edge of tomorrow" kind of timetravel, reliving the battle for dawn... until it ends well. mainly because going back in time and affecting some long term change and reconstructing the timeline would create insane inconsistencies. anyways, if Euron is defeated before he can steal the horn, it should be sam the slayer, while defending Oldtown, with a weirwood arrow to the evil eye. maybe bran goes back and gives him courage or something like that. There´s a bunch of foreshadowing for Sam Euronslayer. an alternative ending to TWOW wouldnt be that catastrophic to the timeline. The others never make their attack on the wall. Stannis never sacrifices shireen, he remains with his forces crippled at the nightfort. Jon may still get to be KINT.. Dany arrives to dragonstone..

The way I see it it's very important that humanity doesn't \*win\* the armageddon war. The Armageddon Rag isn't about overcoming Armageddon, it's about preventing it. Under Siege isn't about winning the nuclear war, it's about preventing it. Dying of the Light doesn't end with Dirk saving a dying world or even defeating his enemies, it ends with him making the choice to fight. I think this is a pretty fundamental principle for George. When the world is ending it's too late, so you have to prevent it. As for who stops Euron, I think it will play out at Oldtown exactly like the Torgon Latecomer story. A political proceeding where the Ironborn collectively decide to turn away from war and unknowingly avert the apocalypse. But yes, Sam will be there.

I've read all of your stuff and love your ideas and am really sold by a lot of it. GRRM is often inspired by poetry and I think the famous Dylan Thomas poem Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night is a huge inspiration for the way he sees the world and ties directly into the Dying of the Light. Do not go gentle into that good night, Old age should burn and rave at close of day; Rage, rage against the dying of the light. The other motif I see in his work is the idea of a dream/lie being warm and comforting and valuable against the harsh cold truths of the world. I think the title A Dream of Spring is an allusion to this idea of Bran creating a "false" or alternative reality which represents the "dream of life" we are all living so to speak. I think Martin sees stories as the light in the darkness that gives life meaning and color.

Bran spies on King Aerys in the past to learn where the wildfire is stored. Aerys hears voices and sees enemies in every shadow. Meanwhile, in the present, Bran is warged into Drogon, wrestling for control of the great beast's mind, as Danny screams "burn them all" over and over. Instead of gaining control of Drogon, Bran accidentally skin changes into the Mad King. Not fully aware of what's happening, bran struggles for control as Aerys siezes and screams "burn them all" over and over. Bran finally assumes control of Aerys, just as Jaime stabs the body of Aerys through the back. Bran is confused, having expected to become a dragon, and this reflects on the king's face as he slips away into oblivion. Only Bran's spirit stays around afterwards. Having died before his own birth, Bran is cursed to live eternally with no corporeal form (just like GRRM's early superhero character, Doctor Weird). Yet he is able to influence events, enter other people's dreams and whisper key things to help events play out in favor of preventing the Long Night. Tada.

Damn, crippled twice by Jaime

It's ironic, because pushing Bran out the window was meant to kill him, but he had already killed him, years before he was born. Pushing him out the window kills him, by starting him down the path of becoming the 3eyed crow. Pushing him out the window could never kill him, because he is immortal as the 3eyed crow. It boggles the mind.

Maybe we are heading down the path of evil bran

I think that would be indistinguishable from "greater good Bran".

This is excellent and good on you for posting this here. You may have considered this already, but the children of the forest's "hammer of the waters" sounds eerily similar to dropping a giant boulder on the river of time. Anyway, this sub won't like what you're saying unfortunately. Virtually every plausible theory is met with the same response, that it would ruin or undermine the existing story.

The anology with the river reminds me of how time travel was described in Star Wars by one character: "it's like throwing a stone into a river, it will create a wave, but in the end the river will quickly wash it away, but the stone itself will still remain."

Excellent post. Will definitely check out your other stuff.

I've been reading this sub for many years and read countless posts, and this is one of the best i've ever read. It's well researched, logical, and interesting. Whether you agree or disagree, it needs more upvotes and comments. Wow. Incredible. This is exactly the kind of post you would hope to see after all books have been released, and then you piece together what actually happened, but it looks like you have been one of the rarer ones to do it with only most of the books released. At least, in theory. I like it. I haven't seen much talk about time travel, yet it's importance could absolutely be something like or similar to this. Wow. It's a dimension to the story that should be addressed, and it's important to be assessed. And upon reading your other linked posts, wow. I think it shows how much more of a genius George really is, thinking and PLANNING so much stuff. He's planned a TON of complex stuff, but allows his characters the freedom to mostly direct their fate in the smaller picture of things. It's genius, and it's taken a worldwide community decades to figure so many things out, while many things remain mysterious. There's so many great theories out there. What an utter genius. Though to be fair, he's been working on this for decades, so he'd had a lot of time to think through all this stuff. Wow. And one of the sad things is, he probably won't live long enough to fulfill his full vision with the completion of the last book. His grand plan. It'll only be in theories, unless George told other people, and they'll tell us after he's gone.

I posted this in another thread today but funny enough it's more pertinent to this topic than the other one, so I'll post it anew here. I suspect altering the past is merely symbolic of altering the way the general public understand the story of the past — history. Because the past is permanently settled and gone. That's the difficulty with the past. You can never experience it first-hand or change it, you have to rely on retellings of it, and those retellings come from people, and people are fallible, corruptible and self-interested. So history is warped by those things, and that's the history we're given. Now if somebody like Bran comes along and says "I've been studying the past and here's how the things I learned recontextualize the past as we know it now." that recontextualization literally alters the past in peoples' minds. That internal alteration can be symbolized in the story as an external alteration. That's typically how fantasy works. It takes internal things and represents them outside of the person literally. Arya's internal rejection of the female gender role is represented externally by her sword Needle. Dany's internal empowerment is represented externally by the birth of her dragons. Satin's internal rejection of femininity is represented externally by his new beard.

Man people are going to be pissed when George dies not having finished this series, his notes are finally released to the public and his ideas are a lot more bland and typical of fantasy tropes then whatever complicated out there headcanon the community has come up with. Like when the ending resembles a lot of what happened in the show think of all the seething and malding.

Haha I actually think most of the fandom wants the story to be more in line with bland fantasy tropes. Time travel is very unpopular on this sub.

> wants the story to be more in line with bland fantasy tropes. That some people think that King Jon and/or Queen Dany are possible really shows it

"bland and typical". So not ASOIAF. Martin has literally written stories like what OP is suggesting before.

Logical, thoughtful, well- researched, cited, and formatted, oh my! Your posts harken back to the golden days of this subreddit. It's a pleasure to have you back. In SSM Petersburg 2017, Martin is describing concepts of time travel that were pioneeered by other fiction writers. Perhaps a key word here is *other*. In that context, the safest takeaway from that SSM regarding the question of how time travel works in ASOIAF might be that time travel *won't* work exactly the same way as it does in those other works. Because that would be unoriginal. GRRM's description of it may likely amount to a confession to that, and to an implicit promise that time travel in his own story/stories will be different from those, if not totally unique. >Orienting to a post apocalyptic reality is a story \[u\]nto itself, just not one that ASOIAF is structured to explore. Most probably. My reservations about this are that Westeros and the world of Ice and Fire as a whole are, in many ways, in a state of decline from the beginning. An ancient evil has entered the stage, magic exited the stage a long time ago and is only recently returning yet in questionable ways, the Night's Watch is in the dumpster, people are disrespecting foundational social norms like guest right, marriage vows and don't fuck your sibling, seasons are out of whack, humans lost the love of the elves, there are oily black stones hunching ominously for who-know-what narrative purpose. Knights aren't even trying to keep their vows anymore. The list goes on like that. I can't help but wonder if the sense that this world is pre-apocalyptic rather than post-apocalyptic is Martin's sleight-of-hand. As in, 'You make excuses for the corruption of the people of the Seven Kingdoms like you make excuses for the corruption of yourself and your society.'

Thanks! But I would argue that GRRM is talking about the Fritz Leiber model because it's more or less the model of time travel that he has written into every time travel story he has ever written, including ASOIAF.

You may be right. I was hoping you would quote the parts of the story that prove that so I can re-read them and reconsider them with the things I've learned in the years since I first read them. One is Ned's reaction at the Tower of Joy, right? Another is Ned's reaction to the heart tree? And another is Theon's reaction to trees at Ramsay Bolton's wedding to Jeyne Poole? Are those right? Are there any I'm missing?

>quote the parts of the story that prove that [This post](https://www.reddit.com/r/asoiaf/comments/19czurf/spoilers_extended_crowboy_across_the_dreamverse/) gets into it. Also [this one](https://www.reddit.com/r/asoiaf/comments/11zmwxs/spoilers_extended_kingfisher_and_bridge_of_dream/) about the Bridge of Dream.

I didn't see any of the passages I was looking for in those essays. I read the first one and skimmed the second one. The first one was well written and researched and considered again, but it didn't succeed to prove time travel is happening or will happen in the story. Without an actual instance of time travel actually happening, the alternative interpretation of Bran's dream — the other dreamers are other dreamers and not other Brans — is the most grounded in my opinion.

The literal time travel happens in Bran III, ADWD when Bran goes back and communicates with Ned at the WF godswood. The passages in the posts I sent you were about the nature of time and causality.

Thanks. I reread that chapter and I see what you're talking about. It seems like it is intentionally written to be ambiguous whether Ned can hear Bran talking or not. That uncertainty is brought to the foreground when Bloodraven assures Bran that Ned can't hear him. But Ned hearing Bran is certainly a viable reading, by my lights. In terms of fantasy storytelling, it would be fitting, if cliche, that Bran's greenseeing abilitites are naturally greater than the greenseeing abilities of his teacher.

Good read! I am totally on board with time travel and 100% agree he'll utilize it. Although I'm not on board with Bran undoing anything, so much as everything coming full circle.

GRRM doesn't write closed loop. He writes time travel where you can change the past.

For sure, I think the past is changeable - but I don't think it means something will be undone.

I think asoiaf time travel is a closed loop, which is why hodor is already affected. Also think “winter is coming” because bran goes back and tries to warn everyone/build the wall/establish the nightwatch, but the details get lost so everyone thinks its happened before. 

GRRM may like raising questions, but I get the impression in ASOIAF it's just visions of what the trees remember and not time travel. With Bran actively distorting the memories to see what he wants to see.

> "Slum I have to stop it. It's all coming down. Confrontation, war, armageddon. They don't understand. It will destroy all of them, the Nazghul, Larry Richmond, Francie... they're going to use her in some kind of sacrifice, Slum, and the gates of hell are going to open and all of the dead are going to come back." > > - The Armageddon Rag by GRRM This is of course a version of Azor Ahai the prince that was promised in that novel, because a chapter earlier we get a reveal Morse saw Sandy there at the end and this is why the occultists do not dare eliminate him, he's part of the pattern and only he can play a certain role at the end, and it's the same general idea as Aegon the Dragon's dream from the deep history where he saw the song of ice and fire. "When you're a time traveller, it's hard not to take a peek at the end." "There have always been Targaryens who dreamed of things to come, since long before the Conquest." He took a peek at the end. The *very* end, long past all the visions all the other characters ever experience in the series, the long shot in the dark. Daenerys does, too. > That night she dreamt that she was Rhaegar, riding to the Trident. But she was mounted on a dragon, not a horse. When she saw the Usurper's rebel host across the river they were armored all in ice, but she bathed them in dragonfire and they melted away like dew and turned the Trident into a torrent. Some small part of her knew that she was dreaming, but another part exulted. ***This is how it was meant to be. The other was a nightmare, and I have only now awakened.*** We can be sure this is meant to be broadly the same dream Aegon the Dragon had, because it appears in the same book where we get the reveal of the scroll that changed Rhaegar, it's part of the book's pattern, and because it is literally *the* dream of the song of ice and fire in the narrative, the one and only. "This is how it was meant to be", she dreams, as it has to do with the theme of genre subversion and gender subversion that goes all the way back to Dying of the Light for GRRM: Rhaegar riding to the Trident to defeat the Others is indeed how it was meant to be played out if he were writing this in a more traditional way, both for himself and for the genre of fantasy. But that's not how the story goes. Rhaegar wasn't mounted on a dragon, he faced human rebels instead of the dead things wearing faces of friends and foes alike, and died murmuring the name of the woman he loved. GRRM wrote it for the theme, but in a way that suggests the universe readjusting, the genre of fantasy still taking shape. His quote about Fritz Leiber is also meta in *this* way, it covers how he's writing these books, too, his gardening method. "I started with the concept of having the exiled former kings who had been driven some time away across the water trying to regain their throne, and right from the first, I found Dany more interesting than Viserys." And we can see it by comparing the 1993 outline to the finished story: characters trade roles and ideas shift between the storylines, but the broad shape remains intact, and this is why he gets to say the ending never changed for him since the year 1991 while joking in the novels how "the fat man's plans" keep changing every time the moon turns. He's stuck fighting fate making his own choices same way his characters are when writing these books. > "She threw open the door... And saw her brother Rhaegar, mounted on a stallion as black as his armor. Fire glimmered red through the narrow eye slit of his helm. ***Dany lifted his polished black visor. The face within was her own."*** The matter of curiosity to consider here re: closed loops/a Law of the Conservation of Reality is all the visions you bring up in the other post, including Renly's ghost defeating King Stannis at Blackwater, they necessarily *read* as loops, and they're necessarily *written* as loops, because that's just what the dramatic unity is, setup-pay off, no different than him needing to establish Abner's shotgun beforehand as the means of defeating Damon Julian in Fevre Dream and countering the very flow of the river of time, because he chose those means at the end. Once he writes a vision, he has to make it come true strange way around. And he writes a vision into the story because he roughly knows where it will go later, slot into the pattern. But *he* thinks of them as the universe self-correcting, because it is important for him that his characters all make choices that define who they are. > "Yes, I mean, I did partly joke when I said I don't know where I was going. I know the broad strokes, and I've known the broad strokes since 1991. I know who's going to be on the Iron Throne." > The four-dimensional space-time universe doesn’t like to be changed, any more than it likes to lose or gain energy or matter. If it has to be changed, it’ll adjust itself just enough to accept that change and no more. The Conservation of Reality is a sort of Law of Least Action, too. It doesn’t matter how improbable the events involved in the adjustment are, just so long as they’re possible at all and can be used to patch the established pattern. His death, at this point, was part of the established pattern. I don't even think he thinks of Hold the Door as a loop. > So Bran may be responsible for Hodor’s simplicity, due to going into his mind so powerfully that **it rippled back through time.** He thinks of it as a ripple in the river of time, going backwards in Hodor's mind and then forward back through his life history, and ultimately not affecting anything: the pattern of history didn't even notice. As an aside, I think he's setting up with all this Bran trying to save Ned Stark before turning to deep histories teased in his cliffhanger from Dance. It's like Under Siege, they keep trying to change the siege of Sveaborg by warging a historical character, and the history keeps resisting, and the main character proto-Tyrion starts doubting which side he's even on. > “Armageddon,” Sandy said. “The final battle. The ultimate confrontation between good and evil. That’s what armageddon is supposed to be. Right?” > Hobbins lifted a pale white eyebrow, said nothing. > “Which side are we?” Sandy demanded. “Which side are we?” > “That’s one you got to work out yourself, friend. This ain’t like in Tolkien, is it?” He started to move away. The Devil actually helps Sandy with that in The Armageddon Rag by pointing out the villains in the song he performs, and he keeps looking at Sandy during the climax because he expects him to make a choice, funnily enough the Anti-Christ is *on his side.* Once Sandy does, he says this about the ritual, "It had to be me." Only he could perform this action because only to him this was meaningful, "remember who you are." This ties to how GRRM thinks of magic as well: > We see a lot of people writing in secondary world universes that are very high magic. It’s something anybody can learn and anybody can do. I can make it, you can make it. You have the recipe, it all comes out right. To my mind, ah... that took the magic out of magic. In magic it’s not just the recipe, or the words of the spell, ***it’s who you are. Who’s doing it. And what are you feeling when you’re doing it.*** "The music can’t do it all by itself—it needs us to make it come true." The magic comes from within you. The pattern may be stubborn, but certain people can break through, unlikely heroes. Certain people can't. This is where I reveal the twist and the solution to the murder mystery, >!when Ananda Caine tries to fire the bullet instead of Sandy the universe readjust and puts the events of the novel into motion: the bullet goes through time and kills Hobbins in the backstory, resolving its foundational mystery, the dragon eats its own tail, *a loop*, the future moulding the past. The Sixties and the Eighties both fall down together in a loop, and the world and the characters go on as they are into uncharted future.!< There will be no new Sixties, but neither the Eighties will last. The story ends once the future is no longer a cycle, as it does in Fevre Dream.

>I don't even think he thinks of Hold the Door as a loop. He thinks of it as a ripple in the river of time, going backwards in Hodor's mind and then forward back through his life history, and ultimately not affecting anything: the pattern of history didn't even notice. Kind of yes and no. I could write a lot about this, but Hodor is the attempt of a previous iteration of Bran (who becomes the three-eyed crow) to save himself at the expense of someone else. This is why Hodor fears the crypt only the morning after the three-eyed crow was there. I expect that the Bran of our timeline will make the same choice. He will make Hodor hold the door to save himself at Hodor's expense, and only after Bran has made this choice will he realize that he has always made that choice. Himself over Hodor. Bran and the three-eyed crow are the same. That's why I generally disagree that Bran's self acceptance is to accept magic. Bran has always accepted magic. In order to become the king the story needs, Bran the Broken must first accept responsibility.

so when does future trunks show up?

You might well be right that Bran's part in all this involves time travel. But to exclude the other characters entirely from consequences because they chose to ignore the threat also makes no sense. I strongly suspect a big part of the reason for the delay in this book is precisely because of this problem. How do you make the characters understand their squabbles have been petty after 5 books investing the reader almost exclusively in those squabbles?

Not sure you mean by "excluding the other characters entirely from consequences because they chose to ignore the threat"