[TV/Books] Game of Thrones ***SPOILER Discussion***

[TirielWoW]

Catelyn wouldn't of taken Tyrion meaning Ned wouldn't of been confronted by Jaime and taken prisoner so yes the war essentially starts when Catelyn kidnaps tyrion because she thinks he tried to kill Bran. Sure, it might've started later, possibly, or Robert would've just killed the lannisters like he had done to the Targeryn children.

It was actually all started by Littlefinger. Bran falling out of the window may have pushed more suspicion on the part of Ned and Catelyn, but Ned was already suspicious due to the way Lord Arryn died. He would have come to the same conclusion regardless of Bran's injury or the conflict with Jaime. All this was going to happen regardless.

[Byuiso]

They really are pacing the story rather quickly, nonetheless we are pretty much set up to see the Dragons vs. White Walkers.
Bran really made things incredibly interesting though.

Also no matter what Jon Arryn looking into the lineage of the Baratheons set it all off. He still would've looked into it and still would've been killed for finding out the secret, causing Ned to be the Hand and him also looking into it.

Though I guess it could go back to Jon Snow being conceived and born too.

[Pipboi]

So now that Bran no longer has access to the weirwood tree, does that mean he no longer has access to visions of the past?
I was really hoping to see more of the Tower of Joy this season, and if that's no longer possible I'm going to be gravely disappointed.

[Sliske]

It was actually all started by Littlefinger. Bran falling out of the window may have pushed more suspicion on the part of Ned and Catelyn, but Ned was already suspicious due to the way Lord Arryn died. He would have come to the same conclusion regardless of Bran's injury or the conflict with Jaime. All this was going to happen regardless.

And the only reason the Lannisters had their eyes on Ned was from the fact that they knew Bran saw them fucking. If Bran didn't climb up, then Ned would've went with only the thought in his head of the letter sent to Catelyn by Lysa. Meanwhile at that same time the Lannisters would suspect absolutely nothing - they didn't kill Jon Aryn, they just saw it as another hand of the king changing - in fact, Jon Aryn was looking into the Lannisters, so it would've pleased them that a new hand was coming.

Meaning Ned would have the jump on them, he'd be watching them trying to find out why they murdered Jon Aryn as the letter suggests, while the Lannisters avoid him. If he found out the knowledge that Joffrey was a bastard, he might've been able to tell Robert before they had time to plan his assasination. But because they already were paranoid about ned due to them trying to kill Bran (And fearing what he might have said when he woke up) they were watching him like hawks and were always 2 steps ahead of him

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Moral of the story: people who climb are dicks

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This is the same rationale that a lot of people use when looking at historical events and applying today's superliberal bias to old stories. Sure, blame the 9 year old boy who didn't listen to his mother. Ignore the ambitious murderers who killed thousands in pursuit of personal goals.

Hey I found a guy who doesn't understand comedic exaggeration / sarcasm.

Of course wars would happen whether bran did what he did or not, it just means he wouldn't be the cause of them. There would be other causes, like Baelon Greyjoy having another go at attacking people, or Dorne going ham on the Lannisters.

[TirielWoW]

And the only reason the Lannisters had their eyes on Ned was from the fact that they knew Bran saw them fucking. If Bran didn't climb up, then Ned would've went with only the thought in his head of the letter sent to Catelyn by Lysa. Meanwhile at that same time the Lannisters would suspect absolutely nothing - they didn't kill Jon Aryn, they just saw it as another hand of the king changing - in fact, Jon Aryn was looking into the Lannisters, so it would've pleased them that a new hand was coming.

Meaning Ned would have the jump on them, he'd be watching them trying to find out why they murdered Jon Aryn as the letter suggests, while the Lannisters avoid him. If he found out the knowledge that Joffrey was a bastard, he might've been able to tell Robert before they had time to plan his assasination. But because they already were paranoid about ned due to them trying to kill Bran (And fearing what he might have said when he woke up) they were watching him like hawks and were always 2 steps ahead of him

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Moral of the story: people who climb are dick.

Sure. It's all the fault of a little boy. Let's blame it all on him. Let's not remember that Ned went into it with the idea that Arryn was murdered by the Lannisters, or that while they might not have initially suspected him, the moment he started investigating Arryn's death, they would have immediately honed in on Ned. Nah, it was all Bran's fault. That makes perfect sense.

Because, remember, children are supposed to be as wise as adults. And if they aren't, and behave like children, they're stupid and bad and everything is their fault. Even when it's not. Because this was all set into motion by Littlefinger who wanted the War of the Five Kings to happen.

[Sliske]

Sure. It's all the fault of a little boy. Let's blame it all on him. Let's not remember that Ned went into it with the idea that Arryn was murdered by the Lannisters, or that while they might not have initially suspected him, the moment he started investigating Arryn's death, they would have immediately honed in on Ned. Nah, it was all Bran's fault. That makes perfect sense.

Because, remember, children are supposed to be as wise as adults. And if they aren't, and behave like children, they're stupid and bad and everything is their fault. Even when it's not. Because this was all set into motion by Littlefinger who wanted the War of the Five Kings to happen.

1. Lannisters didn't kill Arryn, Lysa did at the request of Petyr Baelish. Petyr set the war into motion. He pushed ned in the right direction while simultaneously pushing the lannisters, the arryns and catelyn in the right direction so they could find what he wanted them to find and start a war with each other.
2. Sarcasm doesn't translate well to Americun I guess. Of course Bran isn't the cause of a wars, no more than Hitlers mother is the cause of the Holocaust for birthing him. Its comedic exaggeration and sarcasm.
3. They weren't interested in Arryns death, they gained suspicion of Ned because they thought he was there to investigate the Lannisters, after all, his wife did just Kidnap their brother... this is explained in the show.

So not only are you wrong, but you also don't understand sarcasm.

Its like double fail.

[Reeve]

I'm wondering if BloodRAveN is really Bran. His name is right there. For Bloodraven to say it's time for Bran to "become me," it makes me wonder if Bloodraven really is Bran.

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While this may very well be the origin of the White Walkers in the show (and in that context I'm perfectly fine with it), I will be extremely disappointed if it also turns out to be the book origin of the Others, who Martin convincingly hints at being truly and deeply alien, not merely twisted men.

Yeah I agree entirely.

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That didn't take long.

[Sliske]

I'm wondering if BloodRAveN is really Bran. His name is right there. For Bloodraven to say it's time for Bran to "become me," it makes me wonder if Bloodraven really is Bran.

I think its just that perhaps all of the Greenseers share knowledge. Sort of like the Avatar in The Last Airbender series. I doubt that Brynden Rivers who was actually an important historical figure was just Bran sent back in time.

I mean we know Greenseers can change the past, but I don't think they can actually stay in the past and live a full life.

Greenseers are 1 in 1,000 wargs, and wargs are something like 1 in 100,000 men / women. Them sharing knowledge seems like a pretty easy conclusion to come to

[Reeve]

I think its just that perhaps all of the Greenseers share knowledge. Sort of like the Avatar in The Last Airbender series. I doubt that Brynden Rivers who was actually an important historical figure was just Bran sent back in time.

I mean we know Greenseers can change the past, but I don't think they can actually stay in the past and live a full life.

Eh, if Bran could warg into Hodor in the past, who's to say he couldn't permawarg into someone else's body in the past?

[Berndorf]

I honestly thought those puppies would have larger, or at least more significant, roles to play. Maybe on the books?

They already did. Without the dire wolves there would be no asoiaf/got. It was Martin having a vision of 6 or 7 dire wolf puppies being found which was the germ for the rest of the books. He couldn't get the vision out of his head and eventually started building books around it. With regard to the show/books I think Ghost is the one destined to do something truly great though Summer helped save Bran which could be instrumental to everything else.

[Karlz0rz]

I guess he'll now be remembered as Honodoor!

[Sliske]

Eh, if Bran could warg into Hodor in the past, who's to say he couldn't permawarg into someone else's body in the past?

So now i'm confused. You're implying Bran had a vision back in time, warged into Bloodraven and now perma controls him, lives inside him and is in effect, him? So where is Brans body. Is there two brans now? Bran had to go back 200 years to find Brynden Rivers, so is Bran 200 years old now?

[Reeve]

So now i'm confused. You're implying Bran had a vision back in time, warged into Bloodraven and now perma controls him, lives inside him and is in effect, him? So where is Brans body. Is there two brans now? Bran had to go back 200 years to find Brynden Rivers, so is Bran 200 years old now?

I'm saying that at some point in the future, Bran may find himself in trouble, and will warg out of his skin as his body dies. Only unlike that wildling that did that into his eagle, he'll warg into a human body in the past, where he'll stay. Bloodraven would then be future Bran after he's lived that 200 years or so.

Obviously this is just fun spitballing theory, but I don't see why it's impossible.

[ro9ue]

Also heres hoping that the new Red Priestess in Mereen follows the proud tradition of Red Priestess' on the show, and gets naked.

I'm with you on that, she was smoking hot.

If Bran really can influence the past, i hope they somehow limit that ability because otherwise it could get really messy storywise :/ "Why dont he stop himself from climbing the tower" "why doesnt he save his father" ect....

It can work the other way also, how did Three Eye raven (I won't call him Bloodraven cause in the show he is 1k years old) that hodorizing him make him stay? Not outcasted, exiled for being a tard or stuff like that. Or too stupid to tend to children etc.

I might be playing the Devil's advocate here, I'm just not fan of this time travel thing. Not in this story.

Personally, I think that the Mad King is mad due to the whispers of the Bloodraven/Three Eyed Raven attempting to alter the course of things, and this is why he's so wary of Brann's interference during his visions; he knows the consequences. By trying to change the course of things, it's very easy to cause worse. The Mad King apparently went mad from whispers he heard, so, could maybe hold water.

So perhaps it's not all on Brann, but the meddling of Bloodraven as well

I'm definitely calling it now, Bran builds the wall and somehow has some tie to Lyanna's death (they all thought Ned was the victor in that fight, inserted to show history is not always factually true).

On all the time travel comments. I think there are a few possibilities here.

1) It's the job of the Bran/Bloodraven person to control the "story" of time. Maybe bigger events to accomplish the same goal are set in stone, but smaller details like the "Hodor" situation are malleable in order to preserve the timeline. And maybe thats the true "Game of Thrones".. Not who sits on the throne in King's Landing, but who controls the story of the timeline. And all the forces are competing to fulfill their prophecies (Lord of Light) etc.

2) Time is totally open to alterations by the tampering of Bran/Bloodraven and our memories are only tied to the latest update. Think of it like your cell phone. The physical thing is your brain, and our memories/facts we have in them are just software. When the master of the software (Bran/Bloodraven) rewrite something, there's a software update. The software just behaves based on the current version, not anything from prior versions.

If that makes any sense, think of it like you watched all of Game of Thrones from season 1 and we never even knew of Hodor, but when Bran did the "software update" suddenly it wrote all of those memories of the new story into our minds. It was a quick panic time travel - which the more experienced Bloodraven assisted with - to write in a quick fix to help the story play out the way it needs to be.

The Three Eye'd Raven said it himself, the ink is already dry. Everything that's happened in the past has to happen again, even if Bran caused it. He can't change the past, he might think he can, but hes just going to cause what has already happened.

It's hard to decipher what that means when there appears to be an urgency to "training" Bran.

[eschatological]

So, if this series (and/or books) end with "It all happened because of one crippled boy," I'll be pretty disappointed.

Hodor in the books is a bit different and doesn't have the ties to Ned and Lyanna he did in the show - Ned has always known him as Hodor, and that Hodor had been Hodor as long as anyone could remember. I suppose Bran can go travel at any time seeking out his friend Hodor, but I wonder what his motivation will be if not to see his father, etc.

Also, I'm not digging predestination. Bloodraven has a choice to show Bran the making of the first WW, Bran has a choice to go back to that scene in the present, Bloodraven has a further choice to bring Bran back to Winterfell and Hodor's fall (though I guess at that point I suppose he knows it's necessary to make sure Hodor holds the door). If the logic is Bloodraven has to show Bran that first vision with the WW creation because Bran has already and always fucked things up - I'm not okay with that. Especially since Bloodraven, even in this show iteration, has been sitting under the tree for a hundred years, IE, longer than the creation of Hodor. And if Bran in a future episode changes the past, the whole concept falls off the rails.

Rest of the episode was better than previous weeks. I wish Jaqen had explored a little bit more about the idea that no Lord or Lady was part of the Faceless Men originally. That's inevitably going to lead to Arya's not being a Faceless Man, but with massive skills and being her own master.

I do dislike the one habit I've noticed now two weeks in a row: important, logical questions being asked by smart characters, and then the person being queried having no answer - and then you just cut away as if nothing has happened. It happened with Davos questioning Melisandre about Stannis, when Brienne just interrupted, and it happened when Brienne questioned Sansa, and Sansa had no response. It also happens implicitly with Bloodraven and Bran, the former apparently never giving Bran any clarity about anything.

The Sansa-Littlefinger scene went perfectly until the end when she didn't kill him, and until later in the episode when Sansa *did* lie to......protect Littlefinger? Or is she trying to play the game? What use does she have in throwing doubt on her intelligence (IE, that its source is LF) when all they're doing is sending Brienne to RR to check it out? It's not like she's putting Jon in danger. I don't get it. Is it because LF actually got in her head with the whole throwing doubt on whether Jon will be good to her? Cause then she'd be really dumb, after displaying some smarts immediately prior. Also - she had no reason not to kill him, and she let him go - despite knowing he was either her enemy or dangerously stupid. Meh.

[Lora]

whelp now i'm crying like a fucking little bitch. hold the god damn door.

[TirielWoW]

1. Lannisters didn't kill Arryn, Lysa did at the request of Petyr Baelish. Petyr set the war into motion. He pushed ned in the right direction while simultaneously pushing the lannisters, the arryns and catelyn in the right direction so they could find what he wanted them to find and start a war with each other.

Arryn had started compiling evidence that Joffrey was a bastard, which is what Ned happened across later. Littlefinger requested that Lysa do it, but iirc, Cersei wanted Arryn dead because he was a threat.

Sarcasm doesn't translate well in text at all. So sorry that I can't read your fucking mind.

[Sliske]

And if Bran in a future episode changes the past, the whole concept falls off the rails.

I can't remember where I heard it, but I think in a previous episode or in a book its said that the past can't change. Anything that has happened is going to happen. Bran can't go and pull his dads neck out from under the sword at King's Landing, etc. But whats interesting now is that if Hodor was fucked up from one sentence from Meera while being warged, that has implications on shit like the Mad King's "burn them all" chanting.

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Arryn had started compiling evidence that Joffrey was a bastard, which is what Ned happened across later. Littlefinger requested that Lysa do it, but iirc, Cersei wanted Arryn dead because he was a threat.

Sarcasm doesn't translate well in text at all. So sorry that I can't read your fucking mind.

So you were dead wrong, then tried to be sarcastic about it, while not catching my sarcasm. Got it. I caught your sarcasm by the way. Guess its just an American thing

[Paranoid Android]

The Sansa-Littlefinger scene went perfectly until the end when she didn't kill him, and until later in the episode when Sansa *did* lie to......protect Littlefinger? Or is she trying to play the game? What use does she have in throwing doubt on her intelligence (IE, that its source is LF) when all they're doing is sending Brienne to RR to check it out? It's not like she's putting Jon in danger. I don't get it. Is it because LF actually got in her head with the whole throwing doubt on whether Jon will be good to her? Cause then she'd be really dumb, after displaying some smarts immediately prior. Also - she had no reason not to kill him, and she let him go - despite knowing he was either her enemy or dangerously stupid. Meh.

I will say for this part, however it plays out. That this better not be another trap that Sansa and/or Jon Snow fall into since she gives Littlefinger a pass or believes him when he said he can ally with whichever house (forgot name). I mean Sansa needs to show one time to have a little less naivete once.

[Deleted]

Also how the hell is Brann going to get around now. Hodor was also his ride. The hunter chick is going to have be a bodyguard and mule now unless they meet up someone else or stay somewhere.

Coldhands