For Goodness Sakes Media, Stop Trolling Theories You Don’t Research
Look people, Bran Stark Does NOT ‘Time Travel!’
As usual, no matter how insane or old the theories are, the major press just LOVES to read Reddit articles and use them to write “new” Game of Thrones articles.
Today, Ryan Harkness at UPROXX presented an article compiling 9 Reddit fan theories (9 for God’s sakes), some probably accurate, many of them recycled, and some of them just tired (Don’t get me wrong, I love Reddit, but I don’t love this kind of story).
Here is what he said about Bran (sigh):
“As cool as the whole Hodor ‘Hold the door’ scene was, it might have doubled as a proof of concept giving us show watchers an idea of how time travel works in the Game of Thrones universe. Why include any of that unless Bran plans on taking more trips through history in an effort to tweak things in humanity’s favor?”
Holy Hell (and I am not just picking on Mr. Harkness, new articles like this come out every day).
It WAS NOT time travel.
Bran was greenseeing a scene with Willis as he was warging Hodor. He was warging Hodor in the PRESENT which accidentally connected Hodor to Willis (watch the scene, Meera calls for Bran to warg Hodor, Meera is in the present NOT the past and Bran is also in the present while seeing the past).
It gets a bit complicated after that but still doesn’t add up to time travel(Connecting Hodor with Willis created a time paradox which broke Willis’ mind — the connection actually turned Willis into Hodor).
Yes, it is true, Bran was present in Hodor’s mind which was, in a strange way, in both the past and the present but only because Hodor and Willis share the same brain (one brain, three people).
Bran can, theoretically, effect events in the past but only through taking control of a brain in the present at the same time he sees that person in the past (and the results would not be predictable at all).
Yes, he is likely to do it again, but he won’t be time traveling or possessing (or trying to possess) people in the past.
He can’t do that. Why not?
Greenseeing Is Not Time Travel!
Greenseeing is more like watching streaming video than like visiting history using H.G. Wells time machine.
Don’t believe me? How about believing the two people that both GRRM and Game of Thrones turn to for continuity advice (and who wrote the book above about the History of Westeros with GRRM’s blessing).
Anyway, Elio and Linda were nice enough to read my articles (linked below) and even responded, saying:
Not sure if that means that they agreed with everything that I wrote, but it certainly means that they agree with me on time travel.
Look, I totally understand that Benioff & Weiss can throw the rules out the window anytime they want to, but there is nothing in the text that suggests that greenseeing, warging, or greenseeing + warging work this way.
So, let Me Explain This One More Time
Bran is a greenseer. This means that he has the ability to SEE “what the trees see” and eventually “beyond.” He is not actually there, he sees it as if in a dream where he feels present but is NOT present.
It is like he has a streaming service like Netflix only his streaming service library is comprised of everything the trees have seen over the entire history of all time (In the past I have called this Treeflix).
Greenseeing is like having one of the worlds ONLY VR headsets that allows you to search and view Treeflix (there are very few people who can do this).
He is NOT traveling in time. He is witnessing time like we might watch the History Channel (assuming that the History Channel had anything to do with broadcasting Historical content or which has a library that could be searched mentally in real time).
Look, I have written a great deal about this already, if you want more detail please feel free to check these articles out:
Why Bran Stark Is not the Night King
Unless Benioff and Weiss Really Don’t Care About Logic
medium.com
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