Bran’s Bowl Movement – What’s in the Paste?

“You can come back five years later, and [Arya] has had five years of training and all that. Or Bran, who was taken in by the Children of the Forest and the green ceremony, [so you could] come back to him five years later. That’s good. Works for him.” – GRRM Interview, Observation Deck, 7/23/2013

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This post is going to go against the grain of many theories that exist in the A Song of Ice and Fire fandom. That’s ok because I’m not trying to change any minds, rather I am going to speculate the hell out of this anyway because, let’s face it, what we want to happen in the ASOIAF series may not be what is actually happening. GRRM ain’t done with us yet!

Additionally, this post has the potential to run 20K++ words, but I’m not going to do that to you (this time!). Rather I am sticking with the most basic talking points and notes, updates, and reader comments that can fill-in as it goes. Also a quick reminder that any and all of George R.R. Martins interviews, SSM’s, or other works are all openly discussed on this blog site.

The topics included in the post are:

1. What’s this all about, anyway? A few notes on the origins of the theory.
2. The Scene in Question. Refresher read.
3. The Northern Way. The old (god) making way for the new generation is the thing we are witnessing. Seeds into saplings into mighty trees, and why.
4. The Seed is Strong. What’s going on with the Other side?
5. So, where is Jojen? Let’s discuss.
6. Crackpot Corner… a secondary guess.
7. What’s Next? Additional GRRM stories in Martinworld to analyze.

Do you prefer a listen to the basic overall essay? Watch or listen here…

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What’s this all about, anyway?

I know what’s running through your mind: “But Leeech! What are you thinking? It’s totes canon that Jojen paste is true. Child sacrifice Is. A. Thing! Cannibalism Is. A. Thing!”

Correct… to a degree. That’s what we are here to do, clarify the story and the use of such devices. And to be honest, I know that most in the fandom have already made up their minds on this plot topic, so my goal here is to get a few readers to consider how Martin is working this ‘paste’ plot.

The common theory in parts of the fandom claims what Bran is eating in the bowl during his A Dance with Dragons final chapter is, in fact, the blood or body bits of his friend Jojen Reed. If you Google “Jojen paste” ,you will get many, many a result you can read for yourself.

From my fandom experience, a main reason that some readers think Jojen paste is true is the common fan theory that baby swapping and sacrifice is integral to the history of the Night’s Watch, or to the Others, or some other reason… including misconception that the weirwoods or Bloodraven are nefariously evuuul. Sometimes the ADWD prologue is mentioned as well, the “but the man who eats the flesh of man is an abomination” part… but that applies to Daenerys and her dragons just as much as it does Bran Stark.

GRRM has said that both Daenerys and Bran are “the most magical”, so we are going to see many inverted parallels between the two. I opened with the GRRM quote where he describes what Bran is going through as a green ceremony… a green wedding. Daenerys also has her elemental fire wedding. It seems GRRM has it set up that it takes that ‘element’ to create the next in line, a different sort of bloodline. Dany needed magic fire as Bran needs magic green paste (weirwood).

• A Game of Thrones – Daenerys X

  She had sensed the truth of it long ago, Dany thought as she took a step closer to the conflagration, but the brazier had not been hot enough. The flames writhed before her like the women who had danced at her wedding, whirling and singing and spinning their yellow and orange and crimson veils, fearsome to behold, yet lovely, so lovely, alive with heat. Dany opened her arms to them, her skin flushed and glowing. This is a wedding, too, she thought. Mirri Maz Duur had fallen silent. The godswife thought her a child, but children grow, and children learn.

• A Dance with Dragons – Bran III

  Something about the look of it made Bran feel ill. The red veins were only weirwood sap, he supposed, but in the torchlight they looked remarkably like blood. He dipped the spoon into the paste, then hesitated. “Will this make me a greenseer?”

  “Your blood makes you a greenseer,” said Lord Brynden. “This will help awaken your gifts and wed you to the trees.”

  Bran did want to be married to a tree … 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.

Taking a closer narrative look, we already have a:

1. “Night’s Watch” milk-brother baby swap when Jon switches Gilly’s son (who remains at the wall) with Mance’s son (Aemon Steelsong); a “brother” swap for protection from the flames.
2. Then when Melisandre switches Mance Rayder for Rattleshirt and she then burns a fake Mance.
3. And we have the upcoming Selyse=Shireen fire to appease a god event going to happen in The Winds of Winter.

And then we have more from the fire-consuming side of the story:

• Drogon eats Hazzea and the importance of bones and memory to Dany make it a Martinworld whisperjewel.
• Daenerys “consumes” her pregnancy when she is on the Dothraki sea with “roast ‘kid’ “.
• Even Gregor Clegane (a fiery hand of fiery Tywin) feeds “roast goat” Vargo Hoat to other humans.
• Daenerys “herbs” up Khal Drogo before she smothers him with a pillow as he bakes in the sun, effectively making her the leader of the Khalasar.
• Even fiery Cersei “eats princes” as she consumes Baratheon heirs.

Three-fold reveal, not four, because four would be GRRM overplaying his theme, as his editor Anne Groell puts it (below).

The common theme here is the flames, because as explicitly stated in the books, fire consumes and is a jealous, hungry god.

In ASOIAF, it is only the fire-people/R’hllorists that make the statement of death paying for life; Daenerys, Jaqen speaking of the red god, and Melisandre. Except they are taking this to the literal extremes, as GRRM has his proto-R’hllorists do in his story Only Kids Are Afraid of the Dark.

• A Clash of Kings – Arya VII

  “Three?”

  “The Red God has his due, sweet girl, and only death may pay for life. This girl took three that were his. This girl must give three in their places. Speak the names, and a man will do the rest.”

This is the opposite of the trees whose narrative purpose is to serve the many (guard the realms of men), and as a type of library, a different type of “flame”. This is the symbolic use of the death paying for life idea. A self-sacrifice as opposed to a sacrifice from another for “your” own means; both blood sacrifices, but different intent. Bloodraven and his death is to serve Bran, who will then serve as the new greenseer guard of the realms of men as well as the darkling plain (as GRRM calls it in his other stories, including A Song for Lya). Fire feeds the self, the green feeds the future.

• A Dance with Dragons – Bran III

  “Your uncle may have been named for me. Some are, still. Not so many as before. Men forget. Only the trees remember.” His voice was so soft that Bran had to strain to hear.

  “Most of him has gone into the tree,” explained the singer Meera called Leaf. “He has lived beyond his mortal span, and yet he lingers. For us, for you, for the realms of men. Only a little strength remains in his flesh. He has a thousand eyes and one, but there is much to watch. One day you will know.”

  “What will I know?” Bran asked the Reeds afterward, when they came with torches burning brightly in their hand, to carry him back to a small chamber off the big cavern where the singers had made beds for them to sleep. “What do the trees remember?”

“The secrets of the old gods,” said Jojen Reed. Food and fire and rest had helped restore him after the ordeals of their journey, but he seemed sadder now, sullen, with a weary, haunted look about the eyes. “Truths the First Men knew, forgotten now in Winterfell … but not in the wet wild. We live closer to the green in our bogs and crannogs, and we remember. Earth and water, soil and stone, oaks and elms and willows, they were here before us all and will still remain when we are gone.”

Martin even adds to the teaser of blood sacrifice in the semi-canon The World of Ice and Fire book. The in-world book Wed to the Sea, Being an Account of the History of White Harbor from Its Earliest Days is a history of White Harbor written by Yorrick, who was a maester in service to House Manderly. The text mentions the practice of blood sacrifice to the old gods. Longer book quote in the link for purposes of length: Read Here. Additionally, in semi-relation to this topic, Samwell is learning and teaching true speech with the ravens.

I suspect that the “sacrifices” at White Harbor had to do with freeing people and holding slavers accountable for their crimes against humanity, as discussed in the ADWD- Davos chapters: Read Here.

So, to answer the question above, “What are you thinking?” This… I do not believe that Bran was given Jojen to eat, but rather that is Brynden Bloodraven Rivers as a weirwood in that bowl- the blood of the Raven, so to speak.

Bloodraven lasted as long as he did, preserved in the far icy north so to speak, because he had to wait for Bran to get to him so that Bran can evolve from weepy babe sapling into a weirwood-library-heart tree. Jojen, as good of a boy as he is, has the ability to have prophetic dreams called green dreams, which seems to be a “step down” from the higher talented greenseer. Bran already seems rather advanced in his talents, and as Bloodraven says, “the hour is late,” therefore it seems Bran needs the strong brew to get his roots tapped in to history NOW. After all, Greenseeing means Enlightenment. It is easy to assume how this advancement in Bran’s abilities that surpass Bloodraven’s could be another result of Martin having to skip the 5-year gap in storytelling.

The hour is late means that the ice-dragon Others are already there (or near enough), Brynden is about 125 years old, and the Long Night is about to happen again. So I am thinking that what we are being shown is what we readers have been warned about:

• The World of Ice and Fire – Ancient History: The Long Night

  However, if this fell winter did take place, as the tales say, the privation would have been terrible to behold. During the hardest winters, it is customary for the oldest and most infirm amongst the northmen to claim they are going out hunting—knowing full well they will never return and thus leaving a little more food for those likelier to survive. Doubtless this practice was common during the Long Night.

  Yet there are other tales—harder to credit and yet more central to the old histories—about creatures known as the Others. According to these tales, they came from the frozen Land of Always Winter, bringing the cold and darkness with them as they sought to extinguish all light and warmth. The tales go on to say they rode monstrous ice spiders and the horses of the dead, resurrected to serve them, just as they resurrected dead men to fight on their behalf.

  How the Long Night came to an end is a matter of legend, as all such matters of the distant past have become. In the North, they tell of a last hero who sought out the intercession of the children of the forest, his companions abandoning him or dying one by one as they faced ravenous giants, cold servants, and the Others themselves. Alone he finally reached the children, despite the efforts of the white walkers, and all the tales agree this was a turning point. Thanks to the children, the first men of the Night’s Watch banded together and were able to fight—and win—the Battle for the Dawn: the last battle that broke the endless winter and sent the Others fleeing to the icy north. Now, six thousand years later (or eight thousand as True History puts forward), the Wall made to defend the realms of men is still manned by the sworn brothers of the Night’s Watch, and neither the Others nor the children have been seen in many centuries.

“Your blood makes you a greenseer,” said Lord Brynden. “This will help awaken your gifts and wed you to the trees.”

The only weirwood in the cave to get seeds or blood/sap from is Bloodraven, and he is sacrificing himself in a type of northern way to let the next generation survive. Even Martin says that Bloodraven is “half a tree“. The paste is Bloodraven.

• A Dance with Dragons – Bran II

  Before them a pale lord in ebon finery sat dreaming in a tangled nest of roots, a woven weirwood throne that embraced his withered limbs as a mother does a child.

  His body was so skeletal and his clothes so rotted that at first Bran took him for another corpse, a dead man propped up so long that the roots had grown over him, under him, and through him. What skin the corpse lord showed was white, save for a bloody blotch that crept up his neck onto his cheek. His white hair was fine and thin as root hair and long enough to brush against the earthen floor. Roots coiled around his legs like wooden serpents. One burrowed through his breeches into the desiccated flesh of his thigh, to emerge again from his shoulder. A spray of dark red leaves sprouted from his skull, and grey mushrooms spotted his brow. A little skin remained, stretched across his face, tight and hard as white leather, but even that was fraying, and here and there the brown and yellow bone beneath was poking through.

Again with Martin keeping to his own developed themes in his works, he uses this ‘drink of the green fountain’ idea as a way of bringing peace, generally after a time of war where the dragons dance, but the seed is strong.

Even in Martin’s story Fevre Dream (two quotes below), it is an herbal elixir crafted from a mix of lore & magic merged with modern science that allows Josh York (a classic GRRM trio of Jon-Bran-Bloodraven) to become enlightened. Bran is having a sensation, Daenerys in the House of the Undying is the antithesis to Bran and Bloodraven, yet both are herbally related 😉

You know when GRRM does have ‘children’ consumed? It when it comes down to a fire-elemental character/s that want to overtake (ususrp) a land or rule that is not their own in order to feed the self.

Take this scene (pic) from Martin’s Tuf Voyaging story Guardians. It’s when the human invaders (Andal, Targaryen proto-history) who do not make a peace pact with the native greensea-sentients (mud pots, weirwoods in ASOIAF), then the fire elements start eating the indigenous and their children. Just in this short passgae you can see numerous ideas that GRRM will repurpose into the weirdwood trees, greenseeing =trees/being under the sea (as I have rambled on about for years), Children of the Forest, and Andal or Targaryen, non-peaceful, usurpers.

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The Scene in Question

A Dance with Dragons – Bran III

“For the next step. For you to go beyond skinchanging and learn what it means to be a greenseer.”

“The trees will teach him,” said Leaf. She beckoned, and another of the singers padded forward, the white-haired one that Meera had named Snowylocks. She had a weirwood bowl in her hands, carved with a dozen faces, like the ones the heart trees wore. Inside was a white paste, thick and heavy, with dark red veins running through it. “You must eat of this,” said Leaf. She handed Bran a wooden spoon.

The boy looked at the bowl uncertainly. “What is it?”

The Seed is Strong

Martin has stated a few times that Bran is the most magical in the story, and then at other times Martin has mentioned that Daenerys is also full of magic. This makes total sense since Bran and Daenerys are going to be going head to head before the story’s end. It makes sense that they experience similar situations, even as the choices and results will differ. Even Daenerys has her own tree elixir she has to drink to help open her eyes. Where Bran’s drink is about enlightenment, Daenerys’ drink is the Shade of the Evening.

• A Clash of Kings – Daenerys IV

  “One flute will serve only to unstop your ears and dissolve the caul from off your eyes, so that you may hear and see the truths that will be laid before you.”

  Dany raised the glass to her lips. The first sip tasted like ink and spoiled meat, foul, but when she swallowed it seemed to come to life within her. She could feel tendrils spreading through her chest, like fingers of fire coiling around her heart, and on her tongue was a taste like honey and anise and cream, like mother’s milk and Drogo’s seed, like red meat and hot blood and molten gold. It was all the tastes she had ever known, and none of them . . . and then the glass was empty.

  “Now you may enter,” said the warlock. Dany put the glass back on the servitor’s tray, and went inside.

• A Dance with Dragons – Bran III

  He ate.

  It had a bitter taste, though not so bitter as acorn paste. The first spoonful was the hardest to get down. He almost retched it right back up. The second tasted better. The third was almost sweet. The rest he spooned up eagerly. Why had he thought that it was bitter? It tasted of honey, of new-fallen snow, of pepper and cinnamon and the last kiss his mother ever gave him. The empty bowl slipped from his fingers and clattered on the cavern floor. “I don’t feel any different. What happens next?”

  Leaf touched his hand. “The trees will teach you. The trees remember.” He raised a hand, and the other singers began to move about the cavern, extinguishing the torches one by one. The darkness thickened and crept toward them.

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So, where is Jojen?

At the time of this writing, the current book being A Dance with Dragons, we do not know what happened to Jojen. We do know it has been some since Bran has seen him, and the cave system is dark with steep drops and caverns, but we do not have any definitive evidence that Jojen is dead and his parts or blood are making up the base of blood soup.

Jojen’s deterioration in the later chapters of ADWD are due to homesickness or the physical place he is in, as I and others readers have noted before. He’s fulfilled his purpose of bringing Bran to Bloodraven to complete Greenseeing Means Enlightnement training. He’s burdened with the foreknowledge of his own death, a terrible thing to know from a young age. In addition, his depression is frightening to his sister Meera.

If ‘Jojen paste” is your speculation, that is perfectly fine. I am not trying to change any minds here, just discussing the text and Martinworld as a whole. If GRRM has decided Jojen is paste, then so be it. The details of speculation range from outrageous, to Jojen volunteered himself. Personally, I tend to think that we will get a word from Jojen when he sees his death about to happen, which is probably when the Others enter the cave through the back door (as Other-dragons tend to do). I do not think that after the many times Jojen professes this is not the day he dies, that it will be an event that happens off-page.

• A Dance with Dragons – Bran I

  “Jojen, you have to eat,” Meera told him.

  “Later. I just want to rest.” Jojen smiled a wan smile. “This is not the day I die, sister. I promise you.”

Speaking of Martinworld… this line in Bitterblooms is a good example of GRRM reusing a thematic element in a way that he prefers to get a reaction out of readers. In this case it is “pork” that Shawn is eating, not human. Actually, it is neither because Morgan Full of Magic is “liar”, as the story calls her. What we learn in Bitterblooms is actually that none of the food is real, all is just a mgic trick by Morgan LaFey-Full of Magic-Full of Lies. A few of the shared points are that “people” approach the Brazier-style spaceship where they are, just as the wights do outside of Bloodraven’s cave; that cannabalism in a time of dire need is a consistnet theme across Martinworld; that food as a magical element is also a theme. I discuss Morgan with more detail here. Shawn being afraid and “childish” is like Bran liking his scary children’s tales (and Willie Flambeaux in The Skin Trade at first acting childish with Randi Wade), but for Shawn it is directly related to Creg from her clan, not from the storyteller Old Jon, who serves the same role Old Nan.

• Bitterblooms

Sometimes—on several of the worlds, but most particularly on Avalon—it seemed to Shawn that some stranger was about to board their ship. She would watch them come, striding purposefully across the field, their destination clear from every step. They never came aboard, though, much to her disappointment. There was never anyone to touch or talk to except Morgan. Shawn suspected that Morgan magicked the would-be visitors away, or else lured them to their doom. She could not quite make up her mind which; Morgan was so moody that it might be both. One dinnertime she remembered Jon’s story of the cannibal hall, and looked down with horror at the red meat they were eating. She ate only vegetables that meal, and for several meals thereafter until she finally decided that she was being childish. Shawn considered asking Morgan about the strangers who approached and vanished, but she was afraid.

One thing I have never seen GRRM do in any of his stories is to create or use a crazy Gotcha! type of moment. Is he a tricksy bird when it comes to a variety of dialogue in everything from interviews to problematic prophecy in print? Yes.

But he never lies, rather, it is our desirous reader brains that are hungry for more story. But we readers have to be careful that we don’t overdo it, that we do not overplay any one idea, as Anne Groell put it.

The best and most meta line in all of Martinworld comes from the story Nightflyers, basically Jon and Val and the Nights Watch in space. When the main protagonist, Royd Eris (a complete Jon+Bran+Bloodraven prototype), overhears the complicated speculations as to what or who he might actually be. The crew members get way out of hand in their guesses, fabricating wild ideas, and then Royd has to address these speculations with this most wonderful line:

“Sadly, the truth is less dramatic.”– GRRM via Royd Eris of Nightflyers

1. Override– A betrayal between brothers. We are introduced to the rather well adjusted, pacifist main character Kabaraijian who is eventually sold out by his coworker/brother for money. A blood betrayal in #ASOIAF terms.
2. Nightflyers– Nightflyers is about a haunted ship in outerspace. This story is everything a reader would want from a GRRM story; high body count, psi-link mind control, whisperjewels, corpse handling, dragon-mother ships, the Night’s Watch ‘naval’ institution in space, and Jon and Val.
3. Sandkings– Welcome to the disturbing tale of Simon Kress and his Sandkings. Early origins of Unsullied, Dothraki, Aerea Targaryen, and Dragon who mounts the world, set among a leader with a god complex. One of the “must read” George R.R. Martin stories.
4. Bitterblooms– In the dead of deep winter, a young girl named Shawn has to find the mental courage to escape a red fiery witch. Prototyping Val, Stannis, and Arya along with the red witch Melisandre.
5. The Lonely Songs of Laren Dorr – Discarded Knights guards the gates as Sharra feels the Seven while searching for lost love. Many Sansa and Ashara Dayne prototyping here as well.
6. …And Seven Times Never Kill Man– A look into a proto-Andal+Targaryen fiery world as the Jaenshi way of life is erased. But who is controlling these events? Black & Red Pyramids who merge with Bakkalon are on full display in this story.
7. The Last Super Bowl– Football meets SciFi tech with plenty of ASOIAF carryover battle elements.
8. Nobody Leaves New Pittsburg– first in the Corpse Handler trio, and sets a lot of tone for future ASOIAF thematics.
9. Closing Time– A short story that shows many precursor themes for future GRRM stories, including skinchanging, Sneaky Pete’s, catastrophic long nights…
10. The Glass Flower– a tale of how the drive for perfection creates mindlords and mental slavery.
11. Run to Starlight– A tale of coexistence and morality set to a high stakes game of football.
12. Remembering Melody– A ghost tale written by GRRM in 1981 that tells of long nights, bloodbaths, and pancakes.
13. Fast-Friend transcribed and noted. Written in December 1973, this story is a precursor to skinchanging, Bran, Euron, Daenerys, and ways to scheme to reclaim lost love.
14. The Steel Andal Invasion– A re-read of a partial section of  The World of Ice and Fire text compared to the story …And Seven Times Never Kill Man. This has to do with both fire and ice Others in ASOIAF.
15. A Song for Lya– A novella about a psi-link couple investigating a fiery ‘god’. Very much a trees vs fire motif, and one of GRRM’s best stories out there.
16. For A Single Yesterday– A short story about learning from the past to rebuild the future.
17. This Tower of Ashes– A story of how lost love, mother’s milk, and spiders don’t mix all too well.
18. A Peripheral Affair (1973)– When a Terran scout ship on a routine patrol through the Periphery suddenly disappears, a battle-hungry admiral prepares to renew the border war.
19. The Stone City– a have-not surviving while stranded on a corporate planet. Practically a GRRM autobiography in itself.
20. Slide Show– a story of putting the stars before the children.
21. Only Kids are Afraid of the Dark– rubies, fire, blood sacrifice, and Saagael- oh my!
22. A Night at the Tarn House– a magical game of life and death played at an inn at a crossroads.
23. Men of Greywater Station– Is it the trees, the fungus, or is the real danger humans?
24. The Computer Cried Charge!– what are we fighting for and is it worth it?
25. The Needle Men– the fiery hand wields itself again, only, why are we looking for men?
26. Black and White and Red All Over– a partial take on a partial story.
27. Fire & Blood excerpt; Alysanne in the north– not a full story, but transcribed and noted section of the book Fire & Blood, volume 1.

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Thank you for reading the jambles and jumbles of the GRRMspreader the Fattest Leech of Ice and Fire, by Gumbo!

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