Jojen received visions directly from the Three-Eyed-Crow, it seems. I believe that Jojen and other weaker greenseers see what Brynden Rivers wants them to see. Jojen sees his own death; he knows when he'll die, but I’d argue that it is a designed death via Bloodraven. Like, Jojen believes his demise is inevitable rather than it being by design by a fallible string-puller. Bloodraven presents visions that he wants Jojen to see.
Bran also has visions of the Three-Eyed-Crow and a common enough interpretation of the Crow’s activities is that Bloodraven is messing with Bran’s memories in order for him to focus on the task at hand, i.e. replacing Bloodraven as a tree wizard, or, possibly, a body snatching scenario. Jojen is meant to jumpstart a more powerful greenseer, Brandon Stark, through the Jojen Paste theory. I believe that Bran’s arc will be about Bran having the power to see what he wants to see, but first he must overcome Bloodraven’s narrow view and solutions. I think this is the only way forward for Bran’s story. Bloodraven represents the old guard, the old methods that no longer work, methods that have ego and hubris wound up in them, methods that have unleashed Euron Greyjoy onto the world.
Further, at this point, Bloodraven would be very old. His life has extended well past its natural course. A lot of fans believe that Euron was one of Bloodraven’s early attempts at finding a replacement, but Euron turned out all wrong. Jojen may have been in the running, but he’s already sickly and likely weaker than what would be ideal. Bran is Bloodraven’s Hail Mary Pass, a last ditched effort to pass the baton. And Bran is a great choice. He’s powerful. He’s forced to live in his head because of his injury. He’s naturally curious and adventurous. Bloodraven knows this; he sees it, and he uses such knowledge to exact his will, which may turn out to be counter to Bran’s will in the end.
1: Theon did not owe the Starks anything. He was a hostage, has always been a hostage and the fact that the Starks treated him nicely does not change that.
2: Euron most likely has gone to Valyria–maaybe not via his own free will but he has gone there nonetheless
3: Dany is Azor Ahai but that may not nessessarily be a good thing
4: Margaery–at least is doomed
5: (This is more of a theory of mine) Euron was visited by the three eyed raven but something went wrong and he went insane instead of learning to "fly".
6: Jojen Paste (The theory that the weirwood paste Bran eats in ADWD to awaken his magic contains Jojen's blood/heart) is Canon and it may be one of the catalysts in Bran breaking free of Bloodraven
B) I have no opinion on how likely it is. It is not implausible, at all.
C) If it happens, it would fit the Starkling pattern. Dark mentor reveals his true colors over the murder of an innocent to mirror Ygritte, Littlefinger, the Faceless Men. Setting up a break with the dark mentor to let the Starkling use what they learned from them in order to solve an imminent problem and eventually defeat them or at least thwart their plans. It is the incentive Bran needs to reject the tempting powers of the 3ER and warging, along with realizing the cruelty of warging by his abuse of Hodor. Bran may use his powers in the resolution to the ice threat the same way Sansa may need to call on Littlefinger again after escaping him and Arya may use Faceless magic after leaving them, the same way Jon may have to "go back to that cave" by revisiting elements of his time with the wildlings and Ygritte with the Targaryen mess down South. But each from a smarter perspective and with a clearer purpose.
Bran eating Jojen's sacrifical blood is a dark mirror to Summer eating wights, but also to Harrenhal, which was built from weirwood trees and dark magic, blood mixed into the mortar. If Harrenhal can find a positive future purpose, so can Bran.
I don't think it's in your area of expertise but... what are your thoughts on the Jojenpaste theory? How do you think Jojen will meet his end?
I don’t believe in the Jojen Paste theory. @nobodysuspectsthebutterfly and @poorquentyn already covered this quite nicely so I’m just gonna let them do the dirty work for me:
if you’re trying to log on to the Weirwood Net, logically you’d use something made from weirwood
the paste is red because weirwood sap is red
although the show and the books are completely separate, jojen dying on the show when he did probably confirms that he was not made into paste
and @poorquentyn points out that weirwood paste seems related to shade of the evening, suggesting that Bran ate a plant
With all that out of the way, I can spend my time talking about more important things, aka ASOIAF themes. Because thematically, this passage has never suggested cannibalism to me:
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.
What would you give for a magic potion that let’s you revisit your beloved dead? To see their faces as you did in life? To hear their voices, not a recording but their actual voices? To see them smile again, and perhaps even get the message through to them that you love them? I don’t know about you, but I would give quite a lot.
But “it does not do to dwell on dreams and forget to live” (JKR). In GRRM’s own words, “Bright and many-colored are the webs the dream-spiders weave. […] Sometimes […] the wrongness of it all hits me, and I know I’ve dwelt with dreams too long. Yet the dreams are often better than the waking, the stories so much finer than the lives.” (Why won’t y’all read Dreamsongs?)
The weirwood paste is (literally) bittersweet. It’s a sweet, beautiful thing to be able to visit the past and see your family again, but it’s dangerous too. “Bitterness is a signal of potential toxicity” [x]. I don’t believe weirwood paste is literally toxic, but it’s dangerous in so many ways. What will Bran see that was better left unseen? What happens if Bran can change events in the past? What about Hodor? Is it possible to become addicted to the weirwood paste?
“Bright and man-colored are the webs the dream-spiders weave…” The weirwood paste offers something bright and beautiful, “silver and scarlet, indigo and azure,” but Bran must be careful not to become caught in its deadly trap. Especially when the cave falls under siege, which I predicted years before the show did that.
The horror of weirwood sap doesn’t come from cannibalism. The horror comes from touching the divine and gaining these godlike powers of peering through time and even influencing events. It’s wondrous, to be sure (hence the sweet taste) but it’s horrible too. So often in fantasy, becoming this messiah-figure, holding communion the divine, is something lonely and sad and ... well, bitter.
And symbolically, in my opinion, eating such transcendent fairytale food in Bloodraven’s underworld / liminal space / non-human realm is suggestive of Persephone, who was a resident of two worlds, in a perpetual cycle of death and rebirth. (Literally, Bran is eating “weirwood seeds” and red weirwood sap while Persephone ate red pomegranate seeds.)
The Greeks believed that eating ritual food was communion, a participation with the gods and their powers. […] The ‘seeds of death’ which consummate the marriage of Kore and Hades are part of a complex and powerful symbol. The pomegranate’s many seeds make it an obvious symbol of fertility and it was used both in marriage rites and at funerals in Greece, thus linking the two and underscoring again the motif of ‘fertile death’. It also reveals twin mythological themes of vital import to ancient Greeks and found still among some Greeks in rural areas today: marriage as death and death as a marriage. [x]
I would say that Bran shares this symbolism of “fertile death” - literally summer in the midst of endless winter.
And the color of the weirwood has a lot of symbolism too. The Greeks believed that red, the color of the pomegranate, “red, the blood–color, was also sacred to the dead” [x] That’s why I think GRRM wrote that the weirwood paste “looked remarkably like blood,” to emphasize the mystical connection to the past, allowing Bran to have all of his visions.
“Another link [between pomegranates and] the realm of the Dead was the belief among the ancients that souls nibbled at the pomegranate seeds laid on their graves.” [x] So to me the weirwood paste is a connection to all the greenseers who have come before, who have gone “into the trees” and become a part of the weirwood net.
This is talking about Persephone, but it feels like a summary of Bran’s story to me:
“You will go back again to the secret places of the earth and dwell there a third part of the seasons of the year and two parts among men and the other gods. When the earth blooms with sweet–smelling spring flowers of all kinds, then up from the misty darkness you will come again, a wonder to gods and to all mortal men.” […]
The […] connection of the [Persephone] myth with the cyclicity of nature is far more than an explanation of how the seasons came about. It expresses […] the human hunger for participation and meaning, inspiration and hope. To 'feel into’ the season of winter: to take into one’s self the barrenness, the dormancy, the separation from and seeming cessation of life; to experience it all as if it were the loss of the Kore child, vibrant and cherished; to draw it even deeper into one’s own life, experience the bitterness, the grieving, the raging over all of the places where life spirals downward, appears to be lost: this is the start of initiation. But to follow Persephone on this path, to see her in Nature, is also to experience return. For at the darkest point of winter, the solstice point, the light returns, and life begins to stir again, breaking forth from its hiddenness under the earth, re–emerging in the miracle, the utterly dependable sequel to death: the season of spring. She returns and, with her, the dead are reborn, blossoming forth like flowers and grain: the initiation is complete, the vision fulfilled— only to begin and repeat the whole cycle again. [x]
“to take into one’s self the barrenness, the dormancy” // “Yet to Bran it felt as if they had all died while he had slept … or perhaps Bran had died”
“the separation from and seeming cessation of life” // “It was not dead, just broken. Like me, he thought. I’m not dead either.”
“the loss of the Kore child, vibrant and cherished” // “He was my special boy.”
“the bitterness, the grieving, the raging over all of the places where life spirals downward, appears to be lost: this is the start of initiation.” // “You will never walk again, but you will fly.”
“also to experience return” // A Dream of Spring
“only to begin and repeat the whole cycle again.” // “The war has been waged since time began, and before it is done, all men must choose where they will stand.”
Regarding Jojen’s death … I’m not sure. Probably something heroic, during the Battle for the Cave. I’m not the best at predicting anything North of the Neck, so instead let’s look at how beautiful and heartbreaking this is:
“It tasted of honey, of new-fallen snow, of pepper and cinnamon and the last kiss his mother ever gave him.”
It’s got that ache and that longing which I love in GRRM’s writing. Imagine how painful Jojen’s death will be, if GRRM can do this much when he’s only writing about food, and nasty weirwood paste food at that.
(Honestly tho, more analysis needs to be done about food in ASOIAF, because there’s so much more to all the food than we give GRRM credit for, with all the fairytale / fantasy symbolism he uses.)
(I still haven’t gotten over what GRRM wrote about ice cream, friends.)
The only magic that truly exists in the world of ASOIAF is blood magic. Take notice of all the magic that happened in the story, it all involved blood sacrifices. The Jojen paste theory is very possible and Bloodraven has always been sus. Won’t be surprised if they set things in motion for it to happen.
I will continue to skip Bran chapters if future books ever release, though that feels like a pipe dream.
