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Are the Others really the big bad ?


LordImp

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Something i see a lot of at this forum is " defeating the Others" . Bloodraven is teaching Bran to defeat the Others , Dany has dragons to defeat the Others , Jon will be ressurected to defeat the Others. Bran , Jon , Tyrion , Dany and almost everyone will unite to defeat the Others. But are the Others the big bad of the entire series?

What i like about this series is that its not straight up good vs evil , its grey. A good person can do bad things and a bad person good things. Thats why i dont like the idea of the Others being the big bad , that they are this supernatural evil that everyone must defeat together. In a series like this where good vs evil is not the main theme , wouldent it make more sense if some of the characters actually allies with the Others or it will be a war between North( Stark , Others) and South( Targaryen, dragons) . Im not saying that the Others are good , but i expect a twist about the Others. 

The Others have been built up the entire series as the big bad , so i think something will happen and the we will have a very different view on the Others. For example the Others are linked to the Starks , Bran will lead the Others or that both Others and dragons must be destroyed for the world to continue. 

what do you think? Are the Others the true big bad of this series or will there be a twist and they will turn out to be not so bad anyway? 

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There is no such thing as inherent evil. The others are the prototypical villians and most readers don´t question it because we´re used to it from other novels and movies. In the real world enemies are dehumanized to justify killing them and it´s always wrong, I don´t think asoiaf is any different. GRRM is a realistic writer, even if it´s fantasy of scifi.
I believe they will turn out not so different from humans, with the good and the bad, they propably have very good reasons to do what they do too. Maybe they even are human, at least they seem to be able to procreate with them, wich should already be a hint that they´re not actually "the other", but just different.

That doesn´t mean they won´t be defeated and maybe even extinguished, with all the prophecies coming true in a way, the great war for the dawn we´ve been anticipating. But I believe there will be a reveal that will make us feel sad and bitter about it, with all our heroes turining out to be genocidal mass murderes, all be it out of ignorance.

Long story short, I´d say there´s no way in hell the others are evil. What reason do we really have to believe that? Some sketchy ancient prophecy and the word of fanatics is all we have, and when was that ever right.

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4 hours ago, LordImp said:

Something i see a lot of at this forum is " defeating the Others" . Bloodraven is teaching Bran to defeat the Others , Dany has dragons to defeat the Others , Jon will be ressurected to defeat the Others. Bran , Jon , Tyrion , Dany and almost everyone will unite to defeat the Others. But are the Others the big bad of the entire series?

What i like about this series is that its not straight up good vs evil , its grey. A good person can do bad things and a bad person good things. Thats why i dont like the idea of the Others being the big bad , that they are this supernatural evil that everyone must defeat together. In a series like this where good vs evil is not the main theme , wouldent it make more sense if some of the characters actually allies with the Others or it will be a war between North( Stark , Others) and South( Targaryen, dragons) . Im not saying that the Others are good , but i expect a twist about the Others. 

The Others have been built up the entire series as the big bad , so i think something will happen and the we will have a very different view on the Others. For example the Others are linked to the Starks , Bran will lead the Others or that both Others and dragons must be destroyed for the world to continue. 

what do you think? Are the Others the true big bad of this series or will there be a twist and they will turn out to be not so bad anyway? 

Alien and incompatible with human life isn't the same thing evil

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17 hours ago, Make Shadowbabies Not War said:

I think that the Others will antagonists more than simply villains. They will be the source of conflict, and our protagonists will fight them, but I also expect that they will have motivations behind their actions.

I agree with this and am going to add that I don't think that the conflict with the others is going to be the end-all of the series.  While I believe that the conflict will occur and the majority of the Westeros fighting strength will at least be aware of the conflict (if not actively involved), I suspect that the final challenge will be the fallout from this conflict. 

Should the Others move south, clearly the North will take the brunt of it.  Will other areas on Westeros support the north, or take advantage of the situation to grab territory from the North and the allied Riverlands?  Will outside invading forces, like the Golden Company and maybe...eventually...Dany, try to establish their claims to the IT before confronting the others?

After such a conflict, will the various factions on Westeros be able to set aside past grievances and try to come up with a better system?  This is what I think the "end game" of the series will be, how the various regions and power bases try to pick up the pieces.

 

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My fantasy is that Jon will lead the Others against Dany's Dragons. 

I got to admit, the possibility of that playing out is less. We have less facts about others so far and it would be good if TWOW comes out. We will have more points to speculate about.

As far as now, Others are the time bomb that is going to bring about a development in a culture prone to kings and queens. GRRM keeps his writing parallel to real world so maybe the ending will be the struggle for a modern age democracy.

Yes they will be the antagonist. Bran himseld hides inside a cave to be safe from WW. How will it be possible for Jon/Dany or others to forge an alliance with Others? History repeats itself and the long night is to happen again to bring out a new dawn.

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"Bad"

They'll be the final antagonists, along with Dany. Forces of ice and fire both wrecking havok in Westeros.

Pretty sure Dany is heading towards a heroic sacrifice destroying the Others at the very end of the series.

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2 hours ago, delspark said:

My fantasy is that Jon will lead the Others against Dany's Dragons. 

I got to admit, the possibility of that playing out is less. We have less facts about others so far and it would be good if TWOW comes out. We will have more points to speculate about.

As far as now, Others are the time bomb that is going to bring about a development in a culture prone to kings and queens. GRRM keeps his writing parallel to real world so maybe the ending will be the struggle for a modern age democracy.

Yes they will be the antagonist. Bran himseld hides inside a cave to be safe from WW. How will it be possible for Jon/Dany or others to forge an alliance with Others? History repeats itself and the long night is to happen again to bring out a new dawn.

We have no idea how the first long night ended. All we know was that the Last hero looked after the Childrens with 12 companions and he was the last living and the Others was at his tail , we dont know how it ended. Im in the camp that the Last hero actually forged a pact with the Others and that this pact inspired the Nights King legends. 

Its possible that a pact will be forged. Maybe the Others are more civilizaded than we think. They did send a wight to kill Mormont after all. 

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1 hour ago, Sullen said:

"Bad"

They'll be the final antagonists, along with Dany. Forces of ice and fire both wrecking havok in Westeros.

Pretty sure Dany is heading towards a heroic sacrifice destroying the Others at the very end of the series.

I am leaning towards this too. Others and dragons are both threats to the world and must both be destroyed. Im guessing that the Others and dragons was actually created and therefore is not natural. And fire is not better than ice , they are both equally bad. 

But i think Jon will be more heroic than Dany. Dany might be the one to stop the Others , but i think Jon is the hero of this story. I hope that Westeros will be split between ice and fire while Jon will be in the middle as he is both ice and fire . Im unsure where Bran fits into this , i think he might be ice. Who knows what Bloodraven and COTF are planning . 

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Well, considering the Great Other is Bran, that depends on whether or not you think Bran is evil. Bran, after 'mastering' his powers, attempts to unify Westeros but ultimately becomes the Great Other in the process. He then uses his powers to warn his younger self of this, which brings about a time paradox in which the original Bran - now the Great Other - is in a constant struggle with his younger self - who is attempting to stop his older self as well as his inevitable change into the Great Other himself.

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22 hours ago, LordImp said:

Something i see a lot of at this forum is " defeating the Others" . Bloodraven is teaching Bran to defeat the Others , Dany has dragons to defeat the Others , Jon will be ressurected to defeat the Others. Bran , Jon , Tyrion , Dany and almost everyone will unite to defeat the Others. But are the Others the big bad of the entire series?

What i like about this series is that its not straight up good vs evil , its grey. A good person can do bad things and a bad person good things. Thats why i dont like the idea of the Others being the big bad , that they are this supernatural evil that everyone must defeat together. In a series like this where good vs evil is not the main theme , wouldent it make more sense if some of the characters actually allies with the Others or it will be a war between North( Stark , Others) and South( Targaryen, dragons) . Im not saying that the Others are good , but i expect a twist about the Others. 

The Others have been built up the entire series as the big bad , so i think something will happen and the we will have a very different view on the Others. For example the Others are linked to the Starks , Bran will lead the Others or that both Others and dragons must be destroyed for the world to continue. 

what do you think? Are the Others the true big bad of this series or will there be a twist and they will turn out to be not so bad anyway? 

Go back, read the prologue to AGoT, and ask yourself the question again. They ambush Waymar Royce and giggle as they carve him up. They're evil.

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6 minutes ago, Light a wight tonight said:

Go back, read the prologue to AGoT, and ask yourself the question again. They ambush Waymar Royce and giggle as they carve him up. They're evil.

Right, because humans aren´t sadistic and enjoy killing. If anything the prologue proves that they have a sense of humor and are not mindless zombies.

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Just now, Ser Tristan Flowers said:

Right, because humans aren´t sadistic and enjoy killing. If anything the prologue proves that they have a sense of humor and are not mindless zombies.

Big difference here is that we see a relatively few sadistic humans like Vargo Hoat & Friends, balanced by people like Brother Meribald, but all the White Walkers we see are like this.

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Just now, Ser Tristan Flowers said:

Right, because humans aren´t sadistic and enjoy killing. If anything the prologue proves that they have a sense of humor and are not mindless zombies.

I mean, of course they're not mindless zombies, but they do command an army of mindless zombies. Good and evil are indeed relative terms, but they're both pointless when you're describing an amoral species that literally needs to destroy / change the world we live in to thrive. GRRM likes subverting tropes as a whole, but he very often plays them straight, which would actually be better in this case. Think of the Other's not as a literal threat, but as an extended metaphor on climate change, or whatever societal problem that we're too wrapped up in our own modern issues or apathy to do anything about.

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14 minutes ago, Light a wight tonight said:

Big difference here is that we see a relatively few sadistic humans like Vargo Hoat & Friends, balanced by people like Brother Meribald, but all the White Walkers we see are like this.

Oh really? How many others have we seen?

Killing a dude an laughing at him because he can´t touch you seems like something a lot of warriors would do. We have not seen others hunting and flaying people for sport.

9 minutes ago, The Fiddler said:

I mean, of course they're not mindless zombies, but they do command an army of mindless zombies. Good and evil are indeed relative terms, but they're both pointless when you're describing an amoral species that literally needs to destroy / change the world we live in to thrive. GRRM likes subverting tropes as a whole, but he very often plays them straight, which would actually be better in this case. Think of the Other's not as a literal threat, but as an extended metaphor on climate change, or whatever societal problem that we're too wrapped up in our own modern issues or apathy to do anything about.

Admittedly, you could be right, but I disagree. The others are people, not a natural disaster. We have no idea what they´re doing and we certainly don´t know that they want to destroy the world. We don´t even know that they´re responsible for the long night. They might have a very particular agenda just like everyone else. No PoV character has any inside on tem except some fairytales. For all we know they might be trying to save the world from mankind.

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24 minutes ago, Ser Tristan Flowers said:

Admittedly, you could be right, but I disagree. The others are people, not a natural disaster. We have no idea what they´re doing and we certainly don´t know that they want to destroy the world. We don´t even know that they´re responsible for the long night. They might have a very particular agenda just like everyone else. No PoV character has any inside on tem except some fairytales. For all we know they might be trying to save the world from mankind.

I think you'll be right when it comes to the show. At the moment they've basically been a background threat outside of the first chapter, and we haven't really gotten to know anything new about them for several books now. Whereas, in the show, 

Spoiler

they're basically confirmed to be normal humans, albeit those that have been changed by some sort of ritual. 

The same will probably be true for the books, but the show has the advantage of not needing a POV to flesh out the Great Other. They've also been a tangible threat for ages now, with us learning quite a few things about them.  

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1 hour ago, Light a wight tonight said:

Go back, read the prologue to AGoT, and ask yourself the question again. They ambush Waymar Royce and giggle as they carve him up. They're evil.

Never said they where not evil. What i asked  was if they are the big bad of this series. 

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Yes, they are the big bad though that doesn't mean GRRM will write things in a predictable or stereotypical way - the opposite is much more likely.

Their motivations are unknown but their actions and impact are hardly something that's in doubt with the prologue setting up quite clearly how menacing and antagonistic they are to humans, with Bran's coma dream of the threat lurking in the Land of Always Winter, with the entire wildling population fleeing south or being killed and turned into wights, with the slaughter on the Fist of the First Men, with the Legends of the Long Night, The Last Hero and the War for the Dawn and the Prince that was Promised.

Of course you can ignore all this if you want to and find the idea that GRRM has been setting up false expectations from the very beginning and through the last five books more attractive.  There is no doubt he wants his characters to be realistic and flawed rather than pure and perfect but the Wall and the Others are a huge Chekov's gun that is about to go off rather than part of the supernatural and mystic history of the Starks who they are going to team up with after slaughtering the NW.

Re the idea that they are a counter to or an equal threat to the dragons: Valyrians had dragons for hundreds of years without the Others stirring and the Targaryens ruled over Westeros and even fought dynastic wars of succession with trained dragons without some apocalyptic catastrophe.  What's going on beyond the Wall is the problem and what people should be worried about heading their way not what three half-wild dragons might do if not properly controlled.

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