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I challenge you to justify supporting the Others winning


Canon Claude

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There isn't one. GRRM can say they "aren't evil" as much and as loud as he wants, he has yet to even hint at that in the books. And it would be very hard to justify wholesale genocide and turning their victims into zombies.

If there is something worse they are running from or some cosmic balance reason why they have to go South they could still at least TRY to communicate that...or at least not defile the dead of their victims by animating them to battle their former friends and loved ones.

So, yes there can be a lot of justification for why the Others need to go south, but none for the way they go about it.

1 hour ago, Ralphis Baratheon said:

If the rulers of the realm can't put aside their differences and keep choosing to fight each other and politic and scheme instead of coming together to fight their common enemy then maybe man is too flawed to remain living.

30 minutes ago, rotting sea cow said:

This.

Still wouldn't be their position to decide that for the humans and exterminate the good along with the bad.

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Because they're more likable than Daenerys and the rest of our human characters.  I'm not trolling.  Everyone is either scheming or noble born smug and think they deserve lofty status or a clood blooded murderer or a crippled tree.  Davos, Jaime (who boned his sister and threw a kid out of a window), Meera, and Edric Storm are the only likable characters.  I for one welcome the Others to take all of planetos.

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There's...I guess, an ecological argument? IRL most human societies legally regard non-human life, even fairly intelligent life, as chattel property with extremely limited rights - just look at how unpopular even self-interested environmental protection is these days - and the Westerosi appear similar. If you're a member of a non-human intelligence, you might naturally view human being as your inherent enemy - or even have similar views, but centered on your own species. A chilling thought - that two alien intelligences can acknowledge each other's awareness, and still be set on exterminating the other.

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Basic evolutionary theory?  "Survival of the fittest" normally doesn't take into account who is nicer or more politically correct when determining status as apex predator, nor does it account for personal likes, dislikes, or loyalties.

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This was a great question! Throughout all the books so far, we've never had an Other point of view yet. There hasn't been any communication with these folks - at least, that the reader can understand. All we know is the basically legendary information that the Others are bad, and have seen how they've been killing - and reanimating - humans.

It doesn't look good. But then again, Jaime Lannister looked like a real turd, just tossing Bran out the window to his death. Upon further plot development, he now doesn't seem to be all bad, might be on a redemptive arc, and one might even detect that he's worse when under the influence of his twin sister, Cersei. The Hound, too, seemed like a simple brute, until we heard his backstory and saw his interactions with Sansa and Arya.

I have little doubt that we will (eventually) be learning a lot more about the Others. Who are they, where did they come from, what are their motivations. I don't think they're the standard villainous killing machines, with no redeeming values or rationale for what they do; George RR likes complexity and the Others may end up telling us a lot about the human settlement of Westeros that probably even its current residents forgot.

We may even learn good reasons for why they - and not the humans - ought to prevail in this mortal struggle. As modern humans, we of course can think of a lot of reasons why WE should not.

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2 hours ago, Lucius Lovejoy said:

Because they're more likable than Daenerys and the rest of our human characters.  I'm not trolling.  Everyone is either scheming or noble born smug and think they deserve lofty status or a clood blooded murderer or a crippled tree.  Davos, Jaime (who boned his sister and threw a kid out of a window), Meera, and Edric Storm are the only likable characters.  I for one welcome the Others to take all of planetos.

Whut? wtf dude? lol? why?

Why do you read the books if you find all characters so unlikeable that you hope that the ice demons and zombies who kill everyone in their path to win?

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48 minutes ago, Coolbeard the Exile said:

Why do you read the books if you find all characters so unlikeable that you hope that the ice demons and zombies who kill everyone in their path to win?

To be fair, the First Men went out of their way to wipe out the Giants and the Children of the Forest before they were basically forced to make a pact with creatures that they couldn't just stomp under their boots. Then the Andals gleefully conquered both those cultures while feeling like they were completely justified in doing so. The Targaryens swooped in and decided they wanted to rule millions of people, whether they liked it or not, and had no qualms about burning thousands with dragon fire. Each ruling class exploited the classes beneath them, and the meanest of humans viewed all animals as theirs to lord over. And I say that as someone who likes to eat meat; I'm as much of a hypocrite as anyone else, and I'm aware of a food chain that exists in the world, and I still think humans cross lines when it comes to those food chains and whatnot. But that said, if you do think that a superior species has every right to do what they want, then congrats, you're rooting for the Others to win by default.

My point is that the Others aren't that much different from humans. They're doing the same things that humans would be doing if they could get away with it. You're telling me that we wouldn't summon up our enemy dead into zombies if we had the technology to do so? Even as people read that previous sentence, I'll bet some of them nearly salivated at the thought of having command over a zombie army at their beck and call.

Face it, Agent Smith was completely spot on about humans being a virus. And when a bigger virus comes along and destroys us, it'll be no different from us wiping out millions of species because they were in our way.

Again, that's not to say I don't hate all humans, or that nobody in the books is likeable. It's just a case of my cognitive dissonance acting up.

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Nihilistic justification:

There is no point to anyone’s existence anyway, why continue? Better let the Others end human existence.

Postmodern justification:

Planetos is oppressed by the evil patriarchy. The unjust power structure must be torn down at all costs. The Others are by definition the most oppressed (othered) group, so the dominant groups have no cause for complaint if they are wiped out in process of the Others ending the oppression they have been subject to for 10.000 years. Any argument against this is politically incorrect and should be no-platformed.

Marxist justification:

The Others have no individual property and no economy, so no-one gets exploited. Under their dominion everyone is dead, and death is the great equalizer. All are equal in death. Hence, with everyone being dead, it will be the most equal and therefore the most just society. The weights have no individual identity, so it will be the perfect, peaceful society with no risk of counter revolution.

Racial supremacy justification

The WW are the northernmost, whitest and therefore the purest and most superior race. This is self-evident, no further proof of this hypothesis is needed, it never is in these cases. Therefore the Others should claim their rightful place as the only race worthy of existence. If all other races are wiped out in coming race wars, that is only natural. See social Darwinism for further details.

Religious justification

The Others are ________________(insert name of preferred deity here) instrument of bringing about the prophesied apocalypse due to human sin/lack of faith/karma/sexual deviance (delete as appropriate). Only after the Others have destroyed the world in the final battle, can the perfect paradise/virgin brothel/nirwana for the righteous be established. Hence their victory is both necessary and inevitable. Deus lo vult!  Follow the holy sandal!

Environmental justification

The human race is a parasite on the planet and will eventually destroy nature and themselves anyway. If the Others manage to wipe out the humans  before they develop fossil fuels, nuclear technology and industrial farming, the planet will be saved before it is really under threat.       

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They have no justification but why would they need one? Once they were done with wiping out humanity they could just say they made a mistake like humans always did. Humans aren't the only race (species) with exclusive right to make mistake of genocide!

The Others are omnicidal, but so are humans with their selective "genocide" of any species they deem to be dangerous to them (a lot) as well as countless species wiped out unintentionally by human's terraforming of the planet because they totally own it and are entitled to the right to do whatever they want.

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1 minute ago, Schwarze Sonne said:

They have no justification but why would they need one?  ...

I think you're assuming a lot about Others' motivations that are not in evidence... Like I said, we need to know more. I think that Jon Snow, prior to his assassination, was gearing up to try and communicate with them.

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3 hours ago, James Steller said:

To be fair, the First Men went out of their way to wipe out the Giants and the Children of the Forest before they were basically forced to make a pact with creatures that they couldn't just stomp under their boots. Then the Andals gleefully conquered both those cultures while feeling like they were completely justified in doing so. The Targaryens swooped in and decided they wanted to rule millions of people, whether they liked it or not, and had no qualms about burning thousands with dragon fire. Each ruling class exploited the classes beneath them, and the meanest of humans viewed all animals as theirs to lord over. And I say that as someone who likes to eat meat; I'm as much of a hypocrite as anyone else, and I'm aware of a food chain that exists in the world, and I still think humans cross lines when it comes to those food chains and whatnot. But that said, if you do think that a superior species has every right to do what they want, then congrats, you're rooting for the Others to win by default.

My point is that the Others aren't that much different from humans. They're doing the same things that humans would be doing if they could get away with it. You're telling me that we wouldn't summon up our enemy dead into zombies if we had the technology to do so? Even as people read that previous sentence, I'll bet some of them nearly salivated at the thought of having command over a zombie army at their beck and call.

Face it, Agent Smith was completely spot on about humans being a virus. And when a bigger virus comes along and destroys us, it'll be no different from us wiping out millions of species because they were in our way.

Again, that's not to say I don't hate all humans, or that nobody in the books is likeable. It's just a case of my cognitive dissonance acting up.

How can the books be enjoyable if literally no character is likeable???

The Children of the forest seem pretty aggresive as they warred against the giants, attacked the migrating first men and after the pact they created the others to wipe out the humans. Later they supported the monarch Warg king and now they seemingly intend on wiping out the humans again. 

The Others arent doing the same thing as the humans. The Others seem to all be cruel creatures who laugh as they kill Waymar and they summon zombies and kill everyone. They don't build or do something productive they seem to be a weapon wielded by the children of the forrest. 

It is well known that the smallfolk dont like to war and that it is power hungry lords who are the cause of it and hopefully the humans of westeros will advance as we on earth have.

It is beyond me that you take the side of the Others though especially when we have so many good characters.

Again why do you read the book lol?

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I've always viewed the Long Night / Others similar to a "cleansing of the world" if you will.  Kinda like Noah's ark/flood story.  TWoIaF gave clues that there could have been more than one Long Night by introducing the dragon bones found on Westeros that are pre-Targ and possibly pre-Long Night.  I have some fragmented ideas about how the Others (ice) cleanse Westeros & Dragons/Fire (Doom) cleanse Essos when civilization needs to be reset, or something along those lines.  (leaving it at that)

So I would say that the coming of the Long Night and the Others are the world's natural cycle of survival, and that makes the Others necessary and justified.

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