Why the Others won't win

[Tyrion1991]

One of the great things about GRRM writing is that you really feel like his battles could go anyway. I can genuinely look back and think about how if but for the whims of fate or bad decisions Stannis might have won at the Blackwater instead of the Lannisters. We can see how all these mistakes and clever ploys make the battles so engaging and entertaining to read about. Its never a case of one faction winning being a foregone conclusion because it has all the advantages.

Which is why the Others can't win. The Others seem to be GRRM take on the impending greater threat. Sauron, the Dark One, etc etc. This enemy that seems unstoppable and against whom everyone should be focusing instead of their own petty squabbles. A lot of people get hung up on the "are the Others grey" thing. But most agree that in terms of power, the Others are the armies evil trope. They are powerful enough to destroy all of the other factions.

The problem with GRRM adapting this trope is that it contradicts how GRRM writes his battle scenes and what makes them great. The Others will just win because they are more powerful. The game has been rigged by the author and the heroes has no way of winning. So they can't be held responsible for losing if its never a real fight, they had no chance of ever winning and in effect none of their decisions mattered anyway. If GRRM lets the Others win, that's only because he gave them too many advantages. Because he has the humans living in the real world worrying about things like food and water fighting a High Fantasy Undead army in the middle of a harsh winter that smothers every fire and when all the dragons are dead long before the series starts. 

Plus the Others are a Mary Sue faction. Think about it. All of the major factions have infighting, make mistakes, misjudgements, sorcery is a sword with no hilt, are ignorant of the fact and generally things go wrong. But the Others, in order to be built up as this great threat don't have any of these problems. Which is very unrealistic and High Fantasy. How come one side is living in the real world whilst the other is playing by the High Fantasy book? Its one or the other surely?

A good indicator of this is Battle at the Fist of the First Men. Instead of this complex multi pov battle in which mistakes are made on both sides, you have this unstoppable zombie horde just butcher essentially all of the Nights Watch in a single day. You are never in any doubt about which way this is going to go. There was nothing the Lord Commander could have done to win the day. A huge army materialises out of nowhere and surrounds him. Game over.

To use the obvious parallel. How come the forces of Ice can bring back millions of people but the forces of fire can bring back one dude? Seems a bit unfair.

The reason other fantasy writers have an all powerful antagonist is:

1) To raise the stakes to apocalyptic. All hope is lost.

2) To make the heroes victory seem even more amazing.

3) To make a moral point that good will always prevail over evil.

Now I can hear you all shouting, "But GRRM will subvert point 3!". But he can't make that point. Ned Stark had the ability to do things differently, he didn't lack for power in Kings Landing; his conscience got in the way. This way GRRM challenged the idea that being a good guy is auto win. However because GRRM is making the Others this unstoppable threat, well there is no moral point to this. They will win because they are more powerful. If the playing field was even and our heroes could have won; but pulled a Ned Stark then fine he will have made the point. But the game is currently rigged. All the Others have to is World War Z it all the way to Oldtown whilst winter kills everybody; then shoot a few ice arrows at them pesky dragons. 

Basically the Others wouldn't win because they had a certain world view and are kind of a mary sue faction compared to many of the other flawed factions who owe a lot to chance. So they shouldn't win.

 

 

 

[OberynBlackfyre]

I get what you are saying, but I definitely don't think the Others are as OP as you say.  From what we know about them, there are certain wards of magic they can't get through.  Honestly if it was just the case of them needing to get over a physical Wall, I think they could have accomplished that already.  There are other things working here that we aren't seeing....something needs to happen for them to have the right moment to strike.  And when an enemy is working within a time window, that always benefits those that DONT have the time window.  

Not to mention, Bran got to the Three Eyed Crow, which seemingly seems like a failsafe against the Others, from what we know.  So if he didnt make it, I would say the heroes would definitely seem in a desperate situation.  but with Bran taking on the reign of being the Three Eyed Crow, Daenerys having 3 dragons, Jon coming into his own as a commander (assuming he will come back of course, and follow even the ghost of his story from the TV show) I just think they are actually fit as best as they could be given what they have to work with

[OberynBlackfyre]

I really think the kick of the story will be that GRRM doesnt make the White Walkers the great evil of the series....or at least not the "final boss".   I think he is going to go the "human evil is the real terror" route and make Euron and Cersei the real terrors that will be faced at the end by our heroes.

[Tyrion1991]

5 minutes ago, OberynBlackfyre said:

I get what you are saying, but I definitely don't think the Others are as OP as you say.  From what we know about them, there are certain wards of magic they can't get through.  Honestly if it was just the case of them needing to get over a physical Wall, I think they could have accomplished that already.  There are other things working here that we aren't seeing....something needs to happen for them to have the right moment to strike.  And when an enemy is working within a time window, that always benefits those that DONT have the time window.  

Not to mention, Bran got to the Three Eyed Crow, which seemingly seems like a failsafe against the Others, from what we know.  So if he didnt make it, I would say the heroes would definitely seem in a desperate situation.  but with Bran taking on the reign of being the Three Eyed Crow, Daenerys having 3 dragons, Jon coming into his own as a commander (assuming he will come back of course, and follow even the ghost of his story from the TV show) I just think they are actually fit as best as they could be given what they have to work with

 

Its an Undead army immune to normal swords, never tires, never sleeps and is a limitless supply of fodder. They have superhuman strength. Its like World War Z only if the good guys had swords instead of machine guns. If GRRM is being realistic, then that cannot be beaten by a medieval army and he has not done anything to remotely even the balance to make our heroes decisions and mistakes matter. 

Winter smothers the fires needed to burn the dead.

I'd be surprised if there aren't ways of killing or dealing with the dragons. Plus nothing stops them killing the riders on the ground. Plus Danys dragons won't grow big enough to be a factor against the scale of the host. They aren't enough to offset all the problems. If the Unsullied fought the Undead, they would die easily. If the Dothraki fought them, they would die easily. If they hold castles, they will swarm over the walls. 

The Others can probably do all of the stuff Bran can do. 

[OberynBlackfyre]

2 minutes ago, Tyrion1991 said:

 

Its an Undead army immune to normal swords, never tires, never sleeps and is a limitless supply of fodder. They have superhuman strength. Its like World War Z only if the good guys had swords instead of machine guns. If GRRM is being realistic, then that cannot be beaten by a medieval army and he has not done anything to remotely even the balance to make our heroes decisions and mistakes matter. 

Winter smothers the fires needed to burn the dead.

I'd be surprised if there aren't ways of killing or dealing with the dragons. Plus nothing stops them killing the riders on the ground. Plus Danys dragons won't grow big enough to be a factor against the scale of the host. They aren't enough to offset all the problems. If the Unsullied fought the Undead, they would die easily. If the Dothraki fought them, they would die easily. If they hold castles, they will swarm over the walls. 

The Others can probably do all of the stuff Bran can do. 

oh im not saying they cant do that, but that would only be if Dany and Jon were incredibly dumb.  As it is, Jon and Sam know that the White Walkers are the real threat.....and from what we can gather they most likely only have a limited number of actual white walkers.  I think if you had those armies target the White Walkers, especially with the dragons, it becomes a different ball game. 

 

Now if what happened on the show comes to pass, then we are talking something different.  The Others have a dragon or something comparable sets everything off differently.

[The Fattest Leech]

17 minutes ago, OberynBlackfyre said:

I really think the kick of the story will be that GRRM doesnt make the White Walkers the great evil of the series....or at least not the "final boss".   I think he is going to go the "human evil is the real terror" route and make Euron and Cersei the real terrors that will be faced at the end by our heroes.

I agree with this to a degree. I think the original idea was to make them the baddies before the invasion of Dany and the Dothraki, but who knows how that has shifted? 

To the OP, not sure how much other GRRM work youn have read, but he doesn't do cliche even if he is reworking a common theme. 

[falcotron]

4 hours ago, OberynBlackfyre said:

I think he is going to go the "human evil is the real terror" route and make Euron and Cersei the real terrors that will be faced at the end by our heroes.

Euron could actually be… not quite a red herring, but a side track that ultimately doesn't matter that much to the plot.

If his main scheme is finding a way to use the Others to his own end (and obviously that's a big if), and the Others end up being defeated, it doesn't matter that much whether he'd succeeded in bending them to his plots or whether they were still following their own plans, because they lost anyway. Which could make him an interesting thematic replay of Night's King, but the plot wouldn't be much different if he were never there.

And then sad, pathetic, crazy Cersei, who has no great powers, but could lead millions of people to their deaths—that's the real final threat.

(Of course even if Euron is trying to use the Others, it's also possible that he's going to have the "Oh no, I should have realized I can't control the Daleks, I'm switching to your side Doctor" ending or the "Oh no, I should have realized I can't control the Cybermen, ack I'm dead" ending, but I don't see either of those as being as likely.)

[Lady Blizzardborn]

5 hours ago, Tyrion1991 said:

<snip

Plus the Others are a Mary Sue faction. Think about it. All of the major factions have infighting, make mistakes, misjudgements, sorcery is a sword with no hilt, are ignorant of the fact and generally things go wrong. But the Others, in order to be built up as this great threat don't have any of these problems. Which is very unrealistic and High Fantasy. How come one side is living in the real world whilst the other is playing by the High Fantasy book? Its one or the other surely?

<snip

You're assuming this based on what exactly?

GRRM uses third-person limited POV. He has not given us an Other POV so we know nothing about them except what the POV characters have seen. We know about them what he wants us to know about them at this point. To assume we won't learn anything else about them is...well, odd.

It seems to me he's being rather brilliant in having the humans go up against an enemy about which they are staggeringly ignorant, in part because they didn't pay attention to their own history. This doesn't tell us anything about the enemy, only about the humans.

How can you say the humans are living in the "real world" when they have dragons, magic blood (and blood magic), magic swords, greenseeing, skinchanging, little green men/women to help them, etc?

[falcotron]

12 minutes ago, Lady Blizzardborn said:

It seems to me he's being rather brilliant in having the humans go up against an enemy about which they are staggeringly ignorant, in part because they didn't pay attention to their own history. This doesn't tell us anything about the enemy, only about the humans.

Yes. And the fact that humanity has millennia of written history and yet has still managed to forget something so important to their own survival—that's a neat parallel to Westeros's smaller-scale problems, and the fact that he focuses on showing that large-scale parallel from a close-in view (starting with the Watch's trouble recruiting enough people to do even its Wildling defense job) makes it work even better.

And really, it's hard to think of many fantasies since LotR that have actually found a use for the stock implausibly long time scale instead of just doing it because every other writer does it.

[Wild Bill]

One thought I have is what disrupted medieval and renaissance Europe? The Black Death (nb, GRRM does borrow a lot from history). It might be that the White Walkers will do enormous death and destruction in Westeros. Our intrepid heroes, Dany and Jon, (and the dragons) will sacrifice themselves in the struggle, and "win" in the end.

Ostensibly, Dany, Tyrion, and Varys look to a better social structure. The Black Death, somewhat, improved the lot of peasants. Perhaps that is part of the endgame...

Oh, and the Other's don't win, obviously :). 

[this post is sponsored by State Machine Enterprises as part of their general desire to support the arts and history]

[the trees have eyes]

14 hours ago, Tyrion1991 said:

One of the great things about GRRM writing is that you really feel like his battles could go anyway.

Which is why the Others can't win. The Others seem to be GRRM take on the impending greater threat. Sauron, the Dark One, etc etc. This enemy that seems unstoppable and against whom everyone should be focusing instead of their own petty squabbles. A lot of people get hung up on the "are the Others grey" thing. But most agree that in terms of power, the Others are the armies evil trope. They are powerful enough to destroy all of the other factions.

The problem with GRRM adapting this trope is that it contradicts how GRRM writes his battle scenes and what makes them great. The Others will just win because they are more powerful. The game has been rigged by the author and the heroes has no way of winning. So they can't be held responsible for losing if its never a real fight, they had no chance of ever winning and in effect none of their decisions mattered anyway. If GRRM lets the Others win, that's only because he gave them too many advantages. Because he has the humans living in the real world worrying about things like food and water fighting a High Fantasy Undead army in the middle of a harsh winter that smothers every fire and when all the dragons are dead long before the series starts. 

Plus the Others are a Mary Sue faction. Think about it. All of the major factions have infighting, make mistakes, misjudgements, sorcery is a sword with no hilt, are ignorant of the fact and generally things go wrong. But the Others, in order to be built up as this great threat don't have any of these problems. Which is very unrealistic and High Fantasy. How come one side is living in the real world whilst the other is playing by the High Fantasy book? Its one or the other surely?

A good indicator of this is Battle at the Fist of the First Men. Instead of this complex multi pov battle in which mistakes are made on both sides, you have this unstoppable zombie horde just butcher essentially all of the Nights Watch in a single day. You are never in any doubt about which way this is going to go. There was nothing the Lord Commander could have done to win the day. A huge army materialises out of nowhere and surrounds him. Game over.

The reason other fantasy writers have an all powerful antagonist is:

1) To raise the stakes to apocalyptic. All hope is lost.

2) To make the heroes victory seem even more amazing.

3) To make a moral point that good will always prevail over evil.

Basically the Others wouldn't win because they had a certain world view and are kind of a mary sue faction compared to many of the other flawed factions who owe a lot to chance. So they shouldn't win.

Agreed the battles could go either way.  As to whether the Others can win: that seems a rather foregone conclusion, yes.  GRRM's story is about it's human characters and he has created a rich tapestry of history, culture and religion and the Others are an existential threat to everything he has created.  If they win it seems a rather empty story and a pointless labour of love over 25/30 years to write it.  The drama is in how well he tells the story and how much he enthralls and surprises us as he goes about telling it and he's done a pretty stellar job so far.

Please don't use terms like Mary Sue, they are the most overused and confused terms thrown around on this forum (the only discussion forum I've ever seen them used on before now) largely because they are in vogue.  Characters will be given attributes, skills, magical abiities, lucky breaks and so forth to make the story more dramatic.  That's part of literature, always has been, always will be. 

The Others are being portrayed as a myseterious and supernatural force apparently bent on destroying humanity, something they tried 10,000 years ago and appear to be trying again now.  Just because we don't know their weaknesses doesn't mean they don't have them.  We actually do know the wall can stop them and we know theat obsidian melts them to a puddle.  And given obsidian is is considered frozen fire and that dragons are fire made flesh we seem to have chekhov's guns to provide a ready made solution to your fears.

14 hours ago, Tyrion1991 said:

 

Its an Undead army immune to normal swords, never tires, never sleeps and is a limitless supply of fodder. They have superhuman strength. If GRRM is being realistic, then that cannot be beaten by a medieval army and he has not done anything to remotely even the balance to make our heroes decisions and mistakes matter.

They aren't human though.  They don't have human weaknesses.  That's the point.  And why should they have faction politics and infighting like humans do?  They don't need to appear like another faction in the game of thrones because that is humanity's folly not theirs.  It's actually unrealistic to expect them to appear to have human concerns and characteristics and play their part in Westerosi faction politics. They are outside all of that as their nature and name, The Others, surely implies.