The Others & Evil: GRRM's Words

[falcotron]

Let me put it this way: your average reader (or even your average human) is going to find a zombie apocalypse a Bad Thing. That's why the likes of Night of the Living Dead or Dawn of the Dead exist within the horror genre; the idea of corpses rising, and attacking you is scary.

Sure, but this is a completely different argument than you started out with. If you just want to say that the default assumption is that necromancy is evil and/or scary, that's fine. Of course they are, and of course the Others are meant to appear evil and scary in the prologue.

But you were arguing that it was not just the default assumption but the only possibility, because literally no one has ever written anything otherwise besides the worst movie ever made that broke that assumption, and GRRM is not as bad a writer as Ed Wood. And that argument is nonsense. The authors of the Bible, Tolkien, Homer, Laurell K. Hamilton, etc. are not Ed Wood, and GRRM is not Ed Wood just because he's already given us Lady Stoneheart; likewise, GRRM would not have to be Ed Wood for the Others to turn out to not be pure evil.

[The Marquis de Leech]

I was thinking in terms of the stereotypical "zombie apocalypse against our protagonists" setting (I will concede that necromancy itself is too broad a term for what I was talking about). 

[falcotron]

I was thinking in terms of the stereotypical "zombie apocalypse against our protagonists" setting (I will concede that necromancy itself is too broad a term for what I was talking about).

Well, yes, if you restrict it to "against our protagonists", then it's almost always evil, because the characters acting against our protagonists are almost always evil, especially in fantasy. In most fantasy stories, an inhuman race that used great magical power against the protagonists would certainly be evil, and the fact that they're doing it in a particularly scary way that's often associated with evil only reinforces that.

But this gets to the crux of the question: GRRM has challenged the idea that fantasy antagonists should be pure evil. Lord Stoneheart is attempting to find some way to maintain the Others are pure evil despite that. But you're arguing that for GRRM to do what he claims he wants to do is impossible, and attempting it would make him a terrible writer. I disagree.

Let's look at a different series: In Doctor Who, the Master appears to be the most stereotypical mustache-twirling villain of all time. He dresses in black, chuckles to himself eeevilly, and even at one point unleashes an army of the dead against humanity (although that's not the worst or scariest thing he's done). Over 40-odd years, we've learned a lot more about his motivations, and even seen him save the entire universe a couple times. But he's still very definitely an antagonist, and a bad guy. He's just not the panto villain (or the Sauron-equivalent in one of Tolkien's less subtle imitators) that he appears to be.

And I think that's exactly what GRRM is suggesting he wants in his books: that the antagonists, including the Others, will not be a race of orcs or a faux Sauron. And I believe that he's got a good chance of pulling that off, although of course we won't be able to evaluate whether he really does pull it off or not until we get there.

[butterbumps!]

 

You are straight out confusing complexity with moral greyness. The two are not the same. My point with the cat and mouse is that the Others (within the prologue and elsewhere) are uniformly shown to be vicious evil bastards.

 

No-one has any problem with the Others being shown to be complex critters with eldritch motivations. That's fine. The complete and unjustifiable rug-pull is trying to pretend that the Others aren't the black hats. They are the blackest of the black.They are (to make a Gene Wolfe reference) fuligin. Whether they have a knightly culture or some metaphysical reasoning behind what they do is completely irrelevant because at no point can we be asked to cheer for the Others. If Martin tries, it's bad writing.

 

No I'm not.   I don't even know where you'd get that from, especially in light of how the post of mine that you quoted specifies both "complexity" and "moral ambiguity" as two separate things.

 

I don't think the Others' actions in the Prologue are unambiguously "vicious evil bastards."    You may have missed this post, but I think it's applicable here as well, as it pertains to how we walk away with different meanings depending on how something is framed:

 

I think it's also worth pointing how deranged and maniacal the following Bran chapter would look if we didn't understand the language, if Bran wasn't making us sympathetic to the situation through his explanations of the law and NW desertion, and if we didn't immediately get Jon's words about Theon to realize that not everyone shared his bizarre amusement at kicking a decapitated head.

 

Because that's also a situation where there's a bunch of men standing around another man-- and a prone on this time, so it looks even more unfair from a distance-- a bunch of words are said, the prone man is clearly scared shitless, another man cuts his head off, and then a smiling man kicks it and laughs.  Imagine if we didn't have narration for that scene or understand the language, and if it was our only look at the Starks for a few books?

 

in other words, a little more clarification about what was going on there, or a slightly more sympathetic POV, and we'd probably have a much different understanding of the Others' brutality in that scene.   Bear in mind that POV also makes us pretty unsympathetic to Waymar at first glance, but actually, he's a pretty good guy when you look more objectively at the Prologue.  

 

 

Also, why are you making this about "cheering for" the Others?   Are you purposely or merely unintentionally misrepresenting my argument as my arguing in favor of Others that we'd be cheering for?

 

I've simply taken the position in this thread that if the Others turn out to be both complex and morally ambiguous, that Martin's prepared us for it so that it's not a total rug pull.   Since further clarification is apparently needed, "morally ambiguous" =/= "we'll be cheering for the Others by the end."   The fire side and other magical quantities all seem pretty variously morally ambiguous. It's not exactly a massive leap of faith to suspect that ice might be similarly ambiguous.

[The Marquis de Leech]

I will confess I cheer for the Master for the same reason I cheer for Wile. E. Coyote. He keeps trying and failing, is ever-ingenious, and tries so damn hard.

 

I think our issue is that we haven't really defined what we're arguing against here. Are we saying that the Others won't be pantomime villains? I'd agree there (we already have Aleister Thorne anyway). Are we saying that the Others won't be Sauron? That's tougher, because neither Sauron nor the Orcs are pantomime villains (the closest Tolkien comes to there is Bill Ferny). Too many people around here have mistaken ideas about Tolkien. Whether people are misrepresenting Martin's own interpretation of him, I don't know, but Martin ought to know that Orcs aren't as he describes them . At that point, the remaining options are "the Others are Cthulhu" (which is still Evil, just a different flavour from Tolkien), or Tad Williams-style "the Others are the baddies, but they have an understandable hatred of humanity, so let's feel sorry for them" (which Martin hasn't set-up).

 

I think Martin will do some variant of Sauron-flavoured Cthulhu or Cthulhu-flavoured Sauron: he's a good enough writer to avoid the pantomime, but the Williams approach isn't reachable from here. If people want to kid themselves that the result is grey and "completely unlike old childish black-and-white Tolkien",  they are welcome to it.

[The Mother of The Others]

I'm of the mind that the Others are GRRMs take on the "totally evil enemy". 

 

In GRRM's mind, people are never completely white or completely black.  There is always some grey.  ....I think that goes out the window when we are talking about a supernatural, inhuman enemy.  so I don't take for granted that he is going to continually repeat a theme of moral greyness in enemies. 

 

Thank you Thank you.   And thanks.   That's what I sometimes flail around trying to say for far too many words.

 

Everyone who's human is a grey character because of their human weaknesses.  Character flaws.   They're not equal to their chivalrous ideals of living up to your oaths in the face of peril, of doing the right thing even when it's dangerous.  They fall victim to petty greed, etc., and this takes them off the path and into the grey zone. 

 

The Others aren't weak like that.   They're capable of doing what they mean to do and being entirely congruent  (not two-faced like our soiled knights).   So when they put on a consistent show of, "We're heinous,"   I believe them.

[DavosTheOnion]

Here's the thing (imo), GRRM can make the Others a force of nature that is objectively evil from the viewpoint of all humans (both in-story and reading), but so long as all of the people don't unit perfectly and make friends to combat it he can easily avoid falling into the trap he purposefully avoids. If reading thus far is any indication, the relevant players of Westeros will/would do some even more unforgivable stuff when/if the others march.

[falcotron]

I will confess I cheer for the Master for the same reason I cheer for Wile. E. Coyote. He keeps trying and failing, is ever-ingenious, and tries so damn hard.

That, and when he has fun, he's really having fun, and it's hard not to clap along. Especially with Delgado, Simm, and Gomez, his eeeevil laugh is really infectious. :)

I think our issue is that we haven't really defined what we're arguing against here. Are we saying that the Others won't be pantomime villains? I'd agree there (we already have Aleister Thorne anyway). Are we saying that the Others won't be Sauron? That's tougher, because neither Sauron nor the Orcs are pantomime villains (the closest Tolkien comes to there is Bill Ferny). Too many people around here have mistaken ideas about Tolkien. Whether people are misrepresenting Martin's own interpretation of him, I don't know, but Martin ought to know that Orcs aren't as he describes them . At that point, the remaining options are "the Others are Cthulhu" (which is still Evil, just a different flavour from Tolkien), or Tad Williams-style "the Others are the baddies, but they have an understandable hatred of humanity, so let's feel sorry for them" (which Martin hasn't set-up).

Well, notice that Martin does say having the bad guys be orcs or Sauron isn't a problem for Tolkien, but is for his less subtle imitators, so he's not completely misinterpreting Tolkien no matter how you read it. But still, "That is one difference between him and Tolkien, that there is nothing redeeming in a orc or Sauron." My guess is that GRRM was using Tolkien lazily when he meant more the various sub-Tolkien imitators, and he didn't do a very good job clarifying himself because in each of these instances he's speaking off the cuff, but that's just a guess; maybe he really never read anything but LotR, when he was 13, and most of what he remembers comes from Rankin-Bass's cartoon. Who knows?

But it's not all that important. Whether he misinterpreted Tolkien or not, how could you take this comparison to mean anything other than that there is something redeemable in his enemy? If that's just not true, then what is the difference he's talking about?

At any rate, there's still a whole range between Tolkien and Williams, not just a single step. Which is why I raised the Master. Sure, in The End of Time he's close to a Williams villain, while in Logopolis he's closer to a sub-Tolkien Fauxron, but there are plenty of stories falling between the two, where, even though he's not at all redeemed and not really an object of pity, you can clearly see that there is something redeemable in him and be interested in understanding him. And I think that's by far the simplest way to interpret what GRRM claims he's going for, and therefore most likely what he will do.

I think Martin will do some variant of Sauron-flavoured Cthulhu or Cthulhu-flavoured Sauron: he's a good enough writer to avoid the pantomime, but the Williams approach isn't reachable from here.

I'll leave it to Butterbumps to argue this in more detail (or, rather, to have already argued it earlier in the thread), but I think what's reachable from here is a lot more than you expect. We've actually seen very little. And the very little we've seen, you're thinking of it colored through the interpretation you've already made; a good writer can make you see that you've been misinterpreting something without making it seem like an ass pull.

But, most of all, we still have 3000 pages or more left to go. At least in my paperbacks, AFfC+ADwD together are almost twice as long as all three books of Lord of the Rings. (Yes, the print is a little bigger, but nowhere near twice as big.) So, we have more than a complete LotR worth of text to go. Is that really not enough time for GRRM to weave in information that will go back and make you reconsider the tiny crumbs of information you already had?

If people want to kid themselves that the result is grey and "completely unlike old childish black-and-white Tolkien",  they are welcome to it.

What we've seen of the Others so far is akin to one of those Fauxrons than to actual Sauron, especially to Sauron as depicted in the Silmarillion and the various unfinished stories rather than just LotR. If you want to argue that GRRM is going to give us a villain as complex as the complete Sauron, but not significantly more so, and that the comparison to Tolkien was unfair, then I can agree that's plausible.

But I think this is different from what the OP and others are arguing. They're claiming that the Others will be pure evil, no more complex or grey than they are now, not even as deep as LotR-movie Sauron. I don't see how they could possibly be right in light of GRRM's statements, unless he's flat-out lying or incompetent.

[The Mother of The Others]

I'm fine with learning their backstory, like everyone else I crave the mysterious details of how human suffering led to them being cursed and remade into a frozen tableau of hate, or what have you.   All these "humanizing" details however won't get them off the hook.   I think that's what's being objected to here-----the idea that the Others' sob story will make them sympathetic and therefore no longer evil.  

 

Uh, no.  It's them that makes them evil.  It's what they've chosen to be in their frozen state of bitter recrimination.   Their backstory is irrelevant to the fact that their behavior damns them in the present.   The history lesson we might receive doesn't count as an apology for their actions.   And the threat they pose isn't likely to change just because we learn our ancestors' role in creating them.   There is no, "Well, now that we've learned the truth, that should diffuse the situation.  Let's let bygones be bygones and move on with our lives!"    They're still evil as fuck.   As evil as Tywin.   As evil as Theon.   Evil as Ramsay.   Evil as Penny Who Kills With Boredom.   Worse, too, because these humans are inconstant in their evil.   The humans have their moments of mercy, their redeeming qualities that make you wonder if they're really so bad after all.   The Others are literally frozen-state evil.   Their wills are set, constant, intractible, for the ages.   My complaint is that dealing with such a foe really should entail more than just us spotting some human-like Greyness in them.   That sounds like a really disappointing cop out, after miles and miles of hearing how there's no compromise in them.

[falcotron]

I think that's what's being objected to here-----the idea that the Others' sob story will make them sympathetic and therefore no longer evil.

Go back and read the first post, and Lord Stoneheart's followups. He clearly is arguing that 'The Lannisters can't be called "evil"', but the Others can, and when GRRM said there's no pure evil in his books, he didn't count the Others because 'the Others are not a "real" race'. That's what I'm arguing against, and the same for Butterbumps and everyone else you're disagreeing with. Trying to twist that into arguments against your position, which is clearly different from Lord Stoneheart's, just makes the discussion more confusing and less enlightening.

[The Mother of The Others]

Well, you're absolutely right.  I don't read this forum and I believe that's common knowledge.   But that's also my defense.     --Because if I haven't read any of your posts then how can I have twisted your words around?   

 

I'm not arguing so strangely as all that, either. 

I'm saying the Others shouldn't be allowed into the club of grey characters as of this time, because they have been presented as a greater force of evil than that, and we haven't had anything show us otherwise.  

 

Is that not what the thread is discussing?

 

Plus, with only a slight bit of massaging, what I said can be made to fit your vision of a relevant post:

if the OP said the Others were evil beyond the human level, so did I.

In my words, the humans practice inconstant evil, whereas the Others are frozen into a steady-state evil that's a lot closer to defining them.  Maybe they didn't always want to become what they are now (boo-hoo!) but it's what happened nonetheless.  In D&D they'd have an [evil] descriptor next to their species name.  They might thaw in the future and throw off that defining trait, but for now it's stuck to their marrow and they own it, they claim that evil nature and live it with a passion.  I'm choosing not to look around that, or past it.  Not until a clearly marked detour sign is put in place by the author to send me down that path.

[DMC]

I'm saying the Others shouldn't be allowed into the club of grey characters as of this time, because they have been presented as a greater force of evil than that, and we haven't had anything show us otherwise.  

 

 

This is the self-evident point I made back on page one of this thread and what I got from the OP.  Come back a few days later and it seems to be the same argument, just eight more pages of dick measuring and hair splitting later.  Apparently that makes me 'unenlightened,' but since economy of words seems to be anathema to much of this forum, allow me to elaborate.

 

Will we learn more about the Others and their motives?  Hopefully.  Will this make them more 'understandable' as a race?  Probably.  Will this newfound knowledge make them on par with the 'greyness' we have seen from the vast majority of human characters in ASOIAF?  I think this is highly doubtful.  Just from a practical standpoint, how much Other exposition do you think will follow in the next two volumes?  While you can argue certain characters like Gregor and Ramsay (and no I don't include Joffrey - he's just a kid and ended up lose/lose on the nature vs. nurture battle) may end up with more 'totes evil' credentials than the Others, that doesn't change the fact the Others are the most uniformly evil threat in the series.  And the inner human conflict that is exuded in characters such as Theon or even Tywin can never be depicted in the Others due to the fact their function is a fantasy construct.  Which brings me to my final, and most important, self-Q and A:

 

Are the Others what Martin was referring to when intimating he wanted to introduce more complexity than the Orcs as villians?

 

IMHO, no.  The orcs, or Sauron-controlled forces, are the main villains throughout LOTR.  While there are prior-mentioned ill feelings and outright grudges between the different races in Middle Earth, throughout the books proper we only have them (sometimes begrudgingly) aligning.  The entire story is about the forces of good uniting against this irredeemable evil.  Thus far, ASOAIF has decidedly not been of a similar vein.  The threat of the Others is a backdrop for the host of greyish characters that constitute the narrative.  In fact, the narrative seems to be getting all these greyish characters to somehow eventually unite against the grand evil threat in the final volume.  I think this is what Martin is getting at in his comparison; and not that we should expect extended characterization of the Others' plight and their culture of ice-chivalry.

[butterbumps!]

I'm not arguing so strangely as all that, either. 

I'm saying the Others shouldn't be allowed into the club of grey characters as of this time, because they have been presented as a greater force of evil than that, and we haven't had anything show us otherwise.  

 

 

This is the self-evident point I made back on page one of this thread and what I got from the OP.  

 

Who's arguing to put them into that "club of greyness" "as of this time?"    I mean honestly, is anyone in this thread actually arguing that as of this moment, the Others are "grey?"    

 

The OP's point is that the Others will never be morally ambiguous.  He's arguing that Martin will never write them as anything other than flat evil, and he's arguing that if Martin develops their story such that they turn out to be morally ambiguous, then it will be a total rugpull, as though nothing we've read thus far could be interpreted in a way that might support the idea of ambiguous Others.    So that's the position I've been arguing against, as well as the other posters it appears you're disagreeing with.

 

Since you reframed it to say that you believe the Others are beyond any moral ambiguity or greyness at all to mesh with the OP, I'll say that position seems kind of strange to me in light of how we've seen so much complexity and moral ambiguity in these other forms of magic and magical representatives, and insisting that we have no indication at all that the Others could have moral ambiguity seems a little odd.   The existence of a really developed, morally ambiguous collection of fire representatives-- which are introduced as ice's opposite and what's apparently supposed to stop the big bad Others, but then they themselves become pretty dark and monstrous-- sets up a foundation where morally ambiguous ice representatives are completely within the bounds of the story, and arguably, even necessary to some extent.

[Balerion06]

What if it turns out that we've already met agents of the Others who are sympathetic characters?
If Mel can use glamours to hide her true inhuman appearance (as speculated), then it's reasonable that the Others can do something similar.

[The Marquis de Leech]

The OP's point is that the Others will never be morally ambiguous.  He's arguing that Martin will never write them as anything other than flat evil, and he's arguing that if Martin develops their story such that they turn out to be morally ambiguous, then it will be a total rugpull, as though nothing we've read thus far could be interpreted in a way that might support the idea of ambiguous Others.    So that's the position I've been arguing against, as well as the others it appears you're disagreeing with.

 

 

Evil Does Not Equal Flat. The OP is only concerned with Evil, not with character roundedness.

 

Since you reframed it to say that you believe the Others are beyond any moral ambiguity or greyness at all to mesh with the OP, I'll say that position seems kind of strange to me in light of how we've seen so much complexity and moral ambiguity in these other forms of magic and magical representatives, that insisting that we have no indication at all that the Others could have moral ambiguity seems a little odd.   The existence of a really developed, morally ambiguous collection of fire representatives-- which are introduced as ice's opposite and what's apparently supposed to stop the big bad Others, but then they themselves become pretty dark and monstrous-- sets up a foundation where morally ambiguous ice representatives are completely within the bounds of the story, and arguably, even necessary to some extent.

 

There you go again. You are using moral ambiguity in such close association with "complex" and "really developed", one wonders if there is room for flat grey characters or rounded black characters. 

[butterbumps!]

 

Evil Does Not Equal Flat. The OP is only concerned with Evil, not with character roundedness.

 

 

There you go again. You are using moral ambiguity in such close association with "complex" and "really developed", one wonders if there is room for flat grey characters or rounded black characters. 

 

No, go look at the OP's posts.   He's definitely talking about the Others' being "nothing but evil."   He is talking about character roundness.   As in, the Others will never be morally ambiguous (or "grey" if you prefer), as well as their being the Big Zelda Boss.

 

Also, why do you keep saying that?   I'm referring to both complexity and moral ambiguity separately.   And the two do often go together, you know.   I don't really get what the issue is.

 

Further, I did ask the OP directly about his assertion of "cheapness" of these Others being anything other than "Snidely Whiplashes" up-thread (you know, a cartoonishly evil cardboard cut-out of unmitigated nastiness), and the OP did indeed confirm that this was the view.  So I have, fairly, been responding to both the assumption of lack of depth and lack of moral ambiguity.  I get your issue is not a lack of complexity.  Ok, but yours aren't the only arguments I've responded to in here.  

[DMC]

 

The OP's point is that the Others will never be morally ambiguous.  He's arguing that Martin will never write them as anything other than flat evil, and he's arguing that if Martin develops their story such that they turn out to be morally ambiguous, then it will be a total rugpull, as though nothing we've read thus far could be interpreted in a way that might support the idea of ambiguous Others.    So that's the position I've been arguing against, as well as the other posters it appears you're disagreeing with.

 

From the OP:

 

 

The Others are not human, so GRRM's words about good vs evil do not apply

The Others being evil does not take away from the story, especially one filled with vile characters beyond redemption

The Others & wights are more evil than Tolkien's orcs, until such a time that GRRM can explain more about them.

 

 

I agree that Martin is referring to the greyness of the human characters that have thus far dominated the books, and the Others do not apply to his statement.

 

I agree this does not take away from this story as the Others do, in fact, represent the ultimate obstacle that requires the few remaining heroes to band together and fight against in the climax.

 

I agree the Others, thus far, have been depicted as more evil than the Orcs, if only because we actually were exposed to communication between the Orcs and have yet to with the Others.  This may, and hopefully will, change.  Which leads to...

 

I agree with RB's Pet Leech - in that you seem to be conflating moral ambiguity with complexity in motives.  Moral ambiguity is (awesomely) depicted in Jaime's monologue about oaths being self-contradictory, and the ethical quandaries therein.  This is the type of greyness we get in many human characters.  My point is I don't think we will ever get this from the Others' perspective.  We will (I hope) learn more about their motives, and that will presumably add to the complexity of why they are invading and apparently intent on destroying mankind.  In short, we will learn their basic reasoning.  But unless Martin plans on adding a couple of books, I don't think it's plausible that we will be attuned to any ethical dilemmas on behalf of the inner-Other; and moreover I think from a narrative standpoint Martin wants to preserve some mystery in this regard.

[Caspoi]

Falcotron@ I will comment that the difference between the whights and the examples of resurrections that you took up is that whight's lack a free will but are completely dominated by the will of the Other's, thus making it the highest form of enslavement, a.k.a immoral.

[butterbumps!]

I agree with RB's Pet Leech - in that you seem to be conflating moral ambiguity with complexity in motives.  Moral ambiguity is (awesomely) depicted in Jaime's monologue about oaths being self-contradictory, and the ethical quandaries therein.  This is the type of greyness we get in many human characters.  My point is I don't think we will ever get this from the Others' perspective.  We will (I hope) learn more about their motives, and that will presumably add to the complexity of why they are invading and apparently intent on destroying mankind.  In short, we will learn their basic reasoning.  But unless Martin plans on adding a couple of books, I don't think it's plausible that we will be attuned to any ethical dilemmas on behalf of the inner-Other; and moreover I think from a narrative standpoint Martin wants to preserve some mystery in this regard.

 

First things first, the author of this thread, across various posts of his, not merely the OP itself, did indeed suggest that he was dubious about the extent of development and complexity the Others could have as part of this.

 

Adjacently to this point, it does appear that for the majority of posters who seem to agree with the idea of "Others can't be morally ambiguous," including yourself in this very post, that there's a co-morbid condition of limited imagination in terms of how they may be developed that would give rise to a more morally ambiguous reading.

 

As a side point, we don't even know that they're intent on destroying society.  Nor do we even know that they're even a separate, alien race.  If you presuppose those things, then yea, it makes the prospect of moral ambiguity seem inapplicable.  But keep in mind those are total assumptions you're going on.

[Direwight]

Personally I tend to believe that the Others' greyness will come from the books simply never revealing that much about them; what they want exactly or for what purpose, or their culture and origins. That we'll have several different POV views on them and that the resolution to the conflict will be more of a diplomatic one which shows they aren't in it just for the killing. Enough to make it entirely plausible that they were being reasonable all along if you look at things from their perspective, but without explicitly revealing it either way.