Do the Others have knowledge of the rest of Westeros?

[Lord Varys]

6 hours ago, Free Northman Reborn said:

Not to pick sides in this particular debate, but I just want to comment on the whole Craster plot in general. I have always been tremendously underwhelmed by it. Because it comes across as pretty weak from a plot perspective.

There are a hundred thousand or so people living beyond the Wall at the start of the series, and yet for some reason the Others skip the tens of thousands that live up to 600 miles or more North of the Wall, and come and collect sons from Craster of all people, just a few days ride from the Wall? Why? What makes him so special?

That part I have always found weak. I don't dispute that it is the case, and it might just be that Martin decided to forego logic in order to get Jon and Sam direct access to the person having dealings with the Others, fairly early in the series. But to me it would have had more impact if Jon, hundreds of miles up the Milkwater, on his scouting expedition, came across isolated villages on the fringes of human society, where some old hag recounts to him how they had been making sacrifies to the Others in order to survive that far North.

But Craster, almost in the shadow of the Wall itself? It feels pretty weak to me. But that's the route George chose to take. I just think it makes the story less effective than it could have been. Oh well.

Well, as @Maia has pointed out farther above there are hints that Craster is not exactly the only guy doing this kind of thing. It must be a fairly common practice among many wildlings, as is also hinted at by Jon and Mormont's post-Craster conversation in ACoK. The wildlings have to survive in winter. And that's not exactly easy.

TWoIaF tells us this about the gods the wildlings worship:

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The countless tribes and clans of the free folk remain worshippers of the old gods of the First Men and children of the forest, the gods of the weirwood trees (some accounts say that there are those who worship different gods: dark gods beneath the ground in the Frostfangs, gods of snow and ice on the Frozen Shore, or crab gods at Storrold’s Point, but such has never been reliably confirmed).

The Others could clearly be the ones meant there - whether this means they are worshiped and received tribute directly (like it is done at Craster's) or whether they simply worship them as abstract deities without ever directly interacting with them is unclear.

But since they have been back for quite some time now and even as far down south as Craster's it seems a given that quite a few wildlings must have entered into an agreement of the sort Craster made.

In fact, it might very well have been the toll such an agreement took on a clan, family, or village that eventually allowed Mance to unite the wildlings under his leadership. We know that he and all the other wildlings following him reached the conclusion that they don't stand against a chance against them. Some might have tried to resist them directly, but others may simply have decided that the tribute they were demanding was too much.

Craster obviously only can meet their demands because he marries his own daughters, and thus continuously producing a string of sons to give to them. Unless a man keeps multiple wives he would not be able to meet the demand of the Others. And in the wildling culture polygamy (if you are not raping your own daughters and granddaughters, basically) seems to be a rather costly endeavor. There are those wildlings with multiple wives like Ygon Oldfeather, but he is a raider and a clan chief, Craster is just one guy.

We can safely say Craster is not as fucked-up a guy to kill/abandon all his sons because he fears they would become his rivals. He is an old man already, and presumably any such man would want his own cared for after his eventual death. If he didn't want an army of sons he wouldn't keep a harem of wives in the first place - but he has to, to give the Others what they want.

In addition, the man has some ties to the Watch through his father, that's why he is friendly to the Watch. If he wanted to rid himself of sons he could always send them to the Wall to be raised there. The NW would most likely accept such recruits - that's how Mance got there, after all.

Now that I'm thinking about it it would really be interesting to know who the father of Craster was. If it happened to be Bloodraven (his advanced age would certainly allow for that to be the case) his marriage habits might be so strange, after all. But doesn't exactly look the part, so that's most likely a nonsensical idea.

But in any case - the whole Craster thing is actually very subtle. Very few people dug all that deeply into that whole thing and it wasn't elaborated on after ACoK and ASoS.

I'm sure we'll get a more complete picture on such dealings between the Others and the wildlings when the return of the Others to the lands outside of the Heart of Winter and the Lands of Always Winter are discussed. Bran certainly could explore that part of Westerosi history.

[Maia]

On 16.8.2017 at 11:27 PM, Lord Varys said:

 Meaning the first Others could have been transformed Children, or that there are still some Children-greenseer-Others up in the Heart of Winter controlling things.

 

Why just the first ones? As an analogy - Dany's eggs couldn't hatch normally, for whatever reason - too old, poisoned by the maesters, etc., but she was able to hatch them with a sacrifice. IMHO, something along these lines is happening with the Others - they can't multiply (however they do it) without some magical help or can do so only very slowly.

 

On 16.8.2017 at 11:27 PM, Lord Varys said:

Bran's remark that he would have been very angry about the inevitable end of his species had he been in the shoes of the Children is a very strong sign that there were some Children who felt that way, too, in the old days. And they may actually have done something about. Something terrible.

Because heaven forefend that GRRM writes non-humans as anything other than "forehead aliens", who "are just like us", right? I really hope that he can do better than that.

 

On 16.8.2017 at 11:27 PM, Lord Varys said:

And Gilly and the other wives really seem to know that their sons are given to the Others. They are not killed.

 

Sure, they know that the sons are given over and some of them have even seen the Others - maybe even Gilly herself, or maybe she has heard descriptions from the fellow older co-wives. They also know that sheep and dogs are given over - what do they think happens to those? There is a disconnect in their thinking - an understandable psychological protection mechanism. None of the offerings were slaughtered before their eyes, so they hope for some future for the babies that they were forced to sacrifice.

I am honestly not sure why you like this idea of direct transformation so much, it doesn't make much sense, IMHO. Is it because of

Spoiler

the show

?

 

On 16.8.2017 at 11:27 PM, Lord Varys said:

The Hammer of the Waters is extreme but still just a means to change the landscape. It doesn't involve annihilating the enemy, just severing landmasses. Actually creating magical soldiers and turning humans against each other would actually have been a very smart way to deal with the threat. That way the Children can just sit back and watch, doing and risking nothing.

We don't know what it was intended to achieve, though, provided that it happened at all in the way that the legends described it. Could the Children really have been so foolish as to believe that a relatively  thin stripe of water would protect them against the First Men?

 

On 16.8.2017 at 11:27 PM, Lord Varys said:

Exactly. That is an important point. And the question why or how the Children ended up helping the Last Hero - if that's what they did - is a very important one.

 And whether the Last Hero _or_ the Children had anything to do with the ending of the Long Night. After all, people all over Planetos have their own theories on the subject and there are lots of hints that the Others and wights weren't confined to Westeros. Nor were magical non-humans who might have been related to the Children... or not. After all, Planetos is a world with at least 5 humanoid species still living - why not more in the past?

Honestly, Westerosi Children were a bit too rustic and living too simple a life to be entirely believable as a cause of planet-affecting magical disaster. But what if Essosi Children or a related people had been different and built a magical civilization that eventually produced an apocalyptic disaster? That would fit better, IMHO, particularly since the Long Night and the Others didn't have to be the consequences of the same event. 

 

On 16.8.2017 at 11:27 PM, Lord Varys said:

If the Others had been still around at that time one really wonders that the Wall survived that. I mean, the Night's King ruled for quite some time, why didn't he let the Others through the Wall?

 

Do we know that he didn't? Maybe the Others were too few in number and without the Long Night boosting them couldn't achieve much - particularly since the means of fighting them/protection against them would have still been fresh in everyone's minds.

 

On 16.8.2017 at 11:27 PM, Lord Varys said:

That isn't all that likely. The Children would then just be standard good guy elves from the average fantasy series. There is a point both to the conflict and the inevitable extinction of the Children. And the missing link there are the Others.

 

How is the direction that you insist on not standard? IIRC, there are a lot of fantasy/SF novels/series were an elder race/magic practitioners are being persecuted by the ever-encroaching (mundane)  humans and strike out at them in desperation, creating a big bad or some other disaster in the process. Then the good and wise among them recognize that their time is past and that their fading is inevitable and help the humans  defeat the danger. Which I find to be a fairly problematic message, to be honest, but it is rooted in "fantasy as a metaphor for childhood/growing up" and glorification of land-grabs, so...

It is not just Tad Williams's Osten Ard series or his "Shadow"- something-or-other, it is the usual part of the many series based on British myths and legends in general and Matter of Britain in particular. I am also fairly certain that I have read some older SF novels with the premise as well

 

On 16.8.2017 at 11:27 PM, Lord Varys said:

But I like the idea that there is a corrupted greenseer directing the Others because that would really give Bran some sort of proper opponent, a creature that might be as immobile as he is.

 

Well, - a newby child defeating an age-old master of the craft is a cartoon/children's literature cliché. And having greenseers helping them is one of the few advantages that humans have in that fight. The Others are clearly sentient, too. But there are parallels between skin-changing and wight-wrangling of the Others and there is _something_ at the Heart of Winter, so dunno. Don't know if having "the root of evil" that can be conveniently destroyed by the Heroes once and for all is such a great idea either. 

It would also mean that the Children supposedly helping the Last Hero purposefully kept this secret and past greenseers of the First Men were incompetent.

 

On 16.8.2017 at 11:27 PM, Lord Varys said:

Well, the passage from TWoIaF makes it clear that the seasons were normal before the Long Night.The maesters were skeptical that this is true but there are ancient texts claiming that this is so. And that's a pretty strong hint that there is something to this.

I don't remember such a definite passage. And not everything that the maesters are skeptical of is automatically right ;). Honestly, why should things be the same in a secondary world as they are in ours?

On 16.8.2017 at 11:27 PM, Lord Varys said:

Not so sure about that. I doubt the Faceless Men want to kill all living things.

Didn't the Kindly Man talk about FM bringing the Gift to Valyria? And wasn't it implied that they'd like to bring it to everyone?

On 16.8.2017 at 11:27 PM, Lord Varys said:

I could see the Others reaching out to people magically in principle, but if they do so they are very subtle about it. Even Euron is more likely a failed or discarded greenseer than somebody who is actually influenced by the Others.

I agree that they keep it subtle, for the most part. But Euron is being influenced by them, IMHO, even if doesn't realise it.

On 16.8.2017 at 11:27 PM, Lord Varys said:

 The Weeper's eventual attack on the Bridge of Skulls and subsequent destruction of the Shadow Tower could also play in handy with that. He is the kind of guy who might turn to the Others now that they are basically the only hope he has left.

Not sure about the Weeper destroying the Shadow Tower - IMHO the blow would come from an unexpected direction. Either the Others are already in the North thanks to the Frozen Shore folks from Tormund's band, or they'll/have sail(ed) around the Wall, both east and west. I mean, wildlings do it - why not Others? Which, BTW, suggests that having a few Others cross when people still knew how to fight them/protect aginst them and without the Long Night  wasn't such a big deal. And explains why the Night's King wasn't more successful - though it took a large coalition to take him down.

 

On 16.8.2017 at 11:27 PM, Lord Varys said:

.If the Others and the powers behind them have no understandable motivation that is essentially rooted in something the human reader could relate to George would essentially break with his own rule that he is interested in all those human conflicts.

How is desire to expand  areal of and create congenial climate for your species/tribe not understandable to human reader? Isn't it what our whole history is about? And the Children are not human - why should they act and think like humans? 

 

On 17.8.2017 at 1:42 AM, Lord Varys said:

If the Others are the product of a magical transformation - human male child > Other then it is also possible that a similar transformation could go like this: (male) Child of the Forest > Other. But of course such Children-Others would then look more like Children and not like icy humans (as the Others we have seen do).

 

Why do you think that sex of the sacrifices is important, rather than the result of how Craster is running his operation? And why do you think that shape of beings made from smart ice is indicative of anything? If they were purposefully made to fight humans, it makes sense that they'd be as big as them - the size of the Children was known to be an impediment in their battles with humans.

And, for that matter, all the mentions of ice dragons in TWoIaF make it fairly likely that they will make an appearance. But are they actually a different type of being than the Others, or are they just powerful Others in that shape? Ditto "pale spiders". After all, a being consisting of smart ice doesn't have to be locked into one shape.

 

22 hours ago, The Sleeper said:

If we take it that the hammer of the waters legend as true, then it seems plausible that the long night and winter, may have been initiated by the Children. Having underground refuges, presumably lesser nutritional requirements and fewer number, they would have been able to weather such events much better than the burgeoning human population.

It is possible. I am skeptical of the idea that the Children, rather than one of the powerful magical civilizations that after TWoIaF we now know existed in Essos, caused the Long Night - provided that it wasn't a natural occurence that happens every few thousands of years and gets forgotten by humans - in this last case the Children might have known that it was coming and prepared themselves accordingly.

22 hours ago, The Sleeper said:

The Others could be a natural species who siezed the opportunity to expand.

I really would have preferred this - even more so if they had been aliens from the destroyed second moon of Dothraki legend, but GRRM's utterance about not knowing if they have a culture of their own makes this somewhat unlikely, sadly.

 

14 hours ago, Free Northman Reborn said:

But to me it would have had more impact if Jon, hundreds of miles up the Milkwater, on his scouting expedition, came across isolated villages on the fringes of human society, where some old hag recounts to him how they had been making sacrifies to the Others in order to survive that far North.

But Craster, almost in the shadow of the Wall itself? It feels pretty weak to me.

Actually, this makes perfect sense, IMHO. Don't forget that the wildling party that Waymar Royce had been pursuing was also killed by the Others just a few days march north of the Wall. And Bloodraven's hill, that Coldhands likely died close to during their doomed ranging isn't _that_ far north either. This paints a definite picture - namely that the Others have been around for quite awhile - not somewhere high up in the north, but quite close to the Wall. They were just very discreet. Craster's was their "listening post" - he was known as "friend of the Watch", rangers stopped at his homestead and swapped news, so the Others could learn a lot from him. They are thinking creatures capable of long-term planning, after all.

[The Sleeper]

49 minutes ago, Maia said:

It is possible. I am skeptical of the idea that the Children, rather than one of the powerful magical civilizations that after TWoIaF we now know existed in Essos, caused the Long Night - provided that it wasn't a natural occurence that happens every few thousands of years and gets forgotten by humans - in this last case the Children might have known that it was coming and prepared themselves accordingly.

I'm spitballing. But while I am at it, the ancient civilizations would not be that advanced during the first Long Night and the Children have both considerably longer life spans than humans and their knowledge is preserved in the weirwoods. That is a huge advantage in terms of lore over the humans. I don't think it is an accident that the largest scale magics are attributed to the children.

[Lord Varys]

4 hours ago, Maia said:

Why just the first ones? As an analogy - Dany's eggs couldn't hatch normally, for whatever reason - too old, poisoned by the maesters, etc., but she was able to hatch them with a sacrifice. IMHO, something along these lines is happening with the Others - they can't multiply (however they do it) without some magical help or can do so only very slowly.

The idea would be that the some Children might have become the first Others if the Children are the ones behind the Others.

4 hours ago, Maia said:

Because heaven forefend that GRRM writes non-humans as anything other than "forehead aliens", who "are just like us", right? I really hope that he can do better than that.

Well, he already had the Children fight with the First Men for centuries, right? That means they were not, at first, happy with the idea that they would go extinct and be supplanted by short-lived uglies. Now, I'm not saying that this is a great plot line, but then you have to go back to days George began writing this story.

And MST was such a great influence on this in the beginning that I'm very positive that the ultimate threat is a variation of the Norn theme.

4 hours ago, Maia said:

Sure, they know that the sons are given over and some of them have even seen the Others - maybe even Gilly herself, or maybe she has heard descriptions from the fellow older co-wives. They also know that sheep and dogs are given over - what do they think happens to those? There is a disconnect in their thinking - an understandable psychological protection mechanism. None of the offerings were slaughtered before their eyes, so they hope for some future for the babies that they were forced to sacrifice.

We don't know - perhaps the livestock actually are sacrificed or turned into animal wights while Craster's gang is watching. They are not elaborating on that.

But what we can get from ACoK is that the Others truly come to Craster's, that Gilly has seen them, and that they hand their sons to them. Jon actually has Gilly describes them to him, although he actually confuses them with the wights since he focuses only on the eyes. At this point the NW has yet to see that the Others exist, too. That only happens at the Fist.

4 hours ago, Maia said:

I am honestly not sure why you like this idea of direct transformation so much, it doesn't make much sense, IMHO. Is it because of

  Reveal hidden contents

the show

?

I don't really like that plot all that much. I just think it is, more or less, what we are stuck with.

4 hours ago, Maia said:

We don't know what it was intended to achieve, though, provided that it happened at all in the way that the legends described it. Could the Children really have been so foolish as to believe that a relatively  thin stripe of water would protect them against the First Men?

While the First Men didn't have any ships, sure, why not? They might know a lot of nature and magic but seem to be very ignorant about technological advances and human civilization.

4 hours ago, Maia said:

 And whether the Last Hero _or_ the Children had anything to do with the ending of the Long Night. After all, people all over Planetos have their own theories on the subject and there are lots of hints that the Others and wights weren't confined to Westeros. Nor were magical non-humans who might have been related to the Children... or not. After all, Planetos is a world with at least 5 humanoid species still living - why not more in the past?

That would mean we have the true threat being somewhat disconnected from the actions of the the ancestors of our guys in the distant past. I don't think that's very likely. I think the origin of the Others has to be connected to the story of our guys. This doesn't mean the Others couldn't also have made incursions into north-eastern Essos if the continents are linked in the far north, either directly or by means of a frozen sea.

But we have no clear hints that any Others or wights ever showed up in Yi Ti back during the Long Night.

4 hours ago, Maia said:

Honestly, Westerosi Children were a bit too rustic and living too simple a life to be entirely believable as a cause of planet-affecting magical disaster. But what if Essosi Children or a related people had been different and built a magical civilization that eventually produced an apocalyptic disaster? That would fit better, IMHO, particularly since the Long Night and the Others didn't have to be the consequences of the same event. 

Could be. But then there would be no proper buildup for that. Would it make for an interesting back story if Bran discovered that some Yi Tish god-emperors were responsible for things the Westerosi people have now to deal with? On a certain level it would but I don't expect that to happen.

4 hours ago, Maia said:

Do we know that he didn't? Maybe the Others were too few in number and without the Long Night boosting them couldn't achieve much - particularly since the means of fighting them/protection against them would have still been fresh in everyone's minds.

What we do know is that the Night's King worshiped the Others. We have no reason to believe he actually interacted with them. That doesn't mean he did not but it is even a stretch to believe that his queen was a female Other. It could have been some leftover wight, or a woman that simply was hated so much that she was slandered later on so that she becomes a female Other/wight-like creature in the stories.

I could certainly believe she was from one of the First Men clans/families who worshiped the Others during the Long Night.

4 hours ago, Maia said:

How is the direction that you insist on not standard? IIRC, there are a lot of fantasy/SF novels/series were an elder race/magic practitioners are being persecuted by the ever-encroaching (mundane)  humans and strike out at them in desperation, creating a big bad or some other disaster in the process. Then the good and wise among them recognize that their time is past and that their fading is inevitable and help the humans  defeat the danger. Which I find to be a fairly problematic message, to be honest, but it is rooted in "fantasy as a metaphor for childhood/growing up" and glorification of land-grabs, so...

It is not just Tad Williams's Osten Ard series or his "Shadow"- something-or-other, it is the usual part of the many series based on British myths and legends in general and Matter of Britain in particular. I am also fairly certain that I have read some older SF novels with the premise as well

That is true. But then, again, think when George came up with this entire plot.

I sincerely hope George is not going to play the 'magic finally disappears from the world' card in his story. But the time of the Children, giants, and even the wildlings seems to definitely over.

4 hours ago, Maia said:

Well, - a newby child defeating an age-old master of the craft is a cartoon/children's literature cliché. And having greenseers helping them is one of the few advantages that humans have in that fight. The Others are clearly sentient, too. But there are parallels between skin-changing and wight-wrangling of the Others and there is _something_ at the Heart of Winter, so dunno. Don't know if having "the root of evil" that can be conveniently destroyed by the Heroes once and for all is such a great idea either. 

I don't think Bran is going to be able to defeat whatever is at the Heart of Winter. If a greenseer could do that one imagines that Bloodraven or one of his predecessors would have done so. I mean, whatever the feelings of the Children in the cave they clearly are not allied with the Others.

I think somebody has to physically go there and deal or treat with the entities there. I mean, there is also a chance that the beings there might be willing to listen to reason if somebody presents the case of humanity eloquently. Not sure how big that chance is but if there is an intelligence there then arguments might work better than violence.

4 hours ago, Maia said:

It would also mean that the Children supposedly helping the Last Hero purposefully kept this secret and past greenseers of the First Men were incompetent.

Well, there is the possibility that the ancient First Men actually figured out what and who the Others were. Their very name indicates as much. It could be shortened version of 'other men' or 'other humans', right?

We get the fairy-tale version of the Pact which clearly did not play out as it was supposed as the actions of the post-Long Night First Men kings prove. But the story the First Men wanted to tell their children is not that they were treasonous oathbreakers who didn't give a shit about the Pact they so solemnly swore and continued to push the Children further and further back. They did not want to tell their children that they actually did deserve to be punished for their betrayals. Even more so, perhaps, in their new mindset after they actually adopted the gods of the Children. I mean, they would have betrayed their gods if they actually broke the Pact, right?

The fact that there aren't any greenseers in the North in the present is very odd, if you think about it. In the South the Andals would have helped to cut the First Men off from their old ways but how were the Northmen severed from the old traditions? How well did they First Men ever catch on to the beliefs/religion of the Children? Why didn't they have greenseers of their own, beneath their own weirwoods in their own castle godswoods?

A possible explanation there is that the First Men breaking the Pact cut their ties with most of the traditions they took over from the Children, and quite another would be that they did so after they found out about the true origins of the Others.

The quest of the Last Hero could very well have been not some sort of hero's quest but rather the desperate plea for mercy of the last representative of a beaten race which had gotten around to realize their mistake and were pleading for their very lives.

We don't know how much power the Children still had back then but the chances are not that bad that the Long Night didn't exactly in some great battle but rather because a majority of the Children decided that it was enough, and so a dissenting minority may have taken the Others and went up into the Heart of Winter to brood up there. The Wall would then have been a precaution just in case they would ever come down again.

4 hours ago, Maia said:

I don't remember such a definite passage. And not everything that the maesters are skeptical of is automatically right ;). Honestly, why should things be the same in a secondary world as they are in ours?

Well, then they wouldn't have the concept that seasons could be any different than they are in their world, right? Why on earth should they believe that it is not normal that magic rules the seasons rather than astronomical mechanics? They seem to be aware how seasons should actually work in their world and they are confused that this is not so.

4 hours ago, Maia said:

Didn't the Kindly Man talk about FM bringing the Gift to Valyria? And wasn't it implied that they'd like to bring it to everyone?

In the end, yes, but death is coming to everyone eventually. The Faceless Men don't strike me as a group which wants to kill everyone at once. They don't even see death being preferable to life - else they would be the first to kill themselves, right? If they wanted to eradicate the humans species or all life on the planet they have done a poor job at that.

The Doom was a monstrous thing but it seems to have been motivated by revenge and payback. After all, the Faceless Men began as slaves in Valyria.

Death is a gift in their opinion, something that you have to ask or to pay for. You have to be desperate enough to want to kill yourself or somebody else. It is not that death is going to come for free.

They may be exceptions to those rules, but they seem to be rather rare. Else the Faceless Men would be killing much more people.

4 hours ago, Maia said:

I agree that they keep it subtle, for the most part. But Euron is being influenced by them, IMHO, even if doesn't realise it.

Could be. Although, if he turned out the be the stone beast that might actually be part of him finally activating his potential as a greenseer, realizing the danger they are all in, and trying to acquire power by promising the people of Westeros that he is going to save them from winter and the ice demons. I doubt Euron is going to be a guy to serve anyone. Not even the Others. He wants to rule, that it is very clear.

4 hours ago, Maia said:

Not sure about the Weeper destroying the Shadow Tower - IMHO the blow would come from an unexpected direction. Either the Others are already in the North thanks to the Frozen Shore folks from Tormund's band, or they'll/have sail(ed) around the Wall, both east and west. I mean, wildlings do it - why not Others? Which, BTW, suggests that having a few Others cross when people still knew how to fight them/protect aginst them and without the Long Night  wasn't such a big deal. And explains why the Night's King wasn't more successful - though it took a large coalition to take him down.

But we have the buildup for the Weeper doing something. Perhaps he is not going to work directly with the Others but if he crosses the Bridge of Skulls again, defeating the forces of the Shadow Tower and possibly destroying it, then he also opens a door for the Others.

4 hours ago, Maia said:

How is desire to expand  areal of and create congenial climate for your species/tribe not understandable to human reader? Isn't it what our whole history is about? And the Children are not human - why should they act and think like humans? 

But is that what the Others want to do? And why are they not content with the Lands of Always Winter? We have no reason to believe the place there is overly crowded? And why are they turning dead creatures into their servants? 

4 hours ago, Maia said:

Why do you think that sex of the sacrifices is important, rather than the result of how Craster is running his operation?

Could very well be. We don't know enough about the Others. But as of yet we have little reason to assume that there are female Others. We have never seen any, after all.

4 hours ago, Maia said:

And why do you think that shape of beings made from smart ice is indicative of anything? If they were purposefully made to fight humans, it makes sense that they'd be as big as them - the size of the Children was known to be an impediment in their battles with humans.

I don't really like the idea that the Others create their own out of male human children all that much. How does this work? Do they raise themselves small 'Other children' until they are grown into the creatures we know? How long does this take, and how is this done? And where are they living in that time? What do they live on, etc?

4 hours ago, Maia said:

And, for that matter, all the mentions of ice dragons in TWoIaF make it fairly likely that they will make an appearance. But are they actually a different type of being than the Others, or are they just powerful Others in that shape? Ditto "pale spiders". After all, a being consisting of smart ice doesn't have to be locked into one shape.

Well, as for ice dragons we have to wait and see whether that wasn't just a nod to George's children's book. But, yeah, if there are fire dragons there could also be ice dragons.

[Lord Highland]

8 hours ago, Maia said:

After all, Planetos is a world with at least 5 humanoid species still living - why not more in the past?

Besides the humans, the CoTF, the Others and the Giants, who are you referring to? The Squishers? The Ibbenese?

[cpg2016]

On 8/16/2017 at 8:12 AM, Maia said:

Even during the Long Night, according to the legend of the Last Hero, he had to find the Children and somehow convince them to help. They didn't volonteer their assistence just because the Others were doing their thing.

Yes but the story is allegorical.  Just like the story of Azor Ahai and Nissa Nissa.  They're all making clear the journey's and sacrifices the heroes have to go on in order to succeed.  Obviously both the story of Azor Ahai and the Last Hero can't be true, as they are mutually contradictory in how the Others were defeated.  More likely, as with most stories, they represent parables about the meaning of heroism and sacrifice which are to inform our current heroes about just what is truly needed to beat the Others.

On 8/16/2017 at 8:12 AM, Maia said:

Yes, but they needed Bloodraven and now need Bran because they couldn't produce any new greenseers themselves. A greenseer is likely required for their continued survival, such as it is.

And your evidence for this is....?  Obviously someone was around to teach Bloodraven, which means there was a Child greenseer in the recent past.

On 8/16/2017 at 8:12 AM, Maia said:

This makes no sense. Craster knew that he had protection - he could have never survived with his indefensible set-up otherwise. After all, raiding and robbing each other is completely acceptable in the wildling culture and Craster was not allied with any other wildling tribes, nor did he train his women to fight.

It is made very clear that Craster's protection from mundane threats (e.g. not supernatural) comes from (likely) a distaste of other wildlings to the incestuous nature of his daughters, and also much more importantly, the protection of the Watch.  We know that far from little or no contact, the wildlings and the NW have extensive interactions.  It is perfectly reasonable that his hall is considered neutral ground, a notion the Watch might be willing to fight to enforce.  Moreover, he doesn't have all THAT much anyone would want aside from his daughters.

On 8/16/2017 at 8:12 AM, Maia said:

And we know from TWoIaF that some tribes on the Frozen Shore worship "gods of ice and snow", which are pretty clearly the Others, so Craster wasn't the only one sacrificing children to them, I am sure.

I'm not saying that Craster isn't sacrificing his sons, I'm saying it's not clear the Others are doing anything with them.  Maybe you are on to something with the "life force" thing.  I just wanted to point out that Craster and his wives are highly unreliable sources of information.