Sansa and Cognitive Dissonance

[Angel Eyes]

3 hours ago, The Weirwoods Eyes said:

Oh Goody, a Sansa hate thread these are so rare! 

 

Very rare indeed.

[Springwatch]

23 hours ago, Kandrax said:

You mean pointed a  sword to lying Joffrey, after Nymeria disarmed him, saving Arya from certain death?

Oh yes, she did a good job on Joff. 'The back of his head was all bloody.' And when you say Nymeria disarmed him, you mean 'snarling and ripping at him,' leaving him on the ground 'cradling his mangled arm' and his shirt 'soaked in blood'.

And then Arya raises the sword over him, presumably to deliver the coup de grâce, but finds the mental strength to hold back. This is great: she's not a mindless killing machine and never will be.

[Springwatch]

On 29/04/2018 at 6:49 PM, The Weirwoods Eyes said:

Oh Goody, a Sansa hate thread these are so rare!

It's a classic.

And we never got round to discussing cognitive dissonance, so I sat down and wrote some stuff.

...

The masters of mind-bending are the Others: they master armies of wights; most skinchangers only manage one partner. (I make the assumption that the mechanics are pretty similar - no need to re-invent the wheel, and, like a skinchanger's animal, the wights can have some free range of movement, without being operated like a puppet all the time.)

The ability to raise the dead and control them makes the Others unbeatable by conventional forces, so it's essential to get out there among them, and find out their weaknesses. I'm expecting the Starks to fill this role; they are the family of Winter after all. If so, to stay free, they need atypical minds, that don't respond in the usual way to the Others' mind control.

So, we've got:

• LSH: I think she's the only fire wight in existence at present. I have no idea what's going on in her head, but it cannot be an easy target.
• (And for a long shot, Ned: the only dead Lord Stark for ten thousand years not to be nailed to his tomb with his own sword.)
• Bran: disobedient as a child; greenseeing prodigy; warg; supported by the weirnet.
• Jon: child of Ice and Fire; warg; wants to study wights.
• Arya: strong-willed and disobedient as a child; wolfblooded; warg.

And interestingly, Arya has something in common with Sansa: both of them are spending their '5 year gap' with their sense of self under attack; each of them has to hide their secret self under a false identity that goes very deep, deep enough to deceive a master:

• "Who are you?" he would ask her every day. "No one," she would answer ... ... but not for true, not in her heart of hearts.
• "... You are Alayne, and you must be Alayne all the time." He put two fingers on her left breast. "Even here. In your heart. Can you do that?..."

So finally, Sansa. She has her own brand of uniqueness:

• [Cat] "Sansa was a lady at three, always so courteous and eager to please...." (ACOK)
• [Hound] "Some septa trained you well. You're like one of those birds from the Summer Isles, aren't you? A pretty little talking bird, repeating all the pretty little words they taught you to recite." (AGOT)
• [Tyrion] "You hide behind courtesy as if it were a castle wall." (ASOS)
• [Sansa] He can make me look at the heads, she told herself, but he can't make me see them.... The severed head had been dipped in tar to preserve it longer. Sansa looked at it calmly, not seeing it at all. (AGOT)
• [Tyrion] He had expected anguish and anger when he told her of her brother's death, but Sansa's face had remained so still that for a moment he feared she had not understood. It was only later, with a heavy oaken door between them, that he heard her sobbing. (ASOS)

Sansa can do doublethink, reciting the pretty words and courtesies that may or may not reflect her private thought. The superficial display keeps out people who try to understand her.

So she has the courtesy armour, but will she face mental assault? From the Others? Five books in, there should be a bundle of foreshadowing for it - and so there is:

Quote

As the headsman looked at her, his pale colorless eyes seemed to strip the clothes away from her, and then the skin, leaving her soul naked before him. (AGOT)

and

Quote

Every time she looked at Ser Ilyn Payne, she shivered. He made her feel as though something dead were slithering over her naked skin.(AGOT)

 

[Angel Eyes]

You know that first quote makes me think of one of the Witch-King's quotes from The Return of the King: 

"Come not between the Nazgûl and his prey! Or he will not slay thee in thy turn. He will bear thee away to the houses of lamentation, beyond all darkness, where thy flesh shall be devoured, and thy shrivelled mind be left naked to the Lidless Eye."

So how long before Alayne becomes Durden?

[zandru]

2 hours ago, Springwatch said:

Oh yes, she did a good job on Joff. 'The back of his head was all bloody.' And when you say Nymeria disarmed him, you mean 'snarling and ripping at him,' leaving him on the ground 'cradling his mangled arm' and his shirt 'soaked in blood'.

Yeah! Nymeria almost literally "dis-armed" Joffrey. He was lucky Arya called him off.

[The Weirwoods Eyes]

On 29/04/2018 at 10:37 PM, Angel Eyes said:

Very rare indeed.

I know right? I mean she is so universally adored that hardly anyone ever says a word against her. 

[The Weirwoods Eyes]

11 hours ago, Springwatch said:

It's a classic.

And we never got round to discussing cognitive dissonance, so I sat down and wrote some stuff.

...

The masters of mind-bending are the Others: they master armies of wights; most skinchangers only manage one partner. (I make the assumption that the mechanics are pretty similar - no need to re-invent the wheel, and, like a skinchanger's animal, the wights can have some free range of movement, without being operated like a puppet all the time.)

The ability to raise the dead and control them makes the Others unbeatable by conventional forces, so it's essential to get out there among them, and find out their weaknesses. I'm expecting the Starks to fill this role; they are the family of Winter after all. If so, to stay free, they need atypical minds, that don't respond in the usual way to the Others' mind control.

So, we've got:

• LSH: I think she's the only fire wight in existence at present. I have no idea what's going on in her head, but it cannot be an easy target.
• (And for a long shot, Ned: the only dead Lord Stark for ten thousand years not to be nailed to his tomb with his own sword.)
• Bran: disobedient as a child; greenseeing prodigy; warg; supported by the weirnet.
• Jon: child of Ice and Fire; warg; wants to study wights.
• Arya: strong-willed and disobedient as a child; wolfblooded; warg.

And interestingly, Arya has something in common with Sansa: both of them are spending their '5 year gap' with their sense of self under attack; each of them has to hide their secret self under a false identity that goes very deep, deep enough to deceive a master:

• "Who are you?" he would ask her every day. "No one," she would answer ... ... but not for true, not in her heart of hearts.
• "... You are Alayne, and you must be Alayne all the time." He put two fingers on her left breast. "Even here. In your heart. Can you do that?..."

So finally, Sansa. She has her own brand of uniqueness:

• [Cat] "Sansa was a lady at three, always so courteous and eager to please...." (ACOK)
• [Hound] "Some septa trained you well. You're like one of those birds from the Summer Isles, aren't you? A pretty little talking bird, repeating all the pretty little words they taught you to recite." (AGOT)
• [Tyrion] "You hide behind courtesy as if it were a castle wall." (ASOS)
• [Sansa] He can make me look at the heads, she told herself, but he can't make me see them.... The severed head had been dipped in tar to preserve it longer. Sansa looked at it calmly, not seeing it at all. (AGOT)
• [Tyrion] He had expected anguish and anger when he told her of her brother's death, but Sansa's face had remained so still that for a moment he feared she had not understood. It was only later, with a heavy oaken door between them, that he heard her sobbing. (ASOS)

Sansa can do doublethink, reciting the pretty words and courtesies that may or may not reflect her private thought. The superficial display keeps out people who try to understand her.

So she has the courtesy armour, but will she face mental assault? From the Others? Five books in, there should be a bundle of foreshadowing for it - and so there is:

and

 

I've not read the majority of the thread so I'm not clear on what has and has not yet been discussed. The OP just had me rolling my eyes so much I saw the inside of my skull. 

I think this post is really interesting. Thank you for taking the time to write it. I like the parallels you made between Arya & Sansa's experiences. And think this is a really good point. This skill is of course currently valuable to each of them it is helping to keep them alive. But will it become important in the long term? Perhaps yes. 

I really do think "team Stark" is going to come back together and be integral to fighting the Others. I've always said this; often to much piss taking from other fans.

  But I'd point out that LSH is unlikely the only fire wight in world.  Moqorro survived 10 days and nights adrift in the ocean, under a blazing sun, clinging onto a bit of drift wood surrounded by salt water and without food. He's unlikely to have done so as a mortal man. And Mellisandre displays a similar lack of need for food and drink or sleep as Beric, LSH, and Moqorro. She talks about the fire inside her and is as we know unnaturally old.  Further the words on the dragon binder horn sound funnily like a firewight is required to blow it. "Blood for Fire, Fire for Blood" and  "No mortal man may blow me and live." (I've paraphrased.) sounds like you need a fire wight to me. So it is likely one will pop up or be created in that region of the world too; barring Moqorro blowing it himself. 

Ned isn't the sole Lord Stark/King of Winter loose without a sword binding him to his tomb, there are the three which Bran & Co took too, meaning the shades of those Stark ancestors including Ned are maybe also free to roam. Who knows this might be significant? We need to understand better the way a skinchangers spirit behaves after death don't we. Varymyr tells us in time it fades and of course what happens when the animal you went into dies? Assuming the Starks were all potentially skinchangers. The swords taken included Rickards, & Brandons. So two recently deceased Starks. Hodor has a rusted sword and it is described by Bran as centuries old so one of the older ancestors.  there are three or four Starks without a sword binding them to their tomb. But we don't know enough about the way spirits of skinchangers work yet. I've seen people theorise that using these swords gives the bearer the spirit and strength etc of said dead stark. But I'm not convinced by that idea without more evidence.  Lastly Ned had not been interned so is his spirit free to roam in a different way? Who knows. I'm interested in exploring the idea more though. 

Bran is obviously a powerful greenseer and skinchanger; he'll undoubtedly have some  abillity to resist any mind control type powers the Others may be capable of using. So far we have only seen them bend the dead to their will I'm not sure they'd have the abillity to slip into living peoples skin like Bran does Hodor though. Weirnet is an important tool which will definitely come in handy. Learning to see the wider picture and understand that sacrifices might be needed in order to prevent an apocalypse. 

Jon Warg, possibly going to be a firewight too; personally I don't think he will and don't give a shit that this is what that which we don't discuss did. Product, of Ice & Fire, maybe TPTWP, can potentially ride a dragon. Has dragon dreams.  But is yet to fully grasp/embrace how to use his skills.  Hint: this is why Borraq is at the wall.  Learning to lead. 

Arya - Skinchanger; has mastered slipping into two separate animals one whilst actually awake and conscious. Also has been initiated into another form of powerful blood magic; the wearing of others faces which transforms her features and gives access to the deceased's memories and personality. Learning the skills of lying and concealment of ones true thoughts and feelings. As well as how to kill without allowing it to destroy ones own psyche.

Sansa- Skinchanger though she has yet to claim a new familiar. I think she might claim a Merlin whilst in the Vale. Learning the political game as well as a wider game of manipulation and recourse gathering. Will come in handy especially when combined with her amazing poker face skills and capacity for self control learnt in KL. 

Rickon- Warg, Has no other known skills as his joint dream with Bran in Game can be explained by looking at the way Bran imposes himself into his siblings dreams when they wolf dream. He's done so with Jon, and 

Spoiler

Also with Arya in TWOW Mercy I Arya see's a tree watching her and hears her true name in a wolf dream. This is likely Bran entering her dream as he did Jon's. 

He may have had a joint green dream with Bran, but I feel it more likely that Bran pulled him into his dream because the two boys were both wolf dreaming and in close proximity; medieval children shared beds we know GRRM adopted this as he has Sansa & Arya recall having their sister in bed with them.  Learning, who knows! Maybe we will find out in TWOW if Rickon is brought back to WF by Davos. Or maybe he's unimportant and will die. 

I find your idea that Sansa will face mental assault by the Others intriguing. And yes her abillity to mask her true feelings and thoughts would come in handy there! Tell me more about this idea and why you came up with it? 

This has been a far more interesting conversation than the usual Oh My Gosh Sansa is such a shallow horrid cow and she must die crap I much prefer these interesting discussions to OMG it was her fault Ned died!!!!!

[Kandrax]

3 hours ago, The Weirwoods Eyes said:

is has been a far more interesting conversation than the usual Oh My Gosh Sansa is such a shallow horrid cow and she must die crap I much prefer these interesting discussions to OMG it was her fault Ned died!!!!!

Thankfully, none blame her for Sack of Winterfell, RW, or Saltpans.

[John Suburbs]

20 hours ago, Springwatch said:

The masters of mind-bending are the Others: they master armies of wights; most skinchangers only manage one partner. (I make the assumption that the mechanics are pretty similar - no need to re-invent the wheel, and, like a skinchanger's animal, the wights can have some free range of movement, without being operated like a puppet all the time.)

The ability to raise the dead and control them makes the Others unbeatable by conventional forces, so it's essential to get out there among them, and find out their weaknesses. I'm expecting the Starks to fill this role; they are the family of Winter after all. If so, to stay free, they need atypical minds, that don't respond in the usual way to the Others' mind control.

 

 

7 hours ago, The Weirwoods Eyes said:

Bran is obviously a powerful greenseer and skinchanger; he'll undoubtedly have some  abillity to resist any mind control type powers the Others may be capable of using. So far we have only seen them bend the dead to their will I'm not sure they'd have the abillity to slip into living peoples skin like Bran does Hodor though. Weirnet is an important tool which will definitely come in handy. Learning to see the wider picture and understand that sacrifices might be needed in order to prevent an apocalypse. 

I like the bulk of both your analyses, but I'll point out that we have yet to actually see what I've bolded above. In fact, we've never seen Others and human wights on the same page at the same time. All we have is the Other riding the dead horse, which doesn't make sense to begin with since Others can move across the snow far more effectively than horses, dead or alive. But also, after he dismounts, the horse apparently meanders off like any other horse -- no blind compulsion to slay the living. So even here, we haven't seen the Other actually raise this particular horse, nor does it appear to be controlling it in any way.

I'm probably being a stickler here because in any conventional sense the Others should be masters of the wights. But Martin is not a conventional writer...

 

 

[The Weirwoods Eyes]

4 hours ago, Kandrax said:

Thankfully, none blame her for Sack of Winterfell, RW, or Saltpans.

Gods, don't give them ideas!!! I'm sure some would gleefully get behind those ideas. 

[The Weirwoods Eyes]

1 hour ago, John Suburbs said:

 

I like the bulk of both your analyses, but I'll point out that we have yet to actually see what I've bolded above. In fact, we've never seen Others and human wights on the same page at the same time. All we have is the Other riding the dead horse, which doesn't make sense to begin with since Others can move across the snow far more effectively than horses, dead or alive. But also, after he dismounts, the horse apparently meanders just off like any other horse -- no blind compulsion to slay the living. So even here, we haven't seen the Other actually raise this particular horse, nor does it appear to be controlling it in any way.

I'm probably being a stickler here because in any conventional sense the Others should be masters of the wights. But Martin is not a conventional writer...

 

 

You're quite right and whilst sometimes being pedantic is just pointless, I do think in the case of ASOIAF it is often a good strategy.  I'm prepared to heed your advice and refrain from assuming too much. 

If this were my theory I'd probably spend two days searching for all and any evidence of what is truly at play with the wights.

I suspect they are controlled by the Others. But until we have further evidence I'll refrain from assuming so.  

[Angel Eyes]

40 minutes ago, The Weirwoods Eyes said:

You're quite right and whilst sometimes being pedantic is just pointless, I do think in the case of ASOIAF it is often a good strategy.  I'm prepared to heed your advice and refrain from assuming too much. 

If this were my theory I'd probably spend two days searching for all and any evidence of what is truly at play with the wights.

I suspect they are controlled by the Others. But until we have further evidence I'll refrain from assuming so.  

Well, what we do know about the wights is that they're murderous. Just ask Will and Ser Jaremy, among others. And Others are not needed to have a wight try to murder the closest person.

[John Suburbs]

5 minutes ago, The Weirwoods Eyes said:

You're quite right and whilst sometimes being pedantic is just pointless, I do think in the case of ASOIAF it is often a good strategy.  I'm prepared to heed your advice and refrain from assuming too much. 

If this were my theory I'd probably spend two days searching for all and any evidence of what is truly at play with the wights.

I suspect they are controlled by the Others. But until we have further evidence I'll refrain from assuming so.  

I have looked into it. We have Old Nan talking about the Others and their "hosts of the slain", but she also says the Others are "cold, dead things", which Martin himself has refuted.

Tormund talks about the wight's "masters", and it appears he is talking about the Others, but he never says so directly. His exact words are " A man can fight the dead, but when their masters come, when the white mists rise up ... how do you fight a mist, crow?" And neither time that we've actually seen an Other has the POV said anything about a mist.

Beyond that, other than the one on the dead horse, we see either wights or Others, but never both together.

[LiveFirstDieLater]

18 minutes ago, Angel Eyes said:

Well, what we do know about the wights is that they're murderous. Just ask Will and Ser Jaremy, among others.

And that they die die when burned or their bones are broken... and probably worth noting that bones are collected beneath the weirwoods, both with the Children north of the wall and in the crypts below castles like Winterfell and Raventree Hall. 

It’s true we don’t really know if they are animated (and thus mindless hungry dead zombies) or are controlled like a Warg controlles a wolf... but the fact that a wight could make its way to the Lord Commander’s room instead of just attacking the nearest warm blood makes me lean toward the latter.

Sansa is clearly responsible for the wights, and winter, and parking tickets.

Kust kidding, those are all Cat’s fault.

[Springwatch]

23 hours ago, Angel Eyes said:

You know that first quote makes me think of one of the Witch-King's quotes from The Return of the King: 

"Come not between the Nazgûl and his prey! Or he will not slay thee in thy turn. He will bear thee away to the houses of lamentation, beyond all darkness, where thy flesh shall be devoured, and thy shrivelled mind be left naked to the Lidless Eye."

That quote is terrific, thanks for sharing it. I don't think GRRM rejects all thing Tolkein (Euron's arms with the red eye seem like a tribute). There may be no evil dark lord in Westeros, but houses of lamentation are a definite possibility.

23 hours ago, Angel Eyes said:

So how long before Alayne becomes Durden?

Nice thought. What I really think is that Arya and Sansa largely share a destiny, and even an identity ('Ned's  girl') - so between them they will be that hero.

[Springwatch]

11 hours ago, The Weirwoods Eyes said:

I really do think "team Stark" is going to come back together and be integral to fighting the Others.

Me too; the pack reunites. But I'm only now starting to think their dead ancestors might be a source of help also.

Quote

  But I'd point out that LSH is unlikely the only fire wight in world.  Moqorro survived 10 days and nights adrift in the ocean, under a blazing sun, clinging onto a bit of drift wood surrounded by salt water and without food. He's unlikely to have done so as a mortal man. And Mellisandre displays a similar lack of need for food and drink or sleep as Beric, LSH, and Moqorro. She talks about the fire inside her and is as we know unnaturally old.  Further the words on the dragon binder horn sound funnily like a firewight is required to blow it. "Blood for Fire, Fire for Blood" and  "No mortal man may blow me and live." (I've paraphrased.) sounds like you need a fire wight to me. So it is likely one will pop up or be created in that region of the world too; barring Moqorro blowing it himself. 

I had forgotten these, and they're important because they seem perfectly revived, whereas poor Beric was fading away mentally.

Quote

Ned isn't the sole Lord Stark/King of Winter loose without a sword binding him to his tomb, there are the three which Bran & Co took too, meaning the shades of those Stark ancestors including Ned are maybe also free to roam. Who knows this might be significant? We need to understand better the way a skinchangers spirit behaves after death don't we. Varymyr tells us in time it fades and of course what happens when the animal you went into dies? Assuming the Starks were all potentially skinchangers. The swords taken included Rickards, & Brandons. So two recently deceased Starks. Hodor has a rusted sword and it is described by Bran as centuries old so one of the older ancestors.  there are three or four Starks without a sword binding them to their tomb. But we don't know enough about the way spirits of skinchangers work yet. I've seen people theorise that using these swords gives the bearer the spirit and strength etc of said dead stark. But I'm not convinced by that idea without more evidence.  Lastly Ned had not been interned so is his spirit free to roam in a different way? Who knows. I'm interested in exploring the idea more though. 

There's so little we know about ghosts. There are many dreams of ghosts (Jaime's mother, Dany's kings, Theon's feast of the dead...) I do believe there are spirits trapped in the living world - in the weirwoods, and ravens, probably in the Wall and the Stark tombs. I'm not sure how conscious they are - the natural course of death seems to be the spirit fading, dispersing, but magical means slow the process down. But I'd be surprised if they were all as lucid as the dream ghosts.

I remember now Rickon took a sword from a dead king too, much earlier, when he was sulking among the tombs with Shaggydog. I wonder if that sword was ever put back correctly.

Quote

Bran is obviously a powerful greenseer and skinchanger; he'll undoubtedly have some  abillity to resist any mind control type powers the Others may be capable of using. So far we have only seen them bend the dead to their will I'm not sure they'd have the abillity to slip into living peoples skin like Bran does Hodor though.

Ah, that is a tough point. Bran has a powerful mind, and the rest are wargs too, but if Sansa's going to have an extended interaction with the Others, I think she's going to be sort-of-dead. Definitely more dead than the usual metaphorical death and rebirth. I think this because there's a lot of dreaming in her chapters, a lot of going to bed and giving herself to the darkness, a lot of waking only at the dawn. There's even a touch of Snow White in Cat's thought: Will they lay Sansa down naked beneath the Iron Throne after they have killed her? Will her skin seem as white, her blood as red? (ASOS). (Not my idea this, it's from the forum somewhere.)

And of course many other characters feel like ghosts at some point in the story (Tyrion, Arya...), and many others have a white-eyed moment, which sounds pretty dead to me. So far, we've not seen a way to return from the land of the dead as a normal, fully living person. I'm only half expecting there will be such a way.

Quote

I find your idea that Sansa will face mental assault by the Others intriguing. And yes her abillity to mask her true feelings and thoughts would come in handy there! Tell me more about this idea and why you came up with it?

The short answer is that I never heard a good theory to explain Sansa's reaction to Ilyn Payne, and it's so very extreme, that there must be something there. Foreshadowing would be a good explanation, but who could Ilyn represent? He's pretty extraordinary already: 'With his grim face and deep-sunk hollow eyes, Ser Ilyn might have passed for death himself ... as he had, for years.' (AFFC). Pox scars mean his face is cratered like the face of the moon. The rest of him is close to a living skeleton waving a death's head sword.

The longer answer is that I think the level of foreshadowing, metaphor, codes etc is absolutely intense - like every adjective, every incident is coded to some larger scheme. Realism is hardly important at all. It's crazy, but not as crazy as trying to believe everything GRRM writes. So I take a lot of things to be foreshadowing. I'll have to think about this some more before I start piling everything in.

[Springwatch]

2 hours ago, John Suburbs said:

I have looked into it. We have Old Nan talking about the Others and their "hosts of the slain", but she also says the Others are "cold, dead things", which Martin himself has refuted.

Tormund talks about the wight's "masters", and it appears he is talking about the Others, but he never says so directly. His exact words are " A man can fight the dead, but when their masters come, when the white mists rise up ... how do you fight a mist, crow?" And neither time that we've actually seen an Other has the POV said anything about a mist.

Beyond that, other than the one on the dead horse, we see either wights or Others, but never both together.

Interesting. It's curious that the citizens of Westeros talk about the Others a lot (as in 'the Others take you! etc), but not much about wights, even in stories.  When the great ranging was attacked by wights, the warning was given as three blasts of the horn, the signal for the Others.

It's likely the Westerosi are just as confused as we are.

[The Mother of The Others]

Cowboys ride horses.    It's a cattle drive of the dead.    I'll assume this for now, and then when we're given something else to assume i'll assume that.

Sansa may not freeze in the presence of the Others when almost everybody else does.   Because she's so accustomed to operating under dread.    But i doubt that poker-facing the Others gives you any mental shielding against their psi kung-fu.   She might have a chance of impressing them by passing whatever chraracter test they administer.   But they probably just kill everybody, so feed them Rickon instead of Sansa.... at least Rickon will try to eat them back, and it'll be less of a waste.

 

[The Weirwoods Eyes]

13 hours ago, Angel Eyes said:

Well, what we do know about the wights is that they're murderous. Just ask Will and Ser Jaremy, among others. And Others are not needed to have a wight try to murder the closest person.

Hmm, yes they seem "pre-programmed" to kill the living don't they. But then also there is some direction too as when taken inside CB they head for the LC's chambers. 

[The Weirwoods Eyes]

13 hours ago, John Suburbs said:

I have looked into it. We have Old Nan talking about the Others and their "hosts of the slain", but she also says the Others are "cold, dead things", which Martin himself has refuted.

Tormund talks about the wight's "masters", and it appears he is talking about the Others, but he never says so directly. His exact words are " A man can fight the dead, but when their masters come, when the white mists rise up ... how do you fight a mist, crow?" And neither time that we've actually seen an Other has the POV said anything about a mist.

Beyond that, other than the one on the dead horse, we see either wights or Others, but never both together.

Oh good, this is exactly what I find useful when looking at individual aspects of the story. Collate everything that anyone has ever said or insinuated and try to see what the truth is!  

Sorry that link doesn't seem to take us to anything GRRM has said on the matter but is a book review site? Am I missing something?

 

Yes, That's right isn't it Tormund calls them their masters which implies some Wildling knowledge or folk law about them. 

Might the Others control the wights "remotely" like Bran sitting in his tree controlling what the Ravens say in Stannis's camp for instance. Or BR controlling Mormonts raven?