The Others: Why Now?

[Lady Barbrey]

19 minutes ago, Ralphis Baratheon said:

That's pretty catchy though, almost like the name of a Gothic Rock ballad. 

I thought exactly the same! We could have a concert in the Winterfell crypts.  I have a conversion idea for Rhaegar's harp.  Happy Halloween!

[Lord Varys]

5 hours ago, Ralphis Baratheon said:

That's pretty catchy though, almost like the name of a Gothic Rock ballad. 

Oh, I know, I chose that because it is actually a pretty good title ;-).

[John Suburbs]

13 hours ago, Lord Varys said:

That is just ridiculous. We are not treating 'Martin-speech' as 'special English'. We don't give special meaning to phrases and pretend they have to/can only mean what they mean they appear in this fashion.

A rather: I don't do that. If you do, we don't use the same language.

If you want to ignore important information, be may guest.

LOL, no. We were expected to actually read the novels and figure out what's actually going on if we can due to the clues given by the text.

There is ample evidence in AGoT that Cersei had nothing to do with the death of Jon Arryn. If you don't see them, I can't help you. And there is even more evidence in AGoT that neither Jaime nor Cersei did send the catspaw. And, no, we definitely were not supposed to buy the Westerling shit. Just as George was telling us since AGoT that Roose would betray Robb and that Robb would die at a feast (since ACoK). The entire birth control plan of Lady Sybell's was also as transparent as glass. We got all the pieces in the books.

The man has morons (characters and readers, myself included, more than once - I didn't figure out the Jon Arryn thing, nor did I see the Frey pies) believe in A, but he gives the smart people the clues to realize that he means 'B'.

And about Barristan we don't even have to talk. The man's fake name is 'Arstan' - can it be more obvious?

If the Others supposedly hung out in graves or if the Others and the wights were not working directly with each other (or whatever you seem to believe there) then we would have some clues about that, too, at this point. Just as we actually do have clues about the fact that the Others are made out of male human children and that the Children might have something to do with the origin of the Others. Because there are such hints in the novel. 

Well, it is obvious that Robert Baratheon is still alive.

If there is subtext to analyze, yes. Which there is in the Arlan example which you seem to try to explain away and dismiss instead of taking it actually seriously.

I'm just playing along. I know that it is unlikely that there is a fourth code for wights. But we cannot rule it out, can we? You maintain that the horn blower interpreted Others as wights, which doesn't make much sense considering wights are a thing for the Watch at this point. People have seen them. And the Others do not look like wights at all.

What is the point in even inventing stuff about things we have no way of finding out? If there is a code that means Others, and the code is blown, then the default position would be to actually assume that the person doing that saw Others. Especially when their army of wights was attacking.

But you build completely speculative and internally contradictory theories on the basis of some claim of Ygritte's - which, along with everything Mance said later, might just be lies and nonsense, by the way. The fact of those grave-diggings has not been established independently.

I don't do that. I just assert that your theory there is much more unlikely than yours. And I try to give arguments for that. I think that's pretty evident for most people caring about this topic. don't presume to explain what's going to happen in the future.

How do I know? Why should anyone have zombies do their dirty work?

I didn't figure it out. But it is not the foster thing. It is the fact that Cersei and Jaime and the children and Tywin are not there when Jon gets sick and dies, it is the fact that Lysa dotes so much on her child that she is willing to threaten Catelyn's life when she offers to foster Robert at Winterfell. It is the fact that Lysa and Jon's marriage were a loveless, arranged match and that they quarreled when Walder talked to them immediately before Jon fell sick. And it is the fact that Lysa wrote that letter to Cat - Lysa, who had motive herself and might just divert the Starks' (and the reader's) attention to another suspect. Oh, and just to clarify - I meant Lysa being the poisoner. One can assume Petyr may have advise her on that, but this is not implied by the text. The clues we get help us to pin down the actual poisoner simply by closely reading AGoT. And there were people who figured that out before ASoS was even published.

Take the Meereen plot as an example where clues are given that have yet to hit home. Hizdahr telling Dany that he likes hot spices and him later claiming they don't agree with him when talking to Barristan is there intentional. It is a clue that Hizdahr was in on the poisoning plot. Dany ruling against Grazdan zo Galare early in ADwD and the Sons of the Harpy later cruelly killing the freedwomen who profited from that ruling is a strong sign sign Galazza Galare is either 'the Harpy' or has a great influence with the Sons of the Harpy.

Alleras' overall description and name strongly implies he is Sarella Sand. We are not supposed to believe Alleras is not Sarella until proven otherwise. And so on and so on.

By this time, Pycelle has long been confirmed to be not as apt a liar and conspirator as others at court. But AGoT already established that Cersei was not behind the poisoning, as does ACoK's conversation between Cersei and Tyrion. Pycelle is right that Cersei wanted Jon Arryn to die, but she never gave anyone a command to see to it - not Pycelle nor any other person who might have poisoned the man.

Pycelle falsely assumes Cersei was behind the thing. And the reader can know that when reading ACoK.

He likes to play with the reader, yes, but he never goes against his own rules. He never introduces A and then out of the B changes it to be, declaring well established truths to be exactly the opposite. For instance, he would never suddenly reinvent Robert as a chaste anti-alcoholic, or Aerys II as a completely sane person and great king who was only smeared by his enemies.

If there is deeper/hidden meaning behind something he gives us clues. He makes it clear to perceptive people that there is more to a thing than is apparent.

Or perhaps I'm wrong. Can you give me an example for a twist that comes completely out of the blue? Do we ever meet a character who is safely established to be a monster - say, Ramsay, or Gregor - and then we later learn that this is just nonsense? Or do we meet characters who actually are friendly and intelligent - Maester Aemon, say - and then learn suddenly that this was just nonsense, and they are actually vindictive and stupid?

If you argue the Others and wights are not what they seem to be - enemies of mankind working together - then you are in complete fringe territory. In your world Robert Baratheon could actually be alive, just as Joffrey could be a smart guy.

That is not true. If winters and summers were actually much shorter, on average, then this tendency would fit more or less. I assume that there were exceptionally long winters in the days of the dragons, too, but we don't know - and if there were, they might have still shorter than those we get now.

At this point there is essentially no subtlety to the Others in the story. None at all. There is no reason to assume they are anything but what they appear to be. They might not - but if that's the case then at this points nothing but over-interpreting or twisting sentences that basically have nothing to do with the Others could serve as 'evidence' for that idea.

The Others are a large void we know little about - but at this point we have no reason to believe the little we know about them is false.

It is never going to turn out that the Others are humanity's best friends.

But we are not talking about a discussion among maesters here. Very few characters in this series are scholars, and none of them are obliged to think or care about scholarly knowledge they have no clue even exists when they make statements. It is like expecting a stupid person to be smart. You cannot do that.

No, they don't. I don't take Arlan's words as obviously visible facts. I interpret them as a tendency. In general, winters in the dragon days were shorter and less cruel than those afterwards.

Sorry. That is just not a hint. You have to presuppose the Others were once in graves or that shades might have anything to do with that. Does the text establish somewhere that this might be the case.

The Wall and it weeping there has nothing to do with the Lands of Always Winter.

Not sure how this has any bearing on the magical winter of the Lands of Always Winter.

I was not talking about San Diego, I was thinking of regions were the temperature is constant to the point that people don't consider there to be seasons - or rather not seasons like winter and summer, but rainy and dry, or Nile inundations and no-Nile inundations.

We are not talking about the arctic, nor are we talking about realistic weather conditions. We are talking about a world where winter and summer and spring and autumn are magical.

Do we know anybody actually lives in the Land of Always Winter (but the Others)? 

See above.

And what if the winters from 153-298 AC were, on average, longer and crueler than the winters of any given time before? The facts as we know them still allows us that Ser Arlan is right on that one.

I also don't have evidence that the Others are not Citadel-dropouts wearing a glamor. But I don't assume that this is the case.

The heroes (also) defeating the Others with the help of some dragonriders doesn't mean 'ice' and 'fire' fought against each other. It means the Others and the dragonriders (and other heroes) fought against each other.

Just because there are things/people containing or representing 'ice' and 'fire' in this or that (symbolic) way doesn't mean those elements and things have to anathema to each other in all contexts.

Well, all I can say Varys is happy reading. I think you're leaping to conclusions based on incomplete or misinterpreted evidence, but that's just me.

Thanks for the chat.

[asongofheresy]

On 10/24/2018 at 12:56 AM, wia said:

I think that dragons can't go past the Wall 'cause it's a barrier for magic that works both ways. Why can Ghost and his mom pass is a question. I guess direwolves are allowed to pass since Brandon was the one who built it.

Personally I very much doubt that the Others have anything to do with Jon. And anything to do with Bloodraven simply being beyond the Wall. Might have something to do with what he has been doing with CotF though, but I'm not very invested into that theory.

My personal guess would be that the Others are somewhat akin to glacial periods (like the Ice age) in our world, but with a magic twist to it. Just a natural occurence that comes in power due to mysterious natural factors.

What I've been wondering abouts is the Dayne meteorite and the red comet. One landed, the other, to our knowledge, didn't. If we assume that the Dayne meteor landed shortly before or sometime after The Long Night began (and that Dawn was important in ending it), could we suppose a causation or just a correlation? It would be the Others causing or predcessing space debris, sice the Others were shown to be active before the red comet. Or maybe both are triggered by the same process? So, in this assumption, what would the difference between falling and passing by be for our characters?

As for Rhaegar, then I wouldn't put my faith in whatever he was reading, since he was expecting Aegon, Visenya and Rhaenys being all legendary and what he got is Rhaenys killed as a child, Aegon, whom he believed to be TPTWP, likely also killed as a child and, if we believe RLJ, Jon who is no Visenya by any means. So clearly Rhaegar had no idea. As a side note, why did he go with Rhaenys-Aegon-Visenya pattern when the original was Visenya-Aegon-Rhaenys?

Because when Rhaenys born Rhaegar thought he was the Price that was Promised. Until the birth of Aegon he didn't think his son could be TPTWP and Rhaegar didn't have any pattern for child name and didn't want a Visenya sorry. There must be one more just means he thinks he needs one more child. And he didn't know Elia couldn't give him one before Harrenhall so he didn't choose Lyanna for a prophetic reason. 

Additionally we don't have to assume R+L=J even the fact Rhaegar and Lyanna having a child could trigger Others if it did and that child don't have to be Jon got this theory to work. 

[The Commentator]

They were waiting for Night's King 2.0, which is Jon Snow.  He's the leader that the Others have been waiting for.  The man who would betray the watch for a woman (Arya).