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Rant & Rave Season 8 [Spoilers]: When you are cool like a cucumber, as evil as the mother of madness, but never as perfect as the pet!

The Fattest Leech

By The Fattest Leech,
in General (GoT)

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Lord Varys Council Member

Lord Varys

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1 hour ago, The Dragon Demands said:

Well the scenario I gathered from the TV series, is that the White Walkers were a weapon of last resort that the Children of the Forest made, but NEVER deployed, during their wars against the First Men...because at the last minute, peace broke out.

I guess that piece would have been something for the The Long Night show - to make the Others something that's already technically a thing by the time the show starts, not something they have to come up with as things between First Men and Children escalate again.

It might be that in the books it will turn out they also considered that option back before the Pact, but decided against it because it may have been too extreme.

Also, it doesn't strike me as a last resort kind of option but rather a kind of meticulous and insidious long-term plan of extinction, turning mankind literally against themselves first by turning their young into Others - and thus taking the cure for the disease humanity, those shortlived vermin who multiply so quickly, from themselves rather than having their own people continue to fight - and then also creating zombies out of the dead First Men, which is another way to utilize the enemy to destroy the enemy.

It is actually a fine solution if you think about it in detail.

1 hour ago, The Dragon Demands said:

I like the analogy Elio cited in a video when this happened, to that old episode from Babylon 5 season 1, of a weapon of last resort made as a bluff between two warring groups of aliens - but then the aliens made peace with each other, so the weapon turned on all of them (something similar also happened with war robots in a Star Trek: Voyager episode).  

I don't think that cuts to the chase so far. For one, the books have the Children warding themselves against the Children ... and so far there is no indication that they were ever direct enemies. In that sense the Others wouldn't be a weapon that ever turned against the Children.

But my main point against that idea would be that the Others act too methodical to just enact an ancient (and now pointless) programming or act on the instinct to destroy mankind and create more Others. They waited for a long time to plan their new attacks, they choose their targets very carefully, targeting officers of the Watch, luring the NW out, using the wildlings as pawns against the Others (note that Mance's great army wasn't attacked, unlike the NW at the Fist), building up the numbers of their wights before attacking the Wall, etc.

All that indicates that they may know stuff they should not know if they are just people walking around in the snow, hiding at day. And indicates that there is some kind of mind behind them.

And the final indication is that Bran looked at the Heart of the Winter in the Lands of Always Winter and horrified by what he saw. That indicates that this is more than just a couple of Others, as terrible as they might be. After all, a singular Others is pretty easily killed if you know how to do it.

Basically, I think the parallel between MST and ASoIaF especially in relation to the elfish characters is very strong ... much stronger than to Babylon 5 episodes. Especially if you keep in mind how heavily especially AGoT was influenced by MST for basic plot and setting.

1 hour ago, The Dragon Demands said:

The problem is that this leak says the Green Men sided with the First Men AGAINST the other Children of the Forest, when the story says that the Green Men are guardians of "the Pact" between the First Men and the CotF.

That is something I don't think makes much sense. However, since we have literally no idea what the Green Men did during the Long Night - or at any other time in the history since the Pact - it is certainly possible that there were Green Men siding the Children who created the Others (or just the Others) during the Long Night. After all, it is also quite interesting that the Last Hero searched for Children, not for Green Men when he wanted to defeat the Others. Could be a hint that the Green Men couldn't be counted upon in this struggle.

1 hour ago, The Dragon Demands said:

What if Winterfell IS "the Heart of Winter"? And the knowledge was lost to the mists of time?

That would go against Bran's dream in his third chapter. He looks in the far north, the Lands of Always Winter, and there he sees the Heart of Winter. And what's there is what triggers his desire to live and to name his direwolf Summer.

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The Dragon Demands Council Member

The Dragon Demands

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10 hours ago, Lord Varys said:

Also, it doesn't strike me as a last resort kind of option but rather a kind of meticulous and insidious long-term plan of extinction, turning mankind literally against themselves first by turning their young into Others - and thus taking the cure for the disease humanity, those shortlived vermin who multiply so quickly, from themselves rather than having their own people continue to fight - and then also creating zombies out of the dead First Men, which is another way to utilize the enemy to destroy the enemy.

It is actually a fine solution if you think about it in detail.

Well in the "Histories & Lore" narrated by the late, great Max von Sydow, it summarized the idea as "The Children of the Forest were losing due to the First Men's superior numbers - but what if they could turn their numbers against them? " Turn that advantage into a disadvantage, with a self-replicating zombie army.

 

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Lord Varys Council Member

Lord Varys

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21 minutes ago, The Dragon Demands said:

Well in the "Histories & Lore" narrated by the late, great Max von Sydow, it summarized the idea as "The Children of the Forest were losing due to the First Men's superior numbers - but what if they could turn their numbers against them? " Turn that advantage into a disadvantage, with a self-replicating zombie army.

Oh, well, I don't think I ever watched that one. What season was that? Season 5?

And thinking about the reproduction process of the Others it seems that humans have to be complicit in their own destruction up to a point. The Craster plot introduced that - people have to hand over/sacrifice their own male children to the Others for the cycle to continue.

I don't think this kind of plot implies 'a magical bioweapon run amok' but rather careful planning in the background, the Others taking on the roles of living gods for certain wildling tribes, etc. to replenish their numbers. It doesn't look as if they could just raid villages and abduct infants. At least so far we have not the slightest indication that they ever did that.

But then - we also don't know how long-lived/immortal the Others are, and how many Others are needed to create/control vast armies of wights. But I guess we can assume that during the Long Night there must have been more and visible Others considering all that talk about gigantic ice spiders and the Others being the main enemy and not just a gigantic army of zombies.

Technically the Others could have just created a zombie army to hide behind, making it nearly completely mysterious as to why the dead were rising. But that wasn't the plan/what happened back during the Long Night, apparently.

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SeanF Council Member

SeanF

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4 hours ago, Lord Varys said:

Oh, well, I don't think I ever watched that one. What season was that? Season 5?

And thinking about the reproduction process of the Others it seems that humans have to be complicit in their own destruction up to a point. The Craster plot introduced that - people have to hand over/sacrifice their own male children to the Others for the cycle to continue.

I don't think this kind of plot implies 'a magical bioweapon run amok' but rather careful planning in the background, the Others taking on the roles of living gods for certain wildling tribes, etc. to replenish their numbers. It doesn't look as if they could just raid villages and abduct infants. At least so far we have not the slightest indication that they ever did that.

But then - we also don't know how long-lived/immortal the Others are, and how many Others are needed to create/control vast armies of wights. But I guess we can assume that during the Long Night there must have been more and visible Others considering all that talk about gigantic ice spiders and the Others being the main enemy and not just a gigantic army of zombies.

Technically the Others could have just created a zombie army to hide behind, making it nearly completely mysterious as to why the dead were rising. But that wasn't the plan/what happened back during the Long Night, apparently.

As with the Norns, there are humans who adore the Others, and mate with them.  Far from being bestial, as per the show, the Others are meant to be beautiful, like the Norns.

I don’t know if they’ve adopted the Nornish mass rape programme, however, to replenish their numbers.

Overall, I enjoy the Nornish chapters the best in the new trilogy.  Their society is horrible but fascinating.

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SeanF Council Member

SeanF

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Ding & Dong's moral outlook is ….vile.

Tywin, who murdered a young woman and her infant children, sacked a city that had opened its gates peacefully, had Tysha raped, treated prisoners as slave labour before Ser Gregor butchered them at Harrenhall, massacred the Smallfolk of the Riverlands, and planned the Red Wedding is "lawful neutral."  And, Ramsay Bolton was a "badass".

On the other hand, they think that fighting against slave-drivers, rapists, and child-murderers is sinister.

As for the poetry of their writing, pass the sick bag!

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