The Living Undead

[John Suburbs]

So we have several characters on the side of the living who have died and been resurrected: Jon and Beric definitely, possibly Melisandre. My question is, will the wights react to these people is if they are living, and then try to kill them, or will they perceive them as undead just like themselves? And if it's the latter, might this set up the possibility of sneaking through the wight army to take out the NK directly, which, theoretically at least, will dis-animate all those he has raised?

[Kajjo]

2 hours ago, John Suburbs said:

will the wights react to these people is if they are living, and then try to kill them,

Of course. Who is resurrected, simply lives again. They are living, not undead.

Please note that we already seen wights attacking Jon Snow and Beric Dondarrion on the wight excursion. They are enemies of each other and the wights recognise them as living.

2 hours ago, John Suburbs said:

or will they perceive them as undead just like themselves

The WW are a special kind, in certain aspects like a humanoid species on their own, albeit they appear not to reproduce (which would technically exclude the term "species", but well, it's magic).

Contrary to that, the wights are simple "raised" not "resurrected". They are dead or undead, however you call it. Dead being rasied to move and fight.

Compare:

• White Walkers are created from living humans. They feel, think, act on their own. They look icy-white-blue. 
• Wights are raised from the dead, humans, horses, ice bears, dragons. They mostly look like Walking Dead and are controlled by the WW who raised them. The crumble when the White Walker dies, that had raised them.

[John Suburbs]

2 hours ago, Kajjo said:

Of course. Who is resurrected, simply lives again. They are living, not undead.

Please note that we already seen wights attacking Jon Snow and Beric Dondarrion on the wight excursion. They are enemies of each other and the wights recognise them as living.

The WW are a special kind, in certain aspects like a humanoid species on their own, albeit they appear not to reproduce (which would technically exclude the term "species", but well, it's magic).

Contrary to that, the wights are simple "raised" not "resurrected". They are dead or undead, however you call it. Dead being rasied to move and fight.

Compare:

• White Walkers are created from living humans. They feel, think, act on their own. They look icy-white-blue. 
• Wights are raised from the dead, humans, horses, ice bears, dragons. They mostly look like Walking Dead and are controlled by the WW who raised them. The crumble when the White Walker dies, that had raised them.

I'll have to rewatch last season again. When the band was trapped on the island they were surrounded by wights and the walkers were there directing them to attack. Has there been an instance in which a wight attacked either Jon or Beric directly without the NK or a walker who could conceivably have been mind-controlling them to do so?

It just seems to me that "raised" or "resurrected" is a distinction without a difference here. They were dead, and now they are alive. The only difference is that Jon and Beric still have their faculties intact.

[dbunting]

6 hours ago, John Suburbs said:

I'll have to rewatch last season again. When the band was trapped on the island they were surrounded by wights and the walkers were there directing them to attack. Has there been an instance in which a wight attacked either Jon or Beric directly without the NK or a walker who could conceivably have been mind-controlling them to do so?

It just seems to me that "raised" or "resurrected" is a distinction without a difference here. They were dead, and now they are alive. The only difference is that Jon and Beric still have their faculties intact.

Yes, Jon was there all alone after his scuba diving trip and they swarmed him until Undead BenJen saved him.

[MinscS2]

8 hours ago, John Suburbs said:

It just seems to me that "raised" or "resurrected" is a distinction without a difference here. They were dead, and now they are alive. The only difference is that Jon and Beric still have their faculties intact.

Most, if not all fantasy-worlds have a clear distinction between "raise dead" and "resurrection".

In the first case, you create some form of undead.
In the latter case, you bring said creature back to life.
(In GoT, the twists with resurrections are that you loose part of your "soul" every time you get resurrected.)

Thoros resurrected Beric and Melissandre resurrected Jon.
The NK and WW continuously raise dead as fodder for their army.

[Kajjo]

14 hours ago, John Suburbs said:

It just seems to me that "raised" or "resurrected" is a distinction without a difference here.

That is not the understanding I have. It it a drastic difference.

Jon is back to life, his wounds heal, he lives and can have sex and self control.

Wights are just dead moving once more. Completely different in any aspect I can think of.

I believe the show makes this so extremely clear, that I wonder whether you toy with me or are indeed serious.

[John Suburbs]

12 hours ago, dbunting said:

Yes, Jon was there all alone after his scuba diving trip and they swarmed him until Undead BenJen saved him.

Was that when the NK was on the hill directing the actions of his minions? Has there ever been a case where Jon, Beric or any other dead-now-living character was attacked by a wight seemingly of its own volition?

9 hours ago, MinscS2 said:

Most, if not all fantasy-worlds have a clear distinction between "raise dead" and "resurrection".

In the first case, you create some form of undead.
In the latter case, you bring said creature back to life.
(In GoT, the twists with resurrections are that you loose part of your "soul" every time you get resurrected.)

Thoros resurrected Beric and Melissandre resurrected Jon.
The NK and WW continuously raise dead as fodder for their army.

 

4 hours ago, Kajjo said:

That is not the understanding I have. It it a drastic difference.

Jon is back to life, his wounds heal, he lives and can have sex and self control.

Wights are just dead moving once more. Completely different in any aspect I can think of.

I believe the show makes this so extremely clear, that I wonder whether you toy with me or are indeed serious.

OK, but my question is whether the wights would be able to make a distinction between themselves and those who have been resurrected? My impression is that they instinctively try to slay the living, not just the sentient. So in that sense would they be able to distinguish between their own once-dead flesh and the once-dead flesh of Jon and Beric.

So I guess fundamentally, I'm asking your question Kajjo: are the wights still-dead but just reanimated while characters like Jon and Beric are once-dead but are now fully alive again. I'm sure everybody has their opinion, but are there any facts in the story, either video or text, that could lead us to conclude one way or the other?

 

[Lord Varys]

On 4/23/2019 at 4:07 PM, John Suburbs said:

So we have several characters on the side of the living who have died and been resurrected: Jon and Beric definitely, possibly Melisandre. My question is, will the wights react to these people is if they are living, and then try to kill them, or will they perceive them as undead just like themselves? And if it's the latter, might this set up the possibility of sneaking through the wight army to take out the NK directly, which, theoretically at least, will dis-animate all those he has raised?

You are over-thinking stuff. They don't care about stuff like that. Remember how Jon was essentially pissing himself in fear for dying a second time while the corpses were starting bury him back some seasons? Obviously there is nothing wrong or changed with you in the show just because you were dead. I mean, any proper characterization would have at least played with the effects of what 'being dead' did to your personality, i.e. Jon thinking he is now immortal, Jon feeling he is unnatural, has cheated death, should actually be dead, etc. But none of that ever happened, so there is literally no reason to assume the zombies would care about the other zombies.

In the books chances are that both the wights and Others may react to people who have gotten a second or third, etc. life due to fire magic, especially if they are imbued with fire magic thereafter. For instance, chances are pretty high if you ask me that the wights and Others both will either try to stay away from Melisandre or only dare approach/attack when they have no other choice. Because what she is and represents is completely antithetical to their own existence.

[John Suburbs]

3 hours ago, Lord Varys said:

You are over-thinking stuff. They don't care about stuff like that. Remember how Jon was essentially pissing himself in fear for dying a second time while the corpses were starting bury him back some seasons? Obviously there is nothing wrong or changed with you in the show just because you were dead. I mean, any proper characterization would have at least played with the effects of what 'being dead' did to your personality, i.e. Jon thinking he is now immortal, Jon feeling he is unnatural, has cheated death, should actually be dead, etc. But none of that ever happened, so there is literally no reason to assume the zombies would care about the other zombies.

In the books chances are that both the wights and Others may react to people who have gotten a second or third, etc. life due to fire magic, especially if they are imbued with fire magic thereafter. For instance, chances are pretty high if you ask me that the wights and Others both will either try to stay away from Melisandre or only dare approach/attack when they have no other choice. Because what she is and represents is completely antithetical to their own existence.

It also seems clear that Jon's heart is still beating, his body is still warm (otherwise Dany would be pretty skeeved at sleeping with him) and, and relation to the text at least, there is no black blood collecting in his extremities.

But the fact is that we don't know how the wights distinguish between the living and the dead, so there might be some wiggle room if the showrunners wanted to take it in this direction. And frankly, when given a choice between logical consistency and the high drama of Jon and Beric sneaking past thousands of dormant wights to accomplish some task, it seems to me that they would opt for the high drama. 

[Kajjo]

5 hours ago, John Suburbs said:

are the wights still-dead but just reanimated while characters like Jon and Beric are once-dead but are now fully alive again.

I am sure this is how it is.

We see wights fighting only the living and they fight Beric and Jon. That is conclusive for me.

[Haskelltier]

12 minutes ago, Kajjo said:

I am sure this is how it is.

We see wights fighting only the living and they fight Beric and Jon. That is conclusive for me.

In the show, yes. In the books, I'm not sure. George R.R. Martin said that Beric is some kind of "fire wight". And its clear, that the resurrections by the red god are not perfect, since Beric loses more and more of his memories with each resurrection and all his fatal wounds are remaining.

[Kajjo]

2 minutes ago, Haskelltier said:

In the show, yes.

We are discussing the show here.

2 minutes ago, Haskelltier said:

And its clear, that the resurrections by the red god are not perfect

That's true. We know this from the show, too.

 

[Haskelltier]

3 minutes ago, Kajjo said:

We are discussing the show here.

That's true. We know this from the show, too.

 

Of course, I only wanted to point out, that show and book deal several things differently. And the show often simplified things like the resurrection.

[Lord Varys]

2 hours ago, John Suburbs said:

It also seems clear that Jon's heart is still beating, his body is still warm (otherwise Dany would be pretty skeeved at sleeping with him) and, and relation to the text at least, there is no black blood collecting in his extremities.

But the fact is that we don't know how the wights distinguish between the living and the dead, so there might be some wiggle room if the showrunners wanted to take it in this direction. And frankly, when given a choice between logical consistency and the high drama of Jon and Beric sneaking past thousands of dormant wights to accomplish some task, it seems to me that they would opt for the high drama. 

Again, you would likely produce a better explanation than the morons who adapt the show. 

But considering that these two are not in any meaningful was changed I don't see any reason why the wights should not see them as anything but normal living people.

I for one expect Jon to be much more like Melisandre after his resurrection, a person whose inner 'Targaryen fire' has been kindled by Melisandre's likely much more potent 'kiss of fire' should burn much brighter and hotter than the magic fueling Beric and later Catelyn - although I still doubt Mel actually died and was resurrected. I think ADwD implies that imbued/filled her with fire while she was still alive, possibly because they knew whose child she was and that she could survive such a treatment.

In such a state Jon would be very much anathema to anything touched by the Others, which could be part of the reason why he is going to end up to lead the movement against them (at least at the Wall and in the North).

[John Suburbs]

22 hours ago, Kajjo said:

I am sure this is how it is.

We see wights fighting only the living and they fight Beric and Jon. That is conclusive for me.

And I think it's fair to assume that Jon's heart is still beating, his body is still warm (otherwise Dany would notice) and he doesn't have black blood pooling in his extremities -- unless all of this is a glamour, such as the one Mel keeps on herself . . . ?

So, I get what you're saying, now the only question is what aspect of "life" are the wights drawn to? Is it the warmth and red blood, or something else, and might that something else have been removed once Jon, Beric, etc. died the first time. And maybe, just maybe, J&B were attacked because they were in company with those who are indisputably alive and the wights were being actively directed by the NK.

And the even more salient question is whether the show-runners are more interested in logical consistency or would be more driven by the drama and optics of two men sneaking through an encampment of dormant wights? If past is prologue, I tend to think they would go with the latter. 

[John Suburbs]

21 hours ago, Lord Varys said:

Again, you would likely produce a better explanation than the morons who adapt the show. 

But considering that these two are not in any meaningful was changed I don't see any reason why the wights should not see them as anything but normal living people.

I for one expect Jon to be much more like Melisandre after his resurrection, a person whose inner 'Targaryen fire' has been kindled by Melisandre's likely much more potent 'kiss of fire' should burn much brighter and hotter than the magic fueling Beric and later Catelyn - although I still doubt Mel actually died and was resurrected. I think ADwD implies that imbued/filled her with fire while she was still alive, possibly because they knew whose child she was and that she could survive such a treatment.

In such a state Jon would be very much anathema to anything touched by the Others, which could be part of the reason why he is going to end up to lead the movement against them (at least at the Wall and in the North).

Yeah, I can't argue with any of that. But I think it's an open question as to what exactly it is about the living that draws the wights. Is it the warmth of their bodies, their beating hearts . . . or something else? And might that something else have been removed the first time they died? And we're not even sure about the nature of the wights' minds vs. the minds of the resurrected. Is all memory of their past utterly destroyed, or are they being warged against their wills, which remain trapped inside somewhere like the place Hodor goes to when Bran takes control?

So in the end, it seems to me like there is some wiggle room here.

[Kajjo]

4 hours ago, John Suburbs said:

Is it the warmth and red blood, or something else, and might that something else have been removed

It's probably warmth and blood. Or live force in a magical sense.

Anyway resurrection of Jon gives a living Jon. No question about that. I wouldn't complicate matters here any more.

4 hours ago, John Suburbs said:

J&B were attacked because they were in company with those who are indisputably alive

Jon is on his own after the dragon party left. Only Benjen saves him. So the wights attack Jon, because he is alive.