Who is the great other?

[El Diego]

People find allusions to myth/religion/history throughout the books, and they extrapolate based on that. Problem is, you can't all be right. 

Just because GRRM borrows something from another story doesn't mean the plot hinges on that allusion. He may just be using an image or a name for the sake of using it.

[Clegane'sPup]

5 hours ago, Megorova said:

Not exactly. It's not that simple. Bloodraven is an accomplice (or rather a tool) of the Weirwood, but also his prey. In my opinion, the Weirwood is a parasite with a symbiotic nature, and it feeds on life, including Bloodraven's life.

I asked do you Megorova think that Bran's three eyed crow aka Bloodraven aka Brynden Rivers is Mel's Great Other? You supplied your opinion. Thank you.

I on the other hand have a different opinion.

 

[Ser Loras The Gay]

4 hours ago, El Diego said:

Just because GRRM borrows something from another story doesn't mean the plot hinges on that allusion. He may just be using an image or a name for the sake of using it.

I agree that everything should be follow as writen in those allusions. But some of those elements are clearly on our story. Azor Ahai could just as likely be a interpretation of Jesus or some other reborned hero from a number of religions. Planetos is just like Earth, but a little different so they have their myths just like us do.

[Clegane'sPup]

1 hour ago, Ser Loras The Gay said:

I agree that everything should be follow as writen in those allusions.

But some of those elements are clearly on our story.

Azor Ahai could just as likely be a interpretation of Jesus or some other reborned hero from a number of religions.

Planetos is just like Earth, but a little different so they have their myths just like us do.

People believe what they believe.

Who do you think Mel's great other is?

 

[Ser Loras The Gay]

2 hours ago, Clegane'sPup said:

People believe what they believe.

Who do you think Mel's great other is?

I'd say the Weirwood, the being that started it. Something had to start it at some point, either with magic or technology.

[Son of Man]

Somebody we haven't met and never will.  He's like Rhllor.  The fire god is worshiped by the believers although the People of Fire Valyrians oddly never did.  The First Men didn't worship the Great Other.  The Valyrians had their own gods and the First Men have the old gods.  Rhllor and the Great Other were created by their followers.  The Seven were dreamed up by the Andals.  This is a long way of saying it doesn't exist.

[Clegane'sPup]

19 hours ago, Ser Loras The Gay said:

I'd say the Weirwood, the being that started it. Something had to start it at some point, either with magic or technology.

You may be correct. Give me a bit of time and I will search out Maester Luwin's history lesson. 

[Clegane'sPup]

21 hours ago, Ser Loras The Gay said:

I'd say the Weirwood, the being that started it.

What say, martin drew inspiration for his weirwood trees from knowledge of giant sequoia's and indigenous americans who lived in the USA before the europeans arrived? Just throwing that out there.

Anyway, Maester Luwin's history lesson is in book one Game of Thrones, Bran VII or paperback chapter 66.

A good chapter, in my opinion. Way to much information to copy and paste.
 

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A Game of Thrones - Bran VII    Maester Luwin tugged at his chain collar where it chafed against his neck. "They were people of the Dawn Age, the very first, before kings and kingdoms," he said. "In those days, there were no castles or holdfasts, no cities, not so much as a market town to be found between here and the sea of Dorne. There were no men at all. Only the children of the forest dwelt in the lands we now call the Seven Kingdoms.

"They were a people dark and beautiful, small of stature, no taller than children even when grown to manhood. They lived in the depths of the wood, in caves and crannogs and secret tree towns. Slight as they were, the children were quick and graceful. Male and female hunted together, with weirwood bows and flying snares. Their gods were the gods of the forest, stream, and stone, the old gods whose names are secret. Their wise men were called greenseers, and carved strange faces in the weirwoods to keep watch on the woods. How long the children reigned here or where they came from, no man can know.

 

When I arrive at book five. Again martin is using double names to describe the same thing.  Now the Children of the Forest are singers. Just as the Others are white walkers. This time Jojen gives Bran a mini history lesson.

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A Dance with Dragons - Bran III    "A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies," said Jojen. "The man who never reads lives only one. The singers of the forest had no books. No ink, no parchment, no written language. Instead they had the trees, and the weirwoods above all. When they died, they went into the wood, into leaf and limb and root, and the trees remembered. All their songs and spells, their histories and prayers, everything they knew about this world. Maesters will tell you that the weirwoods are sacred to the old gods. The singers believe they are the old gods. When singers die they become part of that godhood."

I have to contemplate some things.

Jojen had a green dream.
Poppa Reed sent his children to WF.
The Reed children are hell bent on getting Bran to his three eyed crow.
The northmen worship the old gods via the heart tree which is a weirwood.

If the weirwood is Mel's Great Other what does that make the crannogmen and the Reeds?

 

[The Mother of The Others]

She pickin a fight with earth magic cuz there's more Powers in play than she has gods to ascribe those powers to.  So she gots to shove 7 gods into a 2 god sack.   To make em fit in thar, you needs burn em and combine their ashes.  call all of them the devil.   This treatment she aims at the greenseers, but they may yet smack her out of such confusion by being far better behaved than most devils when they save castle black's ass.

[Ser Loras The Gay]

12 hours ago, Clegane'sPup said:

If the weirwood is Mel's Great Other what does that make the crannogmen and the Reeds?

for her would be the devil's worshipers. Pretty neat, and if we consider that it was howland that killed arthur dayne in a cheap move to save Ned the Reeds also killed the man who beared the "dawn".

[Free Northman Reborn]

Dead souls go to some kind of very cold place. We see that the end of Varamyr’s scene and again in Jon’s last scene. So the cold is associated with Death.

We also know that the weirwoods actually housed the souls of dead greenseers. And they were chopped down by the First Men in their thousands. What happened to the souls of these dead greenseers? When evicted from their trees, they went to this cold place.

Bran says to Leaf men would have been wroth if that was done to them. I think these greenseers were indeed wroth. Very wroth. And their life force gathered in this cold place and was accessed by the still living greenseers in a mighty spell to create the Others and the Long Night.

Are these dead greenseers now a kind of merged entity? A single Hive Mind of corrupted greenseer life force? I think so. And that is what constitutes the so called “Great Other”.

[The Mother of The Others]

That's nifty.  I don't like implicating the Children, whom I grant permission to remain better than humanity even in bitter defeat.  So I'll just imagine the living greenseers being overwhelmed and contaminated by the great coldness of the angry dead, transmogrified into Others by that malice that overflowed from the heart of winter and took hold in their bodies or it repatterned the ice itself.

[Fun Guy from Yuggoth]

The Great Other and R'hllor are two consciousnesses trapped inside the weirwood network, like in the end of George's Nightflyers, with Royd and his mother are both trapped inside the computer and fight for control of the ship, Royd is good and his mother is evil and it leads to hijinks.   And in Slavic mythology the god of light is Perkun and the god of darkness is Veles, and they both live inside the world tree and engage in a ritual battle eternally.  There is even a sword splitting the moon in that mythology.

Beric is depicted as a greenseer seated on a weirwood throne in a cave, but is resurrected by a R'hllorist and animated by fire.  He has red hair and a starry cape, like a Red Comet.  Red Beryl is a red gemstone, and dondar means "thunder," (barrach means "tops of branches" in gaelic, and bearaigh means "toadstool").  Moqorro is also described like the Red Comet, with a belly like a boulder and red flames on black, with red robes.  He has bone white hair, and is blacker than a raven's wing, and his eyes looked out of a red "mask of frozen flame"  Mokoro means "canoe."  Weirwoods are always described as blood and bone.  The Grey King carved the first longship out of a weirwood.  The Red Comet is a weirwood.  Mel is a fire priestess but looks like a weirwood, and is more powerful in the presence of the Wall (and the weirwoods) and has an inexplicable bond with Ghost who also looks like a weirwood.  Her red ruby is described as a third eye, and I think it is petrified weirwood sap.  A thousand fiery hands is how the weirwood leaves are described.  Bloodraven is red and white.

The duality of the R'hllorists' religion is mistaken.

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"Because they're different," he insisted. "Like night and day, or ice and fire."

"If ice can burn," said Jojen in his solemn voice, "then love and hate can mate. Mountain or marsh, it makes no matter. The land is one."

"One," his sister agreed, "but over wrinkled."

Life/death, night/day, ice/fire are all two sides of the same coin.

From the Glass Flower:

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“Death,” he told me. “Life. Death. Life.”
“Two different things,” I said. “Opposites. Enemies.”
“No,” said the cyborg. “They are the same.”

(the "melancholy exile prince R'hllor" is from a lost story of George's called Dark Gods of Kor-Yuban, and I think R'hllor comes from the gaelic word rialoir meaning "ruler" or rialaigh meaning "to rule")

[The Mother of The Others]

25 minutes ago, By Odin's Beard said:

There is even a sword splitting the moon in that mythology.

Impressive.   Magic locked the moon into the ecliptic naughty spot, giving us long night.  Until.... does lightbringer have to be a literal sword?    It seems dumb, right?  To wave around a tiny sword in ANY way and blow up a moon!   Even if you stab someone reeeeeely important, it's still a tacky way to explode a moon.   I sort of favor a metaphorical sword in this case.   Like, i don't know, maybe Azor found the way to summon a comet like the Final Fantasy VII viliain, [Jenova??]     Maybe he's the ultimate kid with a magnifying glass burning an ant, only he used the biggest crystal formation to aim a laser at the moon and used up most of the planet's heat to generate the beam, hence the unnatural Cold of the north.  Something harder than porn like that.

 

46 minutes ago, By Odin's Beard said:

Her red ruby is described as a third eye, and I think it is petrified weirwood sap.

That'd be a sweet thing to find at a garage sale in Asshai.   It would be nice if Ghost likes Mel for legit reasons, like she's warming to Jon as The Guy, so Ghost is warming to Mel because she's truly no threat anymore.  But I fear it's manipulation, like she found a way to defeat the wolf's instincts.  Hope I'm wrong.

39 minutes ago, By Odin's Beard said:

The Red Comet is a weirwood.

I wouldn't emphasize this part in your pitch to HBO until maybe the 4th interview when you've already got them eating out of the palm of your hand.

You're a gem though.   Thanks for doing your part to make this joint the ecclectic place it is.

[Fun Guy from Yuggoth]

19 minutes ago, The Mother of The Others said:

Magic locked the moon into the ecliptic naughty spot, giving us long night.  Until.... does lightbringer have to be a literal sword?      I sort of favor a metaphorical sword in this case.   Like, i don't know, maybe Azor found the way to summon a comet like the Final Fantasy VII viliain,

Yes, I think the Red Sword of Heroes is the Red Comet, it is the weirwood's secret weapon.   And he who grasps it is a greenseer who wargs a comet that knocks the Black Planet out of eclipse and ends the Long Night.  I think you've heard this before but I am working on a theory that all of Mars is covered in weirwoods, and that is where the Red Comets are coming from, they are getting launched off of Mars and out into space to colonize other planets.  Azor Ahai was a Smith that forged swords, the Red Comet is a red sword--either hot from the forge or covered in blood, the three forgings are Mars launching comets when it is in different constellations (first Aquarius, then Leo, then Virgo), Mars is sacred to the Smith in the Seven, the astronomical glyph for Mars is an arrow leaving a planet, Davos prays to the Smith when launching a ship.  The followers of the Smith wear hammers, comet strikes are hammers.  

Earth can also launch weirwoods, that was what the Hardhome event was, when the sun rose in the North, and that is why the weirwood circles are on high hills--easier to achieve escape velocity.  I think wildfire is a secretion of the weirwood that it stores underground under the hill, and it ignites it for the launch.  Wildfire is kept in jars shaped like fruit, and wildfire is secretly stored under the Sept of Baelor, which is on a hill, is built of white marble, and gods are kept inside of it--it is a metaphor for the weirwood.  There are a few weirwood circles left on Sea Dragon Point, and there might be one above Bloodraven's cave, and the grove of nine, but it is not on a high hill.  Very few groves left.  But Mirri told Dany the sun will rise in the West, there will be a launch from Westeros. 

And in another myth about Perkune:

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a myth about the kidnapped Saulė (the Sun). She was held in a tower by a powerful king and rescued by the zodiac using a giant sledgehammer.

Something was hiding the sun, and the zodiac destroyed that something with a sledgehammer, revealing the sun. 

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Perkūnas pursues an opponent in the sky on a chariot, made from stone and fire.  Sometimes the chariot is made from red iron. It is harnessed by a pair of red and white (or black and white) horses (sometimes goats).

Perkune is essentially the Red Comet.  And Thor was sometimes depicted as riding a red chariot that shot sparks across the sky. 

The word bran can mean "sword" and "fire" and brand is a "flaming sword"and the comet is called a "burning brand" in Bran has a coma dream where he plummets to the Earth, comets have comas.   Comets have a nucleus, and nucleus means "kernel" and the bran is part of the kernel of corn and the crow asks for kernels of corn when Bran is falling.  Comets have tails, and Yin Tar (tar yin = Tyrion) had a tail and he/she ended the Long Night.  Nefer is a secret underground city shrouded in fog, Neferion ended the Long Night.  Edric Shadowchaser chased the Shadow away, and Edric is a Stark name.

 

2 minutes ago, The Mother of The Others said:

That'd be a sweet thing to find at a garage sale in Asshai.  

That's nothing, I've got a hunch that the fire opal Dany found on the ground in Vaes Tolorro is the ancient Bloodstone, look up what a fire opal looks like.  Black fire opals are sometimes called dragon's breath.

[sweetsunray]

We get several allusions to time-old rivalries between "spider/ice/blue followers" and "dragon/fire/red followers". We don't know how far back in time the city Lyber was, but that's one of the older losst cities where acolytes of a spider goddess feuded with acolytes of a serpent god. Much later, you have the Sarnori and Qaathi warring. Sarnori are associated with silver and ride cole-black and blood red horses. That's the "fire and blood" color scheme. The Qaathi are the milk-white-men, often associated with "poison" (spider and female link) and the Undying being all blue and a heart above a dinner table (with Dany being the dinner). The heart pumping indigo (blue) blood all over the room is spiderblood (hemocyanin instead of hemoglobin), and anatomically the spider heart is stretched out all along the digestive canal of a spider. And both the indigo blood and shade of the evening act like "dreamspider" poison (1974 short story of George "This Tower of Ashes"). There's even a ruined prior Qaathi city in the Red Waste that the Dothraki named "City of Spiders". The blue versus red comes up, time and time again.

So, the dichotomy  between fire and ice, dragons and ice spiders, etc has been prevalent throughout man's memory on Planetos, and Asshai has much if not most of the written word on it (though the sole true Alexandrian libraries are the weirwoods and the CotF who have lived a million years are the sole ones singing the true song of earth). This dichotomy is the reason why Mel thinks only in dual terms: fire versus ice, and whomever she does not recognize as fire-side, she regards to be a follower of the Great Other (which would be the spider goddess of Lyber). This is where she makes a huge mistake, and almost everybody else that fought from this duality viewpoint. The fire side has been as destructive as the Others. And peace and healing to bind both and mute their power is the solution: this is represented by the "green" ones.

So, the answer to the OP's question is complex.

1. There are no true gods, but there are magical beings that are called "gods" by humans.
2. Mel's Rh'lorr and Great Other are based on the Serpent God and Spider Goddess feud raging for ten thousand years at least.
3. The Serpent God is a magical fire creature (wyverns and dragons), while the Spider Goddess is the Corpse Queen (or ancestor) - a white walking widow. Fire versus Ice
4. Dragons burn trees and Others freeze them, so Rh'lorr is no better than the Great Other
5. Trees and water bind both and are the third way out

But the Ice Queen of the Others = Great Other

[The Mother of The Others]

15 hours ago, By Odin's Beard said:

I think wildfire is a secretion of the weirwood that it stores underground under the hill, and it ignites it for the launch

That follows Captain Kirk into a place no one has gone before.   (Couldn't find the smilee that ignites and kabooms).

Earth magic looks like a User of the other elements here as tools to make this NASA dream happen.    Ice preserves (the trees are timeless and can thus expect to survive interstellar distances and the deep absolute zero temps, thanks to ice magic animating them like it does for the Others- - who could potentially even serve as the weir's crew!  )   And from fire the weirship gets its propulsion method when the time comes for rapid change instead of only preserving what is.

So like Jon's parents the Weir are also gathering fire and ice together for grand momentous purpose that breaks the status quo of the Wall era.

Dragons busted out of the moon, if we're literalists.   Either after completing their gestation period inside the moon as baby wyrms, meaning the explosion of the moon was part of a natural process akin to chicks emerging from a cracked open egg, maybe with the help of Ice and Fire and Shadow magic teamwork (uber magics of each required).    Or the dragons were a full population including adults who had long ago overrun the moon, roasted all the other lifeforms to ash and then burned away the atmosphere, at which point they burrowed under the surface for warmth and continued to multiply until they infested the moon to the point of critical mass, and the universe provided a planetoid hatching event on cue.  Fuck:  Maybe that's why they arrested the moon's movement, locking it up during the long night like a womb goes into labor, allowing the forces of physics to act upon the moon until it broke apart,  hatching the dragons neatly onto planetos.  Dragons can survive reentry heat with their unnaturally fire resistant hides.    ...I can also picture the dragons arising into existence only at the moment when sovereign Fire and Shadow magics collided:  The moon blew, and a Creation of magical life was a side effect of magics interboinking, as the heart of winter may have birthed Others as an emergent phenomenon.

 I can also see planetos reaching a critical mass situation like the moon did as Weir roots (of light and dark species) continue to extend into everything and densify into ever greater malignancy,  and interlink and ...fight?.... and exert psi influence over the ids of humans more and more until there's no respite from the haze of insanity the weir inspires in us, and we get worse symptoms than this cyclical warring, until we're actually driven to extinction.  And all other higher lifeforms follow.  And then the trees look around at the blasted worn out world and their roots tap the morse code to each other saying, "Time to go!   This planet is tapped out.  We're too densely populated with our root growth.  It's no fun packed together like sardines underground, just us.  Like a lion moves away to claim new roomier territory, it's time for us weir to  'Fire up the flying hillock, Jim,' and beat it for Uranus."   What if all the roots acted in unison to break the planet apart by churning it like an egg beater.   Then you wouldn't need as much escape velocity.

Now....what was this topic about?  The great other?   Well damn.  By some great stroke of luck, that Planetary Endgame vision of the weir totally qualifies them as a candidate for Great Other.