John Suburbs Posted May 12, 2020 Share Posted May 12, 2020 17 hours ago, corbon said: Everything in the books is data. Data points must be assessed as to their origins, veracity, and likely accuracy. They may lead us in a wrong direction, either because they themselves are false, or because their presentation is misleading. My point is that all the data points lead in the same direction. That the Others control the wights somehow. No data points suggest that the wights are not controlled by the Others.. In old Nan's stories, the Others have dead servants, they ride dead horses and lead hosts of the slain. Old Nan's stories tell us the undead are controlled by the Others. These stories are humanity's oral lore passed down. Much in them has been confirmed (ice spiders have not!), we should not discredit the rest without evidence (even the ice spiders, which may or may not appear). For example, the Others do indeed ride dead horses. And this Other was pursuing the Nights Watch from the battle against the Wights at tFotFM. Which supports Old Nan's oral history that the Others lead armies of the dead (wights). That no survivor from tFotFM saw Others and Wights together, does not prove that they were not there together, only that none of the survivors saw them together initially. But that both Others and undead conducted the pursuit is certainly supporting evidence that the Others and the Undead work together at the very least. The belief of the Nights Watch is that the wights belong to the Others. That may not be correct. This is a data point. Like the other data points we have to assess its veracity. We have to estimate its origin. What I assess here is that the Nights Watch is an ancient order with a huge institutional knowledge on this very subject, nearly all of which has been lost to the mists of time. Its also an institution that has, as its primary purposes and as part of its lore, defending the world of Man against the Others and their wights. That means that the NWs current 'wisdom' may be in error, but may also have deep foundations of truth. We don't know all that the NW knows or all that Jon or any other NW leader or researcher knows or has discussed. It is unwise to dismiss NW beliefs or rituals just because we do not know their foundations. The Nights Watch believes that the undead are controlled by the Others. Craster believes the Others and the wights work together. He 'sacrifices' to the cold gods and believes that thus the wights will leave him alone. The Cold Gods are the Others, the ones who come with the white cold, with mists and super-cooled air. And sacrificing to them prevents attacks from the undead, according to Craster. So Craster believes the undead are controlled by the Others. Melisandre believes the wights are animated by Necromancy, therefore controlled by something else. She (with Stannis) names the Others as the something more, the only enemy that matters. If the Others are the only enemy that matters, and the wights are controlled by something else, then that something else is by definition, the Others, according to her. Melisandre believes the Others are the masters of the wights. The dead have Masters, and the Masters come with teh white mists - thats the Others, who are also described with shadow references and super-cold air connections. Tormunds been fighting this war against this enemy longer tyhan anyone we know. He has more and more current information than anyone. He believes the Others are the masters of the wights. So we have: - Old Nan's stories, humanities collected lore in the form of oral histories which have already been proven true in some other, seemingly crazy, respects - the Nights Watch - Melisandre and her R'hlorrists - Craster - Tormund all telling us the same thing, essentially. And I think all of these (perhaps not Old Nan so much in this particular respect) have experiences, knowledge or access to knowledge that we do not have access to. their judgement or beliefs may be incorrct, but we shoudl not dismiss them without reason. Especially not when they all essentially agree! Plus we have the Other riding a dead horse and continuing the pursuit from tFotFM. Against that you have.... "absence of evidence" (which is a dubious claim at best) but no actual evidence. It seems that way. You are arguing pretty strongly and saying all the evidence we have is wrong - not some of it, all of it, because it all points in one direction. Thats an outright lie on multiple levels. Its not proven beyond a shadow of a doubt. It has a very strong case though with multiple evidence links from multiple directions in multiple time strands. If you wish to claim expertise on the height of nonsense, thats up to you. That the Others control the wights is a very strong case, given what can and cannot be known so far by us, and there is no evidence or suggestion anywhere in the text that the wights are not controlled by the Others. Which may change, with new data. I doubt it will, but new data will be assessed when it arrives. Sorry, but none of this is data. This is ancient tells from pre-history, individual's beliefs, and plain-old misinterpretations of fact. Where does Craster say that sacrificing to the Others protects him from the wights? He says, "If wights come walking, I'll know how to send them back to their graves." He will deal with the wights himself, not his "gods." Melisandre does not name the Others as the necromancers controlling the wights, she merely says they are "something more." Old Nan's stories about the more recent past have been proven false. So sorry, Corbon, but you are making the same mistake that countless readers have made over the years: forming a conclusion first and then massaging the facts to fit that conclusion, all while ignoring anything that disputes it. The fact is, there is no indication that the Others are controlling the wights, nor have we ever seen an Other and a wight at the same place at the same time -- other than the very odd encounter with the horse, which I've already explained. So at best, we have very circumstantial evidence. You know what else was circumstantial? The evidence pointing to Cersei as the killer of Jon Arryn. There, we had Pycelle telling us "she wanted him dead" because "he knew about . . . about . . ." But lo and behold, it turned out to be false. And I never said that it is beyond doubt that the Others are not controlling the wights. I merely said that we have no solid proof of this yet. And on that point, I think you and I agree. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
John Suburbs Posted May 12, 2020 Share Posted May 12, 2020 18 hours ago, FictionIsntReal said: Balon is attacking the North because it's undefended while Robb is fighting the Lannisters, and he stupidly thinks he can ally with the Lannisters after the fact. The book series is most of the way through, and we've only got fleeting glimpses of the undead, but everyone thinks the Others are in league with the wights. Given all the thinks GRRM needs to accomplish by the end, why add some additional "other power that has yet to be revealed"? He could also reveal that the whole series has been the dream of a magic beetle, but I see no reason to speculate about that. Why is there no code for wights as distinct from Others? Because in the experience of the Watch, they go together. Haven't you ever seen a zombie film? Zombies are vulnerable to things modern civilization has in abundance, like bullets to the head, but they still manage to cause an apocalypse. Chekov's gun is a principle of parsimony. Don't include the gun if it's not going to go off. He didn't even need to say not to have the gun on the wall if some gun nobody was aware of in the prior acts is going to go off instead. To kill Will. That is admittedly something I don't have a Watsonian explanation for. How would they be morally ambiguous? They're both still killing the Night's Watch and presumably wildlings. Jon Snow isn't actually an orphan, since he was raised by Ned (the only parent he's ever known) in Winterfell, but I am sure he's using the hidden-heir cliche. Multiple characters have said as much. They've both only been seen north of the Wall, coinciding in the very first chapter. The only other time an Other has been seen is when Sam was fleeing the attack by wights at the Fist. GRRM has said he's more interested in the human heart in conflict with itself than fantasy bad guys, and indeed little of the text is devoted to the Others. However, even his human villains can be quite black-and-white. Additionally, he said that he dressed the Night's Watch in black precisely to avoid the usual black-hat vs white-hat thing, but the Watch are still the good guys while the Others are the bad guys. The Others are also graceful and strange rather than hideously ugly. Sansa initially found Joffrey handsome and charming, and reasoned that Loras rather than Ilyn Payne should be sent after Gregor due to their respective appearances. Cersei and Jaime are both good looking people who are secretly rotten, while the less superficially pleasing Yoren and Sandor actually protect the Stark girls. Jaime starts becoming morally grey when he's paired with Brienne, the completely pure-hearted but ugly woman (and he himself is mained) and later Ilyn Payne. You might think that's a merely superficial subversion, but GRRM seems to really like it. Exactly. Men are not all one unified species, so there is no reason to think the Others are. Yes, we are five books deep, and we have yet to see any actual evidence that the Others are raising and controlling the wights, just pre-historic tales that have fueled the widespread belief that this is so. You know what we did have actual, hard evidence in support of? That Cersei killed Jon Arryn. So it is well-within the realm of possibility that the Others are not the black-evil opponents of all life hell-bent on an Armageddon with mankind, since Martin has made it perfectly clear that this is not the kind of fantasy he wants to write. Yes, they arrive together, just like birds and bees do every spring. Are the birds creating and controlling the bees? Yes, the zombies are vulnerable to fire. In what way does that support they idea they are being raised and controlled by the Others? So the Others just hid behind a bush all night long so that when Will came down they could have Waymar kill him instead of doing it themselves? Why didn't they just use the dead wildlings to kill all of them? Sorry, FIR, but the fact remains: Waymar rose hours after the Others left the scene. There is no sign that they even knew Will was up in the tree, and they certainly didn't know Gared was just over the ridge. Morally ambiguous means that they are neither all-good nor all-evil, that there may be reasons for the good and bad things they do. The Nights Watch kills wildlings too. Are they as immorally, unambiguously evil as the Others? Northmen and Lannisters killed each other on the Green Fork. Does that mean the north was good and the Lanns were evil? Northmen then sacked and burned their way to Duskendale. Do you think those people thought they were being killed by good men or evil ones? And then, Roose Bolton's northmen become allies with the evil Lannisters, proving that foes who kill each other in one battle can become friends in the next. So there is no reason to think that just because some Others killed a few watchmen that other Others cannot later become allies against a common enemy. Again, exactly my point: we have no actual evidence that they are raising and controlling the wights. We have a lot of characters who believe this because those are the stories that have drifted down over the ages. There is absolutely nothing that confirms their veracity, particularly since most of the other tales are complete balderdash, and there is nothing in the text that we can point to as actual proof of this. So the logical thing to do is not simply assume that it's true because that is what is most convenient, but to remain skeptical until some actual evidence does emerge to either confirm or deny it. Sandor Clegane is ugly and a brutish murderer. Sansa is pretty, and she is good. Vargo Hoat was a slobbering beast. Doran Martell is an oozing mess. Rhaegar was handsome, so was the Mad King at first. Catelyn was still attractive, Lysa was not. Sometimes people's characters match their appearance; sometimes they don't. Martin likes to mix it up. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
corbon Posted May 12, 2020 Share Posted May 12, 2020 1 hour ago, John Suburbs said: Sorry, but none of this is data. This is ancient tells from pre-history, individual's beliefs, and plain-old misinterpretations of fact. Still data. Not as good data as our 'live' viewing, but still data. Those who refuse to learn from history are doomed to repeat it. This is the history we have, and we have it from GRRM as a reason. It may be misinformation, but when it al points in the same direction and nothing points in the other direction, well, your choice... 1 hour ago, John Suburbs said: Where does Craster say that sacrificing to the Others protects him from the wights? He says, "If wights come walking, I'll know how to send them back to their graves." He will deal with the wights himself, not his "gods." I gave you the quote, which showed that he believed Sacrificing to the Others kept him protected from the wights. I think he's mistaken in many of his beliefs actually, or at least the ones he professes. But it shows a connection and implies control. 1 hour ago, John Suburbs said: Melisandre does not name the Others as the necromancers controlling the wights, she merely says they are "something more." She says (through Stannis, her parrot on this) they are the only enemy. Which means the wights are not the enemy - which can only be because because they are controlled by the enemy 1 hour ago, John Suburbs said: Old Nan's stories about the more recent past have been proven false. They have? I don't recall that, could you remind me please? 1 hour ago, John Suburbs said: So sorry, Corbon, but you are making the same mistake that countless readers have made over the years: forming a conclusion first and then massaging the facts to fit that conclusion, all while ignoring anything that disputes it. And what is it exactly disputes that conclusion? You haven't provided anything yet. Its always possible that I've missed or forgotten something. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
FictionIsntReal Posted May 13, 2020 Share Posted May 13, 2020 6 hours ago, John Suburbs said: The fact is, there is no indication that the Others are controlling the wights, nor have we ever seen an Other and a wight at the same place at the same time -- other than the very odd encounter with the horse, which I've already explained. I don't recall you explaining the horse. Quote You know what else was circumstantial? The evidence pointing to Cersei as the killer of Jon Arryn. There, we had Pycelle telling us "she wanted him dead" because "he knew about . . . about . . ." But lo and behold, it turned out to be false. No, Cersei really did want Jon Arryn dead and Pycelle helped to ensure that happened by stopping the purging. It was just someone else who poisoned him in the first place. 5 hours ago, John Suburbs said: Exactly. Men are not all one unified species, so there is no reason to think the Others are. Balon did try to ally with Tywin, which is sensible because they were both fighting Robb. He was just dumb enough to request the alliance after he'd already become fully committed (and he's attempting to have an independent Iron Islands which revives the Old Way of raiding, unnacceptable to any central government of Westeros). And since GRRM no longer has time to get to Asshai, despite indicating Dany would go there earlier, I can only laugh at the prospect of visiting other kingdoms of Others who act as rivals to the unnamed ones attacking the Night's Watch. Quote Yes, we are five books deep, and we have yet to see any actual evidence that the Others are raising and controlling the wights, just pre-historic tales that have fueled the widespread belief that this is so. In the very first chapter the Others killed Waymar and he rose up as a wight. Is that not evidence? Enormous numbers of people have died south of the Wall, but the only ones there who've gotten resurrected were Beric Dondarrion (via Thoros, and turning out very different from wights north of the Wall) and Catelyn Stark (by Beric). Quote You know what we did have actual, hard evidence in support of? That Cersei killed Jon Arryn. Earlier you said it was "circumstantial", now you say it's "hard evidence". And for Jon Arryn we got the mystery of Sweetrobin's fostering in the very first book. We also got Lysa Arryn switching from blaming Cersei and Jaime to Tyrion when Catelyn brought him to the Eyrie, as well as Littlefinger claiming the dagger was Tyrion's when we know from Tyrion that's false. We don't have any other suspects for raising the wights. Quote So it is well-within the realm of possibility that the Others are not the black-evil opponents of all life hell-bent on an Armageddon with mankind, since Martin has made it perfectly clear that this is not the kind of fantasy he wants to write. GRRM has spoken about other species which aren't immoral by their own lights but completely antagonist from the POV of their prey. He's written such a species, although there POV characters in Fevre Dream who could debate the morality of what they were doing. Not only are there no POV chapters from the Others, no POV can even understand their language. Steven Attewell has explained how to reconcile GRRM's quote about fantasy villains with the Others (and a number of human villains in Westeros). Since people were discussing a hypothetical "pact" with the Others, that's also discussed at the link. Quote Yes, they arrive together, just like birds and bees do every spring. Are the birds creating and controlling the bees? Birds can be found in places inhospitable to bees, but Others and wights seem more closely connected. The Wall has magical protections and the wight's hand rotted south of it. From what we know the Wall was built to protect humanity from the Others. Wights also don't have a "lifecycle" like birds or bees. Quote Yes, the zombies are vulnerable to fire. In what way does that support they idea they are being raised and controlled by the Others? If you broke up your quotes to respond piece by piece, you might be able to remember the RELEVANCE of zombie vulnerability to fire or headshots. It was about whether they pose an apocalyptic threat. Quote So the Others just hid behind a bush all night long so that when Will came down they could have Waymar kill him instead of doing it themselves? Perhaps every human killed by an Other automatically becomes a wight, and Waymar just continued to lay in the snow because he had no reason to do anything until Will came down. I really don't know, but the idea that some other power (which still hasn't been so much as hinted at even five books in) was hiding behind the bushes resurrecting wights independently but coincidental with the Others strikes me as FAR less plausible. Quote Morally ambiguous means that they are neither all-good nor all-evil, that there may be reasons for the good and bad things they do. The Nights Watch kills wildlings too. Are they as immorally, unambiguously evil as the Others? Nights Watchmen and wildlings can voluntarily switch sides, they can talk and negotiate. Between the two of them the NW are closer to being good guys, even if they have a lot of scumbags in their ranks, because GRRM ultimately favors order over anarchy. Quote Northmen and Lannisters killed each other on the Green Fork. Does that mean the north was good and the Lanns were evil? Quite clearly. Cersei and Joffrey are so bad even other Lannisters realize this, while Tywin is a tyrant who attacked Riverland peasants under a false flag (and had earlier entered KL under false pretenses to sack it and murder some royal children). Quote And then, Roose Bolton's northmen become allies with the evil Lannisters, proving that foes who kill each other in one battle can become friends in the next. Roose Bolton had been sabotaging Robb's efforts. There's nothing similar going on with wights vs Others. We knew there had long been bad blood between Boltons and Starks, that Roose's bastard was bad news and that Eddard had never trusted the Leech Lord. We haven't had any such indication of a cleavage between the Others and wights. Quote So there is no reason to think that just because some Others killed a few watchmen that other Others cannot later become allies against a common enemy. How are they going to do that if they can't even speak the same language, although they can apparently laugh while killing an NW? And what common enemy does GRRM have time to introduce? Quote Again, exactly my point: we have no actual evidence that they are raising and controlling the wights. We have a lot of characters who believe this because those are the stories that have drifted down over the ages. There is absolutely nothing that confirms their veracity We've seen the Others and wights, so we know they're real and back. We even saw an Other on an undead horse. Quote Sandor Clegane is ugly and a brutish murderer. Sansa is pretty, and she is good. Vargo Hoat was a slobbering beast. Doran Martell is an oozing mess. Rhaegar was handsome, so was the Mad King at first. Catelyn was still attractive, Lysa was not. Sometimes people's characters match their appearance; sometimes they don't. Martin likes to mix it up. Sansa wasn't that good in the first book, when she was equating beauty with goodness. Sandor served to teach Sansa a lesson by showing her goodness underneath his ugly surface. And yes, sometimes GRRM has ugly black-and-white villains, as pointed out by Attewell in that link. That's hardly evidence for his aversion to fantasy traditionalism. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
corbon Posted May 13, 2020 Share Posted May 13, 2020 1 hour ago, FictionIsntReal said: I don't recall you explaining the horse. You, like me, are not smart enough to understand explanations that don't include any of the relevant words, like horse for example. To be fair, its easy enough to have written an explanation and edited it out before posting, then forgotten what you have and haven't actually posted. I've done that myself. 1 hour ago, FictionIsntReal said: We've seen the Others and wights, so we know they're real and back. We even saw an Other on an undead horse. You have to understand that an Other riding a dead horse is in no way evidence that Others may raise and control dead humans. That would be the height of nonsense! Its also true, for some values of the word true, that an Other riding a dead horse, and literally dissolving into a puddle, then white mist, after a simple stab wound from a dagger, in no way indicates any actual magical-ness. Yes, thats my straight face working very hard. Straight I tell you! No giggles here! no gig... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
John Suburbs Posted May 13, 2020 Share Posted May 13, 2020 18 hours ago, corbon said: Still data. Not as good data as our 'live' viewing, but still data. Those who refuse to learn from history are doomed to repeat it. This is the history we have, and we have it from GRRM as a reason. It may be misinformation, but when it al points in the same direction and nothing points in the other direction, well, your choice... I gave you the quote, which showed that he believed Sacrificing to the Others kept him protected from the wights. I think he's mistaken in many of his beliefs actually, or at least the ones he professes. But it shows a connection and implies control. She says (through Stannis, her parrot on this) they are the only enemy. Which means the wights are not the enemy - which can only be because because they are controlled by the enemy They have? I don't recall that, could you remind me please? And what is it exactly disputes that conclusion? You haven't provided anything yet. Its always possible that I've missed or forgotten something. It's junk data at best. And none of this is history. It is ancient tales told and retold over thousands of generations before there was a written language. Again, all the "data" pointed to Cersei killing Jon Arryn. How did that work out? No, he does not say sacrificing to the Others protects him from the wights. As I showed you, he intends to protect himself from the wights. Um, the fact remains that Mel never says this. And even if she did, Mel gets pretty much everything wrong. Azor Ahai, the girl on the pale horse, Hardhome . . . Quote Torrhen's Square was under attack by some monstrous war chief named Dagmer Cleftjaw. Old Nan said he couldn't be killed, that once a foe had cut his head in two with an axe, but Dagmer was so fierce he had just pushed the two halves back together and held them until they healed up. So much for Old Nan's accuracy, and this is for someone who is still alive, not thousands of years dead. I've never said this idea is true or that the prevailing impression has been disputed. I merely point out that we have no real evidence for it yet. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
John Suburbs Posted May 13, 2020 Share Posted May 13, 2020 14 hours ago, FictionIsntReal said: I don't recall you explaining the horse. No, Cersei really did want Jon Arryn dead and Pycelle helped to ensure that happened by stopping the purging. It was just someone else who poisoned him in the first place. Balon did try to ally with Tywin, which is sensible because they were both fighting Robb. He was just dumb enough to request the alliance after he'd already become fully committed (and he's attempting to have an independent Iron Islands which revives the Old Way of raiding, unnacceptable to any central government of Westeros). And since GRRM no longer has time to get to Asshai, despite indicating Dany would go there earlier, I can only laugh at the prospect of visiting other kingdoms of Others who act as rivals to the unnamed ones attacking the Night's Watch. In the very first chapter the Others killed Waymar and he rose up as a wight. Is that not evidence? Enormous numbers of people have died south of the Wall, but the only ones there who've gotten resurrected were Beric Dondarrion (via Thoros, and turning out very different from wights north of the Wall) and Catelyn Stark (by Beric). Earlier you said it was "circumstantial", now you say it's "hard evidence". And for Jon Arryn we got the mystery of Sweetrobin's fostering in the very first book. We also got Lysa Arryn switching from blaming Cersei and Jaime to Tyrion when Catelyn brought him to the Eyrie, as well as Littlefinger claiming the dagger was Tyrion's when we know from Tyrion that's false. We don't have any other suspects for raising the wights. GRRM has spoken about other species which aren't immoral by their own lights but completely antagonist from the POV of their prey. He's written such a species, although there POV characters in Fevre Dream who could debate the morality of what they were doing. Not only are there no POV chapters from the Others, no POV can even understand their language. Steven Attewell has explained how to reconcile GRRM's quote about fantasy villains with the Others (and a number of human villains in Westeros). Since people were discussing a hypothetical "pact" with the Others, that's also discussed at the link. Birds can be found in places inhospitable to bees, but Others and wights seem more closely connected. The Wall has magical protections and the wight's hand rotted south of it. From what we know the Wall was built to protect humanity from the Others. Wights also don't have a "lifecycle" like birds or bees. If you broke up your quotes to respond piece by piece, you might be able to remember the RELEVANCE of zombie vulnerability to fire or headshots. It was about whether they pose an apocalyptic threat. Perhaps every human killed by an Other automatically becomes a wight, and Waymar just continued to lay in the snow because he had no reason to do anything until Will came down. I really don't know, but the idea that some other power (which still hasn't been so much as hinted at even five books in) was hiding behind the bushes resurrecting wights independently but coincidental with the Others strikes me as FAR less plausible. Nights Watchmen and wildlings can voluntarily switch sides, they can talk and negotiate. Between the two of them the NW are closer to being good guys, even if they have a lot of scumbags in their ranks, because GRRM ultimately favors order over anarchy. Quite clearly. Cersei and Joffrey are so bad even other Lannisters realize this, while Tywin is a tyrant who attacked Riverland peasants under a false flag (and had earlier entered KL under false pretenses to sack it and murder some royal children). Roose Bolton had been sabotaging Robb's efforts. There's nothing similar going on with wights vs Others. We knew there had long been bad blood between Boltons and Starks, that Roose's bastard was bad news and that Eddard had never trusted the Leech Lord. We haven't had any such indication of a cleavage between the Others and wights. How are they going to do that if they can't even speak the same language, although they can apparently laugh while killing an NW? And what common enemy does GRRM have time to introduce? We've seen the Others and wights, so we know they're real and back. We even saw an Other on an undead horse. Sansa wasn't that good in the first book, when she was equating beauty with goodness. Sandor served to teach Sansa a lesson by showing her goodness underneath his ugly surface. And yes, sometimes GRRM has ugly black-and-white villains, as pointed out by Attewell in that link. That's hardly evidence for his aversion to fantasy traditionalism. The Other gets off the horse, and the horse is never heard from again. Apparently, it just meandered off just like any other horse: no blue eyes, no compulsion to slay the living, no sign that it is being "controlled" in any way. It did whatever it is that dead horses do in their spare time. There is no reason to think that a living man could not have mounted it and ridden away just as easily. Yes, the text pointed directly at Cersei as the poisoner of Jon Arryn, over and over again, without ever stating it outright. The text also points at the Others raising and controlling the wights over and over again without ever stating it or showing it outright. This is the way Martin rolls. Whatever Balon did or did not do or why is irrelevant. The fact is, humans are not one like-minded species, so there is no reason to think the Others are. There could very well be factions that are warring against one another, some of which might want to align with humans to defeat enemies in their own species, just like the Andals and the First Men did, just like the Sarnori did, just like countless other people have. Where do you get the idea that the Others originate from Asshai? Talk about a theory with no evidence. Read the prologue again. The Others kill Waymar and leave. Will stays up in the tree for hours, climbs down, and Waymar rises. The Others are long-gone at this point. You forgot Gregor Clegane/Robert Stone. But again, the wights and the Others have reappeared north of the Wall. Birds and bees appear every spring. Does this mean the birds are raising and controlling the bees? The Others and wights may be related, but it is still a huge leap in logic to conclude beyond a shadow of a doubt that the one is responsible for the other. Hard evidence can still be circumstantial. Holmes walks in to find the butler holding the knife in the lord's back. Hard evidence, but circumstantial if the butler was actually removing the knife to try and save has master's life. "She wanted him dead" because "he knew about . . . about . . ." Hard evidence, but circumstantial because she did not order the murder. Yes clues to the truth about the Arryn murder were peppered throughout the text. And if it turns out the Others are not controlling the wights, the clues were all there as I've shown, right from the prologue. So creatures that are not immoral in their own minds but immoral in the mind's of others. Sounds like the definition of morally ambiguous, which fits literally every character in the book. I think you meant to say, "No POV chapters from Others yet" and "no POV can understand their language yet." Martin has said that we will be learning a lot about the Others in the last two books, so stay tuned. Steven Attewell is not George Martin. He has his theories just like anyone else, but he does not know anything. OK, bees and butterflies appear in the spring. Is one creating and controlling the other? Again, Others "seem" connected to the wights. "From what we know" the Wall was built to protect humans. But what if, as Martin does over and over again, things are not as they seem and what we know is false? Did you ever wonder why a huge wall of ice would be built to stop creatures that are literally made of ice and can glide over snow, which is basically ice, as easily as we walk on land? It's just as likely that the Wall was built by the ice creatures, who build things from ice, to prevent humans from moving north, that the Others have been preying on humans in their territory for thousands of years, and the only thing that has changed in the recent past is the sudden appearance of wights Yes, do the Others and the wights actually pose an apocalyptic threat to humans that most readers think? The answer is still unknown, but we do know that they are vulnerable to two things that humans have in abundance: dragonglass and fire. So my impression at this point as that they are not as big of a threat as most seem to believe. Otherwise, Martin would not have made them so easily destroyable. You don't even need a critical hit to take down an Other. Any puncture with a DG arrowhead will do it. Perhaps humans killed by Others automatically become wights, but perhaps not. It's rather illogical to form an ironclad conclusion based on "perhaps." Othor and Jafer didn't rise when living humans approached them. The wights at the fist were already massed long before they came close to any humans. Yes there has been a hint to another power: Quote And he looked past the Wall, past endless forests cloaked in snow, past the frozen shore and the great blue-white rivers of ice and the dead plains where nothing grew or lived. North and north and north he looked, to the curtain of light at the end of the world, and then beyond that curtain. He looked deep into the heart of winter, and then he cried out, afraid, and the heat of his tears burned his cheeks. If the Others are the ultimate enemy as you say, and they are already in the Haunted Forest, then why does Bran only become afraid when he looks north and north and north to the heart of winter? Why does the 3EC tell him that this is the reason he must live and the Winter is Coming and not the Other wight-masters who are only a few days ride north of the Wall? The assumption is that this is the Great Other, but that is only an assumption, like everything else that fuels the belief that the Others control the wights. There is still plenty of wiggle-room in the text to allow a completely different conclusion. Others can talk and negotiate just as easily as the NW and the wildlings. And I'm sorry, but the idea that GRRM has position the NW as the good guys and the wildlings as bad is sheer nonsense. I'll see if I can find it, but I believe it was Ygritte that pointed out that there are good people and bad people on both sides. And in what way does GRRM prefer order over anarchy? The whole series has been pretty much nothing by war and anarchy. Where are you getting this from? OK, so three bad Lannisters, plus three who are a little good and a little bad, two who are pretty much good but devoted to the evil Cersei, one who appears to be good but is devoted to the evil Tywin, and several others who have had so little page-time that we don't know what they're about. So in your mind, this means every single person who fights for the Lannisters or grows their food or pays taxes to them are pure, simple-minded evil while all northmen are shining paragons of virtue? Tywin Lannister will likely get a statue in Lannisport. Do people generally build statues for evil tyrants? Bolton's men are still northmen who were killing Lannisters. Now they are northmen who are killing other northmen for the Lannisters. This is how it happens. To say that this cannot happen with the Others simply because it is not the way it seems right now is just plain silly. Who knows they can't speak the same language? They probably speak the old tongue, and there are giants and wildings (Thenns) at Castle Black who speak it as well. The common enemy that Bran saw in his coma dream. We still have no idea what it was, and there are still maybe 2,000+ pages left in the series to introduce it. We've never seen Others and wights together, and I've already explained the horse. It's intriguing but hardly conclusive. Your point, as I understood it, was that Martin makes his good characters appear ugly and bad while his bad characters appear attractive and good. This is nonsense, as I've showed you. Many "good" characters are quite attractive, while many "bad" characters are ugly. Pointing out that even good characters do bad things and vice versa merely proves my point: Martin doesn't create pure-good and pure-evil characters, not even if they are blue ice creatures. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ATaleofSalt&Onions Posted May 13, 2020 Share Posted May 13, 2020 This theory seems like little more than wild speculation based on a massive oversimplification of Martin's comments about good and evil. And I don't even see how it avoids that objection. If the Others aren't raising the wights, what is? How is this entity that hasn't been described or hinted at to any extent so far any less evil than the Others appear to be? Why and how does the evilness of the Others even hinge on whether or not they raise the wights? I don't think giving the Others a more complex backstory than we currently have is mutually exclusive with them raising the wights. The Others have had a very limited on-page presence in the novels, and I don't think the fact that a POV character hasn't directly seen an Other raising a wight is somehow evidence they're unconnected. Furthermore, the hints, stories, and testimony regarding the Others raising wights are evidence in favor of that hypothesis. "Evidence" is not synonymous with "conclusive proof." There's certainly far more evidence in favor of that than the theory that they are unconnected. A problem with the Jon Arryn analogy is that GRRM's "twist" was that other established characters with the motive, will, and means to kill him were behind it instead of the Lannisters. He didn't reveal some random previously unknown character as the perpetrator. He didn't have it turn out that actually Jon Arryn randomly died naturally. What or who is the potential Littlefinger/Lysa in this analogy? Lastly, as quoted in the linked piece by Steven Attewell, GRRM's original outline described the Others this way: “…half-forgotten demons out of legend, the inhuman Others, raise cold legions of the undead and the neverborn and prepare to ride down on the winds of winter to extinguish everything we would consider life. The only thing that stands between the Seven Kingdoms and an endless night is the Wall and a handful of men in black called the Night’s Watch.” Sure, it's hypothetically possible he could have changed his mind since then. But there's very little reason to believe that and it's further evidence in favor of the notion that the Others are antagonists who raise the wights. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
corbon Posted May 13, 2020 Share Posted May 13, 2020 7 hours ago, John Suburbs said: So much for Old Nan's accuracy, and this is for someone who is still alive, not thousands of years dead. I've never said this idea is true or that the prevailing impression has been disputed. I merely point out that we have no real evidence for it yet. Thank you for the reference. I don;t think it has the value you assign it, but thanks for providing it Its a shame you still haven't provided any references that contra-indicate that the Others raise the wights. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
FictionIsntReal Posted May 13, 2020 Share Posted May 13, 2020 6 hours ago, John Suburbs said: The Other gets off the horse, and the horse is never heard from again. Apparently, it just meandered off just like any other horse: no blue eyes, no compulsion to slay the living, no sign that it is being "controlled" in any way. It did whatever it is that dead horses do in their spare time. There is no reason to think that a living man could not have mounted it and ridden away just as easily. No living human has been seen riding a dead horse, and we don't see any Others on a living horse. They might be too cold for living horses. Living humans have living horses to ride because we've domesticated them, so we raise and sell them. Your explanation for the Other having a wight horse is happenstance. Quote Yes, the text pointed directly at Cersei as the poisoner of Jon Arryn, over and over again, without ever stating it outright. The text also points at the Others raising and controlling the wights over and over again without ever stating it or showing it outright. This is the way Martin rolls. Lysa Arryn first accused the Lannisters of being behind Jon Arryn's assassination, then we learned Lysa was lying (although Jon Arryn did indeed discover information that resulted in them wanting him dead). The actual perpetrators were there in the first book and we had reasons to distrust them, whereas there's nobody else in the prologue who could have raised Will. Quote Whatever Balon did or did not do or why is irrelevant. The fact is, humans are not one like-minded species, so there is no reason to think the Others are. GRRM could have differentiated the Others, as he did with human villains like Tywin, Balon and Roose. He didn't. He has instead compared them to the threat of climate change. They don't have any names or dialogue, they're just Others. Quote Where do you get the idea that the Others originate from Asshai? Talk about a theory with no evidence. You don't understand the point, I never claimed the Others are from Asshai. I said that since George indicated that Dany was going to go to Asshai and then later decided he didn't have time for that, it makes it even less likely that he was time to introduce a world of differentiated factions of Others. We've actually had Melisandre as a POV from Asshai. Quote Read the prologue again. The Others kill Waymar and leave. Will stays up in the tree for hours, climbs down, and Waymar rises. The Others are long-gone at this point. We don't know the exact rules of how resurrection works, including how close Others need to be to raise the dead. As I noted, it could also be the case that Waymar was a wight for a long time but simply had no reason to get up until after Will came down. Quote You forgot Gregor Clegane/Robert Stone. Gregor was dying rather than dead while under Qyburn's care. His condition seems to be less magical and more (mad) scientific. Quote Yes clues to the truth about the Arryn murder were peppered throughout the text. And if it turns out the Others are not controlling the wights, the clues were all there as I've shown, right from the prologue. What "clues"? Quote So creatures that are not immoral in their own minds but immoral in the mind's of others. Sounds like the definition of morally ambiguous, which fits literally every character in the book. Check out that video of GRRM discussing his vampires. He doesn't think of vampirism as "morally ambiguous". He says he can only think through the human POV about it being bad. Quote I think you meant to say, "No POV chapters from Others yet" and "no POV can understand their language yet." Martin has said that we will be learning a lot about the Others in the last two books, so stay tuned. Yet? We are five books into the series, more than halfway by GRRM's estimation. Is he going to reveal an even bigger bad than the Others that late in the series? Humanity has hardly even begun to fight back against them yet! Quote Steven Attewell is not George Martin. He has his theories just like anyone else, but he does not know anything. Attewell bases his arguments on the text and other things GRRM has said. Your argument is speculative and requires us to ignore what we've read about the Others in the expectation of some twist (which has not been foreshadowed) that will throw all that out. Quote OK, bees and butterflies appear in the spring. Is one creating and controlling the other? Again, Others "seem" connected to the wights. "From what we know" the Wall was built to protect humans. But what if, as Martin does over and over again, things are not as they seem and what we know is false? Did you ever wonder why a huge wall of ice would be built to stop creatures that are literally made of ice and can glide over snow, which is basically ice, as easily as we walk on land? It's just as likely that the Wall was built by the ice creatures, who build things from ice, to prevent humans from moving north, that the Others have been preying on humans in their territory for thousands of years, and the only thing that has changed in the recent past is the sudden appearance of wights That makes no sense. The NW can go north of the Wall for ranging whenever they want. The wards prevent non-humans from entering. Wildlings don't think the Others have been preying on them for thousands of years. Mance doesn't say things were fine with just the Others but then the wights showed up, and that's why he needs to go south of the Wall. Instead the wildlings think the Others are masters of the wights. Quote Yes, do the Others and the wights actually pose an apocalyptic threat to humans that most readers think? The answer is still unknown, but we do know that they are vulnerable to two things that humans have in abundance: dragonglass and fire. DG isn't an everyday material for humanity, like steel. It's important that Waymar's steel failed him. When Sam discovers they're vulnerable to DG, that's an important reveal which gives humanity a chance. Quote So my impression at this point as that they are not as big of a threat as most seem to believe. Otherwise, Martin would not have made them so easily destroyable. You don't even need a critical hit to take down an Other. Any puncture with a DG arrowhead will do it. What kind of enemy do you think he'd create? One that's actually impossible to destroy, because humanity is really doomed? Quote Yes there has been a hint to another power: If the Others are the ultimate enemy as you say, and they are already in the Haunted Forest, then why does Bran only become afraid when he looks north and north and north to the heart of winter? Why does the 3EC tell him that this is the reason he must live and the Winter is Coming and not the Other wight-masters who are only a few days ride north of the Wall? The assumption is that this is the Great Other, but that is only an assumption, like everything else that fuels the belief that the Others control the wights. There is still plenty of wiggle-room in the text to allow a completely different conclusion. We haven't seen that many Others in the Haunted Forest. The Heart of Winter is likely their homeland. The Others BRING the cold, which is why they are also associated with the Long Night. "Winter is coming" is about them. If the cold is caused by some sort of solar cycle, there's not much humanity could do about that (at least with Westerosi technology). We got no indication that something OTHER than the Others is in the Heart of Winter. Quote Others can talk and negotiate just as easily as the NW and the wildlings. They're speech sounds like cracking ice, whereas the NW and wildlings implausibly speak the same language. How are the Others going to communicate with humans (assuming they had any interest in doing so, which doesn't seem to be the case)? Quote And I'm sorry, but the idea that GRRM has position the NW as the good guys and the wildlings as bad is sheer nonsense. I'll see if I can find it, but I believe it was Ygritte that pointed out that there are good people and bad people on both sides. He outright said he dressed the NW in black to counter the white-hat black-hat trope. The wildlings threaten to bring down the Wall, doing battle against one of our main POVs in Jon Snow. GRRM said Stannis was the one true righteous king because he went north,, where he defeated the wildlings. Mance's army includes monstrous characters like Rattleshirt and Varamyr Sixskins in prominent positions, along with the cannibalistic Ice River clans. Aside from him, other wildlings like the Weeper and Craster are 100% bad guys. The worst watchmen tend to be low-grade shitty, sometimes expressed through mutiny against the Watch leadership. Quote And in what way does GRRM prefer order over anarchy? The whole series has been pretty much nothing by war and anarchy. Where are you getting this from? The whole point is to show how awful it is, which is why we get all that stuff about how peasants suffer while lords play the game of thrones. This is not The Worm Ouroborus where war is the best time the characters have. GRRM was a conscientious objector during the Vietnam war and his anti-war perspective is a big part of the series. Quote OK, so three bad Lannisters, plus three who are a little good and a little bad, two who are pretty much good but devoted to the evil Cersei, one who appears to be good but is devoted to the evil Tywin, and several others who have had so little page-time that we don't know what they're about. So in your mind, this means every single person who fights for the Lannisters or grows their food or pays taxes to them are pure, simple-minded evil while all northmen are shining paragons of virtue? Tywin Lannister will likely get a statue in Lannisport. Do people generally build statues for evil tyrants? The Lannister cause is evil, even if a sympathetic character like Podrick Payne might turn up as a Lannister squire. The Boltons and Freys are evil precisely because they betrayed Robb. And yes, evil tyrants are especially likely to get statues. Quote Bolton's men are still northmen who were killing Lannisters. Now they are northmen who are killing other northmen for the Lannisters. This is how it happens. To say that this cannot happen with the Others simply because it is not the way it seems right now is just plain silly. Roose Bolton was introduced as a character Ned Stark had never trusted, and who had recommended killing a wounded Barristan Selmy (while Ned Stark points to keeping him alive as an example of the mercy he wants to extend to Daenerys). Quote Who knows they can't speak the same language? They probably speak the old tongue, and there are giants and wildings (Thenns) at Castle Black who speak it as well. Giants have a difficult time communicating with humans, and they at least seem to be a related species. The Others don't even seem to be a carbon-based lifeform. Quote The common enemy that Bran saw in his coma dream. We still have no idea what it was, and there are still maybe 2,000+ pages left in the series to introduce it. You're right that we don't know what he saw, but you don't introduce "the common enemy" in the last two books of a seven volume series! Quote We've never seen Others and wights together, and I've already explained the horse. It's intriguing but hardly conclusive. The horse was a kind of wight, together with an Other. And you dismissed rather than explained it. Quote Your point, as I understood it, was that Martin makes his good characters appear ugly and bad while his bad characters appear attractive and good. This is nonsense, as I've showed you. Many "good" characters are quite attractive, while many "bad" characters are ugly. Pointing out that even good characters do bad things and vice versa merely proves my point: Martin doesn't create pure-good and pure-evil characters, not even if they are blue ice creatures. I'm saying that his subversion of fantasy tropes is not nearly as thoroughgoing as you think. GRRM's own example was of the NW wearing black. And GRRM has created purely evil human characters, such as all those listed by Attewell. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
John Suburbs Posted May 14, 2020 Share Posted May 14, 2020 19 hours ago, corbon said: Thank you for the reference. I don;t think it has the value you assign it, but thanks for providing it Its a shame you still haven't provided any references that contra-indicate that the Others raise the wights. It's value is that it shows Old Nan tells stories, not facts. Take what she says about the present with a grain of salt; take what she says about the past with a boulder. I never said I had any references that contra-indicated anything. All I said is that the prevailing theory has yet to be confirmed, or even adequately evidenced, so it might not be true. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LynnS Posted May 14, 2020 Share Posted May 14, 2020 45 minutes ago, John Suburbs said: It's value is that it shows Old Nan tells stories, not facts. Take what she says about the present with a grain of salt; take what she says about the past with a boulder. I never said I had any references that contra-indicated anything. All I said is that the prevailing theory has yet to be confirmed, or even adequately evidenced, so it might not be true. I have to say that I'm not entirely convinced about the ice spiders. This sounds more like embellishment to me, to make the story scarier. They could still turn up, who knows. But I think GRRM is making a reference to his novella, The Sandkings. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sandkings_(novelette) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
John Suburbs Posted May 14, 2020 Share Posted May 14, 2020 17 hours ago, FictionIsntReal said: No living human has been seen riding a dead horse, and we don't see any Others on a living horse. They might be too cold for living horses. Living humans have living horses to ride because we've domesticated them, so we raise and sell them. Your explanation for the Other having a wight horse is happenstance. Lysa Arryn first accused the Lannisters of being behind Jon Arryn's assassination, then we learned Lysa was lying (although Jon Arryn did indeed discover information that resulted in them wanting him dead). The actual perpetrators were there in the first book and we had reasons to distrust them, whereas there's nobody else in the prologue who could have raised Will. GRRM could have differentiated the Others, as he did with human villains like Tywin, Balon and Roose. He didn't. He has instead compared them to the threat of climate change. They don't have any names or dialogue, they're just Others. You don't understand the point, I never claimed the Others are from Asshai. I said that since George indicated that Dany was going to go to Asshai and then later decided he didn't have time for that, it makes it even less likely that he was time to introduce a world of differentiated factions of Others. We've actually had Melisandre as a POV from Asshai. We don't know the exact rules of how resurrection works, including how close Others need to be to raise the dead. As I noted, it could also be the case that Waymar was a wight for a long time but simply had no reason to get up until after Will came down. Gregor was dying rather than dead while under Qyburn's care. His condition seems to be less magical and more (mad) scientific. What "clues"? Check out that video of GRRM discussing his vampires. He doesn't think of vampirism as "morally ambiguous". He says he can only think through the human POV about it being bad. Yet? We are five books into the series, more than halfway by GRRM's estimation. Is he going to reveal an even bigger bad than the Others that late in the series? Humanity has hardly even begun to fight back against them yet! Attewell bases his arguments on the text and other things GRRM has said. Your argument is speculative and requires us to ignore what we've read about the Others in the expectation of some twist (which has not been foreshadowed) that will throw all that out. That makes no sense. The NW can go north of the Wall for ranging whenever they want. The wards prevent non-humans from entering. Wildlings don't think the Others have been preying on them for thousands of years. Mance doesn't say things were fine with just the Others but then the wights showed up, and that's why he needs to go south of the Wall. Instead the wildlings think the Others are masters of the wights. DG isn't an everyday material for humanity, like steel. It's important that Waymar's steel failed him. When Sam discovers they're vulnerable to DG, that's an important reveal which gives humanity a chance. What kind of enemy do you think he'd create? One that's actually impossible to destroy, because humanity is really doomed? We haven't seen that many Others in the Haunted Forest. The Heart of Winter is likely their homeland. The Others BRING the cold, which is why they are also associated with the Long Night. "Winter is coming" is about them. If the cold is caused by some sort of solar cycle, there's not much humanity could do about that (at least with Westerosi technology). We got no indication that something OTHER than the Others is in the Heart of Winter. They're speech sounds like cracking ice, whereas the NW and wildlings implausibly speak the same language. How are the Others going to communicate with humans (assuming they had any interest in doing so, which doesn't seem to be the case)? He outright said he dressed the NW in black to counter the white-hat black-hat trope. The wildlings threaten to bring down the Wall, doing battle against one of our main POVs in Jon Snow. GRRM said Stannis was the one true righteous king because he went north,, where he defeated the wildlings. Mance's army includes monstrous characters like Rattleshirt and Varamyr Sixskins in prominent positions, along with the cannibalistic Ice River clans. Aside from him, other wildlings like the Weeper and Craster are 100% bad guys. The worst watchmen tend to be low-grade shitty, sometimes expressed through mutiny against the Watch leadership. The whole point is to show how awful it is, which is why we get all that stuff about how peasants suffer while lords play the game of thrones. This is not The Worm Ouroborus where war is the best time the characters have. GRRM was a conscientious objector during the Vietnam war and his anti-war perspective is a big part of the series. The Lannister cause is evil, even if a sympathetic character like Podrick Payne might turn up as a Lannister squire. The Boltons and Freys are evil precisely because they betrayed Robb. And yes, evil tyrants are especially likely to get statues. Roose Bolton was introduced as a character Ned Stark had never trusted, and who had recommended killing a wounded Barristan Selmy (while Ned Stark points to keeping him alive as an example of the mercy he wants to extend to Daenerys). Giants have a difficult time communicating with humans, and they at least seem to be a related species. The Others don't even seem to be a carbon-based lifeform. You're right that we don't know what he saw, but you don't introduce "the common enemy" in the last two books of a seven volume series! The horse was a kind of wight, together with an Other. And you dismissed rather than explained it. I'm saying that his subversion of fantasy tropes is not nearly as thoroughgoing as you think. GRRM's own example was of the NW wearing black. And GRRM has created purely evil human characters, such as all those listed by Attewell. Again with the "might be." "Might be too cold for living horses." Or might not be. The fact remains that we don't know who wighted this horse, how or why. So for whatever bizarre reason, the Other decided to slog through the snow on it rather than glide over the top. "Living humans have living horses . . ." You know what else is living? The Others. Martin has said they are not dead creatures, just a different form of life. So you explanation is just as happenstance that a living Other would raise a dead wight, but then not control it like a human wight. There was nobody at all who could raise him because the Others had left hours before. If you claim they were hiding in the bushes the whole time waiting for Will to come down, despite this fact not being even hinted at in the book, then there could be all manner of explanations as to who of what did the raising. They don't have names of dialogues yet. He has said we will be learning all kinds of things about the Others in the last two books. There are two full novels to go, both likely to exceed 1,000 pages each. Look at all the factions and world-building he has accomplished in the first 2,000 pages and tell me there is no room to unveil the truth about the Others. You keep proving my point with your own words. We don't know the exact rules of how resurrection works, therefore we don't know who is doing it or why. How can you possibly square 'we don't know how it works' with 'it is definitely the Others to the exclusion of all other possibilities'? Clue: that there are never any Others around when the wights appear and there are never any wights when the Others appear. The dead horse is the exception, but as I've shown, this could be as red a herring as "she wanted him dead." Check out these SSMs where Martin says he loathes pure-evil and pure-good, even in non-humans: https://www.westeros.org/Citadel/SSM/Month/2007/08 https://www.westeros.org/Citadel/SSM/Entry/2903 And this one especially Quote I did not want to write another version of the War Between Good and Evil, where the antagonist is called the Foul King or the Demon Lord or Prince Rotten, and his minions are slavering subhumans dressed all in black (I dressed my Night's Watch, who are basically good guys, all in black in part to undermine that annoying convention). Before you can fight the war between good and evil, you need to determine which is which, and that's not always as easy as some Fantasists would have you believe. https://www.westeros.org/Citadel/SSM/Entry/1427 Yes, yet. There are still a good 2,000 pages to go. Plenty of time to add a new threat, particularly if it turns out that the threat we thought existed turns out to be less-than-threatening or no threat at all. Jeez, you act like it's all over but the shouting, but just look at how radically the world changes with each novel: kings and high lords dead, armies obliterated, foes become friends, nations laid low, city-states destroyed, multinational trade collapses . . . There is plenty of room to upend the story completely, the way Martin has been doing in literally every single novel so far. If you want to base an argument on facts then you have to acknowledge the most salient fact of all: there is no instance of an Other raising or controlling a wight, and the only time we actually see the two together leaves us with more questions than answers. No, the wards prevent wights like Coldhands from passing. There is nothing in the text that suggests the Others are prevented from passing. Again, what Mance or the wildlings think is irrelevant because none of them actually knows anything. People die north of the Wall all the time and are never seen again, so actual Other sightings are likely to be extremely rare. But undead loved ones shambling up out of the dark: that's what puts fear into people. And again, there is no reason to dismiss the idea that the Others are more visible now because they are fleeing from the same horror that is creating all these wights. What would be really interesting is if we were to see a wighted Other at some point. There is plenty of DG on Dragonstone, probably enough to make tens of thousands of arrowheads. Why would Martin set up the Others as such an unstoppable, human-eradicating force, and then make them so vulnerable to something that humans have in abundance? At the very least, he should wait until the tension is much higher before offering us a way out. Some kind of enemy that cannot be defeated through conventional means, but perhaps by a once-in-a-millennium magic boy being trained by an aging wizard. And yet again, the HoW is "likely" their homeland. Why do you build such a rock-solid, ironclad theory on a mountain of maybes, likelys and as-far-as-we-knows? Nobody knows if the Others bring the cold or the cold brings the Others; that's been made very clear in the books. Many winters -- long, harsh winters -- have come and gone over the ages with no word of Others reappearing. No matter how hard you want this connection to exist, it doesn't. You do have an indication that there is something else in the HoW. I just gave it to you. There are Others prowling the HF and Bran doesn't even notice them, but he is horrified of what he saw in the HoW. Obviously, if it was just another Other up there, he would have been horrified long before. Giants have voices like boulders sliding down a mountain, or something like that. The Others have a language, which means they have words that translate to rock and tree and snow, which means they can be communicated with. And once again, "it doesn't seem to be the case" that they want to communicate, which is just another thing that you don't really know for sure. I just posed the quote about the white-hat/black-hat thing and Martin has made it crystal clear: ASoIaF is not about a pure evil dark lord and slavering sub-human minions. Case closed. There is more to the Others than meets the eye, and we will find out all about them in the next two books. If GRRM's anti-war perspective is a big part of the series, then that's all the more reason why he wouldn't give us a race of pure-evil beings bent on mankind's destruction. That merely justifies war for those who are on the "good" side. Everything you post backs up my claim and disputes your own. Why is the Lannister cause evil? They are protecting their house just like any other family. Dany has slaughtered tens of thousands outright and tens of thousands more are dying of disease and starvation. What makes Tywin any more or less evil than Dany. Is it that he isn't as pretty? You've formed these opinions of good and evil in complete contradiction to everything Martin himself has said on the subject. OK, whatever, Roose is "bad" and Ned is "good." The fact remains there were northeners on the same side who are now on different sides, just like the Karstarks. Different factions within human society and different societies within all of humanity. So given what Martin has had to say on this very subject, there is no reason to think the same can't be true for the Others. What does carbon have to do with anything? They speak, therefore they can be spoken to, and reasoned with. To think otherwise turns them into the same tropey, cartoonish enemy that Martin has specifically said is not the case. Why not? What rule is there that the true enemy (if even that's what it is) cannot be introduce late in the story? What on earth gives you the impression that Martin's goal is to write the same predictable, trope-laden fantasy story that thousands of other authors have already written? I didn't dismiss anything. I question it, because it leaves a lot of unanswered questions. To reach the correct conclusion about Jon Arryn, you would have to question what "she wanted him dead" really meant. Wrong. Martin doesn't do pure evil. He's said so over and over and over again. Everybody is the hero of their own story. 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John Suburbs Posted May 14, 2020 Share Posted May 14, 2020 51 minutes ago, LynnS said: I have to say that I'm not entirely convinced about the ice spiders. This sounds more like embellishment to me, to make the story scarier. They could still turn up, who knows. But I think GRRM is making a reference to his novella, The Sandkings. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sandkings_(novelette) She also says giants are savage man-eaters who live in giant castles, wield giant swords, wear giant boots, mix blood into their giant porridge, and eat aurochs whole. Wun Wun eats vegetables. There is also no way anything but the largest, hardiest trees could survive snows 100 feet deep, nor a night that lasted a generation. And if the Others did come at this time, all they would see is snow with maybe a few tree tops sticking out of it and maybe the top of the Old Tower at Winterfell, but certainly no people, no holdfasts, no cities . . . She tells tales, and tales get embellished with each telling. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
FictionIsntReal Posted May 14, 2020 Share Posted May 14, 2020 4 hours ago, John Suburbs said: The fact remains that we don't know who wighted this horse, how or why. Who else could it have been? Who could have raised Will since there were no other characters in that prologue? The horse serves the Other's objective of moving him around, and Ser Waymar served their objective of killing watchmen. Quote You know what else is living? The Others. They're not like any other kind of life. GRRM said they would try to "extinguish everything that we would call "life."". Quote So you explanation is just as happenstance that a living Other would raise a dead wight, but then not control it like a human wight. On what basis do you conclude it wasn't being controlled like other wights? There were non-human wights attacking the Fist. Quote There was nobody at all who could raise him because the Others had left hours before. Do you know he wasn't already a wight while he was lying in the snow? Quote If you claim they were hiding in the bushes the whole time waiting for Will to come down Do you claim some "other power" was hiding in the bushes that GRRM not only didn't reveal in that prologue but still hasn't revealed five books into the series? Quote They don't have names of dialogues yet. He has said we will be learning all kinds of things about the Others in the last two books. We're learning all kinds of things about coronavirus, but it's certainly not getting humanized. The show gave them some backstory, but didn't change their fundamental role as super-antagonist masters of the wights. Quote You keep proving my point with your own words. We don't know the exact rules of how resurrection works, therefore we don't know who is doing it or why. How can you possibly square 'we don't know how it works' with 'it is definitely the Others to the exclusion of all other possibilities'? The pitch letter says so, the historical memory in the North says so, and every time we've seen Others, we've seen at least one wight in the same place in that chapter. Quote Clue: that there are never any Others around when the wights appear and there are never any wights when the Others appear. False, there was an Other on top of that dead horse when it appeared. Quote The dead horse is the exception, but as I've shown, this could be as red a herring as "she wanted him dead." Maybe the entire series is a red herring, and the final novel that GRRM will publish only in the head of John Suburbs will reveal that it's all been the dream of a magic beetle. Quote Check out these SSMs where Martin says he loathes pure-evil and pure-good, even in non-humans: That quote focuses heavily on aesthetics. The Others are not "foul" or "rotten" and their wight minions are not "slavering subhumans". He even says the Night's Watch are "basically good guys", and their whole purpose is to defend against the Others. In your link where someone asks how to reconcile his statements about evil with the Others is something he pointedly refuses to answer, so I don't see how you can think that's evidence of anything. Quote Yes, yet. There are still a good 2,000 pages to go. Plenty of time to add a new threat, particularly if it turns out that the threat we thought existed turns out to be less-than-threatening or no threat at all. Jeez, you act like it's all over but the shouting, but just look at how radically the world changes with each novel: kings and high lords dead, armies obliterated, foes become friends, nations laid low, city-states destroyed, multinational trade collapses . . . There is plenty of room to upend the story completely, the way Martin has been doing in literally every single novel so far. Those political developments don't "upend the story completely" in any comparable way. They're basically more elaborate forms of what was originally going to happen within the first volume of a trilogy. The fact that Theon rather than Tyrion burned Winterfell and that Catelyn died north of the Wall and Robb died in battle rather than both dying in the Red Wedding didn't upend that framework completely. The political story didn't stay constrained to one book because GRRM kept adding more details to it, and it's because of that he hasn't gotten around to the Dothraki (with Dany and her dragons) invading Westeros in Dance or the Others' invasion in Winds. Quote There is nothing in the text that suggests the Others are prevented from passing. Why do you think they've never been seen south of the Wall? Quote so actual Other sightings are likely to be extremely rare. But undead loved ones shambling up out of the dark: that's what puts fear into people Nobody seems any less afraid of Others compared to wights. If anything, it's the opposite, since they already killed some wights in the first book but ranged north of the Wall to investigate anyway. Quote And again, there is no reason to dismiss the idea that the Others are more visible now because they are fleeing from the same horror that is creating all these wights The Others who killed Waymar weren't running in fear, they were laughing at him. And the Other on that horse certainly wasn't scared of it. Quote What would be really interesting is if we were to see a wighted Other at some point. There's nothing left of an Other to reanimate when it dies. Another way it's unlike other life. Quote There is plenty of DG on Dragonstone, probably enough to make tens of thousands of arrowheads. Why would Martin set up the Others as such an unstoppable, human-eradicating force, and then make them so vulnerable to something that humans have in abundance? Westeros is too politically fractious to organize the mass-production of weapons from obsidian on Dragonstone and the shipping of them along with troops to the Wall. The point of the series is the political conflict distracting people from the existential threat of the Others. Quote At the very least, he should wait until the tension is much higher before offering us a way out. It makes victory possible. If Others were invulnerable to all known weapons, Stannis would have little reason to stick around trying to defend against them. Quote Some kind of enemy that cannot be defeated through conventional means, but perhaps by a once-in-a-millennium magic boy being trained by an aging wizard. Characters other than Bran are too tied up in that story for Bran to handle it alone. What is the point of Jon, Sam and Stannis' stories? Are Daenerys' dragons at all needed? Quote And yet again, the HoW is "likely" their homeland. Why do you build such a rock-solid, ironclad theory on a mountain of maybes, likelys and as-far-as-we-knows? It's harder for anything to live in extreme cold, but since the Others are basically made of ice they're exactly the sort of thing that could live there. Quote Nobody knows if the Others bring the cold or the cold brings the Others; that's been made very clear in the books. No, it suddenly turns cold when they arrive, but winters don't cause Others to appear. The World of Ice and Fire doesn't even mention the possibility of the cold causing them to appear (or their appearance being coincidental with that of the wights). Instead it quotes a maester skeptical that such magical inhuman creatures existed at all. Maesters are skeptical of such ancient legends, but we know they are wrong. Quote There are Others prowling the HF and Bran doesn't even notice them There's not that many of them there, since few Night's Watchmen encounter them. Bran not noticing them explains why he isn't afraid. There could be something creating the Others which is even scarier, I don't know. But even in a Lovecraft story the heroes aren't saved by divisions within the pantheon of cosmic horrors. Quote Giants have voices like boulders sliding down a mountain, or something like that. They speak the Old Tongue, like the First Men. That's why humans can communicate with them. Humans can't even make out the phonemes of the Others, much less speak it themselves. Quote The Others have a language, which means they have words that translate to rock and tree and snow We don't know what their words translate to, and we don't know they can be communicated with. Quote And once again, "it doesn't seem to be the case" that they want to communicate, which is just another thing that you don't really know for sure. They just kill any humans they come across without saying anything, unlike Greyjoys or Lannisters trying to obtain political dominion over living humans. Quote I just posed the quote about the white-hat/black-hat thing and Martin has made it crystal clear You don't seem to understand how much of that quote is about aesthetics. And you haven't explained all the dead human villains in the story discussed by Attewell who absolutely fit the traditional fantasy archetype. Quote If GRRM's anti-war perspective is a big part of the series, then that's all the more reason why he wouldn't give us a race of pure-evil beings bent on mankind's destruction. That merely justifies war for those who are on the "good" side. Everything you post backs up my claim and disputes your own. The series contains both the looming threat of the Others and more mundane political disputes which have caused a civil war. The first has been kept mostly offscreen while the focus has been on the latter. The threat from the Others is a metaphor for any problem requiring collective action, hampered by the infighting seen in those wars. Tolkien had Nazgul and orcs throughout his series to oppose his heroes, in contrast to GRRM's focus on conflicts between humans. Quote Why is the Lannister cause evil? Cersei's children are illegitimate, so they're ineligible for the throne. Their basis in a lie requires her to kill anyone who says the truth. In addition, Joffrey and Cersei are both atrocious leaders it would be understandable to oppose even if (like Aerys) they came to power legitimately. And even before the full-scale war broke out, Tywin was attacking completely innocent civilians in the Riverlands. Tywin tries to hold onto completely despicable thugs like Gregor Clegane and Amory Lorch because their willingness to commit atrocities is useful for him, while Robb Stark executed Rickard Karstark for executing Lannister hostages and had his bannermen hunting down Ramsay Bolton when they heard of his crimes. Tywin allied with the Boltons so they would betray Robb. Quote Dany has slaughtered tens of thousands outright and tens of thousands more are dying of disease and starvation. What makes Tywin any more or less evil than Dany. When Dany engaged in mass punishment, she at least made it proportional to the deaths being avenged. She also engaged in much more good-faith bargaining with her enemies while in Meereen than the Lannisters did against Robb. Dany successfully made a peace agreement (even if she didn't like it), while the Lannisters worked to destroy any chance of making peace by executing Ned Stark, sending false envoys to free Jaime, promising to trade Arya while they didn't have her and Sansa when they were planning on marrying her to Tyrion (in addition to Joffrey beating her while she was a hostage). Quote Is it that he isn't as pretty? No, Cersei and Joffrey are attractive but far more evil than Dany (or Brienne). Sansa thought they were good because they looked good, hence GRRM's note about it being "obvious" who is evil. Another person whose villainy was a surprise to characters (and even readers) is Littlefinger, and I'd say he's rather black-and-white in being a thoroughly bad guy who doesn't even have Tywin's focus on stability and a dynastic legacy as a defense. Quote OK, whatever, Roose is "bad" and Ned is "good." The fact remains there were northeners on the same side who are now on different sides, just like the Karstarks. Different factions within human society and different societies within all of humanity. So given what Martin has had to say on this very subject, there is no reason to think the same can't be true for the Others. There is a long history of enmity between the Boltons and Starks. There is no history of infighting among Others or alliances with humans that we know of. Instead the Long Night made them enemies of all humanity. Quote What does carbon have to do with anything? It shows how distantly related (as in, not at all) they are to humanity, in contrast to giants. Quote They speak, therefore they can be spoken to, and reasoned with You don't know that. Has an ant ever spoken to or reasoned with you? How about a bacteria or a virus? Has the second law of thermodynamics ever tried to negotiate? Quote To think otherwise turns them into the same tropey, cartoonish enemy that Martin has specifically said is not the case. If they started dressing in black, slobbering and stinking up the place, maybe. Quote Why not? Basic narrative logic says to introduce the premise (and conflict) early in your story, and resolve it at the end. If in the next book a character woke up, revealing the preceding story was just their dream, it would seem like a waste of time for us to read all those books only to switch tracks. Quote What on earth gives you the impression that Martin's goal is to write the same predictable, trope-laden fantasy story that thousands of other authors have already written? What he's actually written. It's not exactly the same as everyone else, but it's hardly Tristram Shandy or Waiting for Godot. I Am Legend works wonderfully as a single novel, the same ending would not work nearly as well at the end of a seven book series. Quote To reach the correct conclusion about Jon Arryn, you would have to question what "she wanted him dead" really meant. Cersei really wanted him dead, because he really did know the truth about her children. In order to reach the correct conclusion, you have to know more about OTHER people rather than Cersei. Quote Wrong. Martin doesn't do pure evil. He's said so over and over and over again. Everybody is the hero of their own story. Joffrey Baratheon, Gregor Clegane, Amory Lorch, Vargo Hoat, Rorge, Ramsay Bolton, Varamyr Sixskins, Euron Greyjoy etc are all heroes of their own story rather than pure evil? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
John Suburbs Posted May 15, 2020 Share Posted May 15, 2020 17 hours ago, FictionIsntReal said: Who else could it have been? Who could have raised Will since there were no other characters in that prologue? The horse serves the Other's objective of moving him around, and Ser Waymar served their objective of killing watchmen. They're not like any other kind of life. GRRM said they would try to "extinguish everything that we would call "life."". On what basis do you conclude it wasn't being controlled like other wights? There were non-human wights attacking the Fist. Do you know he wasn't already a wight while he was lying in the snow? Do you claim some "other power" was hiding in the bushes that GRRM not only didn't reveal in that prologue but still hasn't revealed five books into the series? We're learning all kinds of things about coronavirus, but it's certainly not getting humanized. The show gave them some backstory, but didn't change their fundamental role as super-antagonist masters of the wights. The pitch letter says so, the historical memory in the North says so, and every time we've seen Others, we've seen at least one wight in the same place in that chapter. False, there was an Other on top of that dead horse when it appeared. Maybe the entire series is a red herring, and the final novel that GRRM will publish only in the head of John Suburbs will reveal that it's all been the dream of a magic beetle. That quote focuses heavily on aesthetics. The Others are not "foul" or "rotten" and their wight minions are not "slavering subhumans". He even says the Night's Watch are "basically good guys", and their whole purpose is to defend against the Others. In your link where someone asks how to reconcile his statements about evil with the Others is something he pointedly refuses to answer, so I don't see how you can think that's evidence of anything. Those political developments don't "upend the story completely" in any comparable way. They're basically more elaborate forms of what was originally going to happen within the first volume of a trilogy. The fact that Theon rather than Tyrion burned Winterfell and that Catelyn died north of the Wall and Robb died in battle rather than both dying in the Red Wedding didn't upend that framework completely. The political story didn't stay constrained to one book because GRRM kept adding more details to it, and it's because of that he hasn't gotten around to the Dothraki (with Dany and her dragons) invading Westeros in Dance or the Others' invasion in Winds. Why do you think they've never been seen south of the Wall? Nobody seems any less afraid of Others compared to wights. If anything, it's the opposite, since they already killed some wights in the first book but ranged north of the Wall to investigate anyway. The Others who killed Waymar weren't running in fear, they were laughing at him. And the Other on that horse certainly wasn't scared of it. There's nothing left of an Other to reanimate when it dies. Another way it's unlike other life. Westeros is too politically fractious to organize the mass-production of weapons from obsidian on Dragonstone and the shipping of them along with troops to the Wall. The point of the series is the political conflict distracting people from the existential threat of the Others. It makes victory possible. If Others were invulnerable to all known weapons, Stannis would have little reason to stick around trying to defend against them. Characters other than Bran are too tied up in that story for Bran to handle it alone. What is the point of Jon, Sam and Stannis' stories? Are Daenerys' dragons at all needed? It's harder for anything to live in extreme cold, but since the Others are basically made of ice they're exactly the sort of thing that could live there. No, it suddenly turns cold when they arrive, but winters don't cause Others to appear. The World of Ice and Fire doesn't even mention the possibility of the cold causing them to appear (or their appearance being coincidental with that of the wights). Instead it quotes a maester skeptical that such magical inhuman creatures existed at all. Maesters are skeptical of such ancient legends, but we know they are wrong. There's not that many of them there, since few Night's Watchmen encounter them. Bran not noticing them explains why he isn't afraid. There could be something creating the Others which is even scarier, I don't know. But even in a Lovecraft story the heroes aren't saved by divisions within the pantheon of cosmic horrors. They speak the Old Tongue, like the First Men. That's why humans can communicate with them. Humans can't even make out the phonemes of the Others, much less speak it themselves. We don't know what their words translate to, and we don't know they can be communicated with. They just kill any humans they come across without saying anything, unlike Greyjoys or Lannisters trying to obtain political dominion over living humans. You don't seem to understand how much of that quote is about aesthetics. And you haven't explained all the dead human villains in the story discussed by Attewell who absolutely fit the traditional fantasy archetype. The series contains both the looming threat of the Others and more mundane political disputes which have caused a civil war. The first has been kept mostly offscreen while the focus has been on the latter. The threat from the Others is a metaphor for any problem requiring collective action, hampered by the infighting seen in those wars. Tolkien had Nazgul and orcs throughout his series to oppose his heroes, in contrast to GRRM's focus on conflicts between humans. Cersei's children are illegitimate, so they're ineligible for the throne. Their basis in a lie requires her to kill anyone who says the truth. In addition, Joffrey and Cersei are both atrocious leaders it would be understandable to oppose even if (like Aerys) they came to power legitimately. And even before the full-scale war broke out, Tywin was attacking completely innocent civilians in the Riverlands. Tywin tries to hold onto completely despicable thugs like Gregor Clegane and Amory Lorch because their willingness to commit atrocities is useful for him, while Robb Stark executed Rickard Karstark for executing Lannister hostages and had his bannermen hunting down Ramsay Bolton when they heard of his crimes. Tywin allied with the Boltons so they would betray Robb. When Dany engaged in mass punishment, she at least made it proportional to the deaths being avenged. She also engaged in much more good-faith bargaining with her enemies while in Meereen than the Lannisters did against Robb. Dany successfully made a peace agreement (even if she didn't like it), while the Lannisters worked to destroy any chance of making peace by executing Ned Stark, sending false envoys to free Jaime, promising to trade Arya while they didn't have her and Sansa when they were planning on marrying her to Tyrion (in addition to Joffrey beating her while she was a hostage). No, Cersei and Joffrey are attractive but far more evil than Dany (or Brienne). Sansa thought they were good because they looked good, hence GRRM's note about it being "obvious" who is evil. Another person whose villainy was a surprise to characters (and even readers) is Littlefinger, and I'd say he's rather black-and-white in being a thoroughly bad guy who doesn't even have Tywin's focus on stability and a dynastic legacy as a defense. There is a long history of enmity between the Boltons and Starks. There is no history of infighting among Others or alliances with humans that we know of. Instead the Long Night made them enemies of all humanity. It shows how distantly related (as in, not at all) they are to humanity, in contrast to giants. You don't know that. Has an ant ever spoken to or reasoned with you? How about a bacteria or a virus? Has the second law of thermodynamics ever tried to negotiate? If they started dressing in black, slobbering and stinking up the place, maybe. Basic narrative logic says to introduce the premise (and conflict) early in your story, and resolve it at the end. If in the next book a character woke up, revealing the preceding story was just their dream, it would seem like a waste of time for us to read all those books only to switch tracks. What he's actually written. It's not exactly the same as everyone else, but it's hardly Tristram Shandy or Waiting for Godot. I Am Legend works wonderfully as a single novel, the same ending would not work nearly as well at the end of a seven book series. Cersei really wanted him dead, because he really did know the truth about her children. In order to reach the correct conclusion, you have to know more about OTHER people rather than Cersei. Joffrey Baratheon, Gregor Clegane, Amory Lorch, Vargo Hoat, Rorge, Ramsay Bolton, Varamyr Sixskins, Euron Greyjoy etc are all heroes of their own story rather than pure evil? Anyone or anything could have raised Will. The Others had left hours before. That's the fact. The horse does not serve the Other's objective of moving around. The Other can move over the top of the snow much faster and much easier than that horse slogging its way through the snow. The horse did not attack anyone, didn't have blue eyes, just acted like any other horse. No evidence that it was being controlled by anyone. Um, the "extinguish everything that we would call 'life'" quote is from the outline that he subsequently abandoned. Sorry, try again. I don't know if Waymar was or wasn't wighted, but I do know he didn't move, not a muscle. Just a dead body lying perfectly still for hours and hours and hours. What makes you certain that he was a wight at this point? I'm claiming that the link between the Others and the wights is very tenuous. There are all sorts of ways this could play out in the text. What the hell does the coronavirus have to do with anything. The virus is just that, a virus, and it is doing what every living organism does: grow and breed and thrive. Are you saying the virus is evil? The show is the show and the books are the books. There are all sorts of ways the show has deviated from the books, scrapping and/or altering fundamental plot lines. The pitch letter is an abandoned plot. There is no "historical memory" of the north, just a lot of tall tales from thousands of years ago, many of which have been proven false. We've been over the horse, and the wight that appeared in the prologue rose many, many hours after the Others left. Will closes his eyes and hears laughter; he doesn't hear any chanting or spell-casting or anything. They just left Waymar, lying there dead. Varamyr enters the snow, the wood, the clouds when he dies, he sees his wolves, a nearby owl, worms under the ground, ravens taking to the air, children riding an elk. He sees no Others, and yet when he awakens to his second life the village is suddenly crawling with wights. Martin doesn't claim the Others or the wights are evil or "slavering subhumans." That is exactly my point. The Others certainly have intelligence, emotions, and objectives. But nowhere does this imply that they are plotting to end all life on the earth, because Martin has specifically stated in no uncertain terms that this is not the king of story he is writing here. If the Others turn out not be to controlling the wights, the only thing upended will be your expectations. The story will be just fine, and will likely be enhanced rather than simply follow the extremely well-worn path of fantasy Armageddon. I don't think the Others have never been south of the Wall. You claim that the wards prevent them from passing the Wall, and that is uncertain at best. The wall prevents dead things like wights and Coldhands from passing. We have no information as to what it does to Others. But it does seem extremely unlikely that if the wards are enough to stop Others, that men would then take the trouble to encase them in tons of ice when it is the Others that can traverse ice and alter and shape it into new forms. It seems to me that a giant ice wall is something that the Others would build to keep undead humans from traveling north, but now that wights are being raised in the north they are on the move to stop it. Yes, both the wights and the Others are of great concern to the wildlings and the Night's Watch. Let's see how the story plays out over the next 2,000 pages before we conclude that Martin is lying to us and plans on writing yet another fantasy fight-to-the-death between Good and Evil. The Others might be afraid of humans or animals, living or dead, but they would be afraid of whatever power exists in the LoAW. Or they could be moving south for some other reason, or they've been there all along but encounters with them have been extremely rare until now. That was one way an Other died. There is no reason to think they can't be killed in other ways that leaves the body intact. The point of the series, as Martin has said, is the conflict within every human heart. Squabbling humans tend to unite when threatened by an outside, and ice creatures and shambling undead certainly qualify is outsiders. And who says this great battle, if there is one, has to happen at the Wall. It seems to me that if this mass invasion is in the works, the Wall would be the first to go, then Winterfell. Once the southron lords realize that have a problem on their hands and dragongloss is their primary defense, see how quickly they could begin mining it and making weapons with it. Stannis has his magic sword. As far as he knows, that's all he needs. Bran is the magical power-center. What was the point of Robb if he was not going to avenge his father? What was the point of Renly? What was the point of anything that didn't pan out the way readers expected. Sit tight. Everything will make sense in the end, even if some characters do not live up to the potential you have set for them. So maesters are wrong, but when they say the Others bring the cold and the wights, suddenly they are right? Again, there could be something scary creating the Others, but we don't know. That's all I'm saying. We don't know. We don't know what Bran saw. We don't know if it's related to the Others or the wights. We don't know what the relationship between the Others and wights is. We simply don't know. You've acknowledged all of these things we don't know many times throughout this thread, so why do you still insist that you do know all about it and exactly how the story will proceed from here. You don't know, I don't know, nobody but Martin knows, and even then . . . Once again, how do you know the Others are not speaking the Old Tongue, or that humans can't figure out the phonemes? The only one who has heard them speak is Will, and I doubt he knows the Old Tongue. But he knows it is a language, so therefore he can hear the phonemes even if he doesn't know what they mean, just that they were words and they were mocking. So sorry, but they have a language, which means they can be communicated and reasoned with. We've seen them kill two humans. This is hardly a representative sample. We don't know why they attacked. If the Wall was intended to separate humans from Others, then they are merely defending their lands from hostile invaders, just like any human would do. There are plenty of dead human heroes as well. People die, especially in time of war. Good people, bad people, in-between people. It would be rather unrealistic to write a story featuring medieval warfare and intrigue if nobody died, don't you think? And what are you on about with "aesthetics"? He isn't writing a story about pure good versus pure evil. Case closed. It's about the most unambiguous thing Martin has ever said. OK, so bad Lannisters mixed with some good Lannister bannermen; good Starks mixed in with some bad Stark bannermen. My point remains: human society is messy; there is no reason to think Other society can't be just as messy. Dany didn't bargain in good faith in Astapor. She knew what she was doing the whole time. And proportional to the deaths being avenged? In Meereen? Tens of thousands of people died in the sack and thousands more are dying from the bloody flux. Thousands more are sailing and marching to kill her. Are they doing this because she is good and they are just plain evil? The Lannisters did not execute Ned, Joffrey did. Tywin, Cersei, Tyrion and everyone else knew he had value as a hostage. But all this is irrelevant. We are talking about Others, not Lannisters and Starks. The only incontrovertible point is that enemies can and do become allies. Again, there is no history of infighting among the Others that we know of. We've only seen a handful of them. We have no idea what their society is like. And again, the Long Night is a legend, not a history. We have no idea when or how it began or ended. What difference does it make how distantly related the Others are, if at all. They are thinking, reasoning creatures that can be communicated with. This great war that you have in mind is not set in stone. Nothing is. We do know they speak. Will hears them speak. They are intelligent enough to make weapons and armor and function in groups. They are not ants or viruses. They are a sentient, intelligent race, and all sentient, intelligent beings can be reasoned with. It has nothing to do with being ugly, slobbery or stinky. Sauron was none of those things. It has to do with creating nuanced characters with depth and conflicts vs. cartoon characters of pure evil that allow the good guys just to defeat the evil and they all live happily ever after. Martin has been crystal clear on this point many times: this is not what he is doing with aSoIaF, so don't expect it to come out that way. Lol, one premise of the first book was for Ned to go to KL, uncover the truth, and defeat those bad Lannisters. How did that work out? Then the second book had Robb and Renly riding to avenge Ned and throw down the Lannisters. Another bust. Meanwhile, Dany was going to claim her birthright. Still hasn't happened. Brienne was off to find Sanse. Nope. The entire series has been nothing but plot lines that looked to be heading in one direction but ended up stopping short or veering off in another direction. So given that Martin has said unequivocally what he is not going to do with his story, it seems the height of illogic to insist that he is, and then support that contention with an endless string of maybes, it-seems-likes and as-far-as-we-can-tells. Yes, Cersei wanted him dead, but she did not kill him. See how subtle Martin is. Others have killed humans, but we don't know why. Wights have also killed humans, but we don't know why. In order to find out, we have to keep reading, not jump to conclusions just because this is how fantasy novels are supposed to be, particularly when the author expresses his disdain for the fact that all fantasy novels are derivative in this particular way. Yes, all of these characters believe they are justified in all their actions. You or I might disagree, but they do not. Again, from Martin's own words: Quote “You don't just have people who wake up in the morning and say, "What evil things can I do today, because I'm Mr. Evil?" People do things for what they think are justified reasons. Everybody is the hero of their own story, and you have to keep that in mind. If you read a lot of history, as I do, even the worst and most monstrous people thought they were the good guys. We're all very tangled knots.” Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ATaleofSalt&Onions Posted May 16, 2020 Share Posted May 16, 2020 5 hours ago, John Suburbs said: “You don't just have people who wake up in the morning and say, "What evil things can I do today, because I'm Mr. Evil?" People do things for what they think are justified reasons. Everybody is the hero of their own story, and you have to keep that in mind. If you read a lot of history, as I do, even the worst and most monstrous people thought they were the good guys. We're all very tangled knots.” How does this quote mean the Others can't raise wights, invade, and kill for what they believe are justified reasons? Operating off your assumption that the Others can't be "evil" as you see it, because it's not George's style, I have a couple other questions: 1) Why does them raising the wights inherently make them pure evil? 2) If raising wights makes them pure evil, and the Others aren't raising the wights, doesn't the pure evil designation just get shifted to whatever is raising the wights? How does it solve your supposed problem of George not including pure evil if there's some other group fitting the bill instead of the Others? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
FictionIsntReal Posted May 16, 2020 Share Posted May 16, 2020 7 hours ago, John Suburbs said: Anyone or anything could have raised Will. The Others had left hours before. That's the fact. If you don't think it was the Others, because they left, how can you think it might be something which was never there in the first place? Something that has never actually appeared in the story at all? We clearly saw a connection between the Others and Waymar, the first wight we saw. Another Other killed Small Paul, and he also became a wight. It could be that being killed by an Other starts a process which results in a wight, we didn't see anything else happen to these corpses before they became wights. Quote The horse does not serve the Other's objective of moving around. The Other can move over the top of the snow much faster and much easier than that horse slogging its way through the snow. No, horses are still useful even in the snow, which is why the NW brought horses on their great ranging. Even Sam rode a horse when fleeing from the Fist. Quote The horse did not attack anyone, didn't have blue eyes We don't get a description of its eyes. Quote Um, the "extinguish everything that we would call 'life'" quote is from the outline that he subsequently abandoned. Sorry, try again. The point is the phrase "everything we would call "life"". Others, like wights, move around but that doesn't mean we include either among the living. Quote What makes you certain that he was a wight at this point? The question is not how can I be certain when he was wighted, but how can you rule out the Others wighting him before they left? Quote I'm claiming that the link between the Others and the wights is very tenuous. The link between them is emphasized anywhere there's a reference to the Others. Your absence of evidence is due to how little of the Others there has been. Quote What the hell does the coronavirus have to do with anything. The virus is just that, a virus, and it is doing what every living organism does: grow and breed and thrive. A virus isn't considered a living organism, but you're right. That's also how GRRM described predators vs prey in that video on vampires. Quote The show is the show and the books are the books. There are all sorts of ways the show has deviated from the books, scrapping and/or altering fundamental plot lines. GRRM has said the ending is the same, it just took a different path to get there. The broad outlines tend to be similar, but the show is more condensed in terms of length and number of characters, and of course there are budgetary constraints scaling things down (like the Iron Throne itself). Quote There are all sorts of ways the show has deviated from the books, scrapping and/or altering fundamental plot lines. The most fundamental plotlines are the ones present from the beginning, and the show was at its most faithful early on. Quote The pitch letter is an abandoned plot. The pitch letter contains multiple things, some of which were abandoned. But GRRM still kept A Game of Thrones as the first act (spread out over three books), to be followed up by A Dance With Dragons and The Winds of Winter. Quote There is no "historical memory" of the north, just a lot of tall tales from thousands of years ago, many of which have been proven false. Is the Wall itself a "tall tale"? It's certainly fantastical, and hard to believe any real humans built it, which is why it's attributed to a legendary figure like Bran the Builder. And which ones have been "proven false"? Quote Will closes his eyes and hears laughter; he doesn't hear any chanting or spell-casting or anything Who says there needs to be chanting? Thoros doesn't chant but instead gives the "last kiss" to resurrect Beric, and Beric (not even being a priest or magician) does the same thing to resurrect Catelyn. Since you've brought up Gregor/Robert Strong, Qyburn didn't seem to do any chanting. It's not even clear a human could recognize "chanting" in an Other. Quote Martin doesn't claim the Others or the wights are evil or "slavering subhumans." That is exactly my point. The Others certainly have intelligence, emotions, and objectives. But nowhere does this imply that they are plotting to end all life on the earth, because Martin has specifically stated in no uncertain terms that this is not the king of story he is writing here. No, he didn't deny that they were plotting to end all life on earth. And killing the living is what we've seen them do every time they've appeared. Quote If the Others turn out not be to controlling the wights, the only thing upended will be your expectations. The story will be just fine, and will likely be enhanced rather than simply follow the extremely well-worn path of fantasy Armageddon. What is added if they are both somehow coincidentally trying to kill all humans? Quote don't think the Others have never been south of the Wall. When has that happened? Quote it is the Others that can traverse ice and alter and shape it into new forms We haven't seen them do any ice-shaping, even of ice not protected by magical wards. I can use absence of evidence too! Quote It seems to me that a giant ice wall is something that the Others would build to keep undead humans from traveling north, but now that wights are being raised in the north they are on the move to stop it. No, the Wall is built to defend against an incursion from the North. It's indefensible against an attack from the south. Someone coming from the south could just open up a gate to go north. Quote Yes, both the wights and the Others are of great concern to the wildlings and the Night's Watch. Let's see how the story plays out over the next 2,000 pages before we conclude that Martin is lying to us and plans on writing yet another fantasy fight-to-the-death between Good and Evil. GRRM isn't lying so much as you're misunderstanding. He hasn't actually denied the Others being evil. Quote The Others might be afraid of humans or animals They're plainly not, we see them attacking rather than fleeing every time, and not even in a desperate manner. Quote but they would be afraid of whatever power exists in the LoAW Are they supposed to be afraid of that AND an invasion of the never seen south-of-the-Wall wights? They also don't seem to be fleeing from the LoAW at a very rapid pace, in contrast to the wildlings who reached the Wall by fleeing from the Others/wights much earlier. Is it somehow too cold for ice creatures? Quote That was one way an Other died. There is no reason to think they can't be killed in other ways that leaves the body intact. There's no reason to think there is any such way. Dragonglass is the only thing we know that can kill them. Quote The point of the series, as Martin has said, is the conflict within every human heart. Squabbling humans tend to unite when threatened by an outside, and ice creatures and shambling undead certainly qualify is outsiders. Yes, that is why they exist in this story. The way GRRM has been deviating from fantasy tradition is by having the humans fight each other for most of the story. Quote And who says this great battle, if there is one, has to happen at the Wall. It seems to me that if this mass invasion is in the works, the Wall would be the first to go, then Winterfell. The Wall is indeed in danger of falling, but since that's the first line of defense against the invasion, it will be all the more difficult to defeat it afterward. And the invasion can go AROUND Winterfell. That's what makes it a scary apocalyptic threat. Quote Stannis has his magic sword. As far as he knows, that's all he needs. Stannis doesn't assume he'l win due to his "magic sword". His sword didn't do anything against Renly, and when he lost at the Blackwater it wasn't because he forgot to pack his sword with him. And he has ordered for dragonglass to be mined on Dragonstone precisely because he thinks it may be needed against the Others. Quote What was the point of Robb if he was not going to avenge his father? What was the point of Renly? Neither of those were POV characters. The point of them is illustrated through the POV characters. GRRM named five important characters who would live through all three books. One of them is indeed Bran, but another is Jon Snow, who actually joined and rose to command of the one organization dedicated to protecting the realms of men from the threat to the north. Quote So maesters are wrong, but when they say the Others bring the cold and the wights, suddenly they are right? Stories of the Others exist, and the maesters acknowledge those stories but cast doubt on them and even suggest Others were made up to demonize wildlings. We know the maesters are wrong about that. Quote Again, there could be something scary creating the Others, but we don't know. That's possible, and wouldn't actually change the relationship between Others and wights, or their relation to humans. Quote We don't know what the relationship between the Others and wights is. It has been stated multiple times that the Others are masters of the wights. You want to ignore all of that, even though there is nothing to contradict that. Quote You don't know, I don't know, nobody but Martin knows D&D know, GRRM has told them. Quote Once again, how do you know the Others are not speaking the Old Tongue The Old Tongue contains words like "Skagos" and "Magnar", not inhuman streams of consonants. Do you think you could speak the language of dolphins? Quote so therefore he can hear the phonemes Hearing a sound does not mean discerning its constituent parts, which is a vital pre-requisite of any understanding as a language. Quote So sorry, but they have a language, which means they can be communicated and reasoned with. Do you think you can communicate and reason with bees? Quote We've seen them kill two humans. This is hardly a representative sample. Those are the only two occassions in which Others have appeared in the story, and they acted exactly like the foes of humanity/Nights Watchmen they've been made out to be. You can't say that's unrepresentative without more knowledge about the broader population. If all Others are alike, then they could indeed be perfectly representative. GRRM certainly hasn't distinguished any Other from any other Other. D&D went further in distinguishing one from the other Others and giving him a tragic backstory, but the GRRM has always emphasized that their version of the Night King has basically nothing in common with the Night's King from the books. Quote If the Wall was intended to separate humans from Others, then they are merely defending their lands from hostile invaders, just like any human would do. The wildlings aren't "hostile invaders", they've been living there for thousands of years. Quote There are plenty of dead human heroes as well. People die, especially in time of war. Good people, bad people, in-between people. It would be rather unrealistic to write a story featuring medieval warfare and intrigue if nobody died, don't you think? I have no idea what you're responding to because you don't quote directly above each response. Quote And what are you on about with "aesthetics"? He isn't writing a story about pure good versus pure evil. Case closed. It's about the most unambiguous thing Martin has ever said. GRRM's quote focuses heavily on aesthetics. "Foul, rotten, slavering", are all things that vicerally disgust us. Giving the "basically good guys" NW black coats is a purely aesthetic choice. Purely good characters are indeed rare in this series, but pure evil isn't quite so absent. And he doesn't deny that he's writing of a war between Good and Evil, he just says you must first determine which is which. The question he was responding to didn't assume the Others were morally ambiguous either, it just praised GRRM for "the moral relativism of many of the characters". Quote OK, so bad Lannisters mixed with some good Lannister bannermen; good Starks mixed in with some bad Stark bannermen. The Lannister leadership is bad, and they are fighting for a bad cause. The Stark cause is good, but bad bannermen betray that good cause. That GRRM may acknowledge that some of the Yunkish armies attacking Dany's Meereen are hapless slaves forced to fight doesn't make their cause any less bad. Quote My point remains: human society is messy; there is no reason to think Other society can't be just as messy. GRRM doesn't have time to resolve the messy human plotlines he's already created AND introduce an entirely new messy society. Quote Dany didn't bargain in good faith in Astapor. Not at Astapor, but afterward. Quote thousands more are dying from the bloody flux You're blaming Dany for that? We know from the Windblown that her enemies are trying to spread it in order to undermine her. Quote Are they doing this because she is good and they are just plain evil? In short, yes. Quote The Lannisters did not execute Ned, Joffrey did. I tend to think of him as a Lannister, since he's a Lannister on both sides. And indeed his reign was marked by the dominance of Lannister symbolism over the Baratheon stag or colors. Quote We are talking about Others, not Lannisters and Starks. The only incontrovertible point is that enemies can and do become allies. Did Joffrey ever turn from an enemy to an ally of the Starks? Did Cersei? Quote What difference does it make how distantly related the Others are, if at all. The more recently two languages diverged, the more mutually intelligible they are. Humans have had some very limited ability to communicate with apes. We don't communicate with insects, and those are still more closely related to us than some sort of extraterrestrial silicon-based lifeform would be. Quote function in groups. They are not ants Ants are more suited to functioning in groups than humans are. Quote It has nothing to do with being ugly, slobbery or stinky. Sauron was none of those things. Sauron himself doesn't really show up amidst the humans in Lord of the Rings. Instead, his hideous minions do. Quote It has to do with creating nuanced characters with depth and conflicts vs. cartoon characters of pure evil He's done that with many human characters, but others are indeed purely evil and cartoonish (I've even specifically named some). He hasn't given any depth or nuance to the Others. Quote that allow the good guys just to defeat the evil and they all live happily ever after. He has said his "bittersweet ending" will be like Tolkien's. He's not nearly as averse to Tolkien as people sometimes make him out to be. Quote So given that Martin has said unequivocally what he is not going to do with his story, it seems the height of illogic to insist that he is, and then support that contention with an endless string of maybes, it-seems-likes and as-far-as-we-can-tells. He didn't unequivocally say what you think he said. He also told D&D where the story would go, and we got their take on that. Quote Others have killed humans, but we don't know why. Oh, I get it. Waymar and Small Paul both slept with the wives of the Others that killed them. It's a domestic drama disguised to look like larger stakes. And of course Tormund fears the Others, because he slept with all of their wives. Quote Wights have also killed humans, but we don't know why One of the advantages of using the undead archetype is that you don't have to explain WHY they attack the living. Quote particularly when the author expresses his disdain for the fact that all fantasy novels are derivative in this particular way. He has much less disdain than you think, and doesn't begrudge Tolkien his approach. Quote Yes, all of these characters believe they are justified in all their actions. You or I might disagree, but they do not. Again, from Martin's own words: What are Ramsay's "justified reasons" for hunting women and torturing people? What are Euron's "justified reasons" for killing his own brother/king, and cutting out the tongue of a woman he impregnated and is keeping captive in his ship? What are Joffrey's "justified reasons" for having Sansa stripped and beaten? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
John Suburbs Posted May 18, 2020 Share Posted May 18, 2020 On 5/15/2020 at 8:25 PM, ATaleofSalt&Onions said: How does this quote mean the Others can't raise wights, invade, and kill for what they believe are justified reasons? Operating off your assumption that the Others can't be "evil" as you see it, because it's not George's style, I have a couple other questions: 1) Why does them raising the wights inherently make them pure evil? 2) If raising wights makes them pure evil, and the Others aren't raising the wights, doesn't the pure evil designation just get shifted to whatever is raising the wights? How does it solve your supposed problem of George not including pure evil if there's some other group fitting the bill instead of the Others? I didn't say they couldn't invade and kill. I just said they have shown no signs of doing so yet. And if they do that, then I'm sure it will be for reasons that they justify. I was merely disputing the contention that the Others are pure evil, black unredeemable evilness who are bent on destroying all mankind just because they are unrelentlessly evil to the core. I never said raising wights makes them evil. I said there is only very sketchy evidence that they are the ones doing it. And I never said that there was some pure evil horror in the LoAW. Just that whatever Bran saw up their scared the p out of him, which wouldn't be the case if the purely evil Others, the ultimate threat to all mankind, could be seen as far south as the Haunted Forest. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ATaleofSalt&Onions Posted May 18, 2020 Share Posted May 18, 2020 2 hours ago, John Suburbs said: I didn't say they couldn't invade and kill. I just said they have shown no signs of doing so yet. And if they do that, then I'm sure it will be for reasons that they justify. I was merely disputing the contention that the Others are pure evil, black unredeemable evilness who are bent on destroying all mankind just because they are unrelentlessly evil to the core. I never said raising wights makes them evil. I said there is only very sketchy evidence that they are the ones doing it. And I never said that there was some pure evil horror in the LoAW. Just that whatever Bran saw up their scared the p out of him, which wouldn't be the case if the purely evil Others, the ultimate threat to all mankind, could be seen as far south as the Haunted Forest. There most definitely are "signs" of them doing it. You can argue that there isn't conclusive proof because we haven't seen an Other point at a wight and raise it on-page, but there is plenty of textual support (and stuff from outside the books as well) for a connection between the Others and the wights, and there is zero indication of anything besides the Others that may be raising the wights. And if there is something else raising the wights, how does that avoid the alleged problem you identify? How is this group or entity any less evil than the Others appear to be if we assume they are raising the wights? The Others could be set on destroying mankind and not doing it just for the sake of being evil. There's a wide range of possibilities. I don't think Martin's comments on the subject imply that he thinks no one is evil and definitely not that nobody does horrifically evil things, just that people generally don't consider themselves evil or do such things for the sake of being evil. Maybe the Others view humans (and animals) the way we view ants (or livestock for that matter). Are humans evil for destroying anthills without a second thought? I think your assumption that whatever Bran saw couldn't be connected to the Others because there are some Others south of the LoAW is faulty. We don't know what exactly he saw, so it's hard to speculate, but if he saw some sort of home or base of the Others, is it not possible he could be freaked out by that? You also have to keep in mind that the land beyond the wall is vast, and we don't know how many Others there are. If there's a few of them spread across hundreds of thousands or millions of square miles it's not implausible that he'd wouldn't see them until finding their home in the LoAW. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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