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War Won't Save The World


CamiloRP

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23 hours ago, CamiloRP said:

Yes, but their centuries old war was memorable enough for the humans, and the humans won, so imagine how memorable it must've been for the Others.

The American war of independence is centuries old and still remembered (America won!). Even the Peloponnesian war is still remembered from thousands of years ago!

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If the humans still remember it, still tell horror stories about it, why couldn't the Others?

I don't think they have to "tell horror stories" to keep the memory alive over generations, because they might be immortal and without generations. And if you attack someone after centuries of peace, you're considered an aggressor.

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one dimensional means that only one of the three aspects (dimensions) of a character is developed, those dimensions being physical, sociological and psychological

Okay, if they're both ugly AND evil I guess they're not one-dimensional!

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I said that no one is fully evil, specially not a whole race

The bloody flux is just misunderstood. Humans should stop trying to eradicate it.

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Yes, but seeing a few individuals do an evil act shouldn't be enough to think all members of that group are evil

GRRM could have individualized them. But he hasn't, any more than he has strains of the bloody flux.

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Imagine you're a Westerosi warrior, maybe even a member of the NW, you grew up with tales of how evil the Others are. You then spot an Other, they don't spot you, you think you can kill them. Of course you do.

If I'm a ranger and I spot one, I think I actually try to bring a report back to my commander. Killing an individual Other is insignificant compared to the larger strategic picture for the Watch. I don't want to be struck down from behind, so I might not retreat if they're already close though.

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So why would the Others act any differently?

For centuries there hadn't been any fighting, even as humans were ranging over that same territory. Only the Others know why & what changed.

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they lost the war before, they presumably know this, which would make them fear

Only against dragonglass weapons, which Waymar didn't appear to have.

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Gregor was constantly under pain, and had little tools to deal with anything, his only tool was violence.

He liked killing people and it was hard to stop him. Not too different from an Other (the headaches bit was mostly relevant to indicate how much milk of the poppy his body would require and thus how we should think of his poisoning & zombification).

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hey aren't as prevalent to be relevant or to be fully flesehd out. Same with the BC.

They've actually been MORE fleshed out than the Others! They're evil with individual characteristics!

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The Slavers have many members that are 'better' than the rest, and therefore, not fully evil.

Do you mean like Hizdahr?

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But in any case, none of this villains is both close to the importance of the Others as an antagonist and has significant 'screentime', so it's not the same.

I agree they're not as important on an existential level (though I know some people think Euron is), though many of them do have MORE screentime. You seem to think that because the Others are so important they can't be as simply evil as those human characters. But the whole point of the conflict among humans over political power is to appear to be a pointless waste when contrasted to the threat of the Others.

13 hours ago, SeanF said:

I don't think there's anything that would prevent a Dothraki Khal from selling or killing his wife if he grew tired of her, or else just giving her to his blood riders to enjoy

I know Illyrio was somewhat flippant about Dany's fate, but I don't think he would have let a valuable asset like her be disposed of that easily. Khal Drogo was supposed to eventually invade Westeros because he was tied to Dany for the long term.

10 hours ago, Mourning Star said:

I think we have, Leaf's analogy of the woods.

Are you referring to the small population of Children not overrunning it like deer?

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And yet the Others attacked the Fist of the First Men in front of the Wildlings... curious no?

The Others are inscrutable.

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How would we know if they eat?

They don't appear to even be carbon-based lifeforms. Even among carbon-based lifeforms, you need to consume food of the same chermical chirality as yourself. Mirror-Jesus could not feed you with mirrored loaves & fish. I suppose there could be some other "species" they could consume (like ghost grass?), but none of the stories from the Long Night say anything about that (nor have we seen them eat). I think you have to accept that they're fantasy creations unbound by conservation of energy. It just comes with the genre (same with most depictions of the undead).

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What I'm saying is that the right thing to do is to try to end violence, and one accomplishes that by trying to understand and speak to the other side.

When they're trying to kill you, that's probably hopeless!

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 No, here I disagree wholeheartedly.

Mercy is never a mistake.

 

It is if it doesn't save anyone (and I do think Cersei's children are doomed). He would have protected her children better by forcing them all on a ship and exiling them.

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In all likelihood, by learning from the Singers or the Green Men.

Only Bran & his companions are even aware the Children are still around. And none of them have given any indication of hidden depths to the Others. If peace is possible, that would seem to be really relevant information they could have given him!

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And they still don't get along... Language is an issue not the only issue.

Stannis was able to defeat Mance's host and get them to submit. That feat doesn't seem feasible with the Others.

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I don't think the Others are animals, and their use of weapons, clothing, and language are evidence of this.

Humans ARE animals. That the Others AREN'T only makes them even more unlike us!

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I assume you are kidding, but obviously no guarantee of a positive outcome is not the same as guaranteeing a negative outcome.

Yes, there are probabilities other than 0 or 1 (some would say all probabilities are!), but extreme examples are useful for clear thought experiments. And if the expected outcome is negative, you should (on average) not expect me or anyone else to take it. Ned did what he did because he didn't expect the negative consequences that actually happened.

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humans are the only race in Westeros to conquer it and force other races into extinction or exile.

It seems like the Others attempted that and failed... and now they're trying again.

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But, that doesn't mean we shouldn't try to learn from our mistakes rather than repeating them.

Vietnam was far from the US, the US was protected by large oceans and their forces were vulnerable to the same things as any other humans. I just don't think there's any transfer of learning to be done here.

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What happens to the babies? How do we know if it is nuanced or not?

We know there were ancient human sacrifices to trees in the religion of the Old Gods/First Men. Jeor explains Craster's child sacrifices by saying the wildlings serve "crueler gods". And Craster is not a nuanced guy.

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It seems to me that the assumption that the Others are mindless evil is just that, an assumption.

I assume the wights are mindless evil, whereas the Others are mindful enough to laugh when they kill someone.

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Nothing about the Others gives me the impression of unthinking animals.

Maybe they think of humans like humans think of hornets. And there's no way hornets are ever going to negotiate a peace with humans, even if that's the only thing to prevent them from being exterminated.

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I think the far better question to ask, is why they have returned now, and what role Men play in that return.

It's a relevant question, but I don't think there's any reason to expect a human cause. We don't know of any for the first Long Night, and humans haven't done anything that unusual in the near term prior to Prologue. I think the Others are unlike humans, have somehow existed apart for countless years, and have now returned for their own inscrutable reasons which may tie into the larger magical system affecting things like the strange seasons of Planetos.

9 hours ago, CamiloRP said:

Are you saying causing genocide on humans is not okey but in non humans it is?

I do think a genocide (species-cide?) of COVID-19 or mosquitoes would be OK.

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Second, for all we know, North of the Wall is Other territory and both the NW and the Freefolk are trespassing.

If you "trespass" for centuries without encountering anyone else with a claim, you're not trespassing.

5 hours ago, Jaenara Belarys said:

Signing off, bye.

Don't make pointless posts like this. We've gotten to an absurd number of pages & replies because of that. This is not an IRC chat!

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22 minutes ago, FictionIsntReal said:

The American war of independence is centuries old and still remembered (America won!). Even the Peloponnesian war is still remembered from thousands of years ago!

The point being what? The humans remember the Long Night, and so should the Others, specially given that they lost.

 

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I don't think they have to "tell horror stories" to keep the memory alive over generations, because they might be immortal and without generations.

There's no reason to assume they are immortal, I mean, they aren't, dragon glass can kill them, but I'm not you, so I can see that's not your point. Regardless, there's no reason to believe they don't age.

 

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And if you attack someone after centuries of peace, you're considered an aggressor.

I never said they weren't the aggressors, they absolutely are, but that doesn't make them fully evil.

 

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Okay, if they're both ugly AND evil I guess they're not one-dimensional!

Well, yes, since 'evil' doesn't cover either the psychological or sociological aspect of anyone and 'ugly' being subjective, is considered not to cover the physical aspect, so the described character would be 'zero dimensional', assuming those are it's only given characteristics.

 

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GRRM could have individualized them. But he hasn't, any more than he has strains of the bloody flux.

He's still got a third of the story or more left. And they will keep showing up more and more.

 

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If I'm a ranger and I spot one, I think I actually try to bring a report back to my commander. Killing an individual Other is insignificant compared to the larger strategic picture for the Watch. I don't want to be struck down from behind, so I might not retreat if they're already close though.

Sure, some may do that, some may attack them, most, IMO. But also, the Others already know of the existence of Humans, so they have no reason to report them to anyone, specially given the fact that they know how easily they can defeat them. Any human warrior in their position would've acted in the same way.

 

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Only against dragonglass weapons, which Waymar didn't appear to have.

Never said they where afraid of Waymar, they clearly weren't, but given what humanity did to them, they should fear that happening again, which would only aid their bias against them and would encourage to want to kill all the Humans they can.

 

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the whole point of the conflict among humans over political power is to appear to be a pointless waste when contrasted to the threat of the Others.

Oh, hi George, I didn't know you still used this forum.

You can know that's the point dude, that's what you think is the point, because it's the predictable fantasy trope resolution, but you can't know that to be the point until the story ends. And yes, if the story would end like you think, that might be the point, but for now you don't know. You're essentially saying 'The story will end this way because the point is x, and the point is x, because the story will end this way."

 

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I do think a genocide (species-cide?) of COVID-19 or mosquitoes would be OK.

That was the point of the post tho, where do you draw the line? Doing it on humans is not OK, fine, how about doing it on LOTR Elves or Dwarves? How about Vulcans? COTF?

But of course you knew that i wasn't the point, you just like ignoring what people are saying for the sake of arguing things no one said.

Also, a genocide of mosquitoes would not be OK, it would be very damaging for the ecosystem.

 

 

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If you "trespass" for centuries without encountering anyone else with a claim, you're not trespassing.

Maybe the Others don't feel that way.

 

Anyhow, good night, I will no longer be replying because, like I said above, I know how this goes. The posts will get increasingly longer each day and they won't end until I stop. You won't change my mind, I won't change yours. Have a good time. 

 

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10 hours ago, FictionIsntReal said:

Humans ARE animals. That the Others AREN'T only makes them even more unlike us!

Then you need to define the words you are using.

If humans aren't meaningfully different than animals in this context, then how are Other's meaningfully different than humans?

Seems silly to me.

10 hours ago, FictionIsntReal said:

Yes, there are probabilities other than 0 or 1 (some would say all probabilities are!), but extreme examples are useful for clear thought experiments. And if the expected outcome is negative, you should (on average) not expect me or anyone else to take it. Ned did what he did because he didn't expect the negative consequences that actually happened.

Again you seem to miss the forest for the trees, and at this point I don't know if it's a joke.

Literally the whole argument I'm making is that there are things of value to consider other than the practical ramifications of an action.

It is a fundamentally different philosophical outlook to the utilitarian assessment of "ends" you describe. Ascribing moral value to a choice separate from it's practical results may not be how you view the world, but it is a clear defining difference in principle worth considering in the context of this story.

Ned made the choice he did because he believed it was the right thing to do, the defining difference between him and Cersei.

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"Honor," she spat. "How dare you play the noble lord with me! What do you take me for? You've a bastard of your own, I've seen him. Who was the mother, I wonder? Some Dornish peasant you raped while her holdfast burned? A whore? Or was it the grieving sister, the Lady Ashara? She threw herself into the sea, I'm told. Why was that? For the brother you slew, or the child you stole? Tell me, my honorable Lord Eddard, how are you any different from Robert, or me, or Jaime?"
"For a start," said Ned, "I do not kill children. 

A Game of Thrones - Eddard XII

Ned isn't playing, he really does try to do the right thing despite it not being in his self interest.

There is no ploy here, he is just being a good person by showing his enemies mercy.

But as we know, he is betrayed, and this is a story, so we see the repercussions of his behavior spiral back into the picture for effect.

Look at the reaction to Tywin's death compared to his.

If Tywin Lannister was truly dead, no one was safe . . . least of all her son upon his throne. When the lion falls the lesser beasts move in: the jackals and the vultures and the feral dogs.

Tywin, who ruled with a ruthless pragmatism (basically through fear) acts as Ned's foil in this sense. He is the Machiavellian, ends justify the means, better to be feared than loved, opposite to Ned's honor.

But, if I'm being honest, this was all really just a long winded excuse for me to post this quote:

 "I want to live forever in a land where summer lasts a thousand years. I want a castle in the clouds where I can look down over the world. I want to be six-and-twenty again. When I was six-and-twenty I could fight all day and fuck all night. What men want does not matter.
"Winter is almost upon us, boy. And winter is death. I would sooner my men die fighting for the Ned's little girl than alone and hungry in the snow, weeping tears that freeze upon their cheeks. No one sings songs of men who die like that. As for me, I am old. This will be my last winter. Let me bathe in Bolton blood before I die. I want to feel it spatter across my face when my axe bites deep into a Bolton skull. I want to lick it off my lips and die with the taste of it on my tongue."

Because this is a story, we see Ned's honor does have a positive outcome, and the North remembers.

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3 hours ago, Mourning Star said:

Because this is a story, we see Ned's honor does have a positive outcome, and the North remembers.

This is true. Ned's honor does pay dividends. 

 

3 hours ago, Mourning Star said:

Humans ARE animals

Humans are biologically animals, but we have better cognitive abilities and full language capacity. The Others do have a language, so they satisfy that. We don't know much about actual white walker's cognitive abilities, but we know that the wights are like Night of the Living Dead zombies in that they are relentless and not that smart.

 

3 hours ago, Mourning Star said:

There is no ploy here, he is just being a good person by showing his enemies mercy

He was a good guy, but you wonder what would've happened if he had A. Not trusted Baelish as much as he did and B. was less freaking honorable. This factors into the trusting LF factor, since if Ned had the heart to do the dirty work needed, he wouldn't have needed LF as much.

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On 3/12/2021 at 9:40 AM, Mourning Star said:

Can you point to any text that supports this claim?

The Children taught The Last Hero to speak their language, presumably the same language the Others speak.

" Thanks to the Children, the first men of the Nights Watch banded together and were able to fight and win the Battle for the Dawn. The last battle that broke the endless winter and sent the Others fleeing to the icy."  Here's Sam after they get back to Craster's after the Others attacked, " the Children of the forest used dragonglass blades" he said. They'd know where to find Obsidian. " Sam also finds mention that in the early years of the NW, the Children would give the Brothers dragonglass once a year.  Sam also finds mention of the Last Hero cutting down Others in battle.  I didn't find any mentions of the Children teaching the Last Hero their language or the Long Night ended in anything other the battle/war, at least when it came to the Last Hero.

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20 hours ago, CamiloRP said:

The point being what?

We don't keep refighting the American war of independence, nor the Peloponnesian war, even if they are remembered.

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Regardless, there's no reason to believe they don't age.

The pitch letter used the term "neverborn". That would seem to imply they don't have an infant-to-adult lifecycle.

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so the described character would be 'zero dimensional', assuming those are it's only given characteristics

Alright, a sadist with wormy lips, does that qualify?

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And they will keep showing up more and more.

They didn't really show up in the last two books.

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given what humanity did to them, they should fear that happening again, which would only aid their bias against them and would encourage to want to kill all the Humans they can

You think they ought to be afraid, but they give no indication of that. If they were actually afraid, the smarter thing to do would be to stay off the radar of the NW.

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Oh, hi George, I didn't know you still used this forum

The exact quote is: "It is important that the individual books refer to the civil wars, but the series title reminds us constantly that the real issue lies in the North beyond the Wall. Stannis becomes one of the few characters fully to understand that, which is why in spite of everything he is a righteous man"

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And yes, if the story would end like you think, that might be the point, but for now you don't know.

We've already gotten the TV show, and we know GRRM told D&D where his endpoint was to they could reach the same place even if they took a different path to get there. And we know he's said his version will be some combination of the same & different, but having the humans vs Others conflict just turn out to be a mistake is a radically different story.

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That was the point of the post tho, where do you draw the line?

War is a negative sum activity, and if the opposing party recognizes that fact and wants to make peace, then it might be possible. We've never gotten any indication of anything like that from the Others. Their army actually swells it fights.

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Also, a genocide of mosquitoes would not be OK, it would be very damaging for the ecosystem.

There are scientists who disagree.

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Maybe the Others don't feel that way.

They can "feel" that merely existing warrants death, but that has no bearing on how we should think about humans "trespassing". They haven't been doing anything to indicate they regarded anything as "trespassing", or that they would respect any human's right to live anywhere.

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You won't change my mind, I won't change yours.

Two rational people cannot foresee to disagree :)

10 hours ago, Mourning Star said:

Then you need to define the words you are using.

You can find the definition of "animal" in a biology textbook. Here's wikipedia's introduction to the concept:
Animals (also called Metazoa) are multicellular eukaryotic organisms that form the biological kingdom Animalia. With few exceptions, animals consume organic material, breathe oxygen, are able to move, can reproduce sexually, and grow from a hollow sphere of cells, the blastula, during embryonic development.

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If humans aren't meaningfully different than animals in this context, then how are Other's meaningfully different than humans?

Per the pitch letter, the Others hate all life. Humans are alive, so they hate us, but presumably not each other, as they are not "alive" in the same sense. And they turn other species of animals into wights. We are all the same to them.

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It is a fundamentally different philosophical outlook to the utilitarian assessment of "ends" you describe.

Rule utilitarianism isn't quite as distinct from deontological ethics as act utilitarianism.

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Ned made the choice he did because he believed it was the right thing to do, the defining difference between him and Cersei.

He made the choice he did because he was mistaken about what the consequences would be. If he could have known with 100% certainty what would happen, I am 100% sure he would have acted differently. Consequences would matter enough to change a decision, even for Ned. Real people don't follow Kant's rule that you should tell the murderer where your friend is hiding simply because lying is bad (we know Ned himself has lied, even if it rankles him).

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If Tywin Lannister was truly dead, no one was safe . . . least of all her son upon his throne.

When Ned Stark died, his son wasn't safe, nor were his brothers. This just reflects the nature of the dangerous politics at play.

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Because this is a story, we see Ned's honor does have a positive outcome, and the North remembers.

Ned's vassals are loyal to him (and as far as we know Tywin's were to him, certainly moreso than Robb's were to him). But he's not getting any "positive outcome" for his blunder against Cersei.

7 hours ago, Jaenara Belarys said:

Humans are biologically animals, but we have better cognitive abilities and full language capacity.

It's unclear to what extent other species have language capacity.

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On 3/5/2021 at 2:06 AM, CamiloRP said:

Make love not war.

That leads to 7 billion + population in almost no time, leading to war over food, water, fuel and place to shit, stand, fuck and well, fight. 

I. N. E. V. I. T. A. B. L. E

All's fair in love and war my ass

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I have a question. Why are we arguing about this when it seems pretty obvious that there will be a war with the Others? In addition to this, really? Make love, not war? Yeah, sure and unicorns will be farting rainbows and we'll all be singing Kumbaya. :)  Don't take it as an insult, but I just find that funny.

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8 hours ago, TheLastWolf said:

That leads to 7 billion + population in almost no time, leading to war over food, water, fuel and place to shit, stand, fuck and well, fight. 

I. N. E. V. I. T. A. B. L. E

All's fair in love and war my ass

Nah, populations tend to control themselves, anyway, it wasn't something I was proposing, it's IMHO, the 'morale' of INTHOTW.

Society thinks they have to kill the Grouns but by the end the protagonist realices that our salvation lies in breeding with them.

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1 hour ago, Jaenara Belarys said:

I have a question. Why are we arguing about this when it seems pretty obvious that there will be a war with the Others?

Because of the whole bunch of evidence in the OP. Now, you can disagree with the conclusion, that's fine, but there's evidence for it. If it were someone else I would ask them to argue, explain their points, etc.

 

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In addition to this, really? Make love, not war? Yeah, sure and unicorns will be farting rainbows and we'll all be singing Kumbaya. :)  Don't take it as an insult, but I just find that funny.

It's not what I proposed, it's, as I said in the post above:

"the 'morale' of INTHOTW.

Society thinks they have to kill the Grouns but by the end the protagonist realices that our salvation lies in breeding with them."

And ITHOTW is one of the most ASOIAF-like stories Martin's ever written.

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1.What exactly is INTHOTW? 

2. We've seen incidents where the Others attack the humans without provocation (The Fist, for example). The Others butchered Waymar Royce when he was next to unarmed. The wight of Waymar attacked and killed Will with no provocation.  The wight of Othor attacked the Old Bear without provocation. You say that the WWs might be attacking because of trespassing. The Battle for the Dawn was about 8000 years ago. If this was about trespassing, the fighting would've happened a long time ago from present day.

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2 hours ago, Jaenara Belarys said:

1.What exactly is INTHOTW? 

In The House Of The Worm. A short story by GRRM. Read the OP.

 

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2. We've seen incidents where the Others attack the humans without provocation (The Fist, for example). The Others butchered Waymar Royce when he was next to unarmed. The wight of Waymar attacked and killed Will with no provocation.  The wight of Othor attacked the Old Bear without provocation. You say that the WWs might be attacking because of trespassing. The Battle for the Dawn was about 8000 years ago. If this was about trespassing, the fighting would've happened a long time ago from present day.

I responded to all of this things in this very thread, sometimes even to you, but I'll go again.

1. Yes, we've seen the Others attack Humans without provocation, I'm not saying they are all good beings and humanity is evil. I'm saying they are human-like, and humans would've deffinitely attacked the Others if they knew they could beat them, with or without provocation.

2. Trespassing isn't something I proposed, I just said it might be that, or it might be anything, we don't know, cause we don't know their motives. I have no reason to think the fighting is because the humans are trespassing (well, besides the Wall) and in fact, if you read the OP, I think the fighting is happening because of millenia old grudges, conflicts, biases and ancient racist propaganda, and that goes both ways.

3. "The Battle for the Dawn was about 8000 years ago. If this was about trespassing, the fighting would've happened a long time ago from present day." 

I answered this to you already, you ignored it. If humans beat the Others, they wouldn't want to fight us right away, or else they wouldn't have been beaten, so maybe this is the time it took them to recover their numbers, maybe they attacked before, but humanity isn't aware, like most of them aren't aware of it right now, or maybe the reason for their attack is more recent (like I speculate about in here)

 

Anyhow, read the OP kid, don't try to argue against arguments you haven't read.

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Haven't read the whole thread.  Yes, war is generally bad.  But let's not be too nihilistic.  Sometimes, a man has to fight.  And at some point, the True Knight must slay the Dragon before it devours too many maidens.  And it seems to me that the good and brave man also has a duty to defend his community against the ravaging hordes of ice demons and ice zombies who seek to eliminate all human life.

Feel free to argue on philosophical grounds that the human life is no more valuable than that of a bunny, a robot, a cockroach or walking corpse, and that if we meet a tiger we should feed our daughters to it in the interests of species diversity.  I'll just roll my eyes.

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2 hours ago, Mister Smikes said:

Haven't read the whole thread.  Yes, war is generally bad.  But let's not be too nihilistic.  Sometimes, a man has to fight.  And at some point, the True Knight must slay the Dragon before it devours too many maidens.  And it seems to me that the good and brave man also has a duty to defend his community against the ravaging hordes of ice demons and ice zombies who seek to eliminate all human life.

Feel free to argue on philosophical grounds that the human life is no more valuable than that of a bunny, a robot, a cockroach or walking corpse, and that if we meet a tiger we should feed our daughters to it in the interests of species diversity.  I'll just roll my eyes.

Ha!, that was never the point, I'm not proposing that humans are 'bad' because they are defending themselves from the Others, I'm proposing that there might be more effective methods of defense and that the Human/Other conflict might be as stupid and trivial as the Bracken/Blackwood conflict.

Tho you did reming me of this one lecture by a vegan dude, he was asked by an audience member why he didn't eat meat but his body killed bacteria and he replied something like 'The other day a bear attacked me in the forest, and while he was eating me I laid there, thinking "too bad I'm a vegan, I could've really done something'. Sadly it was one of the only good parts of the lecture, nothing against vegans, but this particular dude was an absolute ass.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Great post, totally agree with the principle, although one could see the Others as a threat humanity cannot reason with, and hence one it can only confront by working together. The heroes might have to mend differences to survive, it doesn't mean that the Others haven't themselves failed to see as much. The Others could represent what happens when you push someone to the point where they have to do anything they can to survive, and that might imply destroying their enemy, or so they would believe and commit to entirely by now. They were "othered", to the point that now they truly have become the threat they were made to be. This is essentially what I believe will likely happen with Daenerys' supporters. In that case, Ice and Fire, people pushes to two extremes by conflict.

But winning against them wouldn't mean peace, as so far there has been plenty of war without their respective threats over the kingdoms; there would be plenty ahead as well.

A Song of Ice & Fire, to me, is a "Threat of Ice & Fire". It is the Dark Lord using the threat of both to secure peace under his rule. The Others and the dragons both ultimately becoming slaves to the Three Eyed Crow. And the real question becomes, will the "hero" decide to stop him and let mankind chose its own future, with all of the good and bad it implies, or let him rule to secure a peace without free will.

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War between the wildlings and the NW over Jon's death is counterproductive to defending the wall.  It would be best to pack up.  Migration to the east is the peaceful solution.

Jon Wight returning not going to save the world.  He is one of the bad actors who are pushing the world towards the end.  Not purposely but his attempts to help his family are causing problems.  

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  • 1 month later...

No one's talking about this anymore, but I had to return to this thread when I read GRRM's 'Words for our times' quote from Mandela from May 5th.

"It is so easy to break down and destroy. The heroes are those who make peace and build"

5 books, 3 novellas and a world book into this series I'm still not 100% sure what it's about, but if a final resolution to the problem in the north is part of it, then I don't think that our hero (whoever that is) is going to resolve it by wiping out the race of Others. It just wouldn't be consistent with the sorts of beliefs that Mr Martin espouses.

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As to the OP/Title whatever I reiterate that I think it's pretty obvious/clear that Homo Sapiens speciestic ego of thinking "the world needs saving in the first place" sums up our measly existence.

We are saving our own asses, or at least trying in vain to. There are no species that won't benifit from our extinction. Life and Nature will go on in this world and Planetos regardless of our pathetic attempts at survival. 

War will be just another catalyst for Armageddon Apocalypse or Doomsday, whatever you call it. That's how the series is going to end, both in GRRM'S fictional world and ours. Nuclear Holocaust. It is known. What matters is what happens in between 

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On 3/29/2021 at 2:48 PM, CamiloRP said:

I answered this to you already, you ignored it. If humans beat the Others, they wouldn't want to fight us right away, or else they wouldn't have been beaten, so maybe this is the time it took them to recover their numbers, maybe they attacked before, but humanity isn't aware, like most of them aren't aware of it right now, or maybe the reason for their attack is more recent (like I speculate about in here)

 

8000 years to build up their strength? Don't make me laugh. 

On 3/30/2021 at 6:06 PM, Mister Smikes said:

Feel free to argue on philosophical grounds that the human life is no more valuable than that of a bunny, a robot, a cockroach or walking corpse, and that if we meet a tiger we should feed our daughters to it in the interests of species diversity.  I'll just roll my eyes.

:agree: Thank you. 

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