Amph A Song of Ice and Fire Discussion Thread

Right, but it is all super-ambiguous what happened there.

 

Eh, Lyanna gave birth to Jon and died in the process. The Kingsguard were protecting her and the baby (instead of going to Dragonstone to be with Viserys) most likely because Rhaegar legitimized Jon and that made him heir to the Iron Throne once Aegon was killed. The details of the battle don't matter much.

 

NERD!!!!!

 

Yes.

Just "tipsy," huh?

 

Don't hate, appreciate!

 

The White Walkers aren't being "portrayed" as lame. They are lame. It's a totally generic "evil" threat that doesn't really have any purpose or motives. Everything to date points to their defeat by a generically stupid fantasy solution. Until then, they are a supply of endlessly regenerating bad guys to fight in the same way those hoverboard alien things were in the Avengers films (or any non-officer is in the Dynasty Warriors franchise). They are probably the least appealing part of this whole series and I really don't see what there is to get bent out of shape about.

 

As re: everything, Wocky, you are totally wrong. That, or I have had too much faith in this series.

The Others (ahhh) are going to be the faction that opens this story up to truly Lovecraftian proportions, and proves that beings not understandable by man (but still relatively sympathetic) inhabit Martin's planet. At least I hope so.

 

Well, I don't like that they scream like Ringwraiths in the show. I recall them speaking in the prologue of the first book. And laughing.

 

Right, they are scary and psychedelic in the book. In the show, they are generic ice zombies.

 

How are they supposed to accomplish that, EBB. There are two books left. No viewpoint character is in the position to understand the historic position of the Others, with the possible exception of Bran. This, of course, is deeply unlikely because Bran is aligned with the Children of the Forest, who have been participants in a war against the Others for centuries. Certainly longer than any memory of human society. Further, while there's a fair amount of (justified) cultural elitism from the South, there's been very little to suggest moral ambiguity about either the Others or the Children. The latter are never shown to endorse savage or questionable practices, and the former are never shown to be sympathetic or understandable.

Trying to reverse all this would take way too much retelling. This isn't a movie, where we can do a 15 second "Bruce Willis was dead the whole time" flashback montage. And Martin has no capacity for story-telling economy. This would take hundreds of pages, and require freezing most other action to a halt. There's pretty much no way one fits this in and finishes the rest of the story at all.

 

so my sister and I have this crazy idea that Littlefinger is some sort of agent of the Others or whatever. like, that he's deliberately destabilizing things down in the seven kingdoms in order to prepare the way for their arrival. dunno if it's that he's a normal human raised by them or converted by them or whatever or if he's actually some sort of eldrich entity in cloaked human form, but yeah.

it's only a semi-serious theory but i figured i'd throw it out there. idk

 

Martin said as much, at some point. Paraphrasing, he said that we learn much more about the Others in Winds of Winter.

I don't think that they are going to be or meant to be sympathetic or understandable in a human manner. I don't see the Others starting a blood drive or running a community center for underprivileged children.

Rather, in a surely non-intentional nod to Lacan, the Others simply exist in a world that has a different frame of reference to the Westerosi, and they are almost certainly related in some way to the Great Other that is constantly warring against R'hllor. What they are, and how they relate to humans, is natural to them. They are no more evil than a lion would be. That is, the lion is only evil from the gazelle's perspective.

 

Yeah, I won't believe that until GRRM has actually finished them all. And even then I'll wonder.

 

Not at all what I meant. What you're describing isn't fundamentally different than what Martin's been doing with the rest of the series. The Lannister viewpoints didn't really change the sort of things they did, or make them any "nicer" in a conventional sense. But getting inside those characters heads did create some measure of sympathy just by allowing one to grasp their priorities, even those priorities were terrible or pursued at a terrible cost.

Putting aside how unlikely I think this is, why would it be an interesting development? This outcome is not substantively different than being purposeless re-spawning video game bad guys.

 

I suspect that, while the Lannisters pursued their own ends, for self aggrandizement, power, gold, etc. the Others are caught up either through compulsion or need in a existential battle with humanity,

This is a legitimately weird question. How is it "interesting" to explore the cosmic drama that the people in Westeros are likely caught up in? How is it "interesting" to posit that the Others may be a relatively unintelligible species whose goals, needs, and even weltanschauung are totally at loggerheads with the people we have followed so far? At this point, I feel like I am throwing pearls before swine.

 

Yes, I grasped that the first three times you mentioned it. I only chose the Lannisters as an easy way to distinguish between creating sympathy with readers and having characters do something they might legitimately call "good" since my first post wasn't clear on that point.

Allow me to rephrase. Our current state of knowledge is that the Others are, a priori, bent on the destruction of humanity. You have responded that we might discover they are naturally inclined to want to destroy humanity. Where is the daylight between those two positions?

 

The same kind of daylight that there is between believing that the Arabs want to kill us because they hate our freedom, and that they want to kill us because we are propping up israel? Between Indians killing white women because they are immoral savages, and Indians killing whites because they are being massacred and having their land stolen?

Neither of those are exact analogies, but the point is that there is an emphasis on motivation that clarifies and provides nuance to mere actions. You may not find that interesting, I do.

 

Your analogies are so dissimilar I don't think they can even be called that. Making opposition an intrinsic part of the Others' nature doesn't constitute anything rational or cogent. It just makes explicit the "just because" reasoning that we assume is in play at the moment. That's what I'm saying.

 

You are confusing motivation with action. I am just as convinced as you are that the Others will, when it is all said and done, be diametrically opposed to the civilizations we know and seek to destroy them. You are basically arguing that, unless the Others act in a way contradictory to their oppositional nature, they can simply be assumed to be "Always Chaotic Evil".

WHY they are doing what they are doing, however, is a matter of cosmology, world-building, and story-telling.

A more fictional analogy: In the Revelation Space series, humans eventually become aware of a group of superpowered robotic beings (the Inhibitors) that hunt the galaxy for emerging civilizations with the capability of interstellar travel and destroy them. The first few books in the series treat these beings as simply deadly enemies with no motivation, but, after the humans win it is revealed that the machines were trying to prevent the creation of terraforming devices that had a high potential of going haywire and consuming all matter in the universe. (My rough understanding from various wikis)
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Would you argue that it then did not matter why the Inhibitors were trying to destroy humanity? That they were simply mindless evil?

 

No, but again, those are actual reasons. I'm saying that if the sole reason for enmity between humans and Others is some sort of inborn, heritable instinct, then I don't see where genetic determinism is much better/different than "narrative convenience" determinism. I'd agree with you that having some sort of rationale could potentially make them more interesting, but besides not seeing where there's a vehicle to do this (Again, who would give us an unbiased perspective on the Others? Or rather, one that is differently biased than what we now see from their opponents, the humans and the Children of the Wild?) I just don't see how this would qualify as the same category of explanations. I think reason as in "justification" is very interesting, whereas reason as defined as mere "explanation of an event's cause" has the potential to add nothing at all.

 

I was afraid for a second that they were going to make the TV audience think Ramsay was a Karstark and I'd have to endure stupid speculation based on that.

 

Does anyone find it annoying that keep giving Cersei's evil acts over to Joffrey for no apparent reasons? Seriously, so far besides Joffrey and a little bit of Tywin the only Lannister to perform any really dark act has been Jaime. While, in the books Jaime is probably the most likable of the entire bunch.

 

My only guess is that the writers don't want her to be so insufferable when she becomes the major character remaining in King's Landing once Tywin and Joffrey die, Tyrion and Varys go into hiding, and Jamie leaves to help subdue the Riverlands. And/or want to make her descent into bat**** insanity after Joffrey dies to be steeper.

 

They still have all the Tyrells in King's Landing when that happens. Moreover, I am just complaining as they have really watered down the nasty and darkness of the Lannisters.

 

Next week is the bear pit. OMG I cannot wait.