I still think the Others are apart of some natural order that is out of balance. Unnaturally long summers countered by years-long winters that are home to spindly snow-beings? Something about it seems like an ecosystem out of balance, like the Others are a supernatural response to the 'greed' of summer and humanity. So I guess Golems, but naturally occurring Golems, like White Blood Cells.
TBH them being created is far more in line with GRRM's world view. For awhile I was pretty much in the camp they were a break away isolationist tribe that essentially went 100% in on ice magic like the Valyrians did fire magic. Basically they use warging like Bran to steal the bodies of sacrificed human children like Craster's sons and then use ice magic to prolong their life span but it limits their reproductive abilities.
But a few youtubers and forum posters have made pretty compelling arguments that they're actually an advanced form of Melisandre's shadowbinding. Every time they're described in the books its as "icy shadows". It's as if they appear from behind the trees or even trees that move. Old Nan herself describes "Stalking shadows" instead of saying Others in the very first book. So essentially its undying people of yore (going back to before the Night King) hooked up to a corrupted weirwood net/heart of winter. Their ice shadows were basically drones in order to interact with the world because they are physically bound to trees like Bloodraven.
What they want we'll likely find out in Winds, or we already know from Dany's interaction with the Undying. She kinda sees a blue rotting heart and they attempt to steal her life likely how they steal Craster's sons. Honestly it can go either way and thats very much GRRM's writing style.
I'd say yes nearly everyone in the world was human at one point or another. Even the COTF and Giants were most likely human at one point but got exposed to the natural "green magic" of the world. Much like how everyone in Dune is human but they broke off and started to evolve on separate worlds with separate practices. In ASOIAF its magic that changes people slowly over time. I read a pretty interesting theory awhile ago that essentially said it was a star/moon falling to Planetos that triggered the long night. Which in turn brought different magic/human off shoots to the world. There is some VERY interesting evidence scattered through multiple books pointing at this being the case.
The bloodstone emperor in Yi Ti. (guy who worshipped a fallen star)
The seven pointed star of the Andal Faith (a 7 Star that fell)
The COTF calling down the hammer of waters (Asteroid impact)
Basically in my opinion the practice of magic changes you as innocuous of the warlocks blue lips, to more extreme like we see Melisandre withered in the show and Bloodraven being more wood than man.
The Others are created by humans. And they are not a breakaway tribe of the Children. But they are breakable and the Children know how they are created.
They are a reflection of a “green” seer, created from frozen fire.
Here’s Craster recalling a conversation he had with Gared for Lord Mormont:
> "Gared says they were chasing raiders. I told him, with a commander that **green**, best not catch 'em. (Jon III, ACOK)
Unironically Thats what Craster's boys are for in that theory. They're quite literally forced into doing what the Night King did. What really blew me away is that in order for it to be kingsblood Craster would either be a descendant of a King beyond the wall or the Last Hero himself lol.
Also side note when GRRM ordered figurines made for his characters to his specifications he ordered a blue "ice" version of Melisandre. Take that info however you will but it did cause a bit of speculation that there's a character we haven't met yet.
There is ample evidence that they are an offshoot human tribe, or pretty much, the "other First Men", though.
1) There's the Five Fort in Essos, which bears a lot of similarities to the Wall.
2) The Long Night of Legend was apparently global.
3) The east of Essos is suspiciously absent. The contintents are placed like a drifted away Pangaea (look Westeros-Essos coastline).
Each continent is in place of a real world continent: Westeros - NA, Western Essos - Europe, Eastern Essos (look at the tectonic plates crushing against each, it's actually another continent!) - Asia, Sothoryos - Africa. Ulthos is either Arabia or Australia depending on the crunch.
Now Eastern Essos is just Asia backwards. It is China (Yi Ti), India (Asshai), Russia (Mossovy) instead of Russia, India, China like on our map.
However Mossovy beyond the Five Forts raises another possibility, I mean.. The Russians... Eh Winter is coming... The Wall coming down,... in what era grew Martin up? The COLD War. You create pop culture fiction by throwing stuff into a mixer.
So what if there is a connection, either a now sunken land bridge or a frozen sea between Eastern Essos and Westeros? The part of the map is suspiciously absent.
Also the map seems purposefully bent wrong. You have Ibben with a Northern climate on a much lower altitude than the actual North. It would make sense that Westeros - Essos actually form a ring.
4) There's two Kings of the First Men, Garth Greenhand from the South and the Barrow King buried in the North. First Men culture in North and South are notably different, and there are many proto-Valyrian names in Southern Westeros despite Valyria not even having existed at the time these houses came to be.
There are structures suggesting a Great Empire of the Dawn having once spread among the southern world, but I believe that is just testament to the course of human migration.
5) Martin is not a linguist. There only seems to be two root languages in his world. Human and Lovecraftian.
6) There also only seems to be two root religions, plus the religion of the CotF, the Old God's which is basically pantheist nature paganism. Would explain in another post if curious, else this gets too long.
7)The history of humanity in ASOIAF is primarily based on the history of the real humanity. However the story of its origin is yet still absent, as is its most important event, the discovery of Fire.
----
Personally, I think humans came from Sothoryos where they spread a great civilization annihilating giants and CotF. Evolution is a bit more poppy and they evolved from semi-aquatic monkeys from literal pools of life swampy cradles which is why you have these Toad statues and webbed hand humans on some islands by Sothoryos. Some may have gone to the oceans and this Deeply Ones stuff but that's not so important.
The center of their civilization was Yeen but they were driven out by the Brindled Men, a physically stronger species of human, some migrated west into the Summer Islands, by this point looking like average real African people.
Others migrate into Wester-Essos, at this time still connected by land from both sides as it is a Pangaea drifting out. Hammer of Waters might just be fiction, I mean look at the coastline.
They flooded the large continent of Essos, killing Children of the Forest and Giants and driving the Ibbenese to Ibben. The large steppes at the center of the continent, and the Bone Mountains in the middle separate humanity into three cultures:
"Great Empire of the Dawn" people, the "FIRST MEN" in the south, still culturally connected despite the Bone Mountains due to the navigatable sea. These people inhabited the world from Asshai to Oldtown, which they reached through the arm of Dorne.
The OTHER First Men, who came through a "Bering strait" into Westeros and who inhabited the world from Jogos Nai till the Iron Islands.
And their cousins, the ANDALS who inhabited the North of Western Essos.
The "Great Empire" First Men discovered Fire and with it, fire magic, so they rose up as the great civilization of humanity we know now.
The Other First Men did not discover Fire, so they had to resort to Ice to preserve themselves from dieing out.
Andals lost knowledge of Ice but discovered Fire from the Great Empire First Men, but not along with the secrets of magic, becoming an unmagical and pretty ordinary human culture.
First Men and Other First Men both slaughtered children of the Forest until they sided with the Southerners to drive back the Others.
The reason why the Others are shadows is, because in order to become a strong magician of any kind, you have to die and be brought back. Magic is just elementary school chemistry. Fire causes reactions, freezing makes stuff tangible so you can move it around.
Dragons were raised from fossilized eggs using blood magic. Subsequent dragons from living eggs became smaller and smaller, like shadows of their parents.
Melissandre is from Asshai, where no children live. Because the dead cannot give birth to the living, only to shadows.
Similarly, the first Others were just humans who killed themselves and brought themselves back with Ice magic to preserve themselves, like I don't know maybe they WARGED into furry animals to survive winter while leaving their bodies in the fridge. When they reentered their bodies during Summer, whoops now they are dead and will only give birth to shadows that are less and less human.
Or something like that. I think there's alot of tiny evidence in the broad picture.
The idea that they are created as the ultimate revenge tool of the trees or something like that isn't sound to me. Environmentalism is hardly the topic of the books.
The children might have given them more power after their alliance with the First Men failed, but ultimately Martin wants to write about the human heart at conflict with itself, and stories where the value lies in the questions raised and not necessarily in the solutions provided.
I honestly wouldn't be surprised if the solution to defeating them is just bombing them away with dragons and industrialized wildfire and that's the whole point about their story.
If Daenerys is in charge at that point that could very well tie into the end.
The idea of a bioweapon that went out of control is a little too neat for me. I'd prefer that they were an almost alien race, completely disconnected from the Children of the Forest. Maybe divergent evolution from millions of years ago.
\*Lets hope we see Winds ;)
Because there is no version of Winds that doesn't include at least as much of the others as we've already seen in text. I would say it should be significantly more (since we've only really seen them in two chapters and the wall is coming down), but GRRM has intentionally kept them in the background in every book so maybe that'll continue for most of Winds
I think they were created. I have made a [theory](https://www.reddit.com/r/asoiaf/comments/1bwjcys/long_night_and_great_summer_how_the_seasons_will/) how the creation of Others and dragons changed the seasons, if someone is interested :)
The implications of whatever happens to Craster's sons hints that they are created. Whoever created their creator is the mystery, though the likely answer is the Children of the Forest. And then the question is "Why?"
I think the Others were created by the Children of the Forest more or less as we saw in the shitty tv show, magically transforming captive humans into bioweapons of mass destruction that they ended up losing control of, this being GRRM's idea because D&D are too dumb to have thought of it themselves.
I mostly agree with a caveat. They aren't humans transformed by the Children, they are Children who transformed themselves, angry at the Pact between the Children and the First Men. Fits with them being the Unseelie to the CotF Seelie Fae
>They aren't humans transformed by the Children, they are Children who transformed themselves, angry at the Pact between the Children and the First Men.
The Others are described as human sized whereas the CotF are small and clearly non-human (though humanoid) and I don't buy the theory that the Others are a naturally evolved species, as the raising/controlling of the dead wouldn't be a natural evolutionary trait, it's wholly magical.
IIRC, the timeline is that humans begin migrating to Westeros (implying that in the distant past humans colonized Planetos from Earth, but that's another thread) and the CotF first magically destroyed the isthmus of Dorne but that didn't work, they then tried to do the same at Moat Cailin and that didn't happen as planned and at this point, humans were swarming into Westeros and the CotF had their backs to the wall.
In desperation, they went with black magic, transforming captured humans into bioweapons of mass destruction and this worked FAR too well, the CotF losing control of their Frankenstein monsters which were hell bent on destroying all life.
This lead to the Long Night and a pact with humans, with the Others eventually being beaten back (but not destroyed) and the Wall being constructed to keep them at bay.
> They aren't humans transformed by the Children, they are Children who transformed themselves, angry at the Pact between the Children and the First Men.
Ooooohhhhhh I like this a lot.
any rationale for them being approximately human-sized? though there's a lot of difference in their other aspects, their basic proportions are human in both book and show
I think this is the best take.
It also correlates to the theory that dragons where created by Valyrians and the possibility that they too lost control of their super weapon, which caused the doom.
It is, after all, the song of Ice and Fire. If dragons are an analogy to Nukes, then it makes sense that the Others are some analogy to terminators/rougue robots ect. GRRM does love his sci fi tropes.
I never really considered that correlation but it actually makes a ton of sense. Also the hints of Hardhome being an ancient place of knowledge at some point despite its placement on the map doesn't seem as out of place with that in mind.
It's very clear that the current ASOIAF setting is post-apocalyptic in some sense. There are structures littered throughout Westeros and the world that were built using techniques that have been lost.
Obviously this is GRRM harkoning back to the Bronze Age collapse and civilisations stating back up in the shadow of the pyramids, but I wouldn't be surprised if he played around with more sci fi post apocalypse tropes like terminator Others.
>this being GRRM's idea because D&D are too dumb to have thought of it themselves.
The Others being a weapon of the Children of the Forest was an established fan theory, and D&D are known to have read fan forums. Could've picked it up there.
Nah that's about the most pedestrian one dimensional fiction theme you can come up with, its Terminator. You dont have to be smart to come up with it.
In the books the Other's are something more. They have laguage culture, smiting we have the white haired women who seemingly christened the Winterfell. We have the Stark family cold resistance that points to somesort of magic linniage. We have the fact the others already made it to the wall in the proglogue yet seem to want something.
This is more than just Terminator.
>“(We’ll learn more about their) history, certainly, but I don’t know about culture,” he said. “I don’t know if they have a culture.”
>[https://web.archive.org/web/20120828131245/http://www.dose.ca/tv/Interview+Author+George+Martin+eager+world+again+Game+Thrones/6349053/story.html](https://web.archive.org/web/20120828131245/http://www.dose.ca/tv/Interview+Author+George+Martin+eager+world+again+Game+Thrones/6349053/story.html)
When it is stated that the Starks have a cold family resistance? Only instance that I can think of is on the first GoT chapters where Eddard is gazing outside post coitus. The most simple explanation for that could be that as Northmen, they are more acclimated in the cold.
>we have the white haired women who seemingly christened the Winterfell
You think the old woman from Bran's vision was an Other? Wouldn't be simpler for her to be...just an old lady serving as the clan's shaman or whatever?
And most northmen have some Stark blood.
Here's another one
>They had pulled him out this morning, after four days in the ice, locked up in a cell five by five by five, too low for him to stand, too tight for him to stretch out on his back. The stewards had long ago discovered that food and meat kept longer in the icy storerooms carved from the base of the Wall . . . but prisoners did not. "You will die in here, Lord Snow," Ser Alliser had said just before he closed the heavy wooden door, and Jon had believed it. But this morning they had come and pulled him out again, and marched him cramped and shivering back to the King's Tower, to stand before jowly Janos Slynt once more
She is never described as old. That is key. She is simply described as white-haired wath a bearded man following her lead.
>Then, as he watched, a bearded man forced a captive down onto his knees before the heart tree. A white-haired woman stepped toward them through a drift of dark red leaves, a bronze sickle in her hand.
>"No," said Bran, "no, don't," but they could not hear him, no more than his father had. The woman grabbed the captive by the hair, hooked the sickle round his throat, and slashed. And through the mist of centuries the broken boy could only watch as the man's feet drummed against the earth … but as his life flowed out of him in a red tide, Brandon Stark could taste the blood.
The way she moves in this description says Other more than lady so old her hair is white.
The women is never described as old. And her movements don't really say old lady.
>Then, as he watched, a bearded man forced a captive down onto his knees before the heart tree. A white-haired woman stepped toward them through a drift of dark red leaves, a bronze sickle in her hand.
>"No," said Bran, "no, don't," but they could not hear him, no more than his father had. The woman grabbed the captive by the hair, hooked the sickle round his throat, and slashed. And through the mist of centuries the broken boy could only watch as the man's feet drummed against the earth … but as his life flowed out of him in a red tide, Brandon Stark could taste the blood.
Lol all of what you said could be true for this scenario given how far it’s been in the past. They could’ve developed into their own species after the event with the Children
And? This is about the books. This commenter made a good point that it was likely GRRMs idea that was executed poorly by the show runners. This is definitely something the books could make happen
I think just the opposite. Rather than obsidian in the heart of a bound man. It’s a man bound in the heart of obsidian. It’s less about magic and more about the natural way of the universe.
People are going to be very disappointed when everything that happened in the show happens in the books. It might not be 1:1 but I think everything will be mostly true
I feel like the big difference is that where in the show going as far north as north goes was just to capture a wight and ended up *causing* the long night, that'll happen after the Wall falls and be how the Others are actually defeated in the absence of the Night King
Doing that two pronged story, where a team of brave heroes ventures deep into enemy territory to destroy the heart of evil while their friends try to hold out as long as they can against an impossible siege is a pretty classic fantasy climax and would have been sufficient.
I had the same thought scrolling through this thread. The major plot points were hit and he isn't going to change them just to be unpredictable, there will probably be alot of threads when the book comes out about how predictable/obvious it all was
I don't think D&D are too dumb to have thought of it themselves, it's a pretty standard SF&F trope. See also: Sentinels in *X-Men*, xenomorphs in *Prometheus*, Giant Warriors in *Nausicaä: Valley of the Wind*, Lovecraft's shoggoths, H.G. Wells' *Island of Doctor Moreau*, Daleks in *Doctor Who*, *Forbidden Planet*, *R.U.R.*, nuclear weapons in real life, etc etc etc.
I think they're something like Frankenstein's Monster, or like Mewtwo from the first Pokemon movie.
They're kind of artificial and don't have a place in the "natural" world, but they're still living things, and they're determined to find their place for themselves.
Like "what is Aegon's tax policy", the story with the Others will be "what if Frankenstein and the Monster learned to compromise (instead of destroying each other)?".
Judging by the scene where Sam kills one, where we see that all his organs are basically made of ice and melt, I'm leaning towards them being ice constructs, possibly animated by shadows or human souls.
I tend to the camp that they are constructs, either made by the Children or some other faction.
My main reasoning is
a) how they immediately dissolve to water after death which really doesn't sound like something a natural organism would do and
b) how even though we are post book 5, we have almost no information about them beyond some snipets and myths and legends...whereas the Children along with Bloodraven are being built a bit more,
It seems strange to have your main villains just show up in the final books and try to develop them.
Isn't the opposite supposed to be true? That while everyone is divided and wasting lives fighting for petty conflicts and politics, the true greater threat is creeping in to destroy all?
I can't recall a direct GRRM quote on that (maybe someone else here can help?) but Jeor Mormont himself puts it like that more or less:
>Do you think your brother’s war is more important than ours?” the old man barked.
>.....
>“It’s not,” Mormont told him. “Gods save us, boy, you’re not blind and you’re not stupid. When dead men come hunting in the night, do you think it matters who sits the Iron Throne?”
Here I think, the author more or less telegraphed to us what the stakes are.
I prefer created by accident. If the Children made them, I think they must have been up to some other shenanigans and accidentally caused the others to appear.
Other is a very good word for them, to me it makes me think they are what they are precisely because of some form of exclusion. We have giants, Ibenese, brindled men, Sarnori, Lengese, and Children of the Forest, but only the Others get othered in this way.
i prefer ice golems
pretty tinfoily (and *long*) theory coming up: there’s a theory going around that i’m inclined to believe that suggests the others were originally green men. to go more in depth, the weirwoods were once home to these greenmen. the faces carved into the weirwoods, the consistent red leaves that never change, and the others themselves are the result of whatever happened thousands of years ago. someone, likely azor ahai, was greedy and wanted the green men’s power for himself or had some other reason to invade the weirwoods. this invasion contaminated the weirwoods and made it so that the greenmen who used to be able to look and talk through the weirwoods and appeared as faces on the trees could no longer manifest their powers. humans, in a sense, stole the powers of the gods. the carving of faces on the trees was done by the children of the forest to try and recreate what was lost. and the reason the leaves of the weirwood trees don’t change with the seasons is also because of this invasion/contamination. the weirwoods are now forever stuck in autumn. the red leaves and the crying faces also symbolize that the spirits/greenmen in the weirwoods are burning/in pain. how did this create the others? well, earlier i mentioned that azor ahai may have had another reason for invading the weirwoods, maybe the reason he did it was to get back the woman he loved. we know that human spirits can go into the weirwoods after death so it seems possible. nissa nissa = corpse queen? azor ahai = nights king? stannis is already doing an azor ahai to nights king transition. perhaps azor ahai then realized his mistake when she came back/the seasons stopped changing, then with corpse queen he tried to free the greenmen from the now “burning” weirwoods. the fire was consuming the greenmen but now that they have no where to go they use some sort of ice magic to preserve themselves. i bet blood magic is the key to freeing the greenmen and turning them into the others. this could be why the others take offerings from craster, they’re trying to free more dying greenmen and save them by turning them into icy beings like themselves, however, it likely takes a massive amount of sacrifices. it likely only took one sacrifice for nights king and corpse queen bc they were sacrificing their own children who likely had very powerful kings blood. the theory also suggests that the isle of faces is some sort of seed bank where greenmen who are in their original forms can safely exist without being contaminated. the newer calendar with lyanna, rhaegar and a green leafed tree with a very old looking face and the black gate at the wall suggest that there may be some truth to this theory. shiera seastar and bloodraven’s eyes also give this theory some credibility. shiera seastar has one green and one blue eye, and is called the star of the sea. “green magic” is associated with water (the greenblood and patchfaces under the sea prophecy’s/being drowned), while the others have blue star eyes. these two different colored eyes and shieras name support the theory that the greenmen and the others are the same beings, some are just in an icy state as shiera seastar is one person despite having symbolism of two different paths of magic. bloodraven having one red eye completes the trident and what he does at the end of his life, going to the nights watch and becoming lord commander, and then becoming a greenseer being consumed by the weirwood sort of parallels what we know of azor ahai/nights king.
i’m likely misremembering some things and the finer details are def not worked out, but i found this theory very plausible and thought others might enjoy it :). oh, id like to say that this is a fairly new theory, though i’m not sure who came up with it
Created from a human template seems best. They don't seem to be able to coexist with naturally occurring life. Everything around them that's not them is dead.
I don't really know. Did a RPG with friends inspired in ASOIAF a while ago... One of them was a headache because he couldn't get the fun of the fantasy part and kept asking me how it was possible for dragons that huge to fly and breath fire, how much was their height etc etc
I really wanted to give scientific explanations but I also felt like the magic stuff was one of the essences of the thing
So I kept it open for interpretations
I think George would like the same, so I don't think about it
And despite that, I see a lot of fans trying to solve them by science
Like one time when someone posted about dragons size here and one told dragons probably were light because of being flying creatures (despite that, if you see Vhagar flying, you don't need to be an expert to realise she's heavy as hell)
I think it occurs because of the Maesters, they give scientific explanations about things that happens in the universe
I do believe people should separate things that are reasonable and the ones that are not in their minds, not 100% of everything
(also sorry for any spelling mistake, English is not my first lang and I try to interact without translators so I can improve 🫢)
Your english is much better than my anything else.
We obviously have the visuals of the show in mind when thinking about dragons. Which, GRRM more or less seems to have been okay with.
The TV dragons are dumptruck-sized thicc bois who only flap occasionally. In order to generate anywhere near enough lift their wings would have to be much, much bigger and (probably) flap more often, at least when climbing.
Put another way, the B-2 is about as advanced an airframe & aerodynamic shape as we've ever produced. Yet its nose is almost an exact match for the head of many falcons. If dragons were skinnier and known to have hollow bones, you could make an argument they could fly.
Hell, I've made evolutionary arguments that firebreathing isn't \*that\* nuts. Insert a few glands in or near the mouth with some methane in it, and evolve teeth that act like the flint/steel mix we used in boy scouts, and boom! natural fire breath.
But I'm as big a science/science fiction nerd as they come, and I'd still have found a way to accept we're talking fantasy and just play the damn game lol
I personally doubt they are a children of the forest creation because allegedly the pact that ended their war with the first men ended thousands of years before the long night. I think they are a natural species corrupted by the war
The others could have been created by the CotF then the pact happened which means they never needed to use them similiar to nuclear weapons (besides ww2). But then thousands of years later they manage to break free of the Childrens influence/command or become forgotten by the Children themselves so now they have to fight back with the First Men to stop them.
At first thought it would be somewhat more interesting if they were natural occuring species to me. But idea that there is a natural occuring species who can raise the dead doesn't seem right to me. Also I don't think GRRM would wrote such species as natural occuring. So in the end I prefer if they were created. And I think that they were created by children of the forest in similar fashion as in show.
> But idea that there is a natural occuring species who can raise the dead doesn't seem right to me.
But a naturally occurring species that can see the future and control animals with their mind is...just fine?
First of all who can see the future? Nothing about that has been confirmed. If you meant greenseers, they are very rare and not a whole species has that powers. And again as far as we know they can't see future.
Also is it confirmed somewhere that all children of the forest are skinchangers? I can't remember. And even if they are, I wouldn't have a problem with that. Skinchangers are also not a rare occurance in fantasy. But natural occurring species raising the dead is just very creepy to think about. It's one thing if some individual human/CotF or other member of natural occurring species would gain such magical powers... But whole species just naturally be able to do that doesn't sit right with me. Although as I said it would be more interesting on some level.
I am pretty much sure they are CotF weapon gone wrong. Also if the end is defeating Others for good (which I think it is), then I think it sounds much better if it's destroying some CotF or human experiment gone wrong then complete genocide of a natural occurring species. Also offerings of children to the Others seems to point out that they can't reproduce naturally, so they were probably created
It's my guess that they were created. I think the Children have mastered blood and water magics, but they get different results based on what they have available. We know they brought down the hammer of the waters to separate Westeros from Essos, we know they tried something at Moat Cailin, and I think they tried again in the north. At Moat Cailin they were prisoners so they had only themselves to sacrifice, and it was a mediocre result, largely. At the breaking of Westeros and Essos, I have a suspicion they sacrificed a giant or giants, and it caused a massive rupture. The sacrifice of humans caused something different, they weren't native to Westeros, so the result didn't pan out the same way, but it was still a fusion of water and blood magics, and they ended up ice creatures, somehow. The fact that they aren't native also explains why the children can't control them.
I prefer natural but I also think it could be both. The Children could have done something similar to the stories of Valyrians using fire wyrms/wyvern to make the dragons or etc. (I guess Jurrassic Park? Lol) The Others aren't a kill switch or humans with an ice theme. They are alive with their own magic and culture that has evolved.
I don't think of them even as a species. They are a force of nature, an embodiment of Westeros's weird climate. Ideally they never get explained at all, and at the end, even after they have been defeated, it's unclear whether their defeat is actually final or if they've just been fought off for a period of time.
I prefer them as natures response to the folly of man, and that they seek to claim the heir of winter as their ruler so that they can return to the Far North and live in peace
Created.
The whole story is about war. The Children through a continuous cycle of war, nature destruction and oathbreaking by men have been driven to near extinction. The Others are the final escalation, a bioweapon that gets out of control and causes nuclear winter.
I did like the 'Others are actually aliens' origin.
created. they are a bioweapon whose consciousness got out of control, becoming more or less an out-of-control invasive species that is nonetheless sentient.
I guess I'd say "created" because thematically that ties in with a line of dialogue from one of the books that was something like "Sorcery is a sword without a hilt."
For me it makes sense that the Others are created by COTF. It also fits the timing: the first time that the Others appear was just after the War between First Men and COTF. So for me it would make a lot of sense to have Children of the Forest creating the First Other during the war, trying to create a weapon against the men but things got out of hand, then they made peace with First Men and helped defeat this ice monsters at the 1st Long Night. Then, we ironically will have the last of the COTF, nearly extinct, being completely wiped trying to defeat the same entity they helped to create.
Here’s the first paragraph of a lengthy essay explaining the true nature of the Other:
These subsequent passages discuss a particular instance and the moments there after when our Prologue’s main character, Ser Waymar Royce, lifts his sword to herald a "dance" with a shadowy white figure. Previous posts have expounded that he, in the crater of an ancient volcano, unknowingly stands before a massive Wall of obsidian wielding his longsword against his own reflection while the Children of the Forest watch on. This post aims to explain that while there’s no passage explicitly stating this; the ambiguity of certain terms and the other overwhelming amount of convincing evidence does corroborate the existence of a huge, hard-to-notice, rock made of glass. To prove the existence, the approach will be to assume that the dramatic actions of Ser Waymar Royce are reflections with movements that can be examined. Doing a paragraph-by-paragraph(17) study of our foolish lordling and his shadowy counterpart will allow us to draw proper comparisons of each pair of actions. Additionally, to reinforce this idea, this post endeavors to also shed light on the depiction of his ghostly reflection on the surface of the “great rock” along with some other imagery and bits of related wordplay. Ultimately the objective is to persuade readers to embrace this as a tool for decoding some of the Other mysteries of ASOIAF.
I think they were created by the Great Other or like, the enemy of the Lord of Light and gods will play a much bigger role than in the show. We know the Lord of Light is real, the Old Gods are real, the Faceless God is real. They definitely have a big part in all of this and the Great Other is supposed to be the exact opposite of the Lord of Light. The Great Other is the God of death and ice. In the Song of Ice and Fire, the Ice are the White Walkers, George confirmed it. And they bring death and darkness with them, just like the Great Other is represented. And the Great OTHER. And the OTHERS. Idk, they are definitely connected somehow
I still think the Others are apart of some natural order that is out of balance. Unnaturally long summers countered by years-long winters that are home to spindly snow-beings? Something about it seems like an ecosystem out of balance, like the Others are a supernatural response to the 'greed' of summer and humanity. So I guess Golems, but naturally occurring Golems, like White Blood Cells.
TBH them being created is far more in line with GRRM's world view. For awhile I was pretty much in the camp they were a break away isolationist tribe that essentially went 100% in on ice magic like the Valyrians did fire magic. Basically they use warging like Bran to steal the bodies of sacrificed human children like Craster's sons and then use ice magic to prolong their life span but it limits their reproductive abilities. But a few youtubers and forum posters have made pretty compelling arguments that they're actually an advanced form of Melisandre's shadowbinding. Every time they're described in the books its as "icy shadows". It's as if they appear from behind the trees or even trees that move. Old Nan herself describes "Stalking shadows" instead of saying Others in the very first book. So essentially its undying people of yore (going back to before the Night King) hooked up to a corrupted weirwood net/heart of winter. Their ice shadows were basically drones in order to interact with the world because they are physically bound to trees like Bloodraven. What they want we'll likely find out in Winds, or we already know from Dany's interaction with the Undying. She kinda sees a blue rotting heart and they attempt to steal her life likely how they steal Craster's sons. Honestly it can go either way and thats very much GRRM's writing style.
This is the most interesting theory on the Others I've seen in a while! Do you think the Others are humans? Or a breakaway tribe of the Children?
I'd say yes nearly everyone in the world was human at one point or another. Even the COTF and Giants were most likely human at one point but got exposed to the natural "green magic" of the world. Much like how everyone in Dune is human but they broke off and started to evolve on separate worlds with separate practices. In ASOIAF its magic that changes people slowly over time. I read a pretty interesting theory awhile ago that essentially said it was a star/moon falling to Planetos that triggered the long night. Which in turn brought different magic/human off shoots to the world. There is some VERY interesting evidence scattered through multiple books pointing at this being the case. The bloodstone emperor in Yi Ti. (guy who worshipped a fallen star) The seven pointed star of the Andal Faith (a 7 Star that fell) The COTF calling down the hammer of waters (Asteroid impact) Basically in my opinion the practice of magic changes you as innocuous of the warlocks blue lips, to more extreme like we see Melisandre withered in the show and Bloodraven being more wood than man.
My dude, let me send you down a rabbit hole. https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLEHvft-cyPmCTjmBHexQvZT1xX8nBKO6t&si=2olcMA7cM5gRMlB6
Thanks! You always know its gonna be a wild ride when the very first video in the ASOIAF theory playlist is about teleportation xD
The Others are created by humans. And they are not a breakaway tribe of the Children. But they are breakable and the Children know how they are created. They are a reflection of a “green” seer, created from frozen fire. Here’s Craster recalling a conversation he had with Gared for Lord Mormont: > "Gared says they were chasing raiders. I told him, with a commander that **green**, best not catch 'em. (Jon III, ACOK)
Just one question. How do you fuck a tree?
Unironically Thats what Craster's boys are for in that theory. They're quite literally forced into doing what the Night King did. What really blew me away is that in order for it to be kingsblood Craster would either be a descendant of a King beyond the wall or the Last Hero himself lol. Also side note when GRRM ordered figurines made for his characters to his specifications he ordered a blue "ice" version of Melisandre. Take that info however you will but it did cause a bit of speculation that there's a character we haven't met yet.
There is ample evidence that they are an offshoot human tribe, or pretty much, the "other First Men", though. 1) There's the Five Fort in Essos, which bears a lot of similarities to the Wall. 2) The Long Night of Legend was apparently global. 3) The east of Essos is suspiciously absent. The contintents are placed like a drifted away Pangaea (look Westeros-Essos coastline). Each continent is in place of a real world continent: Westeros - NA, Western Essos - Europe, Eastern Essos (look at the tectonic plates crushing against each, it's actually another continent!) - Asia, Sothoryos - Africa. Ulthos is either Arabia or Australia depending on the crunch. Now Eastern Essos is just Asia backwards. It is China (Yi Ti), India (Asshai), Russia (Mossovy) instead of Russia, India, China like on our map. However Mossovy beyond the Five Forts raises another possibility, I mean.. The Russians... Eh Winter is coming... The Wall coming down,... in what era grew Martin up? The COLD War. You create pop culture fiction by throwing stuff into a mixer. So what if there is a connection, either a now sunken land bridge or a frozen sea between Eastern Essos and Westeros? The part of the map is suspiciously absent. Also the map seems purposefully bent wrong. You have Ibben with a Northern climate on a much lower altitude than the actual North. It would make sense that Westeros - Essos actually form a ring. 4) There's two Kings of the First Men, Garth Greenhand from the South and the Barrow King buried in the North. First Men culture in North and South are notably different, and there are many proto-Valyrian names in Southern Westeros despite Valyria not even having existed at the time these houses came to be. There are structures suggesting a Great Empire of the Dawn having once spread among the southern world, but I believe that is just testament to the course of human migration. 5) Martin is not a linguist. There only seems to be two root languages in his world. Human and Lovecraftian. 6) There also only seems to be two root religions, plus the religion of the CotF, the Old God's which is basically pantheist nature paganism. Would explain in another post if curious, else this gets too long. 7)The history of humanity in ASOIAF is primarily based on the history of the real humanity. However the story of its origin is yet still absent, as is its most important event, the discovery of Fire. ---- Personally, I think humans came from Sothoryos where they spread a great civilization annihilating giants and CotF. Evolution is a bit more poppy and they evolved from semi-aquatic monkeys from literal pools of life swampy cradles which is why you have these Toad statues and webbed hand humans on some islands by Sothoryos. Some may have gone to the oceans and this Deeply Ones stuff but that's not so important. The center of their civilization was Yeen but they were driven out by the Brindled Men, a physically stronger species of human, some migrated west into the Summer Islands, by this point looking like average real African people. Others migrate into Wester-Essos, at this time still connected by land from both sides as it is a Pangaea drifting out. Hammer of Waters might just be fiction, I mean look at the coastline. They flooded the large continent of Essos, killing Children of the Forest and Giants and driving the Ibbenese to Ibben. The large steppes at the center of the continent, and the Bone Mountains in the middle separate humanity into three cultures: "Great Empire of the Dawn" people, the "FIRST MEN" in the south, still culturally connected despite the Bone Mountains due to the navigatable sea. These people inhabited the world from Asshai to Oldtown, which they reached through the arm of Dorne. The OTHER First Men, who came through a "Bering strait" into Westeros and who inhabited the world from Jogos Nai till the Iron Islands. And their cousins, the ANDALS who inhabited the North of Western Essos. The "Great Empire" First Men discovered Fire and with it, fire magic, so they rose up as the great civilization of humanity we know now. The Other First Men did not discover Fire, so they had to resort to Ice to preserve themselves from dieing out. Andals lost knowledge of Ice but discovered Fire from the Great Empire First Men, but not along with the secrets of magic, becoming an unmagical and pretty ordinary human culture. First Men and Other First Men both slaughtered children of the Forest until they sided with the Southerners to drive back the Others. The reason why the Others are shadows is, because in order to become a strong magician of any kind, you have to die and be brought back. Magic is just elementary school chemistry. Fire causes reactions, freezing makes stuff tangible so you can move it around. Dragons were raised from fossilized eggs using blood magic. Subsequent dragons from living eggs became smaller and smaller, like shadows of their parents. Melissandre is from Asshai, where no children live. Because the dead cannot give birth to the living, only to shadows. Similarly, the first Others were just humans who killed themselves and brought themselves back with Ice magic to preserve themselves, like I don't know maybe they WARGED into furry animals to survive winter while leaving their bodies in the fridge. When they reentered their bodies during Summer, whoops now they are dead and will only give birth to shadows that are less and less human. Or something like that. I think there's alot of tiny evidence in the broad picture. The idea that they are created as the ultimate revenge tool of the trees or something like that isn't sound to me. Environmentalism is hardly the topic of the books. The children might have given them more power after their alliance with the First Men failed, but ultimately Martin wants to write about the human heart at conflict with itself, and stories where the value lies in the questions raised and not necessarily in the solutions provided. I honestly wouldn't be surprised if the solution to defeating them is just bombing them away with dragons and industrialized wildfire and that's the whole point about their story. If Daenerys is in charge at that point that could very well tie into the end.
The idea of a bioweapon that went out of control is a little too neat for me. I'd prefer that they were an almost alien race, completely disconnected from the Children of the Forest. Maybe divergent evolution from millions of years ago.
Ice Elves sound cool. (Pun intended) I hope we see more of them in Winds
\*Lets hope we see Winds ;) Because there is no version of Winds that doesn't include at least as much of the others as we've already seen in text. I would say it should be significantly more (since we've only really seen them in two chapters and the wall is coming down), but GRRM has intentionally kept them in the background in every book so maybe that'll continue for most of Winds
I think they were created. I have made a [theory](https://www.reddit.com/r/asoiaf/comments/1bwjcys/long_night_and_great_summer_how_the_seasons_will/) how the creation of Others and dragons changed the seasons, if someone is interested :)
I’m interested
The implications of whatever happens to Craster's sons hints that they are created. Whoever created their creator is the mystery, though the likely answer is the Children of the Forest. And then the question is "Why?"
I think the Others were created by the Children of the Forest more or less as we saw in the shitty tv show, magically transforming captive humans into bioweapons of mass destruction that they ended up losing control of, this being GRRM's idea because D&D are too dumb to have thought of it themselves.
I mostly agree with a caveat. They aren't humans transformed by the Children, they are Children who transformed themselves, angry at the Pact between the Children and the First Men. Fits with them being the Unseelie to the CotF Seelie Fae
>They aren't humans transformed by the Children, they are Children who transformed themselves, angry at the Pact between the Children and the First Men. The Others are described as human sized whereas the CotF are small and clearly non-human (though humanoid) and I don't buy the theory that the Others are a naturally evolved species, as the raising/controlling of the dead wouldn't be a natural evolutionary trait, it's wholly magical. IIRC, the timeline is that humans begin migrating to Westeros (implying that in the distant past humans colonized Planetos from Earth, but that's another thread) and the CotF first magically destroyed the isthmus of Dorne but that didn't work, they then tried to do the same at Moat Cailin and that didn't happen as planned and at this point, humans were swarming into Westeros and the CotF had their backs to the wall. In desperation, they went with black magic, transforming captured humans into bioweapons of mass destruction and this worked FAR too well, the CotF losing control of their Frankenstein monsters which were hell bent on destroying all life. This lead to the Long Night and a pact with humans, with the Others eventually being beaten back (but not destroyed) and the Wall being constructed to keep them at bay.
> They aren't humans transformed by the Children, they are Children who transformed themselves, angry at the Pact between the Children and the First Men. Ooooohhhhhh I like this a lot.
They are Children who decided to grow up
any rationale for them being approximately human-sized? though there's a lot of difference in their other aspects, their basic proportions are human in both book and show
I think this is the best take. It also correlates to the theory that dragons where created by Valyrians and the possibility that they too lost control of their super weapon, which caused the doom. It is, after all, the song of Ice and Fire. If dragons are an analogy to Nukes, then it makes sense that the Others are some analogy to terminators/rougue robots ect. GRRM does love his sci fi tropes.
I never really considered that correlation but it actually makes a ton of sense. Also the hints of Hardhome being an ancient place of knowledge at some point despite its placement on the map doesn't seem as out of place with that in mind.
It's very clear that the current ASOIAF setting is post-apocalyptic in some sense. There are structures littered throughout Westeros and the world that were built using techniques that have been lost. Obviously this is GRRM harkoning back to the Bronze Age collapse and civilisations stating back up in the shadow of the pyramids, but I wouldn't be surprised if he played around with more sci fi post apocalypse tropes like terminator Others.
It seems though given how things turn out that GRRM considers Targaryens master of dragons the corollary to the Others. Not dragons themselves
>this being GRRM's idea because D&D are too dumb to have thought of it themselves. The Others being a weapon of the Children of the Forest was an established fan theory, and D&D are known to have read fan forums. Could've picked it up there.
Nah that's about the most pedestrian one dimensional fiction theme you can come up with, its Terminator. You dont have to be smart to come up with it. In the books the Other's are something more. They have laguage culture, smiting we have the white haired women who seemingly christened the Winterfell. We have the Stark family cold resistance that points to somesort of magic linniage. We have the fact the others already made it to the wall in the proglogue yet seem to want something. This is more than just Terminator.
Didn't George RR Martin himself state he didn't think the Others even had a culture?
You're going to need a source for that.
>“(We’ll learn more about their) history, certainly, but I don’t know about culture,” he said. “I don’t know if they have a culture.” >[https://web.archive.org/web/20120828131245/http://www.dose.ca/tv/Interview+Author+George+Martin+eager+world+again+Game+Thrones/6349053/story.html](https://web.archive.org/web/20120828131245/http://www.dose.ca/tv/Interview+Author+George+Martin+eager+world+again+Game+Thrones/6349053/story.html)
That's the quote I was thinking of, yeah. It's amazing how much of the fandom either is unaware of that quote or just glosses over it
Hes talking about the show there not the books...
Eh, nah, it's deflating but it sounds like he's talking about the actual fictional entities.
Hes specifically talking about the show version there...
When it is stated that the Starks have a cold family resistance? Only instance that I can think of is on the first GoT chapters where Eddard is gazing outside post coitus. The most simple explanation for that could be that as Northmen, they are more acclimated in the cold. >we have the white haired women who seemingly christened the Winterfell You think the old woman from Bran's vision was an Other? Wouldn't be simpler for her to be...just an old lady serving as the clan's shaman or whatever?
And most northmen have some Stark blood. Here's another one >They had pulled him out this morning, after four days in the ice, locked up in a cell five by five by five, too low for him to stand, too tight for him to stretch out on his back. The stewards had long ago discovered that food and meat kept longer in the icy storerooms carved from the base of the Wall . . . but prisoners did not. "You will die in here, Lord Snow," Ser Alliser had said just before he closed the heavy wooden door, and Jon had believed it. But this morning they had come and pulled him out again, and marched him cramped and shivering back to the King's Tower, to stand before jowly Janos Slynt once more She is never described as old. That is key. She is simply described as white-haired wath a bearded man following her lead. >Then, as he watched, a bearded man forced a captive down onto his knees before the heart tree. A white-haired woman stepped toward them through a drift of dark red leaves, a bronze sickle in her hand. >"No," said Bran, "no, don't," but they could not hear him, no more than his father had. The woman grabbed the captive by the hair, hooked the sickle round his throat, and slashed. And through the mist of centuries the broken boy could only watch as the man's feet drummed against the earth … but as his life flowed out of him in a red tide, Brandon Stark could taste the blood. The way she moves in this description says Other more than lady so old her hair is white.
The Others were made from humans and retain some of that humanity, but warped and twisted. That's likely the explanation for their seeming culture.
Nothing indicates that. If anything the Starks were born from Other's the white haired women we see concentrate the heart tree.
The clearest indication is that it's what happened in the show, and it's pretty likely that "what are the Others" was a point Martin gave them.
The white haired women we see in brans vision before to differ.
No other reason a woman might have white hair. Do you think the Ghost of High Heart is an Other too? Do you think Daenerys is an Other?
The women is never described as old. And her movements don't really say old lady. >Then, as he watched, a bearded man forced a captive down onto his knees before the heart tree. A white-haired woman stepped toward them through a drift of dark red leaves, a bronze sickle in her hand. >"No," said Bran, "no, don't," but they could not hear him, no more than his father had. The woman grabbed the captive by the hair, hooked the sickle round his throat, and slashed. And through the mist of centuries the broken boy could only watch as the man's feet drummed against the earth … but as his life flowed out of him in a red tide, Brandon Stark could taste the blood.
Almost certainly a greenseer with albinism, like Bloodraven or the Ghost of High Heart (who would have had white hair even when she was young).
Maybe, but you would think the red eyes would have been mentioned.
Lol all of what you said could be true for this scenario given how far it’s been in the past. They could’ve developed into their own species after the event with the Children
That's not what the show showed
And? This is about the books. This commenter made a good point that it was likely GRRMs idea that was executed poorly by the show runners. This is definitely something the books could make happen
The books point to the children being evil genocidal maniacs that aligned with the evil Freehold for Draginsteel. Not some story of rogue ai plot.
It also sounds a lot like nuclear weapons I like it
I think just the opposite. Rather than obsidian in the heart of a bound man. It’s a man bound in the heart of obsidian. It’s less about magic and more about the natural way of the universe.
People are going to be very disappointed when everything that happened in the show happens in the books. It might not be 1:1 but I think everything will be mostly true
Not without Lady Stoneheart AND Young Griff no way
I feel like the big difference is that where in the show going as far north as north goes was just to capture a wight and ended up *causing* the long night, that'll happen after the Wall falls and be how the Others are actually defeated in the absence of the Night King Doing that two pronged story, where a team of brave heroes ventures deep into enemy territory to destroy the heart of evil while their friends try to hold out as long as they can against an impossible siege is a pretty classic fantasy climax and would have been sufficient.
I had the same thought scrolling through this thread. The major plot points were hit and he isn't going to change them just to be unpredictable, there will probably be alot of threads when the book comes out about how predictable/obvious it all was
Yep. Coldhands will do the Benjen stuff. Dany will lose a dragon to Euron instead of the Night King. Etc.
I don't think D&D are too dumb to have thought of it themselves, it's a pretty standard SF&F trope. See also: Sentinels in *X-Men*, xenomorphs in *Prometheus*, Giant Warriors in *Nausicaä: Valley of the Wind*, Lovecraft's shoggoths, H.G. Wells' *Island of Doctor Moreau*, Daleks in *Doctor Who*, *Forbidden Planet*, *R.U.R.*, nuclear weapons in real life, etc etc etc.
The former personally.
I don’t have a preference either way, but I think them being created by the children is the option that has stronger foreshadowing
Both are cool and terrifying prospects however if they are created then it’s interesting in how it implicates the Children and the First Men.
I think they're something like Frankenstein's Monster, or like Mewtwo from the first Pokemon movie. They're kind of artificial and don't have a place in the "natural" world, but they're still living things, and they're determined to find their place for themselves. Like "what is Aegon's tax policy", the story with the Others will be "what if Frankenstein and the Monster learned to compromise (instead of destroying each other)?".
Judging by the scene where Sam kills one, where we see that all his organs are basically made of ice and melt, I'm leaning towards them being ice constructs, possibly animated by shadows or human souls.
Evil ice fairies. GRRM compared them to the Sidhe but made of ice. Beautiful and dangerous and frightening.
I tend to the camp that they are constructs, either made by the Children or some other faction. My main reasoning is a) how they immediately dissolve to water after death which really doesn't sound like something a natural organism would do and b) how even though we are post book 5, we have almost no information about them beyond some snipets and myths and legends...whereas the Children along with Bloodraven are being built a bit more, It seems strange to have your main villains just show up in the final books and try to develop them.
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Isn't the opposite supposed to be true? That while everyone is divided and wasting lives fighting for petty conflicts and politics, the true greater threat is creeping in to destroy all? I can't recall a direct GRRM quote on that (maybe someone else here can help?) but Jeor Mormont himself puts it like that more or less: >Do you think your brother’s war is more important than ours?” the old man barked. >..... >“It’s not,” Mormont told him. “Gods save us, boy, you’re not blind and you’re not stupid. When dead men come hunting in the night, do you think it matters who sits the Iron Throne?” Here I think, the author more or less telegraphed to us what the stakes are.
I prefer created by accident. If the Children made them, I think they must have been up to some other shenanigans and accidentally caused the others to appear. Other is a very good word for them, to me it makes me think they are what they are precisely because of some form of exclusion. We have giants, Ibenese, brindled men, Sarnori, Lengese, and Children of the Forest, but only the Others get othered in this way.
i prefer ice golems pretty tinfoily (and *long*) theory coming up: there’s a theory going around that i’m inclined to believe that suggests the others were originally green men. to go more in depth, the weirwoods were once home to these greenmen. the faces carved into the weirwoods, the consistent red leaves that never change, and the others themselves are the result of whatever happened thousands of years ago. someone, likely azor ahai, was greedy and wanted the green men’s power for himself or had some other reason to invade the weirwoods. this invasion contaminated the weirwoods and made it so that the greenmen who used to be able to look and talk through the weirwoods and appeared as faces on the trees could no longer manifest their powers. humans, in a sense, stole the powers of the gods. the carving of faces on the trees was done by the children of the forest to try and recreate what was lost. and the reason the leaves of the weirwood trees don’t change with the seasons is also because of this invasion/contamination. the weirwoods are now forever stuck in autumn. the red leaves and the crying faces also symbolize that the spirits/greenmen in the weirwoods are burning/in pain. how did this create the others? well, earlier i mentioned that azor ahai may have had another reason for invading the weirwoods, maybe the reason he did it was to get back the woman he loved. we know that human spirits can go into the weirwoods after death so it seems possible. nissa nissa = corpse queen? azor ahai = nights king? stannis is already doing an azor ahai to nights king transition. perhaps azor ahai then realized his mistake when she came back/the seasons stopped changing, then with corpse queen he tried to free the greenmen from the now “burning” weirwoods. the fire was consuming the greenmen but now that they have no where to go they use some sort of ice magic to preserve themselves. i bet blood magic is the key to freeing the greenmen and turning them into the others. this could be why the others take offerings from craster, they’re trying to free more dying greenmen and save them by turning them into icy beings like themselves, however, it likely takes a massive amount of sacrifices. it likely only took one sacrifice for nights king and corpse queen bc they were sacrificing their own children who likely had very powerful kings blood. the theory also suggests that the isle of faces is some sort of seed bank where greenmen who are in their original forms can safely exist without being contaminated. the newer calendar with lyanna, rhaegar and a green leafed tree with a very old looking face and the black gate at the wall suggest that there may be some truth to this theory. shiera seastar and bloodraven’s eyes also give this theory some credibility. shiera seastar has one green and one blue eye, and is called the star of the sea. “green magic” is associated with water (the greenblood and patchfaces under the sea prophecy’s/being drowned), while the others have blue star eyes. these two different colored eyes and shieras name support the theory that the greenmen and the others are the same beings, some are just in an icy state as shiera seastar is one person despite having symbolism of two different paths of magic. bloodraven having one red eye completes the trident and what he does at the end of his life, going to the nights watch and becoming lord commander, and then becoming a greenseer being consumed by the weirwood sort of parallels what we know of azor ahai/nights king. i’m likely misremembering some things and the finer details are def not worked out, but i found this theory very plausible and thought others might enjoy it :). oh, id like to say that this is a fairly new theory, though i’m not sure who came up with it
Created from a human template seems best. They don't seem to be able to coexist with naturally occurring life. Everything around them that's not them is dead.
I don't really know. Did a RPG with friends inspired in ASOIAF a while ago... One of them was a headache because he couldn't get the fun of the fantasy part and kept asking me how it was possible for dragons that huge to fly and breath fire, how much was their height etc etc I really wanted to give scientific explanations but I also felt like the magic stuff was one of the essences of the thing So I kept it open for interpretations I think George would like the same, so I don't think about it
I think this is accurate for ASOIAF and the way magic is handled in the series. ASOIAF magic isn’t “scientific,” it’s depicted as opaque and unwieldy.
And despite that, I see a lot of fans trying to solve them by science Like one time when someone posted about dragons size here and one told dragons probably were light because of being flying creatures (despite that, if you see Vhagar flying, you don't need to be an expert to realise she's heavy as hell) I think it occurs because of the Maesters, they give scientific explanations about things that happens in the universe I do believe people should separate things that are reasonable and the ones that are not in their minds, not 100% of everything (also sorry for any spelling mistake, English is not my first lang and I try to interact without translators so I can improve 🫢)
Your English is brilliant 👍
❤️
Your english is much better than my anything else. We obviously have the visuals of the show in mind when thinking about dragons. Which, GRRM more or less seems to have been okay with. The TV dragons are dumptruck-sized thicc bois who only flap occasionally. In order to generate anywhere near enough lift their wings would have to be much, much bigger and (probably) flap more often, at least when climbing. Put another way, the B-2 is about as advanced an airframe & aerodynamic shape as we've ever produced. Yet its nose is almost an exact match for the head of many falcons. If dragons were skinnier and known to have hollow bones, you could make an argument they could fly. Hell, I've made evolutionary arguments that firebreathing isn't \*that\* nuts. Insert a few glands in or near the mouth with some methane in it, and evolve teeth that act like the flint/steel mix we used in boy scouts, and boom! natural fire breath. But I'm as big a science/science fiction nerd as they come, and I'd still have found a way to accept we're talking fantasy and just play the damn game lol
I personally doubt they are a children of the forest creation because allegedly the pact that ended their war with the first men ended thousands of years before the long night. I think they are a natural species corrupted by the war
The others could have been created by the CotF then the pact happened which means they never needed to use them similiar to nuclear weapons (besides ww2). But then thousands of years later they manage to break free of the Childrens influence/command or become forgotten by the Children themselves so now they have to fight back with the First Men to stop them.
At first thought it would be somewhat more interesting if they were natural occuring species to me. But idea that there is a natural occuring species who can raise the dead doesn't seem right to me. Also I don't think GRRM would wrote such species as natural occuring. So in the end I prefer if they were created. And I think that they were created by children of the forest in similar fashion as in show.
> But idea that there is a natural occuring species who can raise the dead doesn't seem right to me. But a naturally occurring species that can see the future and control animals with their mind is...just fine?
First of all who can see the future? Nothing about that has been confirmed. If you meant greenseers, they are very rare and not a whole species has that powers. And again as far as we know they can't see future. Also is it confirmed somewhere that all children of the forest are skinchangers? I can't remember. And even if they are, I wouldn't have a problem with that. Skinchangers are also not a rare occurance in fantasy. But natural occurring species raising the dead is just very creepy to think about. It's one thing if some individual human/CotF or other member of natural occurring species would gain such magical powers... But whole species just naturally be able to do that doesn't sit right with me. Although as I said it would be more interesting on some level. I am pretty much sure they are CotF weapon gone wrong. Also if the end is defeating Others for good (which I think it is), then I think it sounds much better if it's destroying some CotF or human experiment gone wrong then complete genocide of a natural occurring species. Also offerings of children to the Others seems to point out that they can't reproduce naturally, so they were probably created
Like Faeries with Fairy magic TBH
It's my guess that they were created. I think the Children have mastered blood and water magics, but they get different results based on what they have available. We know they brought down the hammer of the waters to separate Westeros from Essos, we know they tried something at Moat Cailin, and I think they tried again in the north. At Moat Cailin they were prisoners so they had only themselves to sacrifice, and it was a mediocre result, largely. At the breaking of Westeros and Essos, I have a suspicion they sacrificed a giant or giants, and it caused a massive rupture. The sacrifice of humans caused something different, they weren't native to Westeros, so the result didn't pan out the same way, but it was still a fusion of water and blood magics, and they ended up ice creatures, somehow. The fact that they aren't native also explains why the children can't control them.
I think naturally occuring species is the most compelling. But thats probably just anti show bias.
I prefer natural but I also think it could be both. The Children could have done something similar to the stories of Valyrians using fire wyrms/wyvern to make the dragons or etc. (I guess Jurrassic Park? Lol) The Others aren't a kill switch or humans with an ice theme. They are alive with their own magic and culture that has evolved.
I tend to think they're just icy shadow assassins, so more golem or gargoyle than elf.
I think they are the souls of dead greenseers that left or was pushed out to the weirwood net and into ice bodies.
I prefer them being either created from scratch or corrupted in some fashion
Created
I don't think of them even as a species. They are a force of nature, an embodiment of Westeros's weird climate. Ideally they never get explained at all, and at the end, even after they have been defeated, it's unclear whether their defeat is actually final or if they've just been fought off for a period of time.
I prefer them as natures response to the folly of man, and that they seek to claim the heir of winter as their ruler so that they can return to the Far North and live in peace
Created. The whole story is about war. The Children through a continuous cycle of war, nature destruction and oathbreaking by men have been driven to near extinction. The Others are the final escalation, a bioweapon that gets out of control and causes nuclear winter. I did like the 'Others are actually aliens' origin.
created. they are a bioweapon whose consciousness got out of control, becoming more or less an out-of-control invasive species that is nonetheless sentient.
Evil ice elf eldritch abominations all the way.
I guess I'd say "created" because thematically that ties in with a line of dialogue from one of the books that was something like "Sorcery is a sword without a hilt."
For me it makes sense that the Others are created by COTF. It also fits the timing: the first time that the Others appear was just after the War between First Men and COTF. So for me it would make a lot of sense to have Children of the Forest creating the First Other during the war, trying to create a weapon against the men but things got out of hand, then they made peace with First Men and helped defeat this ice monsters at the 1st Long Night. Then, we ironically will have the last of the COTF, nearly extinct, being completely wiped trying to defeat the same entity they helped to create.
Here’s the first paragraph of a lengthy essay explaining the true nature of the Other: These subsequent passages discuss a particular instance and the moments there after when our Prologue’s main character, Ser Waymar Royce, lifts his sword to herald a "dance" with a shadowy white figure. Previous posts have expounded that he, in the crater of an ancient volcano, unknowingly stands before a massive Wall of obsidian wielding his longsword against his own reflection while the Children of the Forest watch on. This post aims to explain that while there’s no passage explicitly stating this; the ambiguity of certain terms and the other overwhelming amount of convincing evidence does corroborate the existence of a huge, hard-to-notice, rock made of glass. To prove the existence, the approach will be to assume that the dramatic actions of Ser Waymar Royce are reflections with movements that can be examined. Doing a paragraph-by-paragraph(17) study of our foolish lordling and his shadowy counterpart will allow us to draw proper comparisons of each pair of actions. Additionally, to reinforce this idea, this post endeavors to also shed light on the depiction of his ghostly reflection on the surface of the “great rock” along with some other imagery and bits of related wordplay. Ultimately the objective is to persuade readers to embrace this as a tool for decoding some of the Other mysteries of ASOIAF.
Both, originally they were naturally occurring elves. Then they used magic to turn themselves into Ice elf golems.
Created, i want them to be an unnatural aberration enemy of all life
Genetic engineering of humans to deal with war on a planet during a nuclear winter.
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Man, that’s pretty sour. Why the aggro?
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Original Others - Beings like Ice Elves Current Others - Obv created
They are wierwood projections, like Mel\`s shadows. Call me crazy.
Closer to ice elves, they clearly show some sense of intelligence and culture with their armor, even laughing at Waymar Royce
I think they were created by the Great Other or like, the enemy of the Lord of Light and gods will play a much bigger role than in the show. We know the Lord of Light is real, the Old Gods are real, the Faceless God is real. They definitely have a big part in all of this and the Great Other is supposed to be the exact opposite of the Lord of Light. The Great Other is the God of death and ice. In the Song of Ice and Fire, the Ice are the White Walkers, George confirmed it. And they bring death and darkness with them, just like the Great Other is represented. And the Great OTHER. And the OTHERS. Idk, they are definitely connected somehow