SPOILER ALERT! regarding Starks and Lannister characters.
whiteblade, welcome!
I believe that Arya's loss of sight is temporary, but my friend Trunk thinks it is a permanent condition.
GRRM has done a masterful job of telling his story so far. Mayhaps the most gripping aspect is how he introduced the Starks, en masse, as the protagonists and not just individual characters while framing the Lannisters as the antagonists as a group... and then how he's slowly twisted these group characterizations.
Eddard was the most honorable man in the story. He loved his wife and kids. He was loyal to Robert. He took Sansa's anger upon himself just to deny the Queen joy. And then he showed mercy to Cersei, lied to Robert, acted self-righteous with Baelish, and plunged the realm into war.
His sons were honorable. Until they met women. Then they broke their vows. They killed and did not know if it was right.
His daughters were good girls. They were wide eyed and fun loving. But without Eddard, they've sinned... especially Arya. How many people has that eleven year old girl killed? We might be up to double digits now. We could justify her actions, but justifying killing brings us to Jaime.
Jaime was introduced as the Kingslayer... and he promptly attempted to murder Bran. Only Gregor may have commited more sins than Jaime, but no one has commited more treason than Jaime Lannister. The big one is the assassination of Aerys II Targaryen, but Jaime claimed it was justified. And it appears that Jaime saved tens of thousands of innocent lives. He's also attempted to save the lives of Eddard's girls.
Tywin was a cold man. No one in Westeros compares to Tywin in sheer ruthlessness. He's exterminated families. He sacked the capital once! Yet, he was the person most active in preserving the Seven Kingdoms.
Tyrion is immediately shown to be both hideous and brilliant... an evil description for sure. Yet he quickly proved himself compassionate and brave. From time to time he was ruthless and manipulative, but he longed to be kind.
To date, the Starks are not as pure, nor the Lannisters as evil, as we were led to believe in AGOT. Humans long for good, yet are drawn consistently to their own selfishness. Humans commit both good and evil.
Now all that was to say that I do not think that the Others are like humans. The Others kill people. They turn them into wights, i.e. murderous zombies. They do the same to animals. They bring cold. I call all of that evil. I don't know any good that comes from them.
Mayhaps I'm still upset from Warcraft. Warcraft started as Orcs v. Humans. The story was that the Orcs were savages driven from their homeworld. They did not try to negotiate with the Humans, they just invaded to find a place to live... they justified killing for survival. So the sides are not good and evil, they are Humans and Orcs. Anyway, after many games some Undead joined the Orcs... and the Orcs were renamed the Horde... yet they were still misunderstood by the Humans. Necromancy, Blood Magic, and cannibalism did not render the Horde as evil. And that's just dumb.
Murderous and malicious corpses are not evil. Does gravity still work?
