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Author Topic: A Game of Thrones: Every time somebody uses the spoiler tags take a shot.  (Read 209618 times)

Cthulhu

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Haven't seen it yet but I could see the heel turn a mile away.  I thought it was pretty clear she had violent impulses and was only held back by the people around her.  Remember she crucified hundreds of people and it was clearly established that included innocents who fought against slavery.

Also finding the schadenfreude of all the people who were treating the medieval despot whose entire motivation is divine right of kings like some hero because she doesn't like slavery.  Object lesson in expecting premodern tyrants to follow 20th century moral sensibilities

I like her as a character eitheyr way.  I think that's what really made this such a phenomenon even among people you wouldnt expect to like a fantasy drama series.   The characters are so well developed that even the bad guys you understand and halfway root for (aside from euron, who's basically 'aw fuck this fucking guy is back' every time he comes on screen)

My mom was frustrated reading the books because she wanted to hate jaime but it does such a good job of making him deeper than just a heel
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MorleyDev

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Nah she crucified hundreds of innocent men, incinerated POWs and regularly burninated anyone who wouldn't submit. Not exactly a Robert Baratheon, much more of an Aegon

Can't say I agree. Executing slave owners and soldiers refusing to surrender and traitors conspiring in your own court is vastly and fundamentally different on a mental level from burning random women and children. In the setting of the show, such people can be argued to deserve death. That justice is served. It always came across that Dany took an unhealthy pleasure in seeing people she thought were evil getting what they deserved. The way she'd believably slide is for her definition of 'evil' to keep widening until it includes everyone, not just to go from "Soldiers refusing to bend the knee" straight to "BURN THEM ALL! THE WOMEN! AND THE CHILDREN! And the chickens!".

The mad king wanted to burn them all because he was losing, his enemies were going to take away what was rightfully his. They dare rise up against me? They dare question me? Their rightful king? Traitors, the lot of them. Why should I let them? Rather it all burn. If that's what they wanted with Dany, then it needed to come at a later point. Not right after her greatest victory. Maybe the civilian populace rise up, maybe people start openly calling for Jon to seize the throne. Maybe she goes straight for the Red Keep and burns that to the ground, and the innocents in and around it are acceptable loses.

The example with the masters and that not all of the slave owners abused their slaves was something Dany had rubbed in her face, and the important thing is that she was visibly shaken by it. She even adjusted her tact and approach in response. On a fundamental level I don't think the two can be reconciled as one leading naturally and immediately to the other.

The idea of Dany going mad queen is fine in theory, but that kind of degradation in character takes time and investment into showing it that the show just didn't do. Hence my complaint about a lack of showing. An anti-hero taking an unhealthy amount of pleasure in causing pain to those they think deserve it, only to decline into villainy, isn't a new idea. It's been done before, there are several pages on tvtropes dedicated to it, and if that is what they were going for here they did it in about the most incompetent way imaginable.

But who knows, maybe Bran was warging into her and he'll turn out to be the real villain all along. Which will make me ask why they left out all the cool shit that potentially happens there with Jojen paste and all that. The 3-eyed crow is a creepy mofo in the books after all, the show went out of it's way to make him into Yoda. After the last few seasons of people coming up with cool and interesting theories only for the show to decide "nah the stupid obvious thing where everyone was stupid is what happened", I've stopped thinking that the show writers could be that clever.

Either way, at this point the show hasn't earned this 'twist', because the writers seem to be more concerned with shock factor instead of the twists like Ned and Robb being twists because they are the logical consequences of the actions of heroic characters that just defy conventional fantasy tropes that would otherwise prevent the characters from facing those consequences.
« Last Edit: May 14, 2019, 12:23:47 pm by MorleyDev »
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Loud Whispers

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Can't say I agree. Executing slave owners and soldiers refusing to surrender and traitors conspiring in your own court is vastly and fundamentally different from burning random women and children.
But when Danaerys ordered the execution of the slaver city elite, she afforded them no trial, executed them by crucifixion - which resulted in the execution of families who owned no slaves, opposed slavery (if you believe the suitor guy. My point is Danaerys couldn't tell afterwords if anyone she had just tortured to death was guilty of anything at all). This would've easily been spotted had Danaerys acted on the advice of her council instead of impulse & intuition. That Danaerys adopted the torture methods of her foes and sought to replace plutocratic oligarchy with feudalistic autocracy was a pretty big running theme throughout the show, where Danaerys was walking the line between fighting to liberate the world, and subjecting the world to the overwhelming awe of her own monarchical splendour. The real tests come when her advisors eventually try to tell Danaerys about the true nature of her father, and also try to teach her the concept of mercy - a concept she had never been shown by anyone from the moment Robert ordered the baby Targs be turned into scrambled eggs. There is not a single moment where she succeeds in learning mercy, right up to the moment she incinerates the defeated Tarlies - who I must remind you, were prisoners of war, not soldiers refusing to surrender. Danaerys did not incinerate them because they were held up in Storm's End daring her to strike - they were unarmed before her soldiers, the justification for execution was that they did not swear obedience to her as the Queen. This is in direct contrast to King Robert who captured traitors, enemies, showed them mercy, took hostages, made marriages and caroused his way to turning enemies into friends - it was clear from the start that Danaerys had the potential to be the last laugh of the Mad King, the one to finally burn King's Landing and achieve it with the form of a dragon.

And so by S8, Robert's fears are realised after the grave. The Mad Queen reaches Westeros with an unknown number of Dothraki screamers laying waste to the Seven Kingdoms. Danaerys is not new to the impulsive elimination of her enemies - so far she has responded to every opposition she has faced with lethal force; the one issue she couldn't deal with violently she left to Daario to deal with. She is a conqueror, not an administrator, nor a diplomat

In the setting of the show, such people can be argued to deserve death. That justice is served.
Dany never shows any heed to the concept of justice, applying laws arbitrarily to her own personal judgement, without obeying any laws herself. She aint' Stannis to put it lightly, and which murderers she pardons and which innocents she executes seems largely up to the whims of D&D up to what stresses she's been put through. Danaerys is rarely allowed a relaxed moment to think clearly or receive actual criticism from the accompaniment of courtiers who are either overawed, infatuated or in fear of her. Just hear how Danaerys goes from talking about breaking the wheel of tyrants and despots to S8 talking about getting the Seven Kingdoms "back" under her grasp.

The idea of Dany going mad queen is fine in theory, but that kind of degradation in character takes time and investment into showing it that the show just didn't do. Hence my complaint about a lack of showing. An anti-hero taking pleasure in causing pain to those they think deserve it, only to decline into a villain, isn't a new idea and it's been done before.
Yeah the pacing was about as abrupt as me walking into a lamppost xD
I'm defending the idea because anything else is indefensible. Oh wait nah, the music is defensible, the musical score's mostly banging

But who knows, maybe Bran was warging into her and he'll turn out to be the real villain all along.
All this time Bran warged into D&D to warp the script and eliminate all non-Starks

*EDIT
Season 5, the debate between the courtiers is a cool example of what I mean. Barristen was the only courtier who actually told Dany the truth, and was the foremost proponent of mercy over Dany's "justice." Emphasis on Barristen's speech - note how everything Barristen warns of Danaerys, Danaerys exceeded the mad King.

"Your grace... Your enemies did not lie... He murdered sons in front of their fathers, he burned men alive with wildfire and laughed as they screamed... The Mad King gave his enemies the justice he thought they deserved, and each time it made him feel powerful and right, until the very end."

Sound familiar? I saw the similar parallels as Dany from the books and had my suspicions this would be the outcome from the get go. Danaerys chooses her "justice," and the form she chooses is every way superior to the Mad King. "I'm not beheading anyone..." Before incinerating sons & their fathers in front of each other

Either way, at this point the show hasn't earned this 'twist', because the writers seem to be more concerned with shock factor instead of the twists like Ned and Robb being twists because they are the logical consequences of the actions of heroic characters that just defy conventional fantasy tropes that would otherwise prevent the characters from facing those consequences.
This is as much an unearned "twist" as Jon's respawn rate is - you know it is inevitable, and you know its execution will be nonsensical despite its necessity


*EDIT
I'm just going to conclude cos I've read more of your post edits and say I agree with you that there wasn't a proper character transition so much as a complete character transplant, even with the foreshadowing acknowledged. Makes Dany shooting down proposals to burninate the countryside earlier a little irrelevant
« Last Edit: May 14, 2019, 12:48:01 pm by Loud Whispers »
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sluissa

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Loud Whispers

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I'll just let this stand on its own.

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MorleyDev

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I think we both agree that this is probably where Dany's story was going, and we both agree it wasn't done well. I think we also agree that it needed more time to develop.

For clarity, the point I'm trying to get across is that she was always acting under something resembling her own moral compass, disconnected from modern morality it may be, and that systematically going street to street manually burning every man woman and child you see to cinders doesn't fit into that established moral compass. Burning soldiers who refuse to bend the knee when told 'kneel or die' does. She never was good about mercy, but her balancing was always in deciding who deserved death and who didn't. And the simple peasants and slave were always in her "doesn't deserve death" list. The ruling classes were, hence the slaver city elite.

That's why I say it needed more time, because her definition of 'deserves death' hadn't been shown to be anywhere near the point where flat-out genocide of the men, women and children was on the table. There was a whole *thing* all of last season that she didn't just march in with her dragons and press the win button because too many innocents would die when seizing what she considered hers by divine right, and not enough happened between then and now for her to go "Great, I won. Burn them all" and do even more damage than marching in with her armies and her dragons would have done in the first place. Systematically going street to street murdering everything she saw.

Instead it came across as "bell rings, murder.exe loaded". The Mad King was a cruel tyrant and even he didn't jump to burning them all. King's Landing would be long ash if he was. He was pushed by his enemies being literally at the gates.
« Last Edit: May 14, 2019, 02:13:21 pm by MorleyDev »
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Loud Whispers

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Basically yeah
This was the TV equivalent to plot falls, everybody dies

MorleyDev

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The annoying thing is HBO apparently offered them 10 episodes to close this season and they decided to do it in 6. It shows. It does feel like there's at least two missing episodes between the soldiers surrendering and it all burning, and two more before The Long Night.

She could have just burned the Red Keep, the soldiers could have still gone berserk (a beast stirs in every man when you put a sword in his hand and all that) with the raping and pillaging. Then an episode or two of her ruling with an iron fist, stoking resentment, burning those who oppose her, then there's a civilian rebellion and bam she decides to burn them all in response and Jon has to kingslayer her. Jon takes the black, goes north and gives Ghost the good boy rubs. Bran becomes the king, and his wheel chair becomes the new Iron Throne. All have cake.

And on top of it all, we didn't get to see Euron try and summon Cthulhu -_-

It is interesting to see people starting to come onto the "What happened to GoT? You used to be so good!" crowd en-masse. It does kinda feel like Dany going psycho was the straw that broke the camels back for many viewers. I've been in that camp since at least Season 5 or 6.
« Last Edit: May 14, 2019, 03:01:11 pm by MorleyDev »
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Kot

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The annoying thing is HBO apparently offered them 10 episodes to close this season and they decided to do it in 6. It shows. It does feel like there's at least two missing episodes between the soldiers surrendering and it all burning, and two more before The Long Night.
Don't have time to check for sources right now, but wasn't there this thing that Martin wanted like 15 seasons or so, HBO offered to fund up to 10 seasons no questions asked and it was D&D who insisted on wrapping it up as fast as possible?
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Mephansteras

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It is interesting to see people starting to come onto the "What happened to GoT? You used to be so good!" crowd en-masse. It does kinda feel like Dany going psycho was the straw that broke the camels back for many viewers. I've been in that camp since at least Season 5 or 6.

For me it's been more a case of "Ok, the writing is going down hill but I'm still enjoying it" to "Nope, I just can't care any more. The writing has just gotten too bad."
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For me, the writing's been as strong as it's always been.

I've only actually seen this season though.
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itisnotlogical

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It is interesting to see people starting to come onto the "What happened to GoT? You used to be so good!" crowd en-masse. It does kinda feel like Dany going psycho was the straw that broke the camels back for many viewers. I've been in that camp since at least Season 5 or 6.

Around season 6 it started feeling like there were less important/interesting developments per episode and more random scenes of just repeating their best-known traits at eachother.

Dany: "Mother of dragons!"
Tyrion: "Snarky comeback!"
Dany: "MOTHER OF DRAGONS!!!"
Davos: "Likeable but not book-smart!"
Tyrion: "Snarky comeback!"

I stopped watching at S6E1 but it's been funny to watch people be mad about the ending. Call it schadenfreude.
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nenjin

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Spoiler: Up to EP3 (click to show/hide)
« Last Edit: May 15, 2019, 11:05:20 am by nenjin »
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Glad I hadn't jumped in to pick up the show a while back expecting it to be more of what it was.

Saw folks note that if they had just put the dragon being shot down/her hand being executed in THIS episode the whole thing makes sense and the character flipping the fuck out is suddenly not lazy as fuck writing.

In hindsight all the "so what did you think of the ending, now that it's almost time for it to air" interviews and those strange pained laughs they got are understandable.
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sluissa

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Glad I hadn't jumped in to pick up the show a while back expecting it to be more of what it was.

Saw folks note that if they had just put the dragon being shot down/her hand being executed in THIS episode the whole thing makes sense and the character flipping the fuck out is suddenly not lazy as fuck writing.

In hindsight all the "so what did you think of the ending, now that it's almost time for it to air" interviews and those strange pained laughs they got are understandable.

The show, from the beginning, was quite good... if a LITTLE too reliant on standard HBO flesh scenes in the first few seasons... but even that MOSTLY fit with the theme of the books. The characters were great. The story was solid. The production values were... less than these last couple of seasons... but by no means bad. (They completely cut around some of the early large battle scenes, simply showing maybe... a dozen people charging into battle and then cutting to the aftermath.) There's a reason everyone loved Ned Stark. There's a reason Tyrion and Jamie and Cersei are all such compelling characters today. There's a reason people were confused and enthralled by the politics and intrigue that went on. These last 2-3 seasons have lost almost ALL of that except maybe some leftover character development that's still showing through, thanks mostly to the amazing acting skills on the set.

It went from one of the best stories on TV to... "Lets see if we can hold peoples attention for a few more episodes with a lot of flash and little substance."

There was a joke floating around... that Ed Sheeran's appearance would be seen as when the show "Jumped the Shark"... I have to agree with them at this point, even though I tried to ignore it at the time.
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