What would you do if Stannis died?

[Queen of Procrastination]

Wouldn´t mind. I don´t like her so I would just keep reading.

[imbs]

wow ppl actually dislike Arya :( this thread makes me sad. Personally Arya dying would be far more devastating than any other character's death to me - even tho Tyrion is my favorite i would trade his life in a heartbeat for Arya.

[-jelena-]

No, no, no, no,.... she won't die, she can't die. How dare you? I refuse :bawl:

[sillent]

I wouldn't mind if Sansa died, as long as her arc actually leads somewhere before she dies. Yes it would be sad, but I'm with Martin, the needs of the book are more important than the safety of the characters.

Like I never understood why Tyrion wasn't killed off at the end of ASOS. His arc could have ended quite nicely there, but I guess he still has a purpose to fulfill.

I never understood why Brienne was a POV or why she is still alive but I suppose she was needed to lure Jaime into whatever is going to happen early in book 6.

[1234567]

Cry a lot. Drown sorrows in vast quantities of wine and hope for a measure of Vengance and of course console myself that Stannis, Sandor and Davos are still alive.

She said, know as she wrote those lines that those four characters were now pretty much doomed. :(

[JonisnoGarySnow]

I would be so sad. :(

[The BlackBear]

She won't die, but on the off chance she did, I'd be pissed, but get over it like I got over the Red Wedding and Oberyn's death. Then I'd get strapped in for the return of the Hound.

[Stormcloak]

Sansa's one of those characters I'm pretty sure will live.

On the off chance though, if she died before her story arc went somewhere I'd be really annoyed (and then I'd keep reading) but if she bowed out on a high I'd be fairly ok. She doesn't annoy me like she did on my first read of GoT but she's still my least favourite Stark (counting Jon) so it could be worse (and was, twice, with Ned and Robb).

[butterbumps!]

Patrick, what are we actually arguing about here? I stand by the opinion that to me, Dany is not "the biggest feminist symbol" of the series. You were incredulous that people did not like her/ wanted her to fail, and posited that such thoughts were implicitly problematic based on the notion that "she is the biggest feminist symbol" of the series. At first, I took issue with the fact that I thought you were calling her a feminist, which I don't believe she is. Then you clarified that you were referring to "feminist symbols," which apparently has no bearing on actually relating to feminism. I thought that this argument came too close to an assertion of "all women are feminist symbols and as such no one can criticize them," which is the basis for why you were angry and incredulous with posters who did not want to see Dany succeed.

I'm not disagreeing with you that Dany is the biggest female lead in the series; I do, however, still object to the implicit value you are placing on her based solely on the fact that she is a female lead, and how criticism against her must automatically be taken as an insult to women categorically. Yes, there were a couple of mentions of "bitch" in this thread; I understand that there are fringe cases out there who do use derogatory, gendered insults. The thing is, it's not the prevailing sentiment on the boards, and most importantly, you know I don't think that way, so I am unclear as to why I have become the recipient of your wrath on this matter.

I haven’t been negating her value as a person or character. I am not one of the posters who wrote about wanting her humiliated or brought low. In fact, I didn't say anything derogatory or critical about Dany at all, but pointed to specific places in the text where she has not aligned with feminist ideals (when I thought that's what you were talking about). I even went so far as to explain the context for why I don't see her as an IT candidate, but rather as something else that suits her better and would actually make a meaningful impact on society, and I did so without denigrating her character. I'm not one of the ones bashing Dany and laughing at the notion of her spectacular death, so I don't understand how I've personally gotten you this upset about it. And further to that end, I'm not even so certain she's going to die.

I will answer this last post, but I don't want to sour things between us by too much of this back and forth.

So... Jon is no more consistent than Dany, surely? She remembers the words of Mirri Maz Duur, she listens to Quaithe, she has an important adviser in the Green Grace, and Missandei is the closest person she has to a friend (she also takes a lot of her advice).

Jon completely dismisses Selyse and almost completely dismisses Melisandre - which is obviously a huge mistake considering the influence Melisandre has over Stannis and the Queen's Men. We have yet to see Dany completely dismiss a woman in this manner; she certainly doesn't trust Quaithe, but she listens to her advice and considers it.

Yes, Jon is more consistent. This has nothing to do with Dany's value as a person, nor is it a critique on her character. It is understandable that Dany might have a natural affinity for trusting women over men given how upbringing. Dany does in fact automatically trust MMD, and does the same with Galazza. Again, I get why Dany would be more inclined to listen to women, and I don't hold it against her, but the fact is, MMD's and Galazza's gender played the big factor in why Dany trusts them both despite not knowing either of them. And the gender of both of these women blind Dany to the fact that they are actually huge threats to her person. Which means that she is not actually as consistent about equality in gender.

Jon interacts with a wider sample pool in general. There are men he doesn't take seriously, and there are a couple of women he doesn't heed. No matter how often you posit that Jon should listen to Mel, it doesn't make this true or reasonable. He spent a good bit of time with Selyse and Mel to know what kind of people they were. He doesn't reject them based on gender; he rejects one because she's a mean-spirited idiot, and the second because she's about as trustworthy as a cobra. Likewise, Jon stands up for Val to men like Axell, and draws on advice other women have given him in various contexts, sometimes in opposition to other men.

In general, Jon's views on humanity and gender are more consistent and balanced than Dany's are; this isn't meant to criticize Dany or suggest that she's lacking. They are two different characters. Jon is a kind of unifier; Dany is something different, at least at this point in time, and it doesn’t mean that her value is any less than Jon’s in this assessment.

Forgive me, but I don't think I did call all the wildlings rapists? I simply mentioned that Jon knows that Tormund and SOME other wildlings are rapists, but he likes them as individuals anyway. I brought this point up to show that Jon is certainly no more advanced in his proto-feminist beliefs than someone like Dany, who actively tried to help female rape victims.

You're mitigating this statement now, but here is what you said:

I'm struggling to find examples of Jon showing "more consistent ideas of equality" than Daenerys. He never reflects on the idea of collective womanhood/sisterhood as far as I can tell; he claims that "the Wall is no place" for women; he has no female advisers; he likes Tormund and other wildlings despite admitting that they're rapists; he blames Catelyn and Cersei for starting the war between the Lannisters and the Starks, not Tywin, Ned, Robert, etc.

The implication is that the wildlings are rapists, and you were dismissing Jon's egalitarian leanings by pointing out his latent misogyny by associating with Tormound and other wildlings despite being rapists. You also accused him of categorically blaming women for the war rather than men, which didn’t actually happen.

She has nothing of true value. Other characters in the series face a similar problem (namely Sansa and Arya, who both also lose their identity as Dany does), but that does not negate Dany's problem.

This is really irrational now. You cannot insist she has nothing when she has more than every single other character in the series. I wouldn't say that Arya has nothing just because the one thing Arya wants (to go home) isn't something she has. No one is trying to say that Dany has everything she wants and is happy. But it is really pushing the limits of reasonability to insist that she has nothing because of this.

Dany did fight for what she believed was right. But she believed that peace was more important than further descruction, and your posts would suggest that you agree with that ideology. She may not have achieved all that she wanted to, but to achieve what she wanted she would have needed to cause more destruction than she did. And I imagine that this would not be a popular choice either - particularly as you seem to be very anti-destruction. So what should she have done? Left the slaves so that they could maybe be freed through another war hundreds of years later? (And, due to the lack of progress in the world of asoiaf since the Doom, I imagine that this would have taken a very long time.)

I'm not interested in criticizing Dany with a point-by-point of what should have happened or where I think she went wrong. My intention on this thread was never to criticize her. The point was to convey the fact that she DID actually have a choice. And she made a choice. Whether it was the right or wrong choice is debatable. But the point is there was a choice.

She conquered a city. She's a full conqueror.

I'm not sure where your analysis originates from with regards to this chapter -- it's deliberately vague. All she says is "Fire and blood" when 'Jorah' tells her to remember her house words. But that doesn't mean anything by itself. All the leaders in the series (Jon Snow, Robert Baratheon, Ned Stark, etc.) embraced fire and blood, but they claimed to do so for the "greater good". Why is Dany somehow different?

It's not an issue of Dany's being different. Here's the situation. She's spent 4 books skirting around the issue of vengeance, unwilling to embrace the dragon and take what's hers. She's uncomfortable being a "monster," and tries to supplant this identity with that of the mother. In DwD, prior to Dany X, she realizes that the "Mother" identity was the distraction from her "Dragon," not the other way around, and that she will have to face up to this "monster" eventually, since it is who she truly is. This "monster" has everything to do with conquest, vengeance, and taking, as has been set up for the 4 books in which she appears. The "Savior" side is what she comes to understand as not truly honest to herself. That's where I'm getting this from.

How does it contradict anything I said? She doesn't want the throne. And she doesn't have anything of value that she wants. She wants a home, not a throne.

You said that she has nothing, despite the fact that she has a throne and a kingdom of sorts. You also say that she doesn't truly want the IT, yet you believe she should have the IT. I was simply pointing out the logical breakdown that's occurring. When you say she has nothing because she doesn't have exactly what she wants, yet promote the idea of her having something else that she doesn't truly want, it still runs into the problem of not having what she truly wants.

[DogLover]

I simply cannot withstand one more Stark death.

[Makes No Sansa]

I'd be a bit sad, she's actually one of my fav characters

[Nausicaä]

Books would be burned, haters would be slayed.

She's my favorite character after Catelyn, so I wouldn't be able to just get over her dying.

[Foxhound]

I'd give a book ending with every Stark dead just to never see another one of these threads.

[Queen Sansa Stark]

I would be crushed. My kind of support to Sansa has stepped on obsessive mode a very long time ago. The idea alone makes me want to cry :cries:.

[Pod The Impaler]

I'd put Brienne in a dress and pretend it never happened.

"What ? She just had a growth spurt, that's all."

[The Other Others]

Nothing. It's not about guessing who will die but about who survives.

[Tony Soprano]

I would probably cry.

And then throw a tantrum on the forums.