Jump to content

Rose of Red Lake

Members
  • Posts

    2,897
  • Joined

  • Last visited

Posts posted by Rose of Red Lake

  1. On 2/4/2021 at 3:30 PM, BlackLightning said:

    Back to Dany, what REALLY matters is how or why? Are these people innocent civilians or are they combatants or are they civilian combatants (aka insurgents)? Were they given at least once chance to surrender? Did she do it on accident? Were the deaths collateral damage in her fight against someone like Euron or Cersei or was it collateral damage in her fight against someone like fAegon or Jon Snow? Did she do it out of spite? Does she become psychotic and then kills half a million people? Did it happen because she was trying to do blood magic?

    I dont know but in the show she was corrupted by power and didn't care about those people. Sapochnik said something that made sense to explain it - "She feels empty, it wasn't what she thought it was, it's not enough." And yes, Dany is never satisfied in the books, "That should be enough for any woman . . . but not for the dragon." She also decided to go to war simply because she didn't like Meerenese food, clothing, or housing, which is nothing really (she doesn't mention slavery at all as a reason to choose "fire and blood"). So in the show it's probably that she didn't want a bloodless victory, she wanted to inflict pain and make people pay, just like she did on the Plaza of Punishment and with the wineseller's daughters in the books. Because teaching people the dragon's power feels good to her. And if "it wasn't what she thought it was," then she had decided Westeros wasn't home. They weren't "her" people or even innocents, it was just another place to smash, just like the Dothraki did in Essos. I dont know, it just lines up for me more so than accidents or blood magic.

  2. Interested in Nymeria because I like her refugee story and I hope we get to see water magic vs. fire magic. Action scenes of Nymeria herself or her water witches drowning a few Valyrians to protect Ny Sar would be cool. Too bad they left that book scene out with Tyrion in the show, it could have connected. We'll also see Valyrians being absolute shit heads.

    Flea Bottom also sounds interesting. They could humanize the people of city Dany destroyed.

  3. 16 hours ago, James West said:

    Dany's childhood was like Egg's.  They were both seen as the unlikely and yet they became rulers.  She flew under the radar because most assumed her brothers would rule.  The crones assumed a son would rule over all of the khalasars.  Rhaegar assumed his son will be the promised one.  They were mistaken.  Dany is the fulfillment of the Azor Ahai prophecy.  The return of the dragons from petrified eggs is Martin's version of Arthur pulling a sword from a stone.  Dany pulled dragons from stone.  Egg himself was an egg that failed to hatch.  Rhaegar's Egg (Aegon) also failed to hatch.  Dany is a female Aegon.  To quote Tyrion "she is Aegon the Conqueror with tits."  She walked into the fire and the dragons came back out with her.  Aegon V and Rhaegar failed.  Dany succeeded because she is AA.  Arthur was the only one who can pull the sword, Dany was the only one who can bring back the dragons from stone.  

    "If they are monsters, so am I."

  4. On 2/9/2021 at 5:52 PM, BlackLightning said:

    The problem here is destroying a city that has already surrendered to her and now completely belongs to her. It is so illogical and unnecessary that it defies everything.

    Maybe it's useful to imagine the ways it could happen more logically then? I can see it going lots of ways.

    - Maybe Dany thinks the surrender is an act of perfidy and a plan to lure her into a trap. This happened with Daeron in Dorne. And maybe perfidy is somewhere in the Aegon plot? Like He, Varys, or JonCon could trick Dany with surrender, which angers her and makes her paranoid about it happening again.

    - Maybe Dany decides on a whim to use No Quarter. Dany already has the most power in the world and can decide to kill 5000,000 people if she wants, and no one can stop her. Also a similar no quarter situation happened at Tumbleton. Soldiers surrendered and the city was destroyed anyway. Of course there is historical precedent for this too.

    - Maybe Dany decides that she doesn't want the daily tedium of ruling, and prefers to "show people whose boss." Maybe she decides Westeros needs to be punished for opposing her. I think there are numerous examples in the books that she goes out of her way to exact punishment on a population level, and then moves on.

    - Maybe she gets progressively more self-righteous and this is her version of "liberation" in her twisted mind. People corrupted by power or deluded by their own bullshit don't have to do things that are logical and make sense.

    - Maybe Dany doesn't see Westeros as her home at that point. Maybe she realizes it was all a fantasy and she lashes out. Maybe she doesn't want to rule over people who don't worship her. Maybe she doesn't see it as "her city" anymore.

    - Maybe she is more like the Dothraki who don't follow rules of war. They force a city into submission and THEN enslave it and rape women. Conquerors in history have done similar things - maybe Dany is on that trajectory.

    -Prophecy-wise, the "Stallion Who Fucks the World!!!!" doesn't really fit someone who "just attacks a tower" and "tries to minimize damage."

    "We all know the saying power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. And there's a great deal of truth in that. But also I find that the desire for power can corrupt us, the lust for power makes people do things maybe they shouldn't do." (x)

    "What drives Dany? With Dany I'm particularly looking at the... what effect great power has upon a person. She's the mother of dragons, and she controls what is in effect the only three nuclear weapons in the entire world that I've created. What does it do to you when you control the only three nuclear weapons in the world and you can destroy entire cities or cultures if you choose to? Should you choose to, should you not choose to?" (x)

    - I read GRRM's statements about power corrupting here, and how he's exploring the effect great power has on Dany, and wonder okay then, WHY is there is a "corrupt, rotting heart" in Dany's fortune telling visions? Why isn't that discussed more? What are the implications of that?

    - Dany has so many unique qualities that comparisons don't fit. Cersei and Ramsay never had dragons. Aegon the Conqueror had a desire to build and restore cities and stick it out for the long haul. Aegon V had Dany's drive to correcting the "wrongs" in the world, but he didn't have the corrupting influence of absolute power through nukes. The High Sparrow, the Brotherhood without Banners both had a righteousness that seemed promising at first, then went horribly wrong and became quite scary (beware the righteous avengers!). It can happen to Dany.

    "The Dragons can win wars for you, that's established in the histories. But they can't necessarily produce peace or prosperity or help you rule the nation. You know Daenerys Targaryen is finding it out in Meereen when she defeats the cities of Slavers Bay with her three dragons. But then in trying to rule as Queen, she can destroy Meereen any time she wants by just unleashing the dragons, she could kill a lot of people, wipe out that most of the population of the city, reduce the entire city to a fiery inferno, but that doesn't help her come up with good laws or to establish peace between the original inhabitants and the the freedmen and people that she's brought in. So ruling is more than just the power to destroy, and that's a lesson that she's definitely learning." (x)

    "Dragons are the nuclear deterrent, and only [Daenerys Targaryen] has them, which in some ways makes her the most powerful person in the world. But is that sufficient? These are the kind of issues I’m trying to explore. The United States right now has the ability to destroy the world with our nuclear arsenal, but that doesn’t mean we can achieve specific geopolitical goals. Power is more subtle than that. You can have the power to destroy, but it doesn’t give you the power to reform, or improve, or build.”

    - Maybe it's thematic. Reading these interviews with GRRM, I think he wants to show dragons as destroyers (of cities, of dynasties, of dreams, of whatever). For the theme to work, the message has to be that you can't get very far with them. A dynasty will only last 300 years compared to the Starks' 10k. Dany's failures also show that the methods used by Aegon to start his dynasty, was bound to fail long-term. Also, if Dany just attacks the Red Keep and goes on to be a successful ruler, it sends a message to crazy political leaders that nukes are helpful and can be useful to their political goals. I don't think GRRM wants his work to bolster the viewpoints of dictators who want to intimidate the populace with WMD. 

    - Maybe some people like villain Dany. Like me!! It's a brilliant experiment in how dictators gain power and how it happens through an illusion. People follow dictators all over the world, and have been convinced their political leaders are heroes. I think it's genius to make her sympathetic at the start. I really was rooting for her but she did things that made me increasingly uncomfortable that I tried to justify. And then I just hit that wall where I realized, no, I'm not looking at a hero with flaws, I'm watching a villain in the making. And I love it! Dany as a hero is boring, told a million times...But Dany as a villain who still thinks she's one of the good guys? It's meaty and interesting and good and I can't wait to see it in the books because it will be so much better.

    On 2/9/2021 at 5:52 PM, BlackLightning said:

    Aerys II Targaryen, a known madman who was likely suffering from an legit mentally illness, only tried to destroy King's Landing when it was clear that all was lost and he had been cornered. Militarily speaking, he was going kamikaze as it was his last stand and it was a political middle finger to the next regime. Which is saying a lot because not even Hitler or his sicko generals went as far as that. Not even Stalin destroyed his own city centers.

    I mean... it happened. It just looked slightly different. Dictators do horrible shit to their own people. Either through outright mass murder, prisons, or willful neglect. Dictator A gasses their own citizens in a concentration camp far away from the city center. Dictator B decides not to go to all that trouble and just kills everyone quickly inside the city. Does it matter??? Don't ask genocide to make sense. It's supposed to be senseless. 

  5. 4 minutes ago, Alyn Oakenfist said:

    That's Meereen.

    I thought you were referring to the time she saved Astapor from it's awful fate at the hands of the slavers.

    Oh right, got them mixed up. But either way, swooping in and "saving" a place she knows nothing about and has never been to before is doubtful. I dont even think it's happening in Slaver's Bay tbh.

  6. 12 minutes ago, Widowmaker 811 said:

    I don’t think Jon Snow will be hatching dragons.  If we are to rank the candidates for Azor Ahai, Daenerys Targaryen will be at the top. The next is a very distant second.  That would be Aegon .  I feel comfortable in my opinion that Daenerys is Azor Ahai. Is it 100% certain? No, but the story left little room for AA to be anybody else.  The first post is a good one but hardly needed given the weight of the evidence to support Daenerys.  The hatching of the dragons is only one.  The prominence of the number 3 in her character arc and the death of her spouse are others. 

    I dont think you will want Dany to be Azor Ahai if the "warrior of fire" is really just a glorified arsonist.

  7. 18 hours ago, Lilac & Gooseberries said:

    I do think that Viserys broke the law and was abusive but I still blame Dany for not even trying to help him. He should have been banished instead of killed or she could have even tried to help him. Not that it makes her an outright kinslayer but the next best thing. My original comment was designed to be as pointless as the majority of the comments we see here.

    I just didnt like how in his moment of agony, she's like "oh he wasn't a real dragon." That was insufferable.

  8. 9 hours ago, Alyn Oakenfist said:

    They kinda forgot the Targs are the with the insanity inbred gene

    The Targaryens should really have all the physical, intellectual, sexual, and mental problems. I think a lot of them are there, just masked. Daenerys infertile like Charles II. Stillborn children like King Tut. Bone disorders like King Tut's sisters. Biopolar and personality disorders like the Spanish Bourbons. Ect.

  9. 8 hours ago, Unit A2 said:

    Arya is the one who will go Stark raving mad.  Bran is calm and easy going for a Stark.  It's Arya and Jon who have the dreaded wolf's blood.  

    wolf's blood isn't "madness." They just act rashly and put themselves in an early grave, and so far its only been applied to 3 people in the story. meanwhile asearchoficeand fire records 40 instances of "madness" and "dragon" in the same passage 

  10. 1 hour ago, BlackLightning said:

    I don't know. Well, to be honest, Dany killing 500,000 (if it happens) people isn't that big of a deal when you compare her to her ancestors. Especially Aegon, Maegor, Daemon and Daeron

    I dont know any of those guys who killed 500,000 people, in a city, in one day. That's like a Rwandan genocide in 24 hours. Do you have stats on the other casualties from each of those guys? 

    Quote

    As far as I'm concerned, making Tyrion Hand of the King again is like making Walder Frey or Roose Bolton Hand of the King.

    Why would you want someone who really went out of their way to murder their own parent to become the second most powerful person in the entire country??

    Bloodraven, on the contrary, had many objections. And Bloodraven wasn't a kinslayer. He didn't personally loose the arrows that killed the Blackfyres. People (aka Blackfyre supporters) called him that because they think that he used sorcery to make sure that the arrows that were shot hit their target. Besides, the Blackfyres were rebels and traitors. What does the Lord of Winterfell do when their Stark kin deserts the Night's Watch? And in the end, Bloodraven was banished to the Wall anyways...so he never really escaped punishment.

    With Tyrion, however...things are different. There is no debate about whether he killed his father or not nor is it a case of a law enforcer killing a lawbreaker who happens to be kin. Tyrion had legally been tried and sentenced; he was a convicted criminal who killed the law enforcer and escaped.

    Very different scenarios.

    I thought you meant being a kinslayer as a public perception to prevent him from being promoted, so that's why I brought up Bloodraven. But reading this post, I think you mean narrative justice? Really I think the only injustice in that regard is what he did to Shae. Not what he did to his father.

    Quote

    Back to Dany, what REALLY matters is how or why? Are these people innocent civilians or are they combatants or are they civilian combatants (aka insurgents)? Were they given at least once chance to surrender? Did she do it on accident? Were the deaths collateral damage in her fight against someone like Euron or Cersei or was it collateral damage in her fight against someone like fAegon or Jon Snow? Did she do it out of spite? Does she become psychotic and then kills half a million people? Did it happen because she was trying to do blood magic?

    In the show her killing them even though they surrendered sounds like the "gut punch" GRRM goes for. I just assume the story is here to deliver a message, loud and clear, about the type of power only Dany has.

  11. On 1/25/2021 at 10:28 AM, BlackLightning said:

    Maybe.

    There is also the infamous dream Dany has. She is having sex with a dead/frostbitten man in which his erect penis feels like a cold steel dagger. In my opinion, this is a dragon dream and that the man in her dream is Jon Snow.

    Yeah, that was pretty disturbing.

    On 1/25/2021 at 10:28 AM, BlackLightning said:

    There's no way anyone will let Tyrion cannot become Hand of the King. Although he (falsely) committed to killing the king he fought for and protected, Tyrion's greatest sin/error is killing his own father while he was on the toilet in his own home.

    Kinslaying and guest right seem to be major taboos and people who commit such sins are cursed in life and after death. Having everyone ignore this (after over a decade of Jaime being dragged through filth for killing King Aerys II and Brienne being forced into running for her life because she is a suspect in King Renly's death) is a massive plot-hole.

    I dont know how much blowback Tyrion will get in the end, if Dany kills 500,000 people. It seems like small potatoes next to that.

    And its odd, there were so many Targaryens killing each other but they were still in power. People called Bloodraven a kinslayer but he was still the Hand for a while after that without much objection. 

  12. House Arryn wiki:

    Quote

     

    Behind the Scenes

    The Andal blood purity of the Arryns and their name may have been inspired by the Nazi belief in the superior Aryan people. The Arryn falcon may also be a derivative of the Imperial Eagle.

     

    What the #@%! is this?

  13. Quote

    "Nonsense," said Lannister. "With the right horse and the right saddle, even a cripple can ride."

    The word was a knife through Bran's heart. He felt tears come unbidden to his eyes. "I'm not a cripple!" - Bran IV, AGOT

     

    Quote

    "No jest. I mean to kill her." If she can be killed by mortal weapons. Davos was not certain that she could. He had seen old Maester Cressen slip poison into her wine, with his own eyes he had seen it, but when they both drank from the poisoned cup it was the maester who died, not the red priestess. A knife in the heart, though . . . even demons can be killed by cold iron, the singers say." - Davos II, ASOS

     

    Quote

    "The Hound had been dying when she left him on the banks of the Trident, burning up with fever from his wound. I should have given him the gift of mercy and put a knife into his heart." - Arya I, AFFC

     

    Quote

    "Nine. The word was a dagger in her heart."  - Daenerys II, ADWD

    I tried searching for heart-stabbing or dagger stabbing imagery and found these passages. It looks like Dany and Bran are the only ones who have it referenced in the first person. Maybe Hodor is stabbed by an Other, with Bran warging him? 

  14. 12 minutes ago, BlackLightning said:

    Murdering Daenerys was a terrible betrayal and it was ultimately unnecessary.

    If Tyrion becomes Hand at the end of the story despite everything he has done, I'll throw the book away. However, if GRRM holds fast and Tyrion is never whitewashed or retconned, then I'll probably fish the book out of the trash can once I calm down.

    If Tyrion gets whitewashed, the book is being burnt. Sorry not sorry.

    Well, you feel what you feel. If you feel that way about Daenerys, that's a good sign that something hit right, because I know we're supposed to feel *something* when a main character dies. In the show, I was glad that she was dead and laughed when Jon stabbed her. No way was that right! haha

     

  15. 17 hours ago, BlackLightning said:

    I hate the idea of Tyrion becoming Bran's Hand. It's one of my top 3 least favorite things about the finale. And if the story beats of Tyrion manipulating Jon into killing Daenerys and then leaving Jon for dead is real, Tyrion becoming Hand after all of that is impossible. Im-pos-si-ble.

    Tyrion and Jon thought she would be able to reign it in. Tyrion had to convince Jon, who was more blind than anyone else in the story. Tyrion couldn't kill her because he threw his Hand pin on the ground and freed Jaime. Dany would only trust Jon to get close.

    Tyrion as Hand - I hate it too, but I'm not going to say it's impossible. A lot of stuff I vehemently dislike has happened in the books so far.

  16. On 12/21/2020 at 10:17 AM, Mithras said:

    It does not make sense why Dany does not learn more about her private family history, especially the Summerhall stuff, with a witness like Barristan at her disposal. GRRM clearly wants to save this mystery to the D&E novellas.

    What a bummer of an ending to the novellas that would be. :laugh:"And they all died"

    I was thinking that withholding this from the reader could be for character reasons too. Dany being ignorant of her family history fits with her failure to learn from the past, if that is how Martin is writing her. When Barristan mentioned Summerhall she said she grew weary and dismissed him. That could be a pattern of characterization where she doesn't really want to know things in-depth. We don't see Quentyn tell her about Daenerys of Dorne either. If I recall there was an interview where it was implied that Dany never finished those books on Westerosi history that Jorah gave her. 

  17. On 11/21/2020 at 1:18 PM, WolfOfWinter said:

    Daenerys' arc really is a good illustration of how far a character can go and still have people defend her actions because she's charismatic and says all the right stuff, even when it contradicts her own actions. Cersei kills hundreds of people? Kill the evil bitch. Dany nukes a million people? Meh, she must have a morally sound reason, and btw nuking Hiroshima was also cool and so Dany must be cool too. 

     

    The defenses are really something. "This is WAR and Dany needs to USE her weapons" - as if dragons are drone strikes making neat and clean kills. "Dany needed to attack the Red Keep and it would have all be over and she would have won" - again a clean and neat plot to win when that's not how asoiaf works. "Dany killing civilians is something should would never do, but if she did, it would be justified like Hiroshima" - wow so she can never be wrong. Riveting analysis. 

  18. 4 minutes ago, SeanF said:

    The only bad faith was her breach of contract with the Good Masters of Astapor.  

    But, they were trying to sell her stolen property in turn.

    Nope. She showed bad faith by burning the envoy's tokar in a whimsical display of power. She lets the Yunkai believe she has pledged a truce by giving them a night to consider her offer. She displays violence casually and irrationally. She doesn't deal honorably with her enemies. Expect more of that sort of thing.

  19. On 10/23/2020 at 1:44 AM, Dalinar said:

    Do you think that the sacking/massacre of KL will happen after the war for dawn or before? Does GRRM intend to end the series with Dannys deconstruction like the show did, or will the battle against the WW end the series? Knowing how things unfolded in the show, makes it hard for me to see a scenario where Danny sacks KL and then contiues to fight with the rest of Westeros side by side against the WW and then die. It seems odd and quite frankly stupid. If she gest killed by Jon after the sacking and then the war against the WW happens, then she wont be part in the fight against the WW, and I don't see that happen either. What are your thoughts on that?

    I agree it's unlikely to happen where she destroys a city and then she gets to hop on a redemption arc like nothing happened and she gets to die a messianic savior. Her ancestors didn't get any sickly sweet writing like that. I don't think some readers realize that corruption by power means. No wiggle room out of that one.

    Making humans vs. humans the last fight fits more with the feel of asoiaf anyway. It's also what closed out Lord of the Rings.

×
×
  • Create New...