Question for all the Slaver's Bay storyline haters

[Bright Blue Eyes]

But furthermore, I don't think Meereen actually is helping Dany grow. It just seems like a very long digression showing Dany as a poor ruler, and I thought the point of her delayed return to Westeros was not just to let her dragons grow, but also for her to learn from her advisors about Westeros, learning from her experiences how to effectively rule, but things are just going poorly from here and she still says foolish things like "the usurper's dogs" and other drivel that Vicerys filled her head with. I don't see how this plotline, other than the complete overhaul of it at the end, did anything and therefore I don't see why we have so many chapters, with so many characters, when really it didn't need to be at the forefront.

That's probably a good hint that you should question your thoughts, particularly your expectations.

I don't think the potential influence of having dragons can be compared to the negative rep of getting them from steeling. People still do business with Dany correct? by your logic shouldn't she have a negative rep?

Nope. People do not do business with Dany. She got basically entire Essos against her.

And is going to have a very decent chunk of Westeros doing the same just on the related stories, based on the Arianne gift chapter.

She is in a very similar situation to Walder Frey!

[TheWeepingKnight]

Really? Now GRRM is being accused of throwing in token ethnics? REALLY!? Good God. This talk of Slaver's Bay not having enough characters to care about therefore it being baaad bewilders me, implying that was it's primary purpose, and not the profound impact on the arc of one of the main six characters whom's journey is still not complete. Nor it the outcome of the battle certain and I utterly disagree with those blase dismissals that the outcome of it is "obvious" and unimportant.

[Nictarion]

It's just the repetitiveness that annoys me. Dany's meetings are basically the same thing over and over again.

That's what ruling is though. It goes back to GRRM's comments on Aragorn's policies and judgements, or lack thereof. He wanted to show how hard ruling is. That's no more evident than in Dany's ADwD chapters, but we also see it in Jon's as well.

It may be boring to some people, but I absolutely see why he put it in. It's realistic. In many fantasy stories Dany and Jon would just be naturally gifted leaders from day one.

[TheWeepingKnight]

That's probably a good hint that you should question your thoughts, particularly your expectations.

Nope. People do not do business with Dany. She got basically entire Essos against her.

And is going to have a very decent chunk of Westeros doing the same just on the related stories, based on the Arianne gift chapter.

She is in a very similar situation to Walder Frey!

That and the fact there is a significant difference between the position of Daenerys in ADWD and the Astapori slavers selling Unsullied.

[Nictarion]

Really? Now GRRM is being accused of throwing in token ethnics? REALLY!? Good God. This talk of Slaver's Bay not having enough characters to care about therefore it being baaad bewilders me, implying that was it's primary purpose, and not the profound impact on the arc of one of the main six characters whom's journey is still not complete. Nor it the outcome of the battle certain and I utterly disagree with those blase dismissals that the outcome of it is "obvious" and unimportant.

It's nice when people get it. :cheers:

[TheWeepingKnight]

Well, learning the follies of her actions as well as tying in with the wider themes of ADWD, paralleling Jon's arc in a sense by having her in conflict with herself, etc. and more and more and more.

[kimim]

That's what ruling is though. It goes back to GRRM's comments on Aragorn's policies and judgements, or lack thereof. He wanted to show how hard ruling is. That's no more evident than in Dany's ADwD chapters, but we also see it in Jon's as well.

It may be boring to some people, but I absolutely see why he put it in. It's realistic. In many fantasy stories Dany and Jon would just be naturally gifted leaders from day one.

He could have put it in, but, seriously, did it have to be so repetitive? I'm really struck by the story of the guy who used to sell spices, is now digging ditches, and wants to sell himself into slavery. It seems to come as a surprise to Dany; I think she recoils as if she was slapped, yet she was told, at the end of Storm, that this is what people were doing. People had congregated on the Meereen docks, were begging to be sold into slavery, and DANY SAID IT WAS OK, AND AGREED TO TAKE A TENTH OF THE PROCEEDS. Then we have the same story in miniature, and Dany acting as if this is a huge shock to her. It already happened!

It's a completely unnecessary repetition, and all of her chapters but the last one are like that. Things repeat and repeat, until we get what we were never supposed to get: A Drogon ex machina who whisks her away from it all, so that she can give up...after less than a year of trying.

It's a waste of time.

[TheWeepingKnight]

Oh, the dogmatic diatribe.

EDIT: With the post above me now edited, this comment is somewhat nullified.

[Jasta11]

Me being bored with Dany's story started way back in ACOK when she sat around Quarth doing bugger all for half an entire book.

Then in ASOS she goes from easy victory to victory against cartoonishly evil, stupid, literal puppy eating slavers. Yawn.

ADWD is where Martin starts to put hardships on her, but it's a bit repetitive. She sits in her pyramid, someone tells her there's a problem, she tries to (unsuccessfully) solve that problem, then goes back to her pyramid. Rinse and repeat until Drogon arrives to whisk her out of that cesspit of a city. And now it very much looks like a veritable host of important characters (Marwyn, Moqorro, Victation, Tyrion, the Dothraki) are coming to rescue her from her mistakes and beat the big bad slavers into the ground so she can start doing sutff that's actually relevant to the larger plot. At least the parts after Daznak's Pit are better.

Simply put, I just haven't been interested in Dany's arc ever since her strong start in AGOT. Not only is it disconnected from those in Westeros, her arc by itself plods along too slowly, doesn't have enough interesting characters, repeats a lot of the patterns we see in other arcs (such as Jon's with the difficulty of imposing reforms, which was far better done IMO) and I don't feel Dany herself is a good enough character to overlook that.

[TheWeepingKnight]

Out of curiosity, does anyone on this thread view the Astapori, Yunkai'i and Meereenese as being a decadent people whom refuse to change their way of life for others and their frivolousness, NOT "evil" moustache twisters?

[A spoon of knife and fork]

Me being bored with Dany's story started way back in ACOK when she sat around Quarth doing bugger all for half an entire book.

Then in ASOS she goes from easy victory to victory against cartoonishly evil, stupid, literal puppy eating slavers. Yawn.

.

I think the way you feel about Dany's chapters in those books are really similar to how I feel about Jons. Like, I literally have no idea what half those ACoK jon chapters are for. GRRM could have written "and jon slowly walked north with his Brothers. It was cold. Ghost was a direwolf with red eyes." and that would have covered most of it. And in ASOS we have jon getting plot gift after plot gift with the wildlings and LC election.

Anyway that's just to say that one mans meat is another's poison. I have come to terms with Jons story and I don't blame him for any of it - I also now see that Jon, Dany, and Tyrion all get a lot of "Gifts" from GRRM and they have their Dull and exciting moments. But it is interesting how differently these arcs can be seen.

On to adwd - all of these characters arcs were boring and too long, it I see what GRRM was trying to do. Just he didn't do it that well.

[A spoon of knife and fork]

Out of curiosity, does anyone on this thread view the Astapori, Yunkai'i and Meereenese as being a decadent people whom refuse to change their way of life for others and their frivolousness, NOT "evil" moustache twisters?

Yes, that's exactly what they are, with the exception of Kraznyz maybe, who is a little over the top. Of course they are doing a LOT of evil by just trying to protect the status quo. It's hard to make someone who likes to enjoy watching babies being eaten by bears as not somewhat evil.

Anyway if you want mousache twirling we have gregor Clegane, Ramsey, and the bloody mummers in weateros. Kraznys is certainly no worse than them.

[Northernmonkey]

That's what ruling is though. It goes back to GRRM's comments on Aragorn's policies and judgements, or lack thereof. He wanted to show how hard ruling is. That's no more evident than in Dany's ADwD chapters, but we also see it in Jon's as well.

It may be boring to some people, but I absolutely see why he put it in. It's realistic. In many fantasy stories Dany and Jon would just be naturally gifted leaders from day one.

I see what you mean, but I don't think GRRM pulls it off very successfully. The small council meetings in Westeros are always fascinating, and packed full of detail, but Dany's meetings don't have any of that. They seem to be always discussing the same matters:

1. The sons of the Harpy

2. The fighting pits

3. Yunkai and Astapor

Repeat ad infinitum.

[JonCon's Red Beard]

Speaking of Slaver's Bay... remember my Dany poll that hasn't yet been approved by mods? *cough*

Some SB related questions you might like:

What you think has affected negative the perceptions others have for her?

She is not yet in Westeros 33 23.4%
Everything in Slaver's Bay is boring 25 17.7%
Her actions in Meereen 41 29.1%
Targaryen hate 10 7.1%
Other 31 22%

What's your opinion of the Meereen plot?

I liked it a lot. 40 28.4%
It's ok, but I've skipped it in rereads/don't care for it. 28 19.9%
Boring, but needed for development. 37 26.2%
I wish I had nuclear weapons to kill them all. 24 17%
Don't care for that plot 10 7.1%

It's not THAT hated... haters are noisier, though.

Really? Now GRRM is being accused of throwing in token ethnics? REALLY!? Good God. This talk of Slaver's Bay not having enough characters to care about therefore it being baaad bewilders me, implying that was it's primary purpose, and not the profound impact on the arc of one of the main six characters whom's journey is still not complete. Nor it the outcome of the battle certain and I utterly disagree with those blase dismissals that the outcome of it is "obvious" and unimportant.

It's not only something that happens to Dany and her plot. Look at Tyrion and his actions with the two slave girls (the servant and the whore) he finds in Essos. While his actions are wrong, it's rather odd that many feel more empathy for those unnamed unimportant characters than for Tyrion, when those unnamed unimportant girls are nothing but plot devices to show us Tyrion's decay, an event for him to realise he has reached bottom. We're not suppose to get more from them than provide Tyrion with motivations and development. :dunno:

Not the same with Jaime and Bran. While Bran also serves as a catalyst for Jaime's eventual redemption, Bran is a full character whose life has been maimed by Jaime. The slavers and the prostitutes were not. Whether we end up liking Jaime at the end or not, Brandon cannot being ignored because we're seeing his path.

[kimim]

Out of curiosity, does anyone on this thread view the Astapori, Yunkai'i and Meereenese as being a decadent people whom refuse to change their way of life for others and their frivolousness, NOT "evil" moustache twisters?

No. they're presented as ridiculous, mustache-twirling villains, and they never go beyond that. The freed slaves are equally one dimensional; they're worshipful and thankful and never fully human. Missandei is the most complex, and she has no more depth than Irri, Jhiqui, Doreah.

[Tagganaro]

My major problems with Dany's chapters relate back to Jon's chapters in ADWD. For me, it's like if you take Jon's chapters in ADWD, remove all the interesting side characters, and change the location and purpose of them to complete irrelevance. Jon frequently gets to spar with good characters, interesting people who have a bit of depth to them and established motivations, people who have some kind of influence on the main plot, and deal with issues that will obviously become major. People like Stannis, Melisandre, Mance, heck even Tormund has better characterization than pretty much all of Mereen. Dany gets what...Hizdar and the Shavepate and the Green Grace and Daario- These people and their motivations don't matter to me, and not much effort has been made to characterize and establish them. And for what? While I generally like the world-building, there is just this idea that none of it really matters to the main plot. The happenings of Slaver's bay don't really seem to matter much as they relate to Westeros.

I would enjoy Dany's chapters much more if Mereen had more interesting characters and you felt like the basic events happening there mattered at all and weren't just a time waster.

[Lord Godric]

That's probably a good hint that you should question your thoughts, particularly your expectations.

Look, I would love Martin to throw convention out the window and have Dany be this awful, terrible, tainted ruler, but I don't think he truthfully strays that far. If I'm wrong, I'll love it. But I honestly don't think that I am.

[Jasta11]

I think the way you feel about Dany's chapters in those books are really similar to how I feel about Jons. Like, I literally have no idea what half those ACoK jon chapters are for. GRRM could have written "and jon slowly walked north with his Brothers. It was cold. Ghost was a direwolf with red eyes." and that would have covered most of it. And in ASOS we have jon getting plot gift after plot gift with the wildlings and LC election.

Anyway that's just to say that one mans meat is another's poison. I have come to terms with Jons story and I don't blame him for any of it - I also now see that Jon, Dany, and Tyrion all get a lot of "Gifts" from GRRM and they have their Dull and exciting moments. But it is interesting how differently these arcs can be seen.

On to adwd - all of these characters arcs were boring and too long, it I see what GRRM was trying to do. Just he didn't do it that well.

At least Jon's story gets better in ADWD. He interacts with loads of great characters, and is a far more proactive leader than Dany so his chapters are all interesting, minus the one where he counts meat. It also marks the point where wildlings and northmen get enough development to be interesting, while the slavers just stay mustache-twirling villains whose sole concern is to find new ways to abuse their slaves for gits and shiggles.

[sifth]

Because no one would ever do business with them again. The army they're giving up means nothing, they have another one the way.

So giving a girl all your soldiers and just hoping she wouldn't use them against you is a wise move in your books. Better yet they didn't even include lessons on how to control the dragon in the deal. It really is lucky for Dany these salvors were soooo stupid.

[TheWeepingKnight]

No. they're presented as ridiculous, mustache-twirling villains, and they never go beyond that. The freed slaves are equally one dimensional; they're worshipful and thankful and never fully human. Missandei is the most complex, and she has no more depth than Irri, Jhiqui, Doreah.

Oh, are you stating this as a indisputable fact or merely your view? Anyhow, I'm fine with the Slavers simply being what I stated they were and little more as I've already stated my feelings on trying to denote Daenerys' arc to being trite simply because there aren't a big supporting cast of Slaver/Freedman characters to care for.