Predictions: You either die a hero or you live long enough to see yourself become a villain.

[Runaway Penguin]

Where is the line between anti-hero and a murdering villain?

Had she burned down King's Landing defiant... Yes, then she would fit the bill. However she didn't do that. HAd she burned down Red Keep with all the civilians, knowingly, to get Cersei, she would still fit the bill. But she didn't do that. She is not morally ambiguous anymore. 

 

Excusing her atrocity with "bright future" is same as saying that all those victims of gulags were just some eggs needed to be broken for the omelette of the New Soviet Man and bright future.

[Vashon]

On 5/14/2019 at 2:03 AM, Calaryion said:

Here’s another outlook.....

So look at all of Dany’s Male advisors, all they have ever done bar Drogo, is tell her to be diplomatic,

Except Daario, who suggested slaughtering the slavelords of Mereen. I think it was him. 

[Daemos]

21 minutes ago, Runaway Penguin said:

Where is the line between anti-hero and a murdering villain?

Dany is that line. A united Planetos is worth everything.

[Vashon]

9 minutes ago, Daemos said:

Dany is that line. A united Planetos is worth everything.

Protagonist centered morality? You know, Dumb and Dumber quitely forgot to have her smash the Free Cities as well, so the best that can happen is a humbled Westeros.

 

And even if she succeeded, how is it supposed to last past her own lifetime? Are her dragons going to be wild then?

[Daemos]

4 minutes ago, Vashon said:

And even if she succeeded, how is it supposed to last past her own lifetime? Are her dragons going to be wild then?

 

Scripture. Law. Constitution. With the invention of writing, mankind has broken free from the shackles of time and proved that it was capable of magic.

[Vashon]

4 minutes ago, Daemos said:

 

Scripture. Law. Constitution. With the invention of writing, mankind has broken free from the shackles of time and proved that it was capable of magic.

Who is going to enforce this, and how? Without guns making plebs as lethal as knights, or Dragonlords supplanting all other nobility with magically blood locked super steeds, what exactly prevents exactly the same mechanisms of rule from arising again? 

[Daemos]

18 minutes ago, Vashon said:

Who is going to enforce this, and how? Without guns making plebs as lethal as knights, or Dragonlords supplanting all other nobility with magically blood locked super steeds, what exactly prevents exactly the same mechanisms of rule from arising again? 

Fear and force mostly, for several centuries then with a little luck, love and enlightenment will carry on from there with a minor relapse every generation or two when people forget the past or the future because they become too distracted.

The net result of Dany's decisions will be positive I believe if she is allowed to live. She just needs a completely new council since the old one was either killed or terrible.

[Vashon]

5 hours ago, Daemos said:

Fear and force mostly,[/quote] In a medieval Steel Age society, without guns, this means that professionally trained men in armor and with a horse are the best pound for pound fighters. Especially when grouped up

 for several centuries then with a little luck, love and enlightenment will carry on

How? The kind of people that do this enforcement are good at violence, enjoy it, and generally only bother to conspire so that they may engage in violence whenever they wish.

The net result of Dany's decisions will be 

Nothing. Some Houses, big and small, will perish, then she will die, and those houses will be replaced by new nobility carrying on exactly the same way they did before the Targaryens. This is in fact what happened when the Doom fell, the old slavers of Ghis popped right back in, and went right back to it. All that happened was that their slaving empire and culture expanded across Essos, the Qaathi, Sarnor and Rhoynar were removed from the field, replaced by the Dothraki.

 

The Valyrian Freehold did not change the culture or the method of society. In the long term, and frankly they didn't want to, not after they tasted wealth and power.

 

And in Westeros, much the same will be said. The Targaryens were a Flash in the Pan, outlasted by enemy forces that stood their ground and patiently bided their time. The Targaryens bent and accomodated those who had no faithful intention of doing the same. The same tolerant behavior of the Freehold before them. Right on the cusp of getting it, Maegor the Great held back from holding the Maesters in the same contempt as the Faith, and continued to acknowledge the Faith as a legitimate institution instead of another enemy to be entirely broken and the Citadel as its secret weapon.

 

The Targaryens are dead, the Iron Throne is worthless, and geopolitics has returned to Westeros and it is now, once again, truly Seven Kingdoms. Nobody who is interested in stability is capable of bringing it. What's most likely to happen is squabbling, every, as every major and minor lords jockey for power. Westeros is about to go through instability and chaos not seen since the Andal Invasion days.

ALSO

Spoiler

 

Except unlike the show and its silliness, we are forced into acknowledging that the Reach both has the manpower, means and motivation for holding down much of Westeros. Which means Old Town, through High Garden, now directly dominates the Stormlands and the Crownlands(formerly Stormlands themselves), and much of the Riverlands. Even while mobilizing to fight the Iron Born, they have plenty to spare as they have spent so little, and with both the Westerlands and the Riverlands devastated and starving from the war and unable to stock grain for the winter, all of Westeros south of the Neck and north of Dorne is heavily reliant on the Reach for survival and stability.

 

If Westeros is getting united, its under High Garden and Old Town.

 

So uh yeah, nobody who is capable and organized is going to maintain anything nice. 

[Tywin Tytosson]

On 5/13/2019 at 8:28 PM, starklover said:

i should read the books if book jon is better

He is.

[Vashon]

6 hours ago, Tywin Tytosson said:

He is.

Mostly because he actually gets a chance to be Lord Commander. In the show he gets about two scenes of Lord Commandering. 

[Tywin Tytosson]

2 hours ago, Vashon said:

Mostly because he actually gets a chance to be Lord Commander. In the show he gets about two scenes of Lord Commandering. 

Very true.   Jon's abilities, esp his administrative abilities are actually seen.

[Tywin Tytosson]

16 hours ago, Vashon said:

 

Sadly, this is what is most likely to happen.  The anarchy may reach the level of the Dawn Age or the Age of Heroes, when there were hundreds of petty kings across Westeros.   Bronn may just get his castle - kill a hundred men, and they make you a Lord.

[Pacala]

i doubt USA was a hero for Japan or Russia was a hero for Europe at the end of WW2. Hero for one side, villains for the other. This is a story without heroes or villains.

[Erkan12]

On 5/18/2019 at 6:02 PM, Runaway Penguin said:

Where is the line between anti-hero and a murdering villain?

Had she burned down King's Landing defiant... Yes, then she would fit the bill. However she didn't do that. HAd she burned down Red Keep with all the civilians, knowingly, to get Cersei, she would still fit the bill. But she didn't do that. She is not morally ambiguous anymore. 

 

Excusing her atrocity with "bright future" is same as saying that all those victims of gulags were just some eggs needed to be broken for the omelette of the New Soviet Man and bright future.

Exactly.

I would say the Hound is an anti-hero after the ''fuck the king'' at the battle of blackwater, he kills and he doesn't care about the people again, but in the end he fought for protecting Arya, even at Winterfell he gives up until he sees Arya and continues to fight.

He even steals silver from a man and his kid, and somehow he returns there, sees that they died in cold, he burries their body.

As for Dany, yeah if she went to Red Keep directly, in order to kill Cersei she had to kill other people too, I would say she acted like an anti-hero, but there was no point to kill all those people and children. It's pure evil, it's something Ramsay or Joffrey would, and I am not even sure about Joffrey the little shit if he would do that or not.

[Vashon]

I honestly think its quite silly to assume she could use dragonfire in a dense city against enemy forces without collateral damage. I'd like to think that she has simply matured as someone who wants rule conquer and rule. Neither of those can be accomplished without bloodshed.

 

[PetyrPunkinhead]

Well, my predictions were almost totally off--all except for Daeny. Glad to see her get a chance to go full on mini-Nazi there before Jon stabbed her and somehow convinced Drogon it was the throne that killed her.

Wow. Bran is a total fuckboi. He set this shit up from the get go. (I'm only half joking here, but seriously, it all kinda worked out too perfectly for him and Sansa there.)

 

[pudgiebudgie]

On 5/17/2019 at 5:25 AM, Rikard said:

The Game goes ever on.

The game goes on in the way life goes on, but the massive burden of built-up anger, bitterness and trauma that the major houses of Westeros carried is gone. The realm has the chance to start afresh. Obviously it won't be utopia. But it will be better than it would have been had the old families continued.

I show how this is the main theme of ASOIAF in a series of posts here: https://asoiaf.westeros.org/index.php?/topic/154628-asoiafs-overall-theme-the-protection-of-children-starting-with-sandors-arc-and-his-threefold-death-i-will-show-it-to-you/