GoT and Feminism: What Happens Now?

[SeanF]

17 minutes ago, divica said:

I think most people agree that danny has the potential to be a tyrant in the books. That isn t what is irritating people… I mean, her last chapter of adwd was about her realising that she shouldn t have compromised… And most people also have to realize that being a tyrant doesn t make a person a villain… Anyone with absolute power becomes a litle bit of a tyrant… However that doesn t make her a bad ruler… As you said, a ruler that uses brutality to defend his/her people isn t necessary a bad ruler… just not that simpathetic or loved

However, in the show the potential for danny to become a monster was basically set aside in s7 with danny trying to win the throne using the most humane ways she could and leaving mereen with a peacefull agreement with the masters. And while you could say that her burning the tarlys shows she isn t the greatest ruller it doesn t show she is the maddest person in the asoiaf universe that burns all the innocents in KL after they kneel to her… Basically after s7 this super destructive danny option shouldn t be possible! Her entire story in the show is about protecting the inocents and punishing the powerful people that don t obey her...

If you tell me that the events of s7 happen diferently in the books then this ending wouldn t annoy people so much. Basically it is needed either a diferent story or a diferent ending...

The lesson that Dany has learned is that displaying restraint and working for the common good means that Cersei will stab you in the back, half your army and two out of three dragons will get killed, the people you save will treat you as if you're something they scrape off their shoes, your closest advisers will plot against you, and your best friend will be murdered when you offer your enemies their lives in return for surrendering.

So, it's natural that she should be absolutely boiling with fury.

[Bael's Bastard]

1 minute ago, divica said:

It isn t reparation for being enslaved. The slaver spent his Money to train seamstresses in order to have a business to sell clothes.

Then the seamstresses become freewomen and take his business from him… He doesn t deserve some compensation for the Money he invested in their training? Shouldn t danny be concerned in finding a way for the slavers to find other lucrative ways of living besides slavery?

Wether you like them or not the slavers have rights… you can t just destroy their world and don t give them a way to move forward...

Bullshit. The slavers have built their wealth on the lives and free labor of others. There is arguably no amount they could pay or have taken from them that would really pay back what they have stolen. Fuck off with the slavery apologetics.

[Panos Targaryen]

2 hours ago, Ghost+Nymeria4Eva said:

That's because women can write complex male characters without resorting to sexist stereotypes. You wouldn't even have known J.K. Rowling was a woman if she didn't appear in front of a camera considering Harry's character is so well written and relatable. Haven't read McCaffrey's, but there are so many female authors like Anne Rice, Lionel Shriver who write complex male protags without ruining their character or stories with sexist nonsense. Need I say George Eliot? The same can't be said of certain male authors, perhaps the majority of them. Can you think of a male author who writes complex female characters without resorting to stereotypes? Because I can't (at least not off the top of my head right now). 

OK, so you're just sexist, thanks for making this so easy. Bye.

[Ghost+Nymeria4Eva]

1 minute ago, Panos Targaryen said:

thanks for making this so easy. Bye.

Couldn't come up with the names eh?  

[Ghost+Nymeria4Eva]

2 minutes ago, Panos Targaryen said:

thanks for making this so easy. Bye.

Couldn't come up with the names eh?  

[Ghost+Nymeria4Eva]

9 minutes ago, divica said:

Wether you like them or not the slavers have rights… you can t just destroy their world and don t give them a way to move forward...

[Cas Stark]

13 minutes ago, Ghost+Nymeria4Eva said:

Lol that's exactly why people are mad about her arc. Even Ramsay or Joffery didn't do the type of thing that writers have Dany do in the end. And they were waaay worse people. 

Btw Ned does kill noncombatants. The books literally start with him chopping off the head of a runaway nightwatchman. Per law but still. He dies because he slights the old gods. I would have to re-read ASOS to comment on Rob and Jon. 

A deserter from his military order, the Night's Watch, who already knows the penalty is death, as does everyone in Westeros know the penalty, is neither a noncombatant in any meaningful sense, nor is it even close to rounding up a random bunch of elites and killing them as collective punishment after you declared yourself queen. 

 

[Panos Targaryen]

2 hours ago, Ghost+Nymeria4Eva said:

Couldn't come up with the names eh?  

No, I feel no need to prove to an open misandrist that male authors can write female characters without being sexist, just like women have no obligation to prove to me that they can be good drivers, scientists etc.

Your views are despicable, but unfortunately you will suffer no consequences for them, cause the mods here allow neo-Marxists and gender identitarians to run wild, calling GRRM an ignorant sexist and racist, people who don't like Daenerys misogynists who are terrified of the idea of a female ruler, ASOIAF a series that panders to the "white male fantasy", etc.

You and the other similarly-minded people in this forum hold hateful and radical political views, make no mistake. The fact that you happen to be on the left side of the political spectrum and have a platform here doesn't change that fact. No one will call you out for it, but you are by definition a sexist and misandrist. Why are you even a fan of ASOIAF?

[Ghost+Nymeria4Eva]

Just now, Cas Stark said:

A deserter from his military order, the Night's Watch, who already knows the penalty is death, as does everyone in Westeros know the penalty, is neither a noncombatant in any meaningful sense, nor is it even close to rounding up a random bunch of elites and killing them as collective punishment after you declared yourself queen. 

 

Noncombatant is someone who is not in combat as a soldier. As I said, Ned follows the law in this case. But it's still brutality as you described earlier. Under the law, the nightwatchman might not be innocent. But Lady was. He knew Sansa lied, doesn't correct her, kills Lady, and dies exactly as the wolf did, at the Sept of Baelor no less. That's like divine justice. 

Dany didn't kill rando elites, she killed slavers who were never going to change their ways. She conquered Yukai and time for serious reform has come. If she really wanted to be an evil tyrant she would have enslaved the former masters. 

[Cas Stark]

1 minute ago, Ghost+Nymeria4Eva said:

Noncombatant is someone who is not in combat as a soldier. As I said, Ned follows the law in this case. But it's still brutality as you described earlier. Under the law, the nightwatchman might not be innocent. But Lady was. He knew Sansa lied, doesn't correct her, kills Lady, and dies exactly as the wolf did, at the Sept of Baelor no less. That's like divine justice. 

Dany didn't kill rando elites, she killed slavers who were never going to change their ways. She conquered Yukai and time for serious reform has come. If she really wanted to be an evil tyrant she would have enslaved the former masters. 

She doesn't know who she killed, because she held no trials nor did any investigation, she picked random members of a social class and gave them a brutal death, one of the most brutal deaths in existences, she may have killed the worst slavers in the city or the reformers, she doesn't bother to find out. 

If you think this is similar to executing a deserter from his post as part of your legal role as warden of the North, nothing I say will change your mind.  

[divica]

21 minutes ago, Bael's Bastard said:

Bullshit. The slavers have built their wealth on the lives and free labor of others. There is arguably no amount they could pay or have taken from them that would really pay back what they have stolen. Fuck off with the slavery apologetics.

But your job isn t to punish the slavers for how they acted when slavery was legal. The legal things they did in the past are no reason for you to punish tem. This shouldn t be hard to understand.

Basically all slavers that acepted the end of slavery should have a clean slate and be treated as other citzens… Otherwise you are a bad ruler that is descriminating against some of your subjects because of legal things they did in the past... 

[Ghost+Nymeria4Eva]

Just now, Cas Stark said:

She doesn't know who she killed, because she held no trials nor did any investigation, she picked random members of a social class and gave them a brutal death, one of the most brutal deaths in existences, she may have killed the worst slavers in the city or the reformers, she doesn't bother to find out. 

What are you talking about? She picked members from the SLAVER social class, as in they were all engaged in and were benefiting from slavery directly. What reformers? Are you trying to say that the some of the people who got rich off slavery were trying to reform it, meaning dismantle their way of life? I think you are just really sleepy now. 

[Cas Stark]

4 minutes ago, Ghost+Nymeria4Eva said:

What are you talking about? She picked members from the SLAVER social class, as in they were all engaged in and were benefiting from slavery directly. What reformers? Are you trying to say that the some of the people who got rich off slavery were trying to reform it, meaning dismantle their way of life? I think you are just really sleepy now. 

So what?  Plenty of people have lived in slave societies and benefit from slavery and still seen the basic inhumanity and worked to reform their society from within.  But, I get it, you want to feel awesome righteous anger and vengeance when she kills The Evil Slavers, whether they're 14 years old or had 1 slave who they treated well, you don't care.  And quite honestly, you are the audience for Dany's slide into evil.  Not me, I got it long ago that you have to be better than your enemies if you want to keep the white hat.

[Zorral]

7 hours ago, Cas Stark said:

I'm not sure what Birth of a Nation, a film by a man who was born 10 years after the Civil War ended, has to do with GOT or ASOIAF, but that's me.

Just for starters the same people who brought you GOT want to do a series of 'alternate' US history in which the CSA won the war and slavery was never abolished.  Think about it.

[divica]

5 minutes ago, Cas Stark said:

So what?  Plenty of people have lived in slave societies and benefit from slavery and still seen the basic inhumanity and worked to reform their society from within.  But, I get it, you want to feel awesome righteous anger and vengeance when she kills The Evil Slavers, whether they're 14 years old or had 1 slave who they treated well, you don't care.  And quite honestly, you are the audience for Dany's slide into evil.  Not me, I got it long ago that you have to be better than your enemies if you want to keep the white hat.

I think the important matter is what kind of evil might danny become.

Someone who kills all the people in KL without some personal grudge against them? NEVER.

Someone that would want to burn all lords that don t kneel to her? Certainly!

That is why I can see her burning mereen but not KL. She is personally involved with the people of mereen. If when she returns people are practicing slavery again, her dragons are gone, some of her people are dead, she was somehow betrayed, there is a plague…  there are several reasons I can see why she might just want to burn mereen and be done with it. 

[Ghost+Nymeria4Eva]

1 minute ago, Cas Stark said:

So what?  Plenty of people have lived in slave societies and benefit from slavery and still seen the basic inhumanity and worked to reform their society from within.  But, I get it, you want to feel awesome righteous anger and vengeance when she kills The Evil Slavers, whether they're 14 years old or had 1 slave who they treated well, you don't care.  And quite honestly, you are the audience for Dany's slide into evil.  Not me, I got it long ago that you have to be better than your enemies if you want to keep the white hat.

Anti slavery advocates in the US as far as I know did not directly benefit from it. As in, there were no slave owners or slave owning family members that one day rose up and said, hey, kidnapping people and keeping them in bondage is bad. You could say all white people in the US at the time benefited from slavery indirectly, with money from the slave economy ending up as stocks on Wall Street. So some of the white activists who wanted slavery gone were technically slavers? The biggest anti slavery advocates have always been former slaves, like Frederick Douglass of course. 

Regardless, there nothing to indicate that there was any such resistance to slavery at freaking Slaver's Bay. If so, when Dany shows up, they would have voiced their opinion. Resistance to slavery in known Essos exists only in Braavos. And they would have supported any resistance or reform movements if such existed on Slaver's Bay.

I highly doubt anyone was happy that the slavers got horrible punishments for their crimes, I certainly didn't. But anyone with an ounce of common sense would rejoice when Dany defeats the slavers. Dany is better than her enemies in Slaver's Bay. She isn't a slaver, deals out punishments only for the truly guilty (the slavers), and doesn't enslave people even though that would make her really rich and powerful. And by Yunkai law the slavers set up themselves, the bloody punishments would be just, like beheading of the deserter was just under northern law. 

[Cas Stark]

4 minutes ago, Ghost+Nymeria4Eva said:

Anti slavery advocates in the US as far as I know did not directly benefit from it. As in, there were no slave owners or slave owning family members that one day rose up and said, hey, kidnapping people and keeping them in bondage is bad. You could say all white people in the US at the time benefited from slavery indirectly, with money from the slave economy ending up as stocks on Wall Street. So some of the white activists who wanted slavery gone were technically slavers? The biggest anti slavery advocates have always been former slaves, like Frederick Douglass of course. 

Regardless, there nothing to indicate that there was any such resistance to slavery at freaking Slaver's Bay. If so, when Dany shows up, they would have voiced their opinion. Resistance to slavery in known Essos exists only in Braavos. And they would have supported any resistance or reform movements if such existed on Slaver's Bay.

I highly doubt anyone was happy that the slavers got horrible punishments for their crimes, I certainly didn't. But anyone with an ounce of common sense would rejoice when Dany defeats the slavers. Dany is better than her enemies in Slaver's Bay. She isn't a slaver, deals out punishments only for the truly guilty (the slavers), and doesn't enslave people even though that would make her really rich and powerful. And by Yunkai law the slavers set up themselves, the bloody punishments would be just, like beheading of the deserter was just under northern law. 

Slaver's Bay is a mess, there is nothing to rejoice about except for Dany's Pyrrhic victory.  There is plague, starvation, war, death on a vast scale.  It's so bad that people are selling themselves back into slavery happily.  She has a hollow moral victory of freeing the slaves, but in terms of actual living conditions, it is worse for almost everyone, noble and former slave, they have all suffered under Dany's kindness.

But, I can see we will never agree here, so might as well end this discussion.

 

[OldGimletEye]

37 minutes ago, Ghost+Nymeria4Eva said:

Noncombatant is someone who is not in combat as a soldier. As I said, Ned follows the law in this case. But it's still brutality as you described earlier. Under the law, the nightwatchman might not be innocent. But Lady was. He knew Sansa lied, doesn't correct her, kills Lady, and dies exactly as the wolf did, at the Sept of Baelor no less. That's like divine justice. 

Dany didn't kill rando elites, she killed slavers who were never going to change their ways. She conquered Yukai and time for serious reform has come. If she really wanted to be an evil tyrant she would have enslaved the former masters. 

Ned executed a deserter for a specific crime that he committed. Now one can dislike the lack of the lack of due process involved, but it was not an act of collective punishment.

And it is pretty clear Dany committed a mass execution for a specific wrong.

And comparing the death of animals to human beings, well I'm just not going to comment on that, as I think most people wouldn't accept that analogy.

Dany's fans have been warned for a long time about the particularly ugliness of collective punishment and guilt. They chose to ignore it. Now after her actions in KL, maybe they should reconsider.

[Cas Stark]

12 minutes ago, divica said:

I think the important matter is what kind of evil might danny become.

Someone who kills all the people in KL without some personal grudge against them? NEVER.

Someone that would want to burn all lords that don t kneel to her? Certainly!

That is why I can see her burning mereen but not KL. She is personally involved with the people of mereen. If when she returns people are practicing slavery again, her dragons are gone, some of her people are dead, she was somehow betrayed, there is a plague…  there are several reasons I can see why she might just want to burn mereen and be done with it. 

She will probably burn them both.  She will, now that we see how the show ends, for sure burn Meereen in the books and/or otherwise leave it a ruin.  She will blame others for this disaster, because she had good intentions, and vow to herself that it will all be different in Westeros.  But, it won't be.  She will have different and much less black opponents in Westeros, and based on the show, she will ultimately, say fuck it to them too.  Bend the knee and live in my world or die.  Just like she has done all along.

[SeanF]

7 minutes ago, divica said:

I think the important matter is what kind of evil might danny become.

Someone who kills all the people in KL without some personal grudge against them? NEVER.

Someone that would want to burn all lords that don t kneel to her? Certainly!

That is why I can see her burning mereen but not KL. She is personally involved with the people of mereen. If when she returns people are practicing slavery again, her dragons are gone, some of her people are dead, she was somehow betrayed, there is a plague…  there are several reasons I can see why she might just want to burn mereen and be done with it. 

I think Martin's (and the show runners') point is that burning and crucifying slavers is where it starts, but it's not where it ends.  Especially if you're a Targaryen who believes that you are not bound by the same laws that govern the rest of humanity, who walked into a fire with three stones and came out with three dragons, who is virtually worshipped by millions of people in the East, and now believes that those who deny her right to rule Westeros are rebels and traitors -blasphemers even - who deserve no mercy.