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This ending is nothing but Bitter


iRapture

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16 minutes ago, Jabar of House Titan said:

So, let me get this straight.

Daenys the Dreamer has magical powers that enables her to save her House from complete annihilation and she is nuts?

Robb Stark started the War of the Five Kings?

Daenerys Targaryen, like her ancestor, has magical powers that enable her to see the future and make her very sensitive to other forms of magic that are enough to drive her crazy?

 Bran Stark is intended for a dark path which then means that he will take and then fully commit to said dark path?

Intriguing....

I edited to elaborate on how Bran's actions (chiefly his interactions with Hodor and Meera) already are complicit with his dark path. As for Robb, yes, yes he did. Once again, an understandable move given the crown killed his father, but it was his war. Just like how it was understandable for Daenerys to liberate Meereen, but not seeing it through to the end, especially in the full ragequit way she did, was irresponsible.

Regardless of your thoughts on whether they actually will go insane, surely you can admit that these people are much better-seeded for going insane/evil than Show-Daenerys?

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13 minutes ago, Beardy the Wildling said:

Regardless of your thoughts on whether they actually will go insane, surely you can admit that these people are much better-seeded for going insane/evil than Show-Daenerys?

Haven't read the books (was considering to before S8 aired...F that), but given that Anakins decent from Good Jedi into darkness and Darth Vader was better paced, nuanced and written (over the course of less than two full movies) than Daenerys decent from Beloved Mhysa, protector of the downtrodden, into Psychopathic killer who kills the downtrodden for shits and giggles, then I'm sure that books-characters are better seeded indeed.

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19 minutes ago, Beardy the Wildling said:

I edited to elaborate on how Bran's actions (chiefly his interactions with Hodor and Meera) already are complicit with his dark path. As for Robb, yes, yes he did. Once again, an understandable move given the crown killed his father, but it was his war. Just like how it was understandable for Daenerys to liberate Meereen, but not seeing it through to the end, especially in the full ragequit way she did, was irresponsible.

Regardless of your thoughts on whether they actually will go insane, surely you can admit that these people are much better-seeded for going insane/evil than Show-Daenerys?

I don't really see Bran having a dark path.  And I've always thought the proper end to Dany and all her fire and blood, mine by rights attitude would be that she becomes an antagonist, but I never honestly thought GRRM had the guts to do it.  It appears he does and he will if he ever finished, however, I'm not sure she will go 'insane' and simply not given in to her tyrannical and ruthless side which has been there from the very start.

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16 minutes ago, Cas Stark said:

I don't really see Bran having a dark path.

I do. He secretly starts warging Hodor even though he knows it's wrong and that it's causing massive amounts of distress to Hodor.

22 minutes ago, MinscS2 said:

Haven't read the books (was considering to before S8 aired...F that), but given that Anakins decent from Good Jedi into darkness and Darth Vader was better paced, nuanced and written (over the course of less than two full movies) than Daenerys decent from Beloved Mhysa, protector of the downtrodden, into Psychopathic killer who kills the downtrodden for shits and giggles, then I'm sure that books-characters are better seeded indeed.

This.

19 minutes ago, Cas Stark said:

And I've always thought the proper end to Dany and all her fire and blood, mine by rights attitude would be that she becomes an antagonist, but I never honestly thought GRRM had the guts to do it.  It appears he does and he will if he ever finished, however, I'm not sure she will go 'insane' and simply not given in to her tyrannical and ruthless side which has been there from the very start.

I have seriously strong doubts that Daenerys ends the series as a pathologically evil antagonist that enjoys the sound of panicked screams and the sight of wholesale destruction and thus marches people into ovens.

The original outline has Dany fleeing into the wilderness, taming dragons, taking control of the Dothraki, mercilessly destroying her competition in Westeros, struggling to govern Westeros after conquering it and then heroically taking the Others head-on before maybe dying, maybe abdicating for Jon Snow.

The skeleton of that all looks like it will remains the same but the muscles, the joints, the connective tissue, the brains and the heart of that has changed. But the skeletal structure is the skeletal structure.

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2 hours ago, Beardy the Wildling said:

You're aware that it's been confirmed that D&D just lazily copy-pasted Jon Connington burning King's Landing due to his greyscale + bell PTSD onto Dany? We aren't pissed because the endings aren't happy enough, we're pissed it doesn't make sense.

 

Thank you for this it never even occured to me to connect those dots. I do not believe for a minute Dany goes mad in the books, she may take extreme measures in slavers bay to deal with the pale mare (kill healthy people along will the sick) which may lead to exaggerated reports and propganda in Westeros that she is mad. If she dies in the books it's most likely in child birth. After all isn't this supposed to be about the Targaryen restoration.

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13 hours ago, hallam said:

I can pretty much guarantee a lot of people are going to be bitter.

None of the heroes are quite the people we thought. But we were constantly warned from start to finish in the shows and the books

We are lured into thinking Danny is the rightful queen despite the strong hints that Jon is going to have a stronger claim from the start. Bastards are never bastards and Jon's first words are that he isn't a Stark. But even setting aside Jon's claim, the only Targarians only ruled because they had dragons. The right of kings was never more than the right of the sword and in this case control of the only WMD.

Exactly that. Yes, we were warned, time and again, but people ignored Cassandra's plangent predictions and Troy burned indeed.

The special "entitlement" of the Targaryens should have sent up red flags from start to finish, but most people ignored it.

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20 minutes ago, CrypticWeirwood said:

Exactly that. Yes, we were warned, time and again, but people ignored Cassandra's plangent predictions and Troy burned indeed.

The special "entitlement" of the Targaryens should have sent up red flags from start to finish, but most people ignored it.

Yes, the signs were there but we were persuaded to ignore them. 

I rather suspect that the folk screaming that GRRM would not turn Danny into Richard Nixon napalming Cambodia and Laos are the same folk who refuse to believe Nixon did that.

Calling the producers stupid for not giving them the ending they want might be OK if this was all their creation. Claiming that this is a stupid ending they invented without any input from GRRM is just nonsense. They have no evidence for that at all but they will carry on in their denial just like they have on Stannis.

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39 minutes ago, hallam said:

I rather suspect that the folk screaming that GRRM would not turn Danny into Richard Nixon napalming Cambodia and Laos are the same folk who refuse to believe Nixon did that. 

That's a terrific allusion, especially given that George was a registered conscientious objector during that very war!

Makes you wonder how much those brutalities fueled his imagination and plot points here in the current tale. 

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38 minutes ago, CrypticWeirwood said:

That's a terrific allusion, especially given that George was a registered conscientious objector during that very war!

Makes you wonder how much those brutalities fueled his imagination and plot points here in the current tale. 

We backed Stalin against Hitler. Then we had a proxy war against Communism. And folk like Nixon were busy killing real people and lots of people back home thought that was just fine and dandy.

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In the end this is GRRM story about Targaryens extinction. D&D have chosen to do it with brutality, hastening events at the end of the show.
Logical or illogical, with more development of characters or not, the end for Dany  and Jon will be the same. It can only be bitter. For the rest of the characters who will survive till the end is a bittersweet ending.

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7 hours ago, hallam said:

Yes, the signs were there but we were persuaded to ignore them. 

I rather suspect that the folk screaming that GRRM would not turn Danny into Richard Nixon napalming Cambodia and Laos are the same folk who refuse to believe Nixon did that.

Calling the producers stupid for not giving them the ending they want might be OK if this was all their creation. Claiming that this is a stupid ending they invented without any input from GRRM is just nonsense. They have no evidence for that at all but they will carry on in their denial just like they have on Stannis.

 

When did Nixon drop Napalm in Hanoi after the city surrendered? 

If what Dany had done was not care about the collateral damage that taking KL would lead to I could understand the parallel. But this isn’t what the show has done. It has Dany kill a million innocent people who surrendered. Which implies that killing all the soldiers and presumed collateral damage was perfectly reasonable. 

What they made Dany do was gratuitous and silly. Even Genghis Khan accepted the surrender of cities. 

Honestly, it’s pretentious to berate your audience for not caring about the common people in the story enough. The readers are the common people. They’ve chosen to read a story about this Dragon Queen and the feuding nobles. They think the idea of Dragons is cool. It’s hypocritical to build up and sell the story on that basis only become condescending and irreverent towards the audience. If you don’t like those things then why make a TV show about them. There’s nothing preventing the heroes being a bunch of peasants doing peasant stuff.

Frankly I only cared about the people of Kings Landing to the extent that Dany had made a horrible decision. I couldn’t care less if they all died of Greyscale or the Undead swept them away. They’re a faceless mass  that’s barely been characterised. It’s like any other disaster movie where you see millions of people die.

 

 

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11 minutes ago, Tyrion1991 said:

 

When did Nixon drop Napalm in Hanoi after the city surrendered? 

If what Dany had done was not care about the collateral damage that taking KL would lead to I could understand the parallel. But this isn’t what the show has done. It has Dany kill a million innocent people who surrendered. Which implies that killing all the soldiers and presumed collateral damage was perfectly reasonable. 

What they made Dany do was gratuitous and silly. Even Genghis Khan accepted the surrender of cities. 

Honestly, it’s pretentious to berate your audience for not caring about the common people in the story enough. The readers are the common people. They’ve chosen to read a story about this Dragon Queen and the feuding nobles. They think the idea of Dragons is cool. It’s hypocritical to build up and sell the story on that basis only become condescending and irreverent towards the audience. If you don’t like those things then why make a TV show about them. There’s nothing preventing the heroes being a bunch of peasants doing peasant stuff.

Frankly I only cared about the people of Kings Landing to the extent that Dany had made a horrible decision. I couldn’t care less if they all died of Greyscale or the Undead swept them away. They’re a faceless mass  that’s barely been characterised. It’s like any other disaster movie where you see millions of people die.

 

 

If you're up against Genghis Khan, or Caesar, or the Black Prince, or King Baldwin of Jersualem, or plenty of other conquerors, you don't get the option of surrender, if you've respond to their demands by executing their closest friend, and they subsequently storm your city.

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2 hours ago, Tyrion1991 said:

When did Nixon drop Napalm in Hanoi after the city surrendered? 

Nixon secretly sabotaged LBJ's negotiations to end the war before he even became President so everything he did was a lie.

Thatcher sank the Belgrano to prevent the Argentines participating in peace talks. She also went and begged Gorbachev to send in the tanks to stop the Berlin wall falling.

There is no end of the perfidious actions of autocratic leaders. People find reasons to excuse all their actions because they don't want to accept the truth. And spreading fake conspiracy stories is one of the ways that they discredit the real ones.

The Thatcher/Gorbachev exchange is on the Thatcher Foundation Web site run by her children. It has been public for about a decade but receives very little attention. But the basic facts were known to some of us at the time.

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Just now, Tyrion1991 said:

What they made Dany do was gratuitous and silly. Even Genghis Khan accepted the surrender of cities. 

 

 

Gengis Khan is a very good example of ruling by fear. You are right that he accepted the surrender of cities but these cities were clearly warned that it was surrender or everyone dies.

Cersei had the opportunity of surrendering and instead beheaded Missandei in front of Dany. The Bells is a a half hearted surrender (if not 'coward') when things didn´t turn out well, but Dany thinks (correctly) that she must send a message to the rest of Westeros; Accept me as a queen or let your children and culture be erased for ever.

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The linchpin of Mongol success was the widespread perception amongst their enemies that they were facing an insurmountable juggernaut that could only be placated by surrender. The Mongols may have counted on reports of horrifying massacres and torture to terrify their foes. The goal was to convince all and sundry that the costs of surrendering were not nearly onerous enough to risk an unwinnable war, given the guarantee of complete annihilation if they lost. This strategy was partially adopted because of the Mongols' lesser numbers; if their opponents were not sufficiently subdued, there was a greater chance they could rise again and attack the Mongols when the Mongols left to deal with another town and settlements.

From a tactical point of view Dany needed the destruction of King´s Landing to properly rule Westeros, or else the rest of the houses would routinely join for 'another war' against her. The Bells is a message to Westeros and a template of her methods against dissension. She wants to break the wheel. And fear it is.

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11 minutes ago, Empress Sansa said:

The Bells is a a half hearted surrender (if not 'coward') when things didn´t turn out well, but Dany thinks (correctly) that she must send a message to the rest of Westeros; Accept me as a queen or let your children and culture be erased for ever.

Precisely.

That was my thinking during the ringing of the bells. The surrender was half hearted, they did not truly submit, and Tyrion was interested in saving his siblings just as much if not more than saving the city. Dany was not mad, she was deliberate!

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Exactly. I am pretty much a peaceful person (even a 'liberal' if you like) and can´t help but empathize with Dany on her 'fuck them all' moment. "No mercy to the killers of my beloved ones, the treasonous advisers and the untrustable common folk in the capital. Jon and the ungrateful north can go to hell also with their double game. This is my game from now on."

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Its a bad story because they’ve warped Dany into another Ygritte for Jon to kill and be all emo about. 

That he has to do it with Jorahs sword adds insult to injury.

Clearly GRRM only intends a bittersweet ending for the Stark clan and to condemn Dany as a monster. This is a horrible resolution to her story. With Ned and Rob you didn’t have an outright betrayal of the character that renders everything they’ve struggled for and sacrificed meaningless because, ultimately, the Stark children were able to carry the torch to victory. Dany does not have that. Her end is to be an ignominious failure and for that to be trumpeted at anyone who rooted for her. 

 

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On a side note i love how S8 began with all the usual suspects reuniting and happily sharing some drinks (and sex) in Winterfell only for most of them to die or treason each other in some way (with some exception).

If one thing is clear is that you can´t trust anybody (well, maybe Arya, but she is playing a different game).

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1 hour ago, Empress Sansa said:

Gengis Khan is a very good example of ruling by fear. You are right that he accepted the surrender of cities but these cities were clearly warned that it was surrender or everyone dies.

Cersei had the opportunity of surrendering and instead beheaded Missandei in front of Dany. The Bells is a a half hearted surrender (if not 'coward') when things didn´t turn out well, but Dany thinks (correctly) that she must send a message to the rest of Westeros; Accept me as a queen or let your children and culture be erased for ever.

From a tactical point of view Dany needed the destruction of King´s Landing to properly rule Westeros, or else the rest of the houses would routinely join for 'another war' against her. The Bells is a message to Westeros and a template of her methods against dissension. She wants to break the wheel. And fear it is.

This is silly. Daenery's "break the wheel" bit has always been about doing so for the good of the common people. Slaughtering common people by the hundreds of thousands in order to save them from the crushing tyranny of nobility makes no sense. If Daenerys wants to ensure no noble houses will rise against her the way to do that is by exterminating the noble houses that fight against her. Maybe starting with that one called Lannister? 

Instead she ignores the Red Keep (giving Cersei time to escape if not for a fortuitous cave-in) in favor of burning random streets of King's Landing. 

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