Foreshadowing is not character development

[Johan Wehtje]

3 hours ago, TimeKills said:

And in her emotional state she very methodically burns streets full of people, back and forth, as if she was mowing the lawn.

I agree with everything else you say up to this point. Then I have difficulty with understanding what exactly is happening with Dany. As other posters have said, there is a reason you do not see her face after the initial reaction. Is she screaming with rage.... for the next hour.  Maybe, but why burn civilians in your mad sad rage and not go for Cersei?

This is an important point. Many people who have said that this turn was foreshadowed by past examples of ruthlessness seem to forget that Dany has always used violence very deliberitavely. Whether killing Khals or executing the Tarlys or suspected harpies etc she has always been chillingly calm. In battle astride Drogon she is generally concentrating or exultant. Although brillinatly acted by Emilia Clark the crazy rage is something completely new. 

Micheal Walsh over at AV Club's mailbag of Thrones has a really good take:

https://www.avclub.com/the-mailbag-of-thrones-answers-what-the-hell-just-happe-1834774885

Quote

Some have argued the show set up her descent into madness for years, but it’s just not true. She was repeatedly given that opportunity and she always stepped back from the edge of insanity. Daenerys was not above torching her enemies, including slave masters and those who betrayed her, but not the innocent and oppressed. That was her whole thing. The show didn’t present this outcome as a real possibility until the middle of season seven when she executed the Tarly boys, and even that was defensible. She gave them a chance to bend the knee and they wouldn’t, so she killed them, and to the rest she granted pardons, the same as Aegon the Conqueror. Why was that so outrageous? Tywin Lannister buried his enemies alive (which is what the “Rains of Castemere” is about) and had them butchered at a wedding. No one ever looked at him and said, “Oh, this guy is going mad!”

Daenerys had what she wanted. Westeros was hers, and she had proven she was an unstoppable force if the Sansas of the world wanted to oppose her. That’s when she decided it was time to do war crimes and betray her guiding principle? I don’t think it made any sense, but at minimum it wasn’t earned. The little work the show put into the possibility it might happen was rushed and underwhelming. 
Of course, I haven’t really answered the question yet: Why did they do that to Dany? Because they’re obsessed with big, shocking moments, and this certainly qualified as one. They cared more about that than whether it made sense for her character. Daenerys, and viewers, deserved a lot better.

 

[Johan Wehtje]

The way this show went you have to laugh or cry.

Here have a laugh:

 

[Nightwish]

7 hours ago, TimeKills said:

And in her emotional state she very methodically burns streets full of people, back and forth, as if she was mowing the lawn.

I agree with everything else you say up to this point. Then I have difficulty with understanding what exactly is happening with Dany. As other posters have said, there is a reason you do not see her face after the initial reaction. Is she screaming with rage.... for the next hour.  Maybe, but why burn civilians in your mad sad rage and not go for Cersei?

Because she has lost control, the fact that she goes back and forth burning the same street is an indication that she is not thinking anymore. She is totally controlled by her emotions and her fury. 

Haven't we all read stories where people just snap, blur and are not even thinking when under great emotional distress? 

Anyway the point that I am trying to say is that Dany’s built up is season 8.

All these situations (losing her dragons and the people she trusts, feeling betrayed by the people she tried to save, Varys attempt to assasinate her, John’s cold approach and the realization that all these good she tried to do actually turned against her) pile up in breaking her. 

So her downfall to “madness” isn’t caused because she is evil or she had cruel tendencies. They created all season 8 as a built up for her broken psychology. 

They show  her suffering over these realizations. She is broken. It is pain that drives her actions. Not cruelty. Cruelty is the outcome, not the reason. 

And she doesn’t enjoy it, she is sad that it has come to that. There is no point in seeking “clues” of madness in the previous seasons because all of the things that actually break her happens during season 8. 

And they do break her because she is not a cruel person, neither evil, sadistic nor mad, either wise the script wouldn’t invest so much time in picturing Tyrion’s plan as useless, Sansa and Arya as ungrateful, Varys as a traitor, the WW as a major threat where she loses her army but she is not rewarded and all that bla...bla..

 

 

 

[Gendelsdottir]

13 hours ago, Nightwish said:

[snip]

But then as she sees the Red Keep, the symbol of her dynasty, she can’t really control her emotions anymore. She explodes and then it is her emotions that control her.

 

7 hours ago, TimeKills said:

And in her emotional state she very methodically burns streets full of people, back and forth, as if she was mowing the lawn.

I agree with everything else you say up to this point. Then I have difficulty with understanding what exactly is happening with Dany.

I appreciate that viewers like yourselves take the time to analyze why a show character's does what she does. Other posters here cite, at some length, examples from history to support or refute the correctness of Dany's actions. I appreciate that this comes from a place of empathy. I get that you identify (more or less) with one or more of the characters. Part of your reaction may be a feeling of, "Why is the show making this person, whom I like, do such heartless/stupid/inexplicable things? If it were me, would I do those things? If I did, how would I justify it?"

However, this is only one of the ways to approach the show. I myself don't identify with any character, on this or practically any other TV show or movie. Why that is, I have no idea. Maybe it's because I don't see people on the screen who are anything like me. Maybe it's because I can't forget that in a scripted show, everything the actors say & do comes from a conscious choice made by a writer, for reasons that have nothing to do with what an actual human being might do in that situation.

I've read the Scientific American article mentioned by @no_one... upthread. Here's a link to it. To me it makes a lot of sense; it sums up my frustration with the direction the show took once the books ran out.

In my view, the problems with GoT go waaaayy beyond this or that character doing heel turns, faceplants, or standing there sucking their thumbs such that viewers go, "What th' ...?! Every single time a character has a "spontaneous moment" like that, for shits 'n' gigs, shock value, etc., it pulls the audience out of the ongoing narrative and into a not-terribly-productive "why did he/she do that?" debate.

Quote

From the article:

... sociological stories don’t discount the personal, psychological and even the genetic, but the key point is that they are more than “coin tosses”—they are complex interactions with emergent consequences: the way the world actually works.

Worldbuilding - "the structures, incentives and forces that shape how [characters] act in this world" - ought not to be sacrificed for "GOTCHA!!" moments.

This is why I find Season 8 so much less absorbing than the early seasons. Again, I appreciate that viewers who support this or that character are disappointed because their character's arc was trashed or completely abandoned or whatever. My own disappointment comes from a slightly different place.

[Nightwish]

8 minutes ago, Gendelsdottir said:

However, this is only one of the ways to approach the show.

I agree, but I what I tried to explain here is just her narrative: from where her moment of "madness" comes and how the script sets her up for this to happen through season 8 developments until she can no longer control her feelings for all that happened to her.  

We can't just skip her emotional state (where she is depicted heart broken) and search for clues in season 4 or 2.

These seasons are irrelevant, nothing of the things that happened in Season 8, ever happened before to her. It took all of these series of events to lead her into collapsing. And she is indeed devastated that it came to this. 

I try not to judge the script itself but only state what comes out of the script according to how they present her specially at the last episode.

Yes this posts focuses on her psychology since this thread is about character development.

Apparently I don't want to expand on how the show itself uses the characters or the conditions around them. Actually Dany's case is too much of a set-up, but that's how they tried to justify this, this is what we are left with to work. 

31 minutes ago, Gendelsdottir said:

I've read the Scientific American article mentioned by @no_one... upthread. Here's a link to it. To me it makes a lot of sense; it sums up my frustration with the direction the show took once the books ran out.

Thank you, I have also read it and I agree. This is one of the reasons that probably the show turned in "soap opera" by focusing too much on emotional personal drama.  

Another reason can also be the problem to deliver what it promised especially in the fantasy section for example: Bran, WW, dragons and so on. 

And this fantasy with reality mix apparently creates an unstable environment that viewers can't trust: 

When heroes are saved most of the times is fantasy, when they are doomed is realism. No rules for its own universe, just convenience. 

So yes apparently this is a great conversation, but it has to do more with the show itself, and I am sure we will read many interesting articles and explanations with different approaches once its finished. 

 

[Vanadis]

30 minutes ago, Nightwish said:

So yes apparently this is a great conversation, but it has to do more with the show itself, and I am sure we will read many interesting articles and explanations with different approaches once its finished. 

 

I guess that if the show manages to shine a light on how important good scriptwriters are to any show, then maybe something good comes out of this. I don't know how the industry works, but I suspect the truly competent don't get enough credit for the job they're doing.

I'll admit that I for one know the names of many directors, and many authors, but only a handful of scriptwriters. 

[Gendelsdottir]

I agree with you @Nightwish that Daenerys's psychological state is the point here, and that we must work with what we're given. It's just that when I'm handed something like this - key character suddenly loses her grip and torches an entire city! - my first reaction is not, "What's going through her mind that would make her do this?" but more like, "What sort of 'artistic choice' would lead to this scene being put in?"

Someone, I forget who, posted about mixing fantasy and reality elements. Roughly, it was this: the more magic there is in a story, the more it (and everything else) has to abide by strict and unchanging laws & limits. Otherwise, you get a world where anything can happen, and that is the death of suspense.

But  yes, that's definitely a separate discussion.

[hewman]

1 hour ago, Gendelsdottir said:

I've read the Scientific American article mentioned by @no_one... upthread. Here's a link to it. To me it makes a lot of sense; it sums up my frustration with the direction the show took once the books ran out.

 

Thank you both no_one... and Gendelsdottir for mentioning the article and for the link to it!

[Gendelsdottir]

38 minutes ago, Vanadis said:

I guess that if the show manages to shine a light on how important good scriptwriters are to any show, then maybe something good comes out of this. I don't know how the industry works, but I suspect the truly competent don't get enough credit for the job they're doing.

I'll admit that I for one know the names of many directors, and many authors, but only a handful of scriptwriters. 

Slightly OT: here's a blog from the showrunners of The Librarians and prior to that, Leverage. http://kfmonkey.blogspot.com/

John Rogers et al are quite forthcoming about their process, and they are candid, funny, intelligent and refreshingly humble. They take the time to answer viewers' questions after every episode, as well. There may be other showrunners who do this, but I can't think of any right now.

Edited to add: the blog hasn't been updated since 2015, though The Librarians ran until 2018. Still, it gives a nice insight into the biz.