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My biggest issue with the finale is that they tried to make us feel guilty for supporting Daenerys' journey.


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1 hour ago, Heartofice said:

I really enjoyed Tyrion’s speech because it summed up my feelings about a certain portion of the fan base who seem to want to hold Dany up as their hero. 

I never saw her in those terms, because it would be far too simplistic and uninteresting a story for her to swoop in and save the day. Her character was always more complex , in the books and parts of the show.

My least favourite parts of the show were the movements where i was expected to cheer for Danys cruelty , when she burns someone. Her riding on a dragon and giving inspirational speeches was more annoying than anything.

So yes, I’m happy

That speech was spot on.  I hated Dany's character throughout the show and was concerned she was always going to be the character that does as she pleases with no repercussions following the birth of the dragons.

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1 hour ago, madhikun said:

Same. I've never been a huge Arya fan due to her blind love for her family, but I never hated her. Sansa and Arya were the most self-centered characters and they still got a happy ending. 

Arguably they got the happiest endings.  They both got what they wanted when they were little.  I understand Arya had her struggles throughout the series but I think they were the lightest of all the characters. 

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7 minutes ago, SeanF said:

I'm on board with that.  But, turning that hero into the devil in next to no time, simply so everyone else can be pleased that she's dead, and then retconning her previous actions which were largely portrayed as good as being bad is rotten writing.

There was no retcon at all. Everything was there from the point that she burned Mirri Maz Duur alive. Remember that Mirri Maz Duur thought that she was pre-emptively saving the world from death and destruction at the hands of Dany's child. In her mind, she believed that an evil act was necessary to make the world a better place. And as fans, most cheered Dany for taking her revenge. It's been the same at every point. Nothing Dany did in the past 7 seasons has had to be re-interpreted to fit with the ending so there's not retcon.

On the other hand, I agree that the full on descent to city-slaughtering mad queen was too quick. Sadly, I think that die was cast when they decided to end the series in 13 episodes rather than 20. Even though some of them were feature-length, the pacing that exists when a season was strung out for 10 weeks felt better. It gave time for viewers to absorb plot points. And in the end, I don't think anyone is pleased that she's dead, it's a tragic death. Even Tyrion understands that. Both he and Jon are unsure if they've done the right thing and it's good that the show was equivocal about that. There's no sense that Westeros is going to be a better place now that the wars of ice and fire are over.

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15 hours ago, AlaerysTargaryen said:

I hated that speech that Tyrion gave about how she was really always evil because she killed her enemies in Essos. We just cheered for her and didn't see the truth in the face. She killed them with fire, dragons and with other means. Just because she didn't wield a sword, didnt do it herself and wasn't a man, it doesnt make her a crazy villain. What she did in KL is another story. But trying to make us feel COMPLICIT because we cheered when she crucified child murderers and killed slavers is fucking insane. Why all of the sudden they are aplying modern sensitivities to the story?  In the recent EW interview even Kit agrees, Dany was never a good person we never believed the signs. FFS! Emilia Clarke seems to be heartbroken and very conflicted about the morality of her character even 2 years later. Whatever her undoing in Westeros was and her fast descent into madness/villainy it does not negate her past actions. Daenerys Targaryen was a GOOD PERSON and made the world across the sea a better place despite the doom she caused in her homeland.

All of this.

Also, WTF with the Nazi symbolism in Dany's speech (acclaimed only by evil dark skinned foreigners, of course). D&D crossed a line there.

Also in their effort to kill Dany's character they also killed the Starks', who now come across as assholes.

 

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24 minutes ago, Vanadis said:

We should question accepting Ned beheading that "traitor" in the first episode.
We should question killing Jeoffrey.
We should question killing Ramsey.
We should question killing the Freys.
We should question Arya killing that man who tried to buy an under-aged whore.
We should question Tyrion killing his father and lover and threatening that if he could, he would have killed everyone present at the trial.
Everything. All of it.

Well, we should and many do.

Ned believed he killed a deserter. Had Bran been the 3ER already then, Ned likely would not have killed him.

Both the show and the books make Joffrey's death so that it leaves a bad taste. He was a kid after all. He shouldn't have died imo, just not be king.

Plenty of viewers question the way Ramsay was executed. I do not support death penalty, but that works in a society where you have actual prisons that aren't just black cells to let someone rot away in. For me a man like Ramsay should be locked up for life, and not in some penal colony where he can get power. Since there is no way to succesfully let alone safely do that in Westeros, I'm ok with Ramsay being executed. I'm NOT ok with the way he died. Though if he ends up locking himself up in the crypts with his dogs of WF in tWoW and ends up being eaten by them, I'd think "what goes around, comes around". Still, I would question the morality of anyone actively and intentionally setting his dogs loose on him.

Arya's show murders were featured as sadistic, both for Meryn Trant and the Freys. And plenty of people and viewers considered Arya irrecoverable. I disliked the portrayal of these murders as Arya's book murders are not sadistic or maniacal, except once, during a fight for her life and Sandor's. I know that in the books she's not the one baking anyone into a pie nor will she be the one to murder all men of House Frey. I expect a Red Wedding 2.0 with LS to get her men into Riverrun and for the rest of House Frey to implide by in-fighting. Even the daughters are described as willing to murder their half-siblings. Nevertheless I also expect that Red Wedding 2.0 to be a painful read too, because there will be characters present who are likeable and sympathetic (such as the groom, Jaime's cousin).

I consider Tyrion a villain, for all the things you say, and I reject Saint Tyrion as a show-invention, because book Tyrion is dark and disturbing and I never agreed with his pettiness.

That said, the sole person in this list who even considered getting civilians killed even though they are caught in the conflict is Tyrion. Even in the show, Arya aims to prevent the death of people who had no agency and did not partake in the RW, even though they carry the Frey name. She even did not invite the men of Walder Frey's bannermen who aided in the Red Wedding slaughter, nor did she make others do the murders for her.

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36 minutes ago, HouseLark said:

There was no retcon at all. Everything was there from the point that she burned Mirri Maz Duur alive. Remember that Mirri Maz Duur thought that she was pre-emptively saving the world from death and destruction at the hands of Dany's child. In her mind, she believed that an evil act was necessary to make the world a better place. And as fans, most cheered Dany for taking her revenge.

One person saying that this is how it will end is not enough. We need to see Dany slowly, step by step, becoming that person, who goes from "innocents are valuable" to "innocents need to be sacrificed."

Personally, I think they intentionally skipped this part of her arc as often as they could because they wanted the final shock to be as big as possible.

And I think Dany isn't the only character they did this with. I guess Stannis was a foreshadowing of what would happen to Dany. They gave Stannis scenes where his love for Shireen was made so believable that it was unthinkable that he would ever harm her. His story too would have worked a lot better if that aspect of him just wasn't present. Or, if they wanted to keep it, they should have found a way to make that shift believable, even if that meant they'd lose the surprise. 

It's like I understand what they're going for: These are supposed to be moments of great tragedy. The writers let there be as big a gap as possible between who the characters are - a person with a great love for something specific - and what they become - a person who is willing to sacrifice their great love for something else that has become more important - because the greater the gap, the greater the tragedy. But then the writers fail to take us on the journey that gets us there. They fail to give us the scenes we need in order to make it believable that the characters would betray their own core values. 

To say that "a seer said that they would do this, therefore we always knew what their characters were", is to let the writers off the hook. We're not supposed to be told who people are. We are supposed to be shown who people are.

And when the moment of tragedy comes, it is supposed to be tragic not because someone once said it would happen, but because we know from what we have been shown that yes, this is believable. This is what they would do. "I know they would do this because I have come to know them as a character." 

And I realize that people have different deal breakers. If they had swapped the CGI dragons for muppets in the last few seasons, I'm sure a lot of people would be raging about now. Or if they swapped the beautiful costumes with clothes from Wallmart. Or if they fired all their actors and got some students from a high school acting class to play their parts instead. 

To some of us, it is a deal breaker that they didn't wrap up the story in a comprehensible way. To tell a good story is more than just showing a string of events that leads to an outcome. You have to be true to the characters, and show the character traits that are important early enough that people can follow along with the story. And not sacrificing staying true to a character for a cheap surprise.

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1 hour ago, Vanadis said:

To some of us, it is a deal breaker that they didn't wrap up the story in a comprehensible way. To tell a good story is more than just showing a string of events that leads to an outcome. You have to be true to the characters, and show the character traits that are important early enough that people can follow along with the story. And not sacrificing staying true to a character for a cheap surprise.

But the way I see it, the descent into a kind of righteous tyranny started in season 1. Dany has always been comfortable with violence and accepting of the deaths of innocent people in order to further her goal. In season 1 she was happy enough to go along with the Dothraki sacking cities and slaughtering innocent Lhazareen so that it furthered her goal of taking the Iron Throne. She also knew that the Dothraki would do to Westeros if they invaded under Drogo. She threatened Qarth in season 2, promising to rain fire on the city if it did not give aid to her people. She killed slavers and nobles in Astapor and Meereen. She had to be talked off the ledge when she returned to Meereen as her instinct was to torch her enemies and probably half the city in the process - it was only thanks to Tyrion that she didn't.

Right through the series we've been shown Dany's penchant for violence and destruction in pursuit of her goal. As Tyrion pointed out (and that was maybe unnecessary), we were encouraged to cheer because some of the people were "bad" and we were also shown that Dany had some noble goals like ending slavery. I think a lot of Dany's negative character traits and actions were overlooked in a desire to see her as a classic fantasy hero and also because, you know, dragons are cool.

The rapidity of the decline from queen with tendency towards unrestrained violence to mass murderer of innocents was a bit much, but the seeds were sown long before this season, most of us just weren't looking for them. A lot would look different with a start-to-finish re-watch of the series.

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1 hour ago, Vanadis said:

One person saying that this is how it will end is not enough. We need to see Dany slowly, step by step, becoming that person, who goes from "innocents are valuable" to "innocents need to be sacrificed."

Personally, I think they intentionally skipped this part of her arc as often as they could because they wanted the final shock to be as big as possible.

And I think Dany isn't the only character they did this with. I guess Stannis was a foreshadowing of what would happen to Dany. They gave Stannis scenes where his love for Shireen was made so believable that it was unthinkable that he would ever harm her. His story too would have worked a lot better if that aspect of him just wasn't present. Or, if they wanted to keep it, they should have found a way to make that shift believable, even if that meant they'd lose the surprise. 

It's like I understand what they're going for: These are supposed to be moments of great tragedy. The writers let there be as big a gap as possible between who the characters are - a person with a great love for something specific - and what they become - a person who is willing to sacrifice their great love for something else that has become more important - because the greater the gap, the greater the tragedy. But then the writers fail to take us on the journey that gets us there. They fail to give us the scenes we need in order to make it believable that the characters would betray their own core values. 

To say that "a seer said that they would do this, therefore we always knew what their characters were", is to let the writers off the hook. We're not supposed to be told who people are. We are supposed to be shown who people are.

And when the moment of tragedy comes, it is supposed to be tragic not because someone once said it would happen, but because we know from what we have been shown that yes, this is believable. This is what they would do. "I know they would do this because I have come to know them as a character." 

And I realize that people have different deal breakers. If they had swapped the CGI dragons for muppets in the last few seasons, I'm sure a lot of people would be raging about now. Or if they swapped the beautiful costumes with clothes from Wallmart. Or if they fired all their actors and got some students from a high school acting class to play their parts instead. 

To some of us, it is a deal breaker that they didn't wrap up the story in a comprehensible way. To tell a good story is more than just showing a string of events that leads to an outcome. You have to be true to the characters, and show the character traits that are important early enough that people can follow along with the story. And not sacrificing staying true to a character for a cheap surprise.

Daenerys needed to cross an unforgiveable moral threshold long before we reached the burning of Kings Landing to make her behaviour seem both credible and evil, but she didn't.  So, we got a cheap shock instead.

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6 minutes ago, HouseLark said:

Right through the series we've been shown Dany's penchant for violence and destruction in pursuit of her goal. As Tyrion pointed out (and that was maybe unnecessary), we were encouraged to cheer because some of the people were "bad" and we were also shown that Dany had some noble goals like ending slavery. I think a lot of Dany's negative character traits and actions were overlooked in a desire to see her as a classic fantasy hero and also because, you know, dragons are cool.

And that's what some of us have been saying for years (that the inflated ego and seeds of tyranny have always been there), but I agree: the show has not done a great job of showing it, even the books mostly show things from Dany's own (naturally biased) point of view, making it harder to see her for what she is early on.

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6 minutes ago, HouseLark said:

Right through the series we've been shown Dany's penchant for violence and destruction in pursuit of her goal.

But *almost everyone* used violence and destruction to reach their goals. The *only* difference is 1) Dany was more powerful since had dragons, 2) More often than not she would actually try to help people and fight evil as opposed to just doing it for fun, or for vengeance, or out of necessity, and 3) Dany is the *only* one in the end who the overarching narrative points a finger at through Tyrion, who himself used violence when needed, and says: Violence disturbing. Violence bad. 

Her story simply does not work within the greater narrative. 

It *could* have worked, but they needed competent writers.

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That was the moment it just dawned on me that Dany is basically Light Yamagi. People have been looking away for so long because "Dany only kills bad people", which is fun logic to justify cold blooded murder, which she did pretty often; the nobles of Meereen being the worst case of this, but what she did to Astapor wasn't much better. Naturally going back on your word is fine "when the person your dealing with is evil", by her logic and the supporters of Dany. It's even worse knowing that many of the people she killed aren't even ones who are openly trying to kill her. The slavers in Astapor she basically kills, simply because "they're evil" and for no other reason. The nobles in Meereen she also kills "because they're evil" and no other reason; I wonder if she did any real investigation into which ones were hurting those kids and which weren't. Tyrion's right, there's only so long, before our real world views of what evil is and her warped one can match.

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4 minutes ago, Vanadis said:

But *almost everyone* used violence and destruction to reach their goals. 

I think there IS a difference between how Daenerys often killed people and how most of the characters on the show killed people.  Her methods and total lack of feeling towards those she felt deserved it always chilled me.  Crucifixion is supposed to be one of the most painful and drawn out deaths imaginable.  Burning people alive.  Even very early on, her reaction to Viserys being 'crowned' was pretty chilling.  When Arya killed her victims, she sometimes did it in really horrible ways, too.  I disagree that we were to really "cheer" her.  

 I have a hard time believing (but judging from this thread, it's true) that people honestly "cheered" Daenerys when she would kill her enemies in various horrible ways without even batting an eye.  Didn't her ruthlessness ever make you uneasy? 

That said, I also felt that her decent from killing her enemies without mercy, to killing innocent civilians without mercy, was - as almost everyone has been saying - too rapid.  This was the woman who had been broken up over her dragons killing a child.  How many children did she command her dragon to burn in KL?  

But for those who are offended that Tyrion was basically addressing the viewer when he said "we cheered her"...maybe it is worth looking at one's reactions to violent death on screen.  I know it is "just" fiction.  But I do find the exultation over graphic and terrible deaths (even when they are bad people) to be kind of disturbing.   

If Daenerys was supposed to be without a doubt a heroic figure in earlier seasons, why are there quite a few people who didn't like her ruthlessness and her arrogance and felt uneasy at the prospect of her crossing into Westeros to destroy "her enemies"? 

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2 hours ago, Vanadis said:

Personally, I think they intentionally skipped this part of her arc as often as they could because they wanted the final shock to be as big as possible.

Yes, I don't understand why they can't be just honest about it, but are blaming the fans for not seeing it. This gets to my nerves. 

This is a gray universe where all of them commit more or less crimes. So of course we can question everybody's morality. But since we can question everybody's morality then we should expect that anyone is capable of burning KL but the only difference is that the rest of the characters had not the means to do so?

https://thegrumpyfish.com/2016/06/20/game-of-thrones-showrunner-daenerys-is-not-her-father-and-shes-not-insane/

“She’s not her father and she’s not insane and she’s not a sadist, but there’s a Targaryen ruthlessness that comes with even the good Targaryens. 

I give up these people are insane. Apparently they don't know what they direct, they don't remember what they are saying and how they supported Dany's viewpoint. They don't care. They just make excuses on the way. Throwing the ball to the viewers, either they support or not Dany, for me is highly unprofessional. It is their job. They control both the message and the medium. 

I honestly believe that yes part of this was our fault for taking them seriously and believing they could deliver a story that would make sense. 

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59 minutes ago, Vanadis said:

But *almost everyone* used violence and destruction to reach their goals. The *only* difference is 1) Dany was more powerful since had dragons, 2) More often than not she would actually try to help people and fight evil as opposed to just doing it for fun, or for vengeance, or out of necessity, and 3) Dany is the *only* one in the end who the overarching narrative points a finger at through Tyrion, who himself used violence when needed, and says: Violence disturbing. Violence bad. 

Her story simply does not work within the greater narrative. 

It *could* have worked, but they needed competent writers.

That first difference is the really important one. Violence is part and parcel of Westerosi society but it's a question of scale. All of the great houses in, both in their histories and within the confines of the ASOIAF story, used violence to achieve their goals. That goes for notional good guys like Robb Stark to outright evil bastards like Tywin Lannister. But there's something about the willingness to wreak destruction on a mass scale that is different. It's why in the real world we are so horrified by chemical and nuclear weapons but not conventional weaponry which kills as many people. The difference is, in Westeros, only one faction has ever and will ever have access to the weapon of mass destruction.

I'd also argue that every character that used violence did so because they were trying to do what they considered to be the right thing. Even Tywin and Cersei did what they did in the service of their house which was the most important thing to them. The whole point of GoT and ASOIAF is that violence is awful and the finger is pointed at everyone, not just Dany. The only difference is she had the ability to end life on a mass scale.

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28 minutes ago, Red Dragon10 said:

 I have a hard time believing (but judging from this thread, it's true) that people honestly "cheered" Daenerys when she would kill her enemies in various horrible ways without even batting an eye.  Didn't her ruthlessness ever make you uneasy? 

Sure. But so did everyone else's ruthlessness. 

In the last scene, they could have swapped Dany with any other character - Tyrion, Arya, even Jon - and we would have had the same discussion about them.

"Yes we cheered on Tyrion when he was ruthless, even though it was disturbing, but come on, the Tyrion I have come to know would not have murdered thousands of innocents after the city surrendered."
"Oh? What about that time he threatened everybody at his trial?"
Etc.

In other words, singling Dany out in order to make a moral point seems random.

A story just shouldn't be random.

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2 minutes ago, HouseLark said:

The whole point of GoT and ASOIAF is that violence is awful and the finger is pointed at everyone, not just Dany. The only difference is she had the ability to end life on a mass scale.

The finger should be pointed at everyone, but in my eyes they failed to do that.
What's more, there should not only be finger pointing, the resolution should be complex and not simplified. It's called a Song of Ice and Fire but it shouldn't be reduced into a Tale of Black and White.

And what's more, I thought one of the concepts of Game of Thrones was that the person with the biggest physical force not necessarily is the most powerful person anyway - as seen by the whole concept of a "game". Who knows what, and why, and where, and how, and how they influence each other, that used to be the foundation for all the stories in Game of Thrones.

What we have now, is a very simplified story: "Dany is the most powerful by physical means, so let's turn her into the Ice Queen from Narnia, only with fire, and let's have Jon fall in love with her because it worked so well with Edmund."

 

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7 minutes ago, Vanadis said:

Sure. But so did everyone else's ruthlessness. 

In the last scene, they could have swapped Dany with any other character - Tyrion, Arya, even Jon - and we would have had the same discussion about them.

"Yes we cheered on Tyrion when he was ruthless, even though it was disturbing, but come on, the Tyrion I have come to know would not have murdered thousands of innocents after the city surrendered."
"Oh? What about that time he threatened everybody at his trial?"
Etc.

In other words, singling Dany out in order to make a moral point seems random.

A story just shouldn't be random.

In the second book it’s kind of weird. I loved Tyrion, but I wanted Stannis to win. A victory for Tyrion meant a victory for Joff and I’d take anyone over him as king. I mean when it comes to Dany she basically is just a different kind of evil than most people write about. Look at how she sacks Astapor and basically abandons it. This is basically something Tywin himself would do.

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18 hours ago, AlaerysTargaryen said:

But trying to make us feel COMPLICIT because we cheered when she crucified child murderers and killed slavers is fucking insane.

Did you? Then you rightfully feel so.

OK, I myself enjoyed the master of the Unsullied being burned by the dragon. Yes, I also appreciated a lot of Arya's vengeance kills. 

However, I didn't appreciate crucifying arbitrary masters just as a statement. I never appreciated her pep-talks about burning down cities and destroying houses of stone. This was always creepy and many people understood it as such.

War is a dirty trade, but her willingness to destroy whole cities was mentioned so often... why do you think there have been dozens of Youtube videos predicting Queen of Ashes / Mad Queen or the like? It was possible to get the clues.

Daenerys was just to cute, to charasmatic as actress for many to see the truth about her. 

 

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1 minute ago, Kajjo said:

Did you? Then you rightfully feel so.

OK, I myself enjoyed the master of the Unsullied being burned by the dragon. Yes, I also appreciated a lot of Arya's vengeance kills. 

However, I didn't appreciate crucifying arbitrary masters just as a statement. I never appreciated her pep-talks about burning down cities and destroying houses of stone. This was always creepy and many people understood it as such.

War is a dirty trade, but her willingness to destroy whole cities was mentioned so often... why do you think there have been dozens of Youtube videos predicting Queen of Ashes / Mad Queen or the like? It was possible to get the clues.

Daenerys was just to cute, to charasmatic as actress for many to see the truth about her. 

 

The road to tyranny is gradual.  They had six seasons to actually show her becoming Genghis Khan in the East, burning down cities that defied her with women and children trapped inside them , leaving pyramids of skulls in her wake, while persuading herself that she was acting in the greater good, in order that she could remain a character that people could empathise with.   Then, we could have seen her bring such methods with her to Westeros.

But, that would have damaged sales of merchandising, for such an iconic character.

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2 minutes ago, SeanF said:

burning down cities that defied her with women and children trapped inside them

She just threatened to do so and her advisers talked her out of it. Barely so, sometimes. 

It was possible to understand from what kind of wood she is made. many understood it. The fanboys now moan.

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