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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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Just now, SeanF said:

No.  Hanging him was justified in the context of this being a cruel and brutal world.  As is a lot of what Dany did.

In our world, hanging a 12 year old would be a crime, as would be much of what Dany does.

Well in our world 12 year olds can’t join most military orders, but if one could and he was caught killing his general, that would be treason. You know a capital crime.

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You go into fantasy stories like A Game Of Thrones expecting to see the fantastic, the mystical, and the bloody.

Looking back to the beginning, Ned was punished for wanting to do "good" and not acting brutal enough.

If AOIAF wanted to be a tale of morality, then it should have focused on that from book one, not build up these incredible events, only to tell you "HAHA, the joke is on you stupid! Killing people is bad, remember???"

My opinion is that GoT builds up character story lines not for message, but for reader shock. And then tries backtracking and saying, remember this foreshadowing? 

It's not consistent with its message.

 

 

 

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I think this is an unpopular opinion but I actually love that they are punishing people for supporting her journey. Even back in season 3 and 4 I would tell people to just imagine similar scenarios but with characters they were invested in. The whole fire and blood thing sounds great when Dany is calm, confident, doing it to mostly evil people, and all to a triumphant score.

When she is listing her titles with varying levels of composure she came across as clearly delusional in some of the cases, and just arrogant in others. When as early as season 2 she is already screeching about destiny and her dreams coming true I always thought I would be incredibly disappointed if she either wasn't a villain ultimately, or at least got set straight and her ego checked. 

I loved the fact she turned and that Emelias acting for the brief parts she got to play the Mad Queen for. What I didn't love was how unbelievably rushed it was, and even moreso that we got to explore that side of the character for a whole of 25 or so minutes. 

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46 minutes ago, Vanadis said:

Killed Olly.

Well, he did kill his commander.  While he was too young to be in that role, he was mutinous.  And besides all that - you can hardly say that Jon didn't bat an eye at doing it.  It was obviously difficult for him and he didn't want to do it.  It was more similar to Ned beheading NW deserters, whether he wanted to or not. 

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6 hours ago, draft0 said:

That's what the show didn't do--bringing the viewer along for the final turn. Suddenly, it shifted perspective away from Dany, distanced the camera away from her. And so, as viewers, we were not complicit, because we were not cheering Dany as she took the torch to the city. We saw the sack of King's Landing through Tyrion's eyes, Jon's, Arya's--but not Dany's. 

It was a tasteful choice to show us the view from the ground. Too often we've seen Dany burning people from above on her dragon, we know what that looks like. This time, only the victims mattered. After a mass killing in the U.S., when media images focus too much on the killers' face instead of the faces of the victims, it is seen as offensive.

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27 minutes ago, kevinbgwrites said:

 

I loved the fact she turned and that Emelias acting for the brief parts she got to play the Mad Queen for. What I didn't love was how unbelievably rushed it was, and even moreso that we got to explore that side of the character for a whole of 25 or so minutes. 

Well, yes, we needed several episodes of her tyranny, either on the way to the IT, or after having taken it, instead of it being an excuse for Jon to get her out of the Starks' way.

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8 minutes ago, Rose of Red Lake said:

It was a tasteful choice to show us the view from the ground. Too often we've seen Dany burning people from above on her dragon, we know what that looks like. This time, only the victims mattered. After a mass killing in the U.S., when media images focus too much on the killers' face instead of the faces of the victims, it is seen as offensive.

This. I have been surprised at people being critical of them not showing Dany's perspective during episode 5 after she goes wild. I thought it was one of the best decisions they made regarding the episode. It puts you totally into the perspective of the enemy/victims and I really don't see what we'd have gained from cutting to her making an angry face amidst the carnage. 

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1 minute ago, SeanF said:

Well, yes, we needed several episodes of her tyranny, either on the way to the IT, or after having taken it, instead of it being an excuse for Jon to get her out of the Starks' way.

Right exactly. I fully agree and am with people in regards to anger at the episode/season, just think certain people are upset about the wrong thing.

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1 hour ago, Vanadis said:

Killed Olly.

I don't think it subverted expectations, it just felt cheap.

I think the problem is with how they tell stories, at least in the last few seasons.

They try to hide who characters are, or give us reason to believe that other character traits are stronger, so that they can reveal the true nature of the character in a surprise moment.

I feel the last seasons are full of that type of storytelling.

An example of this: Jon says he wants to support Dany even after the horrors she has brought. Tyrion has a long speech about why killing her is the right thing to do. When Jon leaves, he says something about how she is the queen or some such thing. Why? To attempt to hide his intention from the viewer. When he goes to meet Daenerys, we are supposed to think that he will not kill her after all, since she is his queen. Then he takes her in his arms and repeats that she is is queen. And only then does he stab her.

I would have preferred that they didn't try to hide his intention. Don't hide who he is until the very last moment. It would have been much better if he had walked into Tyrion's cell and started the conversation saying "Tyrion, I know what I have to do but I don't know if I can do it."

We don't need surprises. 

Gods, it's as if surprises is the only tool in the storytellers' toolbox. 

They admitted they used this technique in the S7 Arya/Sansa fiasco. They said they write everything as if the twist would never happen. So Ayra threatens to cut off Sansa's face - ridiculous. In this case, Jon had to look like he's untroubled by mass murder and even rationalizes her decisions for her, offering the dumbest of excuses. He had to look like the blind follower while Tyrion (of all people) had to give JON SNOW a morality lesson and tell him she's a threat to his family (as if he doesn't fucking know that?). So yeah, they assassinate characters for cheap tricks. 

 

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30 minutes ago, kevinbgwrites said:

I think this is an unpopular opinion but I actually love that they are punishing people for supporting her journey. Even back in season 3 and 4 I would tell people to just imagine similar scenarios but with characters they were invested in. The whole fire and blood thing sounds great when Dany is calm, confident, doing it to mostly evil people, and all to a triumphant score.

When she is listing her titles with varying levels of composure she came across as clearly delusional in some of the cases, and just arrogant in others. When as early as season 2 she is already screeching about destiny and her dreams coming true I always thought I would be incredibly disappointed if she either wasn't a villain ultimately, or at least got set straight and her ego checked. 

I loved the fact she turned and that Emelias acting for the brief parts she got to play the Mad Queen for. What I didn't love was how unbelievably rushed it was, and even moreso that we got to explore that side of the character for a whole of 25 or so minutes. 

I agree.  This was the whole point of her arc.  To make her popular, to make the audience cheer when she kills the 'bad guys' and then to see her devolve where she no longer differentiates between 'bad guys' and 'people who won't bend the knee' and it all unravels for her in tragic fashion.  If it was made clear from the start that she would end a tyrant, instead of the more subtle evidence, then it wouldn't have the same resonance.

Unfortunately, the show blew it with their 180 turn at the very end.

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12 minutes ago, SeanF said:

Well, yes, we needed several episodes of her tyranny, either on the way to the IT, or after having taken it, instead of it being an excuse for Jon to get her out of the Starks' way.

That's because apparently Jon is more afraid of Sansa than Dany. So instead of trying to convince Sansa, he murders Dany. Far easier... 

Then Tyrion is against violence  "PEACE, LOVE, FREEDOM TO THE DWARF"  but again to save his ass he has no problem telling Jon to murder her.  

:rofl:

 

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10 minutes ago, kevinbgwrites said:

Right exactly. I fully agree and am with people in regards to anger at the episode/season, just think certain people are upset about the wrong thing.

It would have been more true to what had gone before to leave her on the Iron Throne.  Then she could have finished like Michael Corleone, winning everything at the cost of losing her soul.

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19 minutes ago, kevinbgwrites said:

This. I have been surprised at people being critical of them not showing Dany's perspective during episode 5 after she goes wild. I thought it was one of the best decisions they made regarding the episode. It puts you totally into the perspective of the enemy/victims and I really don't see what we'd have gained from cutting to her making an angry face amidst the carnage. 


Well, it's not a matter of whether or not they showed the result of her destruction. It's good that they did.

The reason for the criticism is that this was the first time they showed her losing the struggle between the ruthless side of her and the goodhearted side. And *that* is the story they were telling in that moment. It's certainly a story worthy of being told. They should not have cut that part out.

But even more than that, they should have shown the struggle a long time before. How it affected her. How it affected people around her. They should even have had conversations about this. Dany should have said: I'm afraid of what I'm becoming. Am I wrong? Like Jon did. Only her saying it would have given the question a real impact. There could have been so many good scenes and twists and turns because of her struggle. But they saved it until the very end. What a wasted opportunity of a potentially interesting character.

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I agree. People say that the crucifixations are signs that she's going down the path of madness. These are displays of her being ruthless, but that doesn't mean that she has a warped ideology or view of the world. Her world domination stuff comes out of nowhere, so does whatever was going through her mind at the wall of KL. It's too bad that they chose to radically change who this character is in the last 2 episodes, after the better part of a decade building up to something else. In the books, I could definitely see her going down the path of becoming a Robespierre type character (in terms of conviction and ways of going about it, not necessarily abolishing monarchy). This doesn't mean that they should of attempted to go down that path in the final season.

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43 minutes ago, kevinbgwrites said:

I think this is an unpopular opinion but I actually love that they are punishing people for supporting her journey.

Probably, but I wholeheartedly agree. The signs were there all along. Substitute Dany's early enemies for someone who isn't essentially a cartoon villain and she's looking very problematic nearly from the beginning. The genocides in the Slaver cities being a prime example, but even her willingness to make use of the Dothraki to power her planned conquest, or the use of slaves herself, and then later on brutally punish slavers younger than she was when she had slaves shows she is either brutally ruthless or getting swept up in her own bullshit quite early on. As it turns out, it's probably the latter one.

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5 hours ago, Vanadis said:

But, this assumes that the takeaway is that we should have questioned Dany's use of violence, and only hers.

I think that if we are to follow Tyrion's advice, we should question not only Dany's arc but every single act of violence in the show that we ever felt the urge to accept or cheer.

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.

We should have looked back and asked: Did these acts of violence in the end make the characters so insensitive to power that they turned into monsters?

And in all other cases, the answer is no. In every single other case, the dealer of violence either was mad to begin with, or they stayed sane.

Now if what Tyrion describes really was the moral of the story, we should have seen evidence of it everywhere. We should have seen people breaking under the burden of the violence they committed. 

But in the end, Dany was the only one to carry this theme. The only one out of how big a cast...? 

No - you can say that isolated perhaps that there was some sense to be made from Dany's story, and you could be generous about how much information you think it is fair that the show provided about her character before her fall. But, even if you accept that this is the moral of her story, it in no way fits in with the rest of the GOT world as a whole. 




 

I think the show indeed wants you to question everything, especially anything about power, violence, and legitimacy.
Game of thrones is not a fantasy saga with political elements thrown in the mix, Game of thrones is a political saga with fantasy elements thrown in the mix, and that's probably one of the reasons the show is called "Game of thrones" and not "a song of ice and fire".
There is a french youtuber called Tatiana Ventôse, who makes political videos, i don't always agree with her on everything, but for the last few years, she has made a serie of videos about Got, analyzing the political content of the show, it's very interesting, and although she was kinda rooting for Daenerys, she always said there was a big risk that she would become a tyrant.

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1 minute ago, beeeeeen said:

I think the show indeed wants you to question everything, especially anything about power, violence, and legitimacy.
Game of thrones is not a fantasy saga with political elements thrown in the mix, Game of thrones is a political saga with fantasy elements thrown in the mix, and that's probably one of the reasons the show is called "Game of thrones" and not "a song of ice and fire".
There is a french youtuber called Tatiana Ventôse, who makes political videos, i don't always agree with her on everything, but for the last few years, she has made a serie of videos about Got, analyzing the political content of the show, it's very interesting, and although she was kinda rooting for Daenerys, she always said there was a big risk that she would become a tyrant.

Did it? I always under the impression that sex and violence in shows are used to attract audiences. I believe that GOT is not that different. Violence is so conveniently used in the script and also so often, with the action only moving forward, that it becomes the norm at some point, not the question. 

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3 minutes ago, Rose of Red Lake said:

"Sansa, I know she massacred a million people but she's really a good queen. If you could just give her a chance. . ."

"Sansa she will fry you too so give her a chance... " :rofl:

 I can't believe what a chance we missed seeing Sansa running panicked as hell with Drogon behind her. :lmao:

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1 minute ago, Nightwish said:

Did it? I always under the impression that sex and violence in shows are used to attract audiences. I believe that GOT is not that different. Violence is so conveniently used in the script and also so often, with the action only moving forward, that it becomes the norm at some point, not the question. 

Sex and violence attract audiences yes, but that doesn't mean the show has no other purpose. Good stories do not exist just to entertain us, good stories exist to make us think about real life.

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