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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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On 5/27/2019 at 8:51 PM, CrypticWeirwood said:

Sure she did. She didn't crucify the ones responsible for the kids' deaths. She even crucified her innocent future father-in-law who had opposed said atrocity!

This will never stop being funny to me. The look on her face when she found out Hizdahr's father was in that group and was wrongfully executed was legitimately hilarious.

16 hours ago, digiFemme said:

I don’t think people are against Dany going mad, only how they executed it. Even Cersei’s blowing up the sept of Baleor (while unjustifiable) had a better build up. She had just gone through a traumatic experience and which made anything related to the faith of the seven hateful to her. If they had handled Dany’s descent to madness half as well as they did Cersei’s destruction of the sept, perhaps there would be less complaining.

I think it was done subtly - her shift toward helping the North was based on selfish motives. Did you notice that she wasn't very altruistic about her saving the North? She called it "Jon's war" and said that the only reason she's not pursuing the Iron Throne is for him. Then in the battle she only moves she really makes are to save him and kill the NK because he killed her dragon. The vibes she's sending off in these scenes is that everyone and everything revolves around her needs. 

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1 hour ago, Rose of Red Lake said:

This will never stop being funny to me. The look on her face when she found out Hizdahr's father was in that group and was wrongfully executed was legitimately hilarious.

I think it was done subtly - her shift toward helping the North was based on selfish motives. Did you notice that she wasn't very altruistic about her saving the North? She called it "Jon's war" and said that the only reason she's not pursuing the Iron Throne is for him. Then in the battle she only moves she really makes are to save him and kill the NK because he killed her dragon. The vibes she's sending off in these scenes is that everyone and everything revolves around her needs. 

Are you trying to prove that she’s selfish when it comes to certain things? That’s kind of out-of-topic isn’t it? A lot of characters in GoT are selfish at some point, she isn’t the only one and this isn’t a Disney show. Also, Dany’s selfishness is besides the point. Being selfish does not mean you wouldn’t make an effective ruler. It doesn’t mean she’d turn into an evil murderer either. Those scenes were probably set up to show why the North needed to be independent-  I wish they could have done this without affecting her character but they were clearly willing to do much worse.

I don’t think she cares for the North anymore than Jon cares for the unsullied. It’s not for her to take, which is fine* Had she had more time to get to know Westeros, she could have grown to care for it and the North but that’s not how the story goes. The moment she enters, she has to deal with an unfamiliar problem. 

Her mistake with that execution was terrible...it still doesn’t mean she’d turn into a murderer. There’s a difference between someone who makes a stupid mistake that costs an innocents life vs. someone who actually meant to do it. Both horrible crimes but only the latter connotes cruelty and malicious intent.

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52 minutes ago, digiFemme said:

Are you trying to prove that she’s selfish when it comes to certain things? That’s kind of out-of-topic isn’t it? A lot of characters in GoT are selfish at some point, she isn’t the only one and this isn’t a Disney show. Also, Dany’s selfishness is besides the point. Being selfish does not mean you wouldn’t make an effective ruler. It doesn’t mean she’d turn into an evil murderer either. Those scenes were probably set up to show why the North needed to be independent-  I wish they could have done this without affecting her character but they were clearly willing to do much worse.

 

I'm just saying that with these beats, they are sending signals that something is wrong and not all is right with Dany - that audiences should take note. This is how they do foreshadowing. She also frightens the smallfolk with her dragons in her opening scene of the season. Every scene with her is off somehow; viewers got complacent for whatever reason.

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2 hours ago, Rose of Red Lake said:

. She also frightens the smallfolk with her dragons in her opening scene of the season

Uh, because the dragons were necessary, she brought them.

Because dragons are mythical creatures of legend with an incredible destructuve  power?

Because they'd grown up with horror stories about dragons?

So...

If an allied nation installs an AF base in my country, that means the person who made that decision is an evil monster one second away from torching their country's capital?

I think like Dany fans you bought into your own perception.

Now everything that happened 'will' be 'evidence'.

 

 

 

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6 minutes ago, It_spelt_Magalhaes said:

Uh, because the dragons were necessary, she brought them.

Because dragons are mythical creatures of legend with an incredible destructuve  power?

Because they'd grown up with horror stories about dragons?

So...

If an allied nation installs an AF base in my country, that means the person who made that decision is an evil monster one second away from torching their country's capital?

I think like Dany fans you bought into your own perception.

Now everything that happened 'will' be 'evidence'.

 

 

 

Excuse me? I went into this season knowing Dany would burn innocents. This was something I knew she'd do for two years. Check my post history, twitter, and tumblr. I've been saying it on all platforms, non stop before the season began. Sure, I just got the place wrong. I thought she'd raze Winterfell to the ground. But she said she was going to so...

I'm not following you on the alien parallel. 

She wanted to scare the people who weren't impressed by her. Then she smiled up at her dragons, signalling to the viewer that something is off. Something was, indeed, off. 

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9 minutes ago, Rose of Red Lake said:

Excuse me? I went into this season knowing Dany would burn innocents. This was something I knew she'd do for two years. Check my post history, twitter, and tumblr. I've been saying it on all platforms, non stop before the season began. Sure, I just got the place wrong. I thought she'd raze Winterfell to the ground. But she said she was going to so...

I'm not following you on the alien parallel. 

She wanted to scare the people who weren't impressed by her. Then she smiled up at her dragons, signalling to the viewer that something is off. Something was, indeed, off. 

Allied. Not allien.

Please call down and read the post.

This should be a somewhat civilized discussion.

Her decision, and the show is very forceful about it, to rule by fear happens when she has no hope for any quarter from anyone. Well later in the season than arrival at Winterfell.

She smiled up at her dragons because she loved them. I'm not sure how you spin 'wanting to scare people and being proud of it' from that scene.

We all had our pet theories.

I thought she was going to, for merely the blink of an eye, be Queen, if only after countless deaths in a Fire and Blood way.

We got that.

My grievance is that the execution made us think 'crazy psycho' instead of 'military tyrant'. They fucked up in The Bells. Even something as simple as her torching the Red Keep and 'then' make her little speech, contrived to modern audiences as it is?

It would make me a believer that it all lined out propey. But it doesn't. So I can’t rate this as the kind of set up that makes it as beautifully shocking and 'no, he was the bad guy all along' like, for instance 'Unbreakable'.

That is foreshadowing done right.

Arya's journey as the Night King killer has decent set up. 

This was sloppy.

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45 minutes ago, It_spelt_Magalhaes said:

Her decision, and the show is very forceful about it, to rule by fear happens when she has no hope for any quarter from anyone. Well later in the season than arrival at Winterfell.

She's always been ruling by fear and might=right. 

"Sometimes strength is terrible" 

"I will answer injustice with justice"

"They can live in my new world or die in my old one"

"Aegon got a long way on fear"

"Those who would harm you will die screaming" 

"Bend the knee or die" (i.e. a villain's choice)

"I'm going to break the wheel" (i.e. destroy all the houses of westeros)

"She killed Varys as much as I did"

"Don’t want to overfeed them."

"Whatever they want"

*burns all the food*

*kills the Lannister soldiers the show attempted to humanize*

*later we learn their fate in the Bronn scene*

And then, funnily enough, in S8, she wonders why people don't love her, they only fear her?

45 minutes ago, It_spelt_Magalhaes said:

Allied. Not allien.

Sorry, are you saying Dany is an ally? I'm still not following your point. Allies proves nothing about the endgame? Its pretty easy to recall all the alliances that went to shit. It was suspicious that she would be hellbent on wanting the throne so badly, then suddenly divert from that path for a love story. The show suggests she's only there for Jon and she doesn't care about the Northerners. She's just playing nice to make him happy. From an awkward writing perspective it looked like she was a villain then suddenly became good because Jon snow fucked her. In fact, that's a primary reason why most folks thought it would never happen, because Jon approved of her. Jon Snow's character integrity was sacrificed to make this twist happen because without him everyone would have seen this coming sooner.

45 minutes ago, It_spelt_Magalhaes said:

My grievance is that the execution made us think 'crazy psycho' instead of 'military tyrant'. They fucked up in The Bells. Even something as simple as her torching the Red Keep and 'then' make her little speech, contrived to modern audiences as it is?

 It would make me a believer that it all lined out propey. But it doesn't. So I can’t rate this as the kind of set up that makes it as beautifully shocking and 'no, he was the bad guy all along' like, for instance 'Unbreakable'.

That is foreshadowing done right.

I'm not saying it's good foreshadowing. I'm saying that's how D&D do foreshadowing. It's really stupid but its there.

Still, I'm surprised you don't see how bad it looks to scare the small folk with dragons, then smile about it. That scene was really obvious to me. She "loves her dragons?" Yeah, a bit TOO much was the idea. 

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Actually, I checked that dragon torture scene again. It's quite funny because just as she's rounding up all the nobles in Meereen to torture them, in the next scene, Aemon and Sam are reading a letter that makes you forget all that: "And though Daenerys maintains her grip on Slaver’s Bay, forces rise against her from within and without. She refuses to leave until the freedom of the former slaves is secure." Then Sam says she sounds like quite a woman. 

The show runners use intentional amnesia, attempting to pacify audience's fears even though they just witnessed something horrific.

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3 hours ago, Rose of Red Lake said:

I'm just saying that with these beats, they are sending signals that something is wrong and not all is right with Dany - that audiences should take note. 

This is ridiculous. Dragons are scary beasts, in real world and in Westeros alike. Should she have painted them pink and dressed them with a pretty ribbon to spare the people of the North a fright?

The only thing audiences can take note from these scenes is that from now on he show makes Northerners ungrateful xenophobic people…

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23 minutes ago, Rose of Red Lake said:

'm not saying it's good foreshadowing. I'm saying that's how D&D do foreshadowing. It's really stupid but its there

Well, we've come to the point of all this.

You claim people who created an emotional attachment to Daenerys' story were blinded to her faults.

As a selfconfessed Daenerys critic from the get go,  you were intentionally spinning the 'she's a villain' into her 'every action' just the same as the other faction went 'but she's just misunderstood' and twisted facts to it.

To you, there was nothing positive about her character. Ever.

So it's pointless to discuss the intended complexity of the characters' journeys with you.

Were we watching Snow White?

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1 hour ago, Nowy Tends said:

This is ridiculous. Dragons are scary beasts, in real world and in Westeros alike. Should she have painted them pink and dressed them with a pretty ribbon to spare the people of the North a fright?

The only thing audiences can take note from these scenes is that from now on he show makes Northerners ungrateful xenophobic people…

Daenerys isn't just their ally, she's their overlord, and she wasn't the queen they chose.

Missandei got to choose her queen but the Northerners did not.

Dany had a haughty demeanor after her dragons gave them a scare when they wouldn't worship her says everything about her arc this season. If they won't love her, at least they'll fear her, and she gets satisfaction from that.

1 hour ago, It_spelt_Magalhaes said:

Well, we've come to the point of all this.

You claim people who created an emotional attachment to Daenerys' story were blinded to her faults.

As a selfconfessed Daenerys critic from the get go,  you were intentionally spinning the 'she's a villain' into her 'every action' just the same as the other faction went 'but she's just misunderstood' and twisted facts to it.

To you, there was nothing positive about her character. Ever.

So it's pointless to discuss the intended complexity of the characters' journeys with you.

Were we watching Snow White?

I'm not "twisting facts into it" when the show ends with her like it did. You don't want to discuss the possibility that there is foreshadowing for it? If that's the case, it is equally frustrating to discuss this with you, when I think there is enough evidence that the show has laid out. Otherwise I wouldn't have come to the conclusion. You're assuming I hated Dany first then extrapolated from there. 

I read the books before the show ever aired. I found myself agreeing with Dany a lot in the books, who wouldn't? But then something happened. At the end of ADWD, Dany still had contempt for the nobility in Meereen even though she had won, and she concluded that the nuclear option was the "solution." I found myself agreeing with her again - but this time I was scared. She was taking her anger out on innocent people for enjoying a tourney, just like in Westeros, and I also wanted her to burn everyone. So I started to distance myself from emotional attachment to her, because I didn't want to agree with her when she did something horrible. Still, there were many times I fell into the Dany POV trap while reading the books. The show pulled me out of that by the obvious way in which her cruelty was displayed visually, and by rewrites like the dragon torture scene and the way she treated Hizdahr. Then I went back and re-read things and saw a lot of problems. Then I watched S7. What set off alarm bells at that point was how she felt entitled to the North when she hadn't even met a single lord of Westeros yet. We had just come out of a season when Sansa and Jon fought a war to win it back after much hardship. Then Dany comes along and says Jon has to bend the knee. We go through all this back and forth, Dany finally agrees to help. And people assume she doesn't care about the throne anymore. And I'm just not convinced that she'd ever be the endgame hero, in fact the Azor Ahai prophecy and the fire cult surrounding her suggested a villain. But I knew she'd probably do something "action hero-y" again. Then I read author interviews and he seemed to be using Dany as a analogy for nuclear weapons in the hands of unstable rulers because he talks about that fear a lot and directly said dragons are nukes and that they can't do anything but destroy. Then I read Fire and Blood and concluded it was the most anti-Targaryen book ever. Then when S8 played it was like a reset back to that original state, where she expected them to be instantly loyal and grateful to her, and she had learned not one whit of humility, and from that point it just confirmed to me that Dany's POV in the books is an unreliable narrator. 

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30 minutes ago, Rose of Red Lake said:

read the books before the show ever aired

 

32 minutes ago, Rose of Red Lake said:

read the books before the show ever aired. I found myself agreeing with Dany a lot in the books, who wouldn't? But then something happened. At the end of ADWD, Dany still had contempt for the nobility in Meereen even though she had won, and she concluded that the nuclear option was the "solution." I found myself agreeing with her again - but this time I was scared.

You made a judgment. 

My problem with your discourse is not that you saw Daenerys as a person with various fragilities, through her life experience and even genetic predisposition, who flies around straddling a nuke, and as such is in position of unprecedented power.

In a prime position to be corrupted by it, yes.

My problem is that you went into the show with that opinion formed.

And per your own admission went back for more clues in the books. 

Until your perspective went from 'flawed and doomed to failure' to 'naturally irredeemable'.

I find that to be demeaning of the work as it was written.

If it was enough for you in the show, kudos. 

If you found enough foreshadowing in the 'show', see that?, show? Kudos!

I thought 'power corrupts, especially if your daddy went mad too' was a petty message, clumsily done by D&D.

Now, if you want to explore the deeper tennant of how the only way to subvert power's damning influence on people is to deny it challenge, to not use it? 

My unhappiness at some of your comments is only that you don't really get what I'm saying.

Your emotional judgment on Daenerys' character, well deserved in the books, facilitates your notion of how it was sufficient 'foreshadowing' in the show.

You can see the evil in her because you already know it's there.

The hamfisted, moronic visuals as the season progresssed, fail to give us this, revelation, especially after many made the judgment that she is merely a victim, an underdog that suddenly gets the means to punish the oppressors, free the oppressed, rah rah.

And that pity vote mentality is mighty hard to break.

But so is looking back on even some of the greatest social catastrophes that led to the world we now live in and see the good intentions that started them, the good people who were deformed by those good intentions and where they lead to.

You have no sympathy for the villains in your stories. Their journey means nothing. Their suffering means nothing.

No action they took was good or gentle or even, hells forbid, mistaken or misguided.

'Damn, she was always evil! Can't you see it?!'

Well, I personally didn't know Bruce Willis was dead until the end of Sixth Sense. Maybe you're one of those who go around saying 'I knew he was dead when she didn't talk to him in the restaurant'.

But you've read the script before hand and went in already knowing he was dead. So everything is now proof that he's a ghost.

 

 

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@It_spelt_Magalhaes can you use normal paragraphs?

Like this guy do;

8 hours ago, digiFemme said:

Are you trying to prove that she’s selfish when it comes to certain things? That’s kind of out-of-topic isn’t it? A lot of characters in GoT are selfish at some point, she isn’t the only one and this isn’t a Disney show. Also, Dany’s selfishness is besides the point. Being selfish does not mean you wouldn’t make an effective ruler. It doesn’t mean she’d turn into an evil murderer either. Those scenes were probably set up to show why the North needed to be independent-  I wish they could have done this without affecting her character but they were clearly willing to do much worse.

I don’t think she cares for the North anymore than Jon cares for the unsullied. It’s not for her to take, which is fine* Had she had more time to get to know Westeros, she could have grown to care for it and the North but that’s not how the story goes. The moment she enters, she has to deal with an unfamiliar problem. 

Her mistake with that execution was terrible...it still doesn’t mean she’d turn into a murderer. There’s a difference between someone who makes a stupid mistake that costs an innocents life vs. someone who actually meant to do it. Both horrible crimes but only the latter connotes cruelty and malicious intent.

It's hard to read your post when you're using space after every sentences.

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I'll try. 

It's easier for me to read what I'm writting like this because my screen is small and it gets overtaken by the keyboard. As you can see from earlier posts I keep having to edit back due to bad spelling because not only is autocorrect going for my native language but I keep missing the letter keys!

Bad phone! Bad!

 

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2 hours ago, It_spelt_Magalhaes said:

You have no sympathy for the villains in your stories. Their journey means nothing. Their suffering means nothing.

You keep putting words in my mouth. 

2 hours ago, It_spelt_Magalhaes said:

The hamfisted, moronic visuals as the season progresssed, fail to give us this, revelation, especially after many made the judgment that she is merely a victim, an underdog that suddenly gets the means to punish the oppressors, free the oppressed, rah rah.

I dont speak the language of Daenerys victimhood/underdog. She's the most powerful person in the world. When Dany treats human lives like they're expendable, I dont really care about their "journey" that much, especially when they still see themselves as the moral center of the universe. In fact it seems self indulgent to give Dany so much attention when there are other characters in this story who turn away from that path like Arya. Even Cersei is more interesting to me because she got a very human death and she knew she wasnt a hero and owned her villainy out right. I find Dany very annoying and that decreases my interest in her "struggle" enormously.

2 hours ago, It_spelt_Magalhaes said:

No action they took was good or gentle or even, hells forbid, mistaken or misguided.

'Damn, she was always evil! Can't you see it?!'

I'm just saying the show foreshadowing events to come. If you'd rather discuss me and my "discourse" than this very basic film school technique then please stop replying to me. 

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On 5/21/2019 at 1:42 AM, 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.

Is very Machiavellian actually, Machiavelli describes in the Prince how Cesare Borgia used a brute (forgot his name)to bring justice to lawless Romanga, and then executed the brute in public to distance himself from the ill feelings the guy's hard but effective justice has caused.

Daenerys had delivered unprecedented punches against slavery, sorcery, piracy, necromancy and usury by taking slavers bay, by destroying Euron's 1000ship fleet, by fighting Night King and burning the Warlocks of Qarth. Moreover, she possibly indirectly ruined the Iron Bank's secret dirty profits in the slave trade (as implied by Iron bank rep and Cersei's conversation), and made violent debt collection by them harder by destroying the golden company. 

Nevertheless, Dany was too fiery, and once the sword has been forged the furnace is put out. That's basically what happened to Dany.

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1 hour ago, Hodor's Dragon said:

That's spelled g-u-e-s-s-e-d r-i-g-h-t.

Lots of people observed the demands of the story and saw where this was going. Dany wants to play the game of thrones. She won't be able to win, without some kind of massacre and disregard for innocent life. If the story let her continue to only fight the "bad guys" and win then she gets it easy. 

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1 hour ago, Rose of Red Lake said:

Lots of people observed the demands of the story and saw where this was going. Dany wants to play the game of thrones. She won't be able to win, without some kind of massacre and disregard for innocent life. If the story let her continue to only fight the "bad guys" and win then she gets it easy. 

Exactly and she lost. She did not consider all the possibilities in her mind like Littlefinger taught Sansa.  She never considered another Targ could get pass her dragon to kill her.  She underestimated Jon and what he might do to stop her fire and blood vision of conquering the world.  She didn’t play the GOT very well because her political skills were lacking. You never trust anyone in this game.

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20 minutes ago, TheFirstofHerName said:

Exactly and she lost. She did not consider all the possibilities in her mind like Littlefinger taught Sansa.  She never considered another Targ could get pass her dragon to kill her.  She underestimated Jon and what he might do to stop her fire and blood vision of conquering the world.  She didn’t play the GOT very well because her political skills were lacking. You never trust anyone in this game.

Yes, there was a lot of book foreshadowing for a betrayal, especially someone she least expected, and even clues that a "wolf" would do it.

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