Jon killing Dany doesn’t work for me

[SeanF]

27 minutes ago, theladyinspring said:

Is there any reason Jon can't eventually have what Gilly and Sam have? He's got the rest of his life ahead of him, surely he'll meet another fun and daring wildling girl and fall in love and this time there's no reason he can't just go off with her. He'll always have some trauma, but so does everyone else. 

In the immediate what happened to Jon is devastating and a tremendous burden he has to carry. It's actually kind of sickening that everyone in his family is fine with him carrying that alone. But he's got friends and a people he relates to that he can join. He can still have a life.

I think Jon would find it hard to find a third date, given what happened to the first two.

[SeanF]

8 minutes ago, CrypticWeirwood said:

It's not like she has never sacked a city after she'd won before.  Astapor, anyone?

In the Show, the only innocent that died at Astapor was a horse.

That's hardly on a par with Genghis Khan or Timur the Lame.

[Techmaester]

5 minutes ago, SeanF said:

I think Jon would find it hard to find a third date, given what happened to the first two.

His track record of betraying his girlfriends is 2 for 2 so far. 

[NymeriaWarriorQueen]

20 minutes ago, Techmaester said:

His track record of betraying his girlfriends is 2 for 2 so far. 

If D & D had gotten their way then Jorah would have betrayed her too after the attack.  Deleted scenes indicate he supported Jon and Tryrion and was to go with him to the Wall.  Guess we got lucky with the ending we got.  I know I prefer it.

[CrypticWeirwood]

9 hours ago, King Jon Snow Stark said:

Does it matter who Sansa marries. The next king or queen will be the Nephew of King of the 6 kingdoms until Bran dies. If Edmure's son gets elected that king will be related to Sansa and her family. I really don't understand why there wasn't a revolt by the other lords. Two Stark Monarchs in charge of the 7 kingdoms. That is crazy. 

And if only Jon had married Dany, it would have been two Targaryen monarchs in charge of the Seven Kingdoms! Would that really have gone over better, all things considered? Hard to imagine anything worse.

Unlike House Targaryen, House Starks have never brought disaster and ruin to the Seven Kingdoms, only stability those few times they begrudgingly and temporarily accepted the reins of power over the softer half of Westeros as well as their own harder historical half of it.

[King Jon Snow Stark]

1 minute ago, CrypticWeirwood said:

And if only Jon had married Dany, it would have been two Targaryen monarchs in charge of the Seven Kingdoms! Would that really have gone over better, all things considered? Hard to imagine anything worse.

Unlike House Targaryen, House Starks have never brought disaster and ruin to the Seven Kingdoms, only stability those few times they begrudgingly and temporarily accepted the reins of power over the softer half of Westeros as well as their own harder historical half of it.

Jon would have been at best Prince Consort and Warden of the North. Dany was the real power. But that would have been a different show. 

[CrypticWeirwood]

4 hours ago, LucyMormont said:

And Jon, the only character that always acted with the greater good in mind -albeit cluelessly-  gets exiled and banished. 

His privacy, his peace, and his freedom was his reward for having saved the world from the twin threats of ice and fire. I'm convinced that this was all a set up, a gift from those who knew what he had won, what he had lost, and who he truly was. (Bran, Sansa, Arya, Tyrion, Davos, Sam)

Even if he's really the Thousandth Lord Commander as he appears to be, Jon will have the freedom to visit Winterfell at will. I'm sure he'll have all the freedom in the world.

And no bloody kneeling.

[Rose of Red Lake]

11 minutes ago, CrypticWeirwood said:

And if only Jon had married Dany, it would have been two Targaryen monarchs in charge of the Seven Kingdoms! Would that really have gone over better, all things considered? Hard to imagine anything worse.

 

This illustrates how the Jon/Dany relationship was a faux romance to hide the dark Dany twist. That Jon would betray her was unfathomable, because she would be pregnant with Jon's incest baby  and this would somehow soften her and make her an angel and they would rule together. Yeah, no. Old hippie GRRM who loves the Grateful Dead and hates nuclear war isn't going to be ending the story with this message that the pyromaniac conquistadors should continue in any form.

[CrypticWeirwood]

44 minutes ago, SeanF said:

In the Show, the only innocent that died at Astapor was a horse.

That's hardly on a par with Genghis Khan or Timur the Lame.

The show is but a faint and sometimes misleading palimpsest of reality. Just because the showrunners hid things from you they should not have does not absolve Saint Dany of her path of betrayal and destruction.

[Charles Stuart]

2 hours ago, Techmaester said:

But they aren't, I mean the show developed a character who was good in nearly every aspect but willing to commit violence to spread it. We have a war created by Bobby B because he couldn't lay Neds sister, We have a collection of houses all fighting for power in perpetual war after the real Kings dethronment. 

How can you respect a character who killed his closest relative, destroyed his bloodline, failed to avenge his actual father and mother and went on to wander about an ice desert because "ai dunt wunt eht"?

It's insulting, he is exactly what not to aspire to. A protector of the status quo so afraid of change and it's outcome that he disregards the entirety of who he is. 

I didn't read the books but if this summarizes Jon in them I won't be reading them.

Bobby B didn't actually start the war. Lyanna ran off with rhaegar leading to Ned's dad and elder brother heading down to KL to get her back. Aerys did his usual mad thing and executed them and then sent a message to Jon arryn to execute Ned and Bobby B who were under the care  of Arryn as his wards. Arryn refused and that's what kicked off the war.

As to Jon's character , he pretty much sacrificed his own freedom, life and love for Daenerys to save the realm from Daenerys' own madness.  He surely knew killing her would lead to not so pleasant things for him personally in the aftermath but he did it no matter the cost to him personally.

If that isn't heroic then I don't know what is.

[JagLover]

1 hour ago, CrypticWeirwood said:

Perhaps they'll instead reread her chapters, this time more closely looking for all the signs they'd missed before.

The signs were there alright for her to become an increasingly ruthless conqueror, but the signs were also there for her to remain a grey character, rather than a blonde Hitler.

[Tyrion1991]

4 hours ago, CrypticWeirwood said:

What do you mean that "GRRM considers Jon the protagonist"?

Why does Jon pulling a Jaime and saving the kingdom by killing a cruel tyrant somehow make Jon "the protagonist"?  What does that even mean? 

Does that mean Jaime was "the protagonist" of Robert's Rebellion? Was Laertes and not Hamlet therefore the protagonist of Hamlet? 

Why can't Dany be "the protagonist" or at least "a protagonist"? Because she died? Because she became ugly and dangerous? Because she committed mass murder? How would any of those rule her out?

Shouldn't Bran be "the protagonist" here? After all, he's not only the character who opened the story, he's also the character who won the game of thrones in the end.

This is clearly the story of the Stark children including Jon, and Dany and Tyrion. Aren't they all "the protagonists"?

Finally, what are "emotional feelings"?  Aren't all feelings emotional and all emotions feelings?  Why wouldn't you focus on Jon's feelings here?  He's just had to do a terrible, terrible thing that he'll never heal from in order to save their world, and save it not for himself mind you but for the others. More personally, it was to save his sisters. You can't minimize that damage by pretending it didn't happen, pretend that it had no effect on these "emotional feelings" you strangely refer to so disparagingly.

The emotional feelings that result from "the human heart in conflict with itself" are central to what this tale is all about according to its author. Those are the emotional feelings that come from the conflicts in our own heart,  from the horrible things that do to ourselves or to others — or have done to us — because of those heart-felt conflicts.

This curious thing happens when you decide you like or dislike this or that character. You interpret everything about them through the lens of confirmation bias so that no matter what they do you consider it evidence that your view of them is right. But this bias means you cannot see them fairly. You overlook, even ignore or cannot acknowledge, the bad things in the characters who have won you over: they're your guys now just like the "my mother drunk or sober" slogan. You blind yourself to their faults and your confirmation bias makes you interpret everything that happens in the light you want to see it in. Then you go and do the very same thing but reversed  in whoever you've decided you don't like. That person now can do no right, and you're forever nitpicking and dwelling on the things your confirmation bias has confirmed are surely reality.

And yet neither of those two approaches is anything close to true.  They're fictions we tell to ourselves about others, and about ourselves too.

If Jon killing Dany with a dagger to the heart hurt you, imagine what it did to Jon! Don't you think this hard-sick emotion you're feeling right now was Martin's deliberate intent here? Those dagger-through-the-heart feelings are what gives the story its power. You may even feel yourself empathizing with either or both of Jon and Dany. And so you'll remember this story for a long time. It got to you.

That's what it was supposed to do, so mission accomplished.

 

 

I’ve really never liked Jon. He is an incredibly cliche character, with probably the least interesting story arc with the Nights Watch facing off with zombies and having to make peace with the Wildlings, an incredibly obvious twist of him being the heir and never actually does anything. There’s nothing interesting about him and I never considered characters faith in him to be warranted or earned. 

So for it to be confirmed that George is writing this as a Romeo and Juliet tragedy is a big problem because I do not empathise with this individual remotely or have any investment in him as a character.

Not everybody likes a story. I love reading about the Horus Heresy but Iam sure many people would consider it to be slock and not worth the time with uninteresting characters. Not everybody has the same relationship and interest in a character. How invested or involved you are isn’t a rational or objective thing.

This is coming up a lot with the defences of Danys arc. People have this very detached view that it’s mechanically sound as a story but they don’t actually show any emotional reaction or interest in it. Among my immediate circle of friends it’s simply an affirmation of a dry long held theory and I see this view everywhere. To me that’s not really proof that the story was good or worked because it’s intended as an emotional tragedy.

You relate to a love story much more of you like both characters. For example, if you like Lan and Nynaeve from Wheel of Time then any plot beats about those characters have a much greater impact than if I simply viewed the story with a detached and disinterested eye. If I had despised Nynaeve and thought she was annoying then it would be an uphill struggle to get a reaction when she speaks up for Lan at the inn to help him.

Yes I’ll remember this as George wanting to be Alan Moore and missing the mark by about 40 years. I think the moral behind the story is repugnant, untrue and offensive. Being apathetic is a virtue? We should solve relationship problems by stabbing them? Power and heroes are bad so you’re a Nazi for liking stories about them? 

I believe GRRM intent was to have Dany be a demonstration of why a messianic hero who amassed that much power would automatically become evil and a monster. That makes her an “evil superman” only within the fantasy setting. I have seen this type of story many times in many different mediums. It’s not as original and ground breaking as people say it is. Hell, Halo 5 has the same story as this only the Chief doesn’t kill Cortana.

I believe his intent regarding Jon was that I would see him as the default protagonist. The guy I would want to be. Like Thomas from Magician or Rand from Wheel of Time. He failed in that regard entirely. I found myself resenting the characters presence entirely and viewing his chapters dispassionately; which is not the authors intent whatsoever. I doubt he wanted me to think, “hmm, the political ramifications of the Lord Commander being stabbed”.

Because of this the story does not work for me. It’s doing a cliche plot line and with only half the pieces working.

 

[Pacala]

1 hour ago, Charles Stuart said:

If that isn't heroic then I don't know what is.

Martin : "No Heroes, No villains. I like to do things differently". This story is not about the chosen one.

IF we gonna see the book finale, i think Drogon gonna kill Jon and fly away free.

[Kaapstad]

2 hours ago, TheFirstofHerName said:

If D & D had gotten their way then Jorah would have betrayed her too after the attack.  Deleted scenes indicate he supported Jon and Tryrion and was to go with him to the Wall.  Guess we got lucky with the ending we got.  I know I prefer it.

If Jorah were alive, I don’t think she would have burnt Kings Landing in the first place. I would say Jorah, Missandei were the only ones who could control her worst impulses. 

[Kaapstad]

3 hours ago, theladyinspring said:

I agree that if Jon is really back in the Nights Watch for good then it's a brutal end for him.

It isn’t that brutal. He can still visit Sansa in Winterfell and Arya whenever she returns. Both of them likely scarred for life just like he is and staying single. 

[Kaapstad]

3 hours ago, theladyinspring said:

Is there any reason Jon can't eventually have what Gilly and Sam have? He's got the rest of his life ahead of him, surely he'll meet another fun and daring wildling girl and fall in love and this time there's no reason he can't just go off with her. He'll always have some trauma, but so does everyone else. 

In the immediate what happened to Jon is devastating and a tremendous burden he has to carry. It's actually kind of sickening that everyone in his family is fine with him carrying that alone. But he's got friends and a people he relates to that he can join. He can still have a life.

I really doubt he would marry anyone especially after what happened to his first 2 women. He would be having PTSD at this point. The way he tells Dany " You will always be my queen" before he kills her shows he would honour her memory forever. 

It’s not too bad as in my head canon he would still visit Winterfell and his family every now and then after a few years. Sansa is also unlikely to marry after she was raped by 1 husband and  mentally tortured by another prospective husband. Arya has said she won’t marry. THey could just all live together once they become adults. Too much has happened to them to live a normal life. 

[Rose of Red Lake]

Ygrrite and Dany. God, its really dumb to repeat the same story twice. 

[Kaapstad]

35 minutes ago, Pacala said:

Martin : "No Heroes, No villains. I like to do things differently". This story is not about the chosen one.

IF we gonna see the book finale, i think Drogon gonna kill Jon and fly away free.

GRRM said the fates of the main characters are the same in the books as on the show. Only the secondary characters fate may change. Jon is going to live in the books. 

[Rose of Red Lake]

4 minutes ago, Kaapstad said:

The way he tells Dany " You will always be my queen" before he kills her shows he would honour her memory forever. 

Except she didnt want him to keep saying that. I think he was manipulating her.

[Kaapstad]

2 minutes ago, Rose of Red Lake said:

Except she didnt want him to keep saying that. I think he was manipulating her.

He says that just as he stabs her. I think this time he meant it in a romantic context. He first says "You are my queen" then follows it up with "You will always be my queen". He didn’t mean that literally.  After all he did love her. He was forced to kill her.