Daenerys is the main character

[HoodedCrow]

Peter the Great had vision. He wanted to vastly improve his countries merchant marine and navy.  He learned how to build ships. Amazing.

[ummester]

1 minute ago, HoodedCrow said:

Peter the Great had vision. He wanted to vastly improve his countries merchant marine and navy.  He learned how to build ships. Amazing.

Now we are talking technology vs ideals. Imagination vs reality. that, as always, requires balance to resolve.

[SeanF]

32 minutes ago, ummester said:

That is how history judged his actions - not a close assessment of the man's ideals. No-one judges themselves the villain. Everyone undertakes their own heroes journey - which is part of what was so impressive about GoTs - so many flawed heroes we could relate to.

Look, it boils down to a simple paradigm, does society revolve around the individual or should the individual bow to society?

Yes, I accept there is leeway and nuance - but in the end you must decide which side of the human condition you occupy. or rather, when things come undone you have no choice but to make that choice.

Are you the caveman that protects the tribe from the leopard or the caveman that accepts you must follow the protector?

That’s not a question that can be answered with a Yes or No.

[ummester]

14 minutes ago, SeanF said:

That’s not a question that can be answered with a Yes or No.

Yes... and no

In the end, when the world pushes against you, it can be.

But our species is weak now, we think our intellect has prevailed and can generate some 'safe' future. It never can. We must always fight the leopard - that is the condition we evolved into, we can never surmount it. Humans be human.

[Lord Lannister]

On 11/20/2021 at 9:19 AM, SeanF said:

In WWII terms, Dany in the show is more like Curtis Le May or Sir Arthur Harris.

Maybe you could associate Drogon with LeMay or Harris.

[BlackLightning]

On 11/21/2021 at 7:39 AM, ummester said:

No, she was more like Stalin. The dream of a better world - where all men were equal - by force.

It shits me, obviously D&D didn't have the vision to bring GoTs home coz D&D lack vision, but now it seems GRRM won't even finish his own story before everything collapses around him.

That's not Stalin.

It's more like Robespierre

On 11/21/2021 at 7:46 AM, ummester said:

Society over the individual always defaults to that vision.

No not necessarily.

Because you have situations where you have hive-mind, groupthink societies. Or like where people are just different cogs, wheels, levers and pulleys in the great machine and are easily replaced. Like The Giver

[ummester]

20 hours ago, BlackLightning said:

That's not Stalin.

It's more like Robespierre

Well, indirectly, and definitely via evolution of thought, the French Revolution led to the Russian revolution and both world wars. Civilization is in a constant state of evolution and collapse, with certain historical figures rhyming in their thoughts along the way. Surely you accept this is something GoTs and GRRM incorporated into its fiction.

But I have a question, for my own writing, how do you adequately write Stalin, or Danny's , redemption - if it is at all possible. Closest proxy I can think of is Darth Vader at the end of Jedi - but you need a personal tie (child, sibling, lover) to really make that work - but I digress.

20 hours ago, BlackLightning said:

No not necessarily.

Because you have situations where you have hive-mind, groupthink societies. Or like where people are just different cogs, wheels, levers and pulleys in the great machine and are easily replaced. Like The Giver

I have not read The Giver - perhaps I should? At a quick glance it ultimately seems to oppose group think, or am I wrong?

This said, your argument seems to agree with my proposition - which is not actually mine but a long held philosophical belief. If a group think society devolves us into cogs and wheels, we are on the way to defaulting to an authoritarian vision.

Personally, I think GRRM is quite clever (albeit prone to laziness, which we all are) and I think a clever person would understand the concepts I talk about and incorporate them into their magnum opus.

It is dangerous to rank society fully above the individual, as soviet Russia, Hitler, the CCP, even Trump and surely Biden and Rona now show. I firmly believe the individual is always King - because society is always little more than a construct of individual needs. I may be outcast to a yacht in the coming years but I think, if that is the case, my mind will remain more open than those on shore.

Back to Dany, as presented in the show and eluded to in the books, she was definitely more of a you must follow me than think for yourself person than Jon. Add to that Dany's sense of entitlement vs Jon's earned title and we have a clear contrast of the established group vs the individual hero.

I watched an interesting podcast the other day, explaining that what women really seek in a bad boy is actually a hero. The difference is so mind numbingly simple. A bad boy can never conform to society - he is broken beyond repair (Ramsay, possibly Jorah, definitely the Hound). A hero knows how to  blend in with society but oppose it when needed - Jon kind of fits that bill perfectly. Dany tried to, but lost her way, coz love, entitlement and stuff. She is a tragic, flawed hero - she is Anikan Skywalker done right and yes, I still think she resonates with Stalin. Coz Stalin, like Hitler, had the populace on their bad boy side but never really learned to rise above social pressure.

Or perhaps I'm just a madman, dribbling shit in the inter webs