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Is Dany a White Savior?


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On 3/21/2023 at 12:29 AM, GZ Bloodraven said:

The short answer is yes she is. 

That doesn't mean it's a problem: she's definitely a critique on the white savior trope in that most white saviors are colonizers with nukes claiming to want to abolish slavery and then creating terrorist states. At this point, that's exactly what Dany is and it isn't ignorant to ask that question and wonder about the consequences of thinking like a white savior thinks. 

You're being foolish.

What terrorist states she has made? The people of Meereen are free to come and go and live their lives as they please, Yunkai was left alone, and the actions of evil individuals who had no connection to Daenerys were what destroyed Astapor.

What nukes does she have? The dragons are not nukes at this point; at best, they are guns.

She is not a colonizer. Colonizers create colonies and colonies, by definition, are subservient geopolitical and socioeconomic possessions of another country in which the people of such colony do not have the rights afforded to those who live in the controlling country.

What country is she creating colonies on behalf of?

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8 minutes ago, BlackLightning said:

St. Tyrion's monologue is, by nature, a question of whether she was right to fight and destroy evil men.

Sorry, you have to contextualize it with everything else said and presented. The sloppy writing is about how Dany is becoming an extremist who treats the world as with her or against her, and that was fine when the evil men she killed were actually evil, but now she's liable to call Sansa evil and kill her, or Arya evil and kill her, etc. just because they disagree with her.

It's badly written, but the point is quite plainly not that Dany shouldn't have killed evil people. It's that her view of who is evil is now deeply flawed and will mean non-evil people are going to die.

Edited by Ran
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3 hours ago, the trees have eyes said:

What other examples in fantasy?

This is what I mean.  I'm not really interested in rehashing the Iraq War but it's worth reminding you that Dany turns up in Astapor with a handful of Dothraki outcasts (the weak and the sick who didn't join one of Drogo's Khos), three ships loaned by an opportunist in Qarth and three flying lizards the size of dogs.  She turns up to buy mercenaries and has no political or military power base of her own. 

From that you've managed to transform her into an amalgam of a classical European Ruler establishing a colonial / imperial system (with her nukes to establish her undoubted military superiority over the "savages" despite the fact that all the fighting is done by local soldiers against the oppressive local regime rather than any foreign army) and a "white" saviour despising local culture and systems despite the fact that she has plenty of locals who feel the same about those systems on her side and she is in any case a cosmopolitan character who has only ever experienced Eastern cultures in The Free Cities, The Dothraki Sea and Qarth and who wears her title of Khaleesi proudly, dons her Qartheen gowns and wears her floppy ears.  "Mighty Whitey" and a classic colonial-imperial European this is not.

I would argue Avatar is a white savior narrative who's just conflict results in the creation of a terrorist faction in the sequel.

I'm not saying she despises the culture, I'm saying she's the only perspective on her regime change: a French noblewoman, exiled in Algeria, marrying a Kenyan political leader, living in Egypt for a bit, and then helping Saudi Arabian, Iraqi, and Iranian woman achieve their freedom by organizing them in overthrowing their leader, only to spawn a pro-oppressing women terrorist group and running back to Kenya, and the only perspective we get on the "liberating Saudi Arabian, Iraqi and Iranian women" is from the white French woman...that's a whit savior. 

3 hours ago, the trees have eyes said:

This is exactly the issue any regime change gives rise to as @SeanF said.  The argument that Dany should not do anything unless she is certain she can make people's lives better is a strange critique: no one can know the future.  You may not be making that critique directly but the idea that as a "White saviour" she does not know enough to try and fix things and in any case who is she to try tends that way.

I am not making that critique: if "white savior" invokes the idea that she shouldn't overthrow slavers, I understand why you wouldn't want to call the objectively white savior narrative a white savior narrative. I'm just saying she should have had a rough reconstruction plan before she started the conflict. 

 

3 hours ago, the trees have eyes said:

She leaves Astapor with a local council to govern it (hardly a sign of the colonial system you claim she is on the way to creating) but without any army or police it suffers first a coup then a conquest and it ends in disaster.  What moral is GRRM giving us?  Leave well alone so the local slavers can carry on castrating thousands of children and having them murder thousands of newborns to complete their training until someone else has a foolproof solution?  I think not.  That would never happen.  It's too hard, leave it to someone else, is not the way.  It's up to Dany.  It's a shame that people only seem to see her skin tone, which then leads to her thoughts and attitudes being "polluted" in their view by real world issues.  He is showing us that change has to be fought for, that it can be bloody and that there will be setbacks and challenges.  It's why she sets up in Meereen (before, er, going on a dragon trip to the Dothraki Sea). 

George is saying that while, yes, it is good to stop bad people from doing monstrous things...if you don't have a plan for reconstruction and just fuck off afterwards, things can go to shit. So we're saying the same thing, yay. And depending on if Dany stabilizes Meereen before she leaves or not (I don't think she will, I may be wrong) he is also saying that 1. regime change wars don't stabilize regions or 2. regime change wars can stabilize regions by (whatever way Dany stabilizes Meereen). 

I would say she is more Spartacus than Louis XVI as well, except if Spartacus was a White woman from Marsailles and if people from the Balkans were POC and the only perspective we got in a fictional retelling of the Third Servile War was from Spartacus the White woman from Marsailles with baby-nukes.

19 minutes ago, BlackLightning said:

It DOES endorse the idea that people should default to the status quo and that they should not protest violent oppression

Only if the writer's are biased towards Tyrion, which I do think is the case, so we agree that D&D were not good at their jobs, yay, I love when people agree it makes me so happy.

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13 minutes ago, BlackLightning said:

You're being foolish.

What terrorist states she has made? The people of Meereen are free to come and go and live their lives as they please, Yunkai was left alone, and the actions of evil individuals who had no connection to Daenerys were what destroyed Astapor.

What nukes does she have? The dragons are not nukes at this point; at best, they are guns.

She is not a colonizer. Colonizers create colonies and colonies, by definition, are subservient geopolitical and socioeconomic possessions of another country in which the people of such colony do not have the rights afforded to those who live in the controlling country.

What country is she creating colonies on behalf of?

Oh, it appears we don't agree, I should have flipped to the next page.

The Sons of the Harpy are turning Meereen into a terrorist state.

Her baby dragons are nukes.

The Valyrians were colonizers: I was hyperbolic in saying Dany herself was a colonizer, but her goal is to reconquer (recolonize) Westeros, so idk. 

Meereen, Yunkai and Astapor would assumably be colonies of Dany's future Westeros, like a Puerto Rico situation. 

I think I've made the case that Dany is, at the very least, a White savior, who's story is talking about, at the very least, the importance of stopping evil slave systems and maybe having a plan for reconstruction so that things don't go to shit.

19 minutes ago, Ran said:

It's badly written, but the point is quite plainly not that Dany shouldn't have killed evil people. It's that her view of who is evil is now deeply flawed and will mean non-evil people are going to die.

This is my reading, but because Tyrion is portrayed so sympathetically by D&D in later seasons (except that they write him to be less intelligent in his grief and trauma, not to be more malicious like GRRM), and because of some...loose justification for Dany's mad queen...arc is too strong a word...Dany's mad queen three-day blip...the interpretation that Dany should never have given in to her fire and blood impulses, even when deposing slavers, is decently valid, as the stated reason she goes mad is because she had, like, conditioned herself to be ruthless after watching Drogo kill Viserys? And so she's sad about Ellaria and Olenna and her dragons and Jorah and Missandei, and that turns her moral compass off, and if she hadn't been all fire and blood when dealing with the slavers, she wouldn't have been all fire and blood when dealing with King's Landing, so she shouldn't have dealt with the slavers. I think that's the reading where D&D support keeping slave systems in favor of not allowing tyrants to develop "liberation theology" (is the term that they used in the script to describe Dany's thinking). It's a shame that more people will watch that last episode of Game of Thrones than read the last book: hopefully WB remakes the ending of the show in 15 or 20 years to actually align with the ending of the books.

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31 minutes ago, Ran said:

Sorry, you have to contextualize it with everything else said and presented. The sloppy writing is about how Dany is becoming an extremist who treats the world as with her or against her, and that was fine when the evil men she killed were actually evil, but now she's liable to call Sansa evil and kill her, or Arya evil and kill her, etc. just because they disagree with her.

It's badly written, but the point is quite plainly not that Dany shouldn't have killed evil people. It's that her view of who is evil is now deeply flawed and will mean non-evil people are going to die.

If it's badly and sloppily written, then how can the point be "quite plainly" anything at all?

 

 

 

 

 

TV!Sansa at this point -- also known as Sandra -- has way more in common with the bad guys of the show (i.e., Littlefinger, Cersei) than the good guys (i.e., Ned, Brienne). So, I'd put in her in the bad guy category. But that's beside the point, as Sansa and Arya are -- in and of themselves -- legitimately dangerous. Sansa literally worked to undermine Daenerys at every chance she got. And the fact of her betraying Jon and attempting to weaponize him (and the rest of the country by extension) in her private, one-sided feud against Daenerys is a big problem. Jon not only loves Daenerys but Daenerys is as much of a blood relative to Jon as Sansa is. Who is Sansa to meddle and take issue with this?

As for Arya, Arya not only enjoys killing people who make her mad but she's actually really good at it. As much of a problem as that is, I can't help but point out both the irony and the hypocrisy of how Arya is basically the same as Daenerys. You know, except for one difference: Arya knows a killer when she sees one. LMAO

But on a more serious note, I can appreciate and agree with the idea that Daenerys is deeply flawed and is thus ineligible to sit the Iron Throne and rule Westeros. Hell, Daenerys can be a perfect little princess-superhero and still be ineligible to sit the Iron Throne and rule Westeros. My problem was -- and continues to be -- the way that it was developed, communicated and presented.

Daenerys Targaryen and the Starks can politically disagree and dislike/distrust each other without one of the two parties being portrayed as a violently unhinged hellion and the other being attributed as harmlessly angelic when the opposite is true.

It was all very offensive, very disingenuous, very unimaginative, very ignorant, very rushed, and a little cheap. 

Edited by BlackLightning
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7 minutes ago, BlackLightning said:

If it's badly and sloppily written, then how can the point be "quite plainly" anything at all?

It's badly written because it is all about making a hash of Dany and basically speedrunning her development because they were piss-poor at setting it up.


But it's badly written in a "blunt hammer" way. I think you have to willfully ignore the context to get out of it any kind of idea that Tyrion said it was wrong for Dany to defend herself from evil men, or to kill evil men who opposed her. His meaning is plain from the other arguments he puts to Jon both before and after that line, which is that she has decided she is the arbiter of good, and that all that is evil is whatever is opposed to her. She has become a fascist or whatever misappropriation of modern history they wanted to turn the last season into a commentary on.

It's sloppy, but it's plain. Maybe it's easier for me, who has never watched the season, to point it out. I can understand in the moment that it'd be jaw-dropping to see that particular rhetoric used in that particular way. But the fact remains, their intent is clear: Dany has become a problem.

Edited by Ran
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46 minutes ago, Ran said:

Sorry, you have to contextualize it with everything else said and presented. The sloppy writing is about how Dany is becoming an extremist who treats the world as with her or against her, and that was fine when the evil men she killed were actually evil, but now she's liable to call Sansa evil and kill her, or Arya evil and kill her, etc. just because they disagree with her.

It's badly written, but the point is quite plainly not that Dany shouldn't have killed evil people. It's that her view of who is evil is now deeply flawed and will mean non-evil people are going to die.

There’s more to it, than mere disagreement.

Sansa, in the show, was trying to pitch Jon and Daenerys into a succession fight, from which only one would emerge alive, by revealing his parentage.  The moment  Varys found out, he was planning to remove Daenerys.

And “remove” in a medieval/early modern setting means “kill.”  Edward II, Richard II, Henry VI, Joanna of Naples are all examples.

No medieval ruler, however gentle, would treat Sansa as anything other than a major threat.

Tyrion’s “evil men” speech, and the whole narrative of season 8, was vilifying Daenerys for acting in a way that was entirely normative, for a ruler in her world.

Even the whole business of “they don’t get to choose” is turned on its head a few minutes later, when 16 oligarchs laugh uproariously at the notion that the any account should be taken of the views of the smallfolk in choosing a ruler.

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1 minute ago, SeanF said:

Tyrion’s “evil men” speech, and the whole narrative of season 8, was vilifying Daenerys for acting in a way that was entirely normative, for a ruler in her world.  

Except for the whole thing about her not looking like she was done fighting, and that many more people were going to be executed because she saw them as opposing her. 

They've taken the "Dany is not made for peace" thing and cast her as someone who will perpetually create conflict by simply moving the goal posts to go after paradise as she defines it. She is set on a never-ending crusade that will burn more and more people for narrower and narrower deviations from her definition of "good". This is not normal for a ruler in her world. 

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The notion that Arya - who ends up leaving Westeros - was in any danger from Daenerys in the show is ludicrous.

The Sansa thing also makes little sense. Also, the Jon-Dany thing, since they could fucking marry to resolve the issue. There is such a thing as co-rulership in existence in this world ... and even if it wasn't, they could fucking invent it.

It really makes no sense to actually discuss this shit because it makes no sense.

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8 minutes ago, GZ Bloodraven said:

Oh, it appears we don't agree, I should have flipped to the next page.

The Sons of the Harpy are turning Meereen into a terrorist state.

Her baby dragons are nukes.

The Valyrians were colonizers: I was hyperbolic in saying Dany herself was a colonizer, but her goal is to reconquer (recolonize) Westeros, so idk. 

Meereen, Yunkai and Astapor would assumably be colonies of Dany's future Westeros, like a Puerto Rico situation. 

I think I've made the case that Dany is, at the very least, a White savior, who's story is talking about, at the very least, the importance of stopping evil slave systems and maybe having a plan for reconstruction so that things don't go to shit.

I misunderstood.

Yeah, we're going to have to agree to disagree on the dragons. They aren't babies anymore, but they are not the full-grown larger-than-commerical-airliner monsters that Balerion, Vhagar and Meraxes were.

The Sons of Harpy are turning Meereen into a terrorist state. That is true. But is Dany responsible for their actions or are they responsible for their own? Even so, Meereen's previous status as a state built, driven and glorified by the violent and subversive dehumanization of other human beings, it does not take a college degree to make the argument that it was a terrorist state long before Dany got there. To use a real-world comparison, Afghanistan was a terrorist state before the Americans intervened.

The Valyrians were colonizers, yes, and they suffered for it. To reconquer and to recolonize are two different things. To recolonize means that there would have to be another country involved. The Targaryens and their descendants were/are not colonizers. How can they be with Valyria dead in the water?

Meereen, Yunkai and Astapor as colonies of Dany's future Westeros? Possibly. But I don't think it's fair to say so at this point. Dany is not the type. She was content to leave Meereen alone before things took a hard left. She was even content to leave Astapor and Yunkai alone after things had gotten ugly. She only ever bothered to rule Meereen and its surrounding countryside; any other Westerosi royal or nobleman would have chosen Meereen as their seat and use that powerbase to seize and exert control of the whole region.

As for you making the case of Dany being a White Savior...um, I hear you and you have a point but it's a nope for me. I'm with @Lord Varys. The racial concept of white or black or whatever doesn't exist anywhere in Planetos. The closest you can get to the idea of racial supremacy is the Old Valyrians but the Old Valyrians parade their supremacy more like the Romans or like the Ptolemy dynasty of Egypt did instead of like the Europeans of the early modern, modern and post-modern eras. And nothing about the idea of Roman supremacy, Ptolemian exclusivity or even the more general apotheosis of the Egyptian pharaohs had anything to do with whether or not they were white or black. Romans were notably multiracial. The Egyptians ruled over people who were both lighter than them and just as swarthy and dark as they were.

Sure the Valyrians looked notably different than their subjects and they were incestuously exclusive and domineering. But you can't really say that they were racist, genocidal oppressors like the European powers of the Age of Exploration and Imperialism were.

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10 hours ago, SeanF said:

@Lord VarysI could find it credible that a Great Master might object to the crucifixion of child slaves for fear of the retribution that would follow if they lost the coming fight.  But, not on the ground that it was a crime.

But, this was a very public, very deliberate atrocity, a way for the elite to collectively bloody their hands.  I see it as Martin’s version of Crassus crucifying slaves on the Appian Way, an act in which I would hold the Senate entirely complicit.

Hizdahr zo Loraq is introduced as a very highborn, very well-connected Meereenese nobleman. That would imply that his father - if he was still alive during the sack of Meereen - was of equal rank and (nearly) equal standing. And that, in turn, means that the Loraq family were at the heart of the highborn oligarchy ruling Meereen. They would not be rich people with no political power.

But in any case, as your example of Crassus shows - it would make no sense for the wronged parties to only blame Crassus for the deed when he was acting on behalf of the Roman senate. They grant imperiums, so they are, in the end, the ones responsible for the actions of the commanders and generals they create.

To not be a part of the Great Masters one would not just have to speak against something ... but one would have to distance oneself publicly and openly from one's peers. I'm sure Dany would have accepted any Great Masters leaving Meereen and asking her to join her ranks before her forces started to besiege the place.

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Bear in mind, St. Tyrion, who is the two D’s mouthpiece, brands the killing of the child abusers of Astapor as “murder”, a highly loaded term;  claims that Daenerys killed twice as many people as his family (he’s obviously forgotten about what his dad did in the Riverlands); omits to mention the crucifixion of children at Meereen, or Daenerys’ kidnap and near-rape by the khals.  Then, we have the entire aesthetic of portraying Dany and her followers as Nazis.  And the twist is that -Dany aside - the Nazis all have dark skins.

I’d say the political message is both clear and very reactionary.  The message is that fighting an unjust status quo is the hallmark of a fascist tyrant.  At the same time, it’s portrayed as a good thing that Westeros is now ruled by people who compare the smallfolk to livestock, and see new brothels as their main priority.

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13 minutes ago, SeanF said:

And “remove” in a medieval/early modern setting means “kill.”  Edward II, Richard II, Henry VI, Joanna of Naples are all examples.

Now, I have to disagree with you in this.

There were a lot of people who were definitively removed from power without being killed. Elizabeth Bathory being one, Charles of Orleans being another.

Even the Byanztine usurpers, Anna Komnena and her husband Nikephoros, were removed and forcibly made to retire from affairs of state.

31 minutes ago, Ran said:

It's badly written because it is all about making a hash of Dany and basically speedrunning her development because they were piss-poor at setting it up.


But it's badly written in a "blunt hammer" way. I think you have to willfully ignore the context to get out of it any kind of idea that Tyrion said it was wrong for Dany to defend herself from evil men, or to kill evil men who opposed her. His meaning is plain from the other arguments he puts to Jon both before and after that line, which is that she has decided she is the arbiter of good, and that all that is evil is whatever is opposed to her. She has become a fascist or whatever misappropriation of modern history they wanted to turn the last season into a commentary on.

It's sloppy, but it's plain. Maybe it's easier for me, who has never watched the season, to point it out. I can understand in the moment that it'd be jaw-dropping to see that particular rhetoric used in that particular way. But the fact remains, their intent is clear: Dany has become a problem.

Exactly.

So, for that reason, you can't say that anything that has been badly written has been made plain. Bad writing can imply to make it understood, but it cannot, by definition, make anything plain...much less sensible.

The real madness of Tyrion's statement is that in denouncing Daenerys for being a problem, he is saying that he is the arbiter of good and that all that is evil is opposed to him. He tells Jon Snow what to do and how to think and fully expects him to do it. Why? Because he "drinks and knows things," making him good and smart enough to what's best for everyone.

In this, the main difference between Daenerys' stance of "if you're not with me, you're against me" and that of Tyrion's is that she does it from a position of hard strength (which makes her frighteningly tyrannical) and Tyrion does it from a place of weakness (which makes him deviously manipulative). Also, when Jon does exactly what Tyrion tells and wants him to do, Tyrion doesn't even bother to lift a finger to help him. Tyrion does not care about doing the right thing: how can he when he frequently plots to help Cersei maintain power and/or escape and when he backstabbed Varys...despite agreeing with him?

Tyrion only wants to save his own life, which makes his whole aim to oppose and get rid of Daenerys selfish and a tad villainous. And because his whole aim is selfish and petty, his whole speech is disingenuous. The disingenuity of it is multipled by that terrible speech.

First, she came for baby-killing witches, then she came for mass-murdering opportunists, then she came for slavers, then she came for pro-rape barbarian warlords, then she came for my deviously twisted sister and her minions, now she's coming for me, and soon she will come for you but when she does no one will be there to speak up for you.

Tyrion's hypocrisy is cemented and demonstrated by his pseudo-trial in the Dragonpit (you know, the point where he -- a traitor and an accessory to murder -- gets to tell everyone that they are wrong and that they should all listen and trust him) and by his governance of the Small Council with the explicit goal of getting the smallfolk to debase and prostitute themselves for the sake of enrichening the King and the Small Council....to the glee of the Small Council.

The whole thing is so jacked up.

44 minutes ago, Ran said:

Except for the whole thing about her not looking like she was done fighting, and that many more people were going to be executed because she saw them as opposing her. 

This makes her no different from anyone else in their world.

Jon Snow himself is a part of that club, many times over

46 minutes ago, Ran said:

They've taken the "Dany is not made for peace" thing and cast her as someone who will perpetually create conflict by simply moving the goal posts to go after paradise as she defines it. She is set on a never-ending crusade that will burn more and more people for narrower and narrower deviations from her definition of "good". This is not normal for a ruler in her world. 

That's fine. And you're right, it is not normal for a ruler in her world.

But that's not what they put on screen.

What happened was that the "Dany is not made for peace" thing was a throwaway line from the middle of season 6 that was treated as a joking quip and proceeded to be proven wrong in the same season. What also happened is that this throwaway moment from season 6 got turned into a plotline that was introduced in the very last episode of the series and was resolved within five minutes of its introduction.

It's not even worthy of the honor of being called a shaggy dog story

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39 minutes ago, BlackLightning said:

Now, I have to disagree with you in this.

There were a lot of people who were definitively removed from power without being killed. Elizabeth Bathory being one, Charles of Orleans being another.

Even the Byanztine usurpers, Anna Komnena and her husband Nikephoros, were removed and forcibly made to retire from affairs of state.

Exactly.

So, for that reason, you can't say that anything that has been badly written has been made plain. Bad writing can imply to make it understood, but it cannot, by definition, make anything plain...much less sensible.

The real madness of Tyrion's statement is that in denouncing Daenerys for being a problem, he is saying that he is the arbiter of good and that all that is evil is opposed to him. He tells Jon Snow what to do and how to think and fully expects him to do it. Why? Because he "drinks and knows things," making him good and smart enough to what's best for everyone.

In this, the main difference between Daenerys' stance of "if you're not with me, you're against me" and that of Tyrion's is that she does it from a position of hard strength (which makes her frighteningly tyrannical) and Tyrion does it from a place of weakness (which makes him deviously manipulative). Also, when Jon does exactly what Tyrion tells and wants him to do, Tyrion doesn't even bother to lift a finger to help him. Tyrion does not care about doing the right thing: how can he when he frequently plots to help Cersei maintain power and/or escape and when he backstabbed Varys...despite agreeing with him?

Tyrion only wants to save his own life, which makes his whole aim to oppose and get rid of Daenerys selfish and a tad villainous. And because his whole aim is selfish and petty, his whole speech is disingenuous. The disingenuity of it is multipled by that terrible speech.

First, she came for baby-killing witches, then she came for mass-murdering opportunists, then she came for slavers, then she came for pro-rape barbarian warlords, then she came for my deviously twisted sister and her minions, now she's coming for me, and soon she will come for you but when she does no one will be there to speak up for you.

Tyrion's hypocrisy is cemented and demonstrated by his pseudo-trial in the Dragonpit (you know, the point where he -- a traitor and an accessory to murder -- gets to tell everyone that they are wrong and that they should all listen and trust him) and by his governance of the Small Council with the explicit goal of getting the smallfolk to debase and prostitute themselves for the sake of enrichening the King and the Small Council....to the glee of the Small Council.

The whole thing is so jacked up.

This makes her no different from anyone else in their world.

Jon Snow himself is a part of that club, many times over

That's fine. And you're right, it is not normal for a ruler in her world.

But that's not what they put on screen.

What happened was that the "Dany is not made for peace" thing was a throwaway line from the middle of season 6 that was treated as a joking quip and proceeded to be proven wrong in the same season. What also happened is that this throwaway moment from season 6 got turned into a plotline that was introduced in the very last episode of the series and was resolved within five minutes of its introduction.

It's not even worthy of the honor of being called a shaggy dog story

@Ranand I both love Guy Gavriel Kay.

Alixana sums it up, while she and her husband are considering the fate of a man who would be emperor.

”There cannot be two emperors.  Two *living* emperors.

Or as Kruschev puts it to Malenkov, in The Death of Stalin:  “It’s a choice between his death (Beria’s) or his revenge.  Now sign this fucking thing.”

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1 hour ago, GZ Bloodraven said:

I would argue Avatar is a white savior narrative who's just conflict results in the creation of a terrorist faction in the sequel.

Avatar?  So the literary trope of the white saviour is Dany and Jake Sully.  These are supposed to embody the trope but the trope has to exist in the first place for them to embody or deconstruct it.  This just feels like a knee-jerk reaction with the giant blue-skinned non-humans and the myriad peoples of Slaver's Bay being tied together as non-white.  Civil conflict is a typical consequence of regime change but a nasty civil war does not make for a terrorist state.  All authoritarian regimes use a degree of terror against their own citizens and failed states can allow militias, guerrillas groups and terrorist organisations safe havens either through conscious choice or being too weak to prevent them.  But these are different things.

1 hour ago, GZ Bloodraven said:

I'm not saying she despises the culture, I'm saying she's the only perspective on her regime change: a French noblewoman, exiled in Algeria, marrying a Kenyan political leader, living in Egypt for a bit, and then helping Saudi Arabian, Iraqi, and Iranian woman achieve their freedom by organizing them in overthrowing their leader, only to spawn a pro-oppressing women terrorist group and running back to Kenya, and the only perspective we get on the "liberating Saudi Arabian, Iraqi and Iranian women" is from the white French woman...that's a whit savior. 

Except she is Valyrian so is from the region originally.  As, loosely, were the Andals.  It's why I think to identify race is a false here as GRRM has woven his own tapestry.  In this case she would be an Egyptian princess, whose family fled the destruction of The New Kingdom for France where they supplanted the French Royal family and adopted some new but retained some of their own customs.  Rather like the Ptolemies in Egypt as it happens.  No real world comparison can stand up because of course it stems from the author's creative imagination.  That's my main dislike of critiquing art this way, along with the vagueness and general application of the white saviour term.

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1 hour ago, BlackLightning said:

As for you making the case of Dany being a White Savior...um, I hear you and you have a point but it's a nope for me. I'm with @Lord Varys. The racial concept of white or black or whatever doesn't exist anywhere in Planetos. The closest you can get to the idea of racial supremacy is the Old Valyrians but the Old Valyrians parade their supremacy more like the Romans or like the Ptolemy dynasty of Egypt did instead of like the Europeans of the early modern, modern and post-modern eras. And nothing about the idea of Roman supremacy, Ptolemian exclusivity or even the more general apotheosis of the Egyptian pharaohs had anything to do with whether or not they were white or black. Romans were notably multiracial. The Egyptians ruled over people who were both lighter than them and just as swarthy and dark as they were.

 

Yeah, if you don't think Dany is white you can't think she's a white savior. I just do think she's white; not in-universe, but for all intents and purposes. And I don't think the Targaryens have done enough racial deconstruction to make the Blood of Old Valyria and those racial implications not equivalent to whiteness. 

57 minutes ago, the trees have eyes said:

Avatar?  So the literary trope of the white saviour is Dany and Jake Sully.  These are supposed to embody the trope but the trope has to exist in the first place for them to embody or deconstruct it.  This just feels like a knee-jerk reaction with the giant blue-skinned non-humans and the myriad peoples of Slaver's Bay being tied together as non-white.  Civil conflict is a typical consequence of regime change but a nasty civil war does not make for a terrorist state.  All authoritarian regimes use a degree of terror against their own citizens and failed states can allow militias, guerrillas groups and terrorist organisations safe havens either through conscious choice or being too weak to prevent them.  But these are different things.

It's not about the events: it's about the perspective of the narrative. Dune is mostly from white Paul Atreides' perspective on saving the Fremen (a deconstruction of the white savior trope that I would liken to Dany). Avatar is from the white character who is saving the people of color's POV. Dany is the POV character of Dany's saving of the Slaver's Bay slaves. She is white. Dany is a white savior narrative. If you don't think she's white, like @BlackLightning, that is ok. If you don't think that a white savior narrative is when a white person saves people of color and the story is told from their perspective, that is also ok. But if you think both those things (which I think I reasonably do), then Dany's a white savior. The regime change/reconstruction question is a couple layers on top of the fundamental critique, though I still think it's largely valid.

1 hour ago, the trees have eyes said:

Except she is Valyrian so is from the region originally.  As, loosely, were the Andals.  It's why I think to identify race is a false here as GRRM has woven his own tapestry.  In this case she would be an Egyptian princess, whose family fled the destruction of The New Kingdom for France where they supplanted the French Royal family and adopted some new but retained some of their own customs.  Rather like the Ptolemies in Egypt as it happens.  No real world comparison can stand up because of course it stems from the author's creative imagination.  That's my main dislike of critiquing art this way, along with the vagueness and general application of the white saviour term.

"from the region" Egypt was Qarth in my example, she's more like a 15th generation Greek or Cypriot member of a conquering family of the French who was exiled to Algeria, married the Kenyan, visited Egypt, liberated the Saudis Iraqis and Iranians, ran back to the Kenyans when shit hit the fan, and then went back to France to take it over again. The Andals weren't from the region, the axe is west of Qohor, like Senegal or something. 

I agree no real world comparison can stand up, but George is commenting on real world things, whether modern or historical. That's the whole point of the series. And I don't think the white savior term is being applied vaguely or generally. Is Dany  white? Is she saving non-white people? Is that story being told from her perspective alone? That's a white savior for me. I am going to reiterate again that this is not a bad thing, I think George is playing with it well, but it is happening.

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2 hours ago, SeanF said:

@Ranand I both love Guy Gavriel Kay.

Alixana sums it up, while she and her husband are considering the fate of a man who would be emperor.

”There cannot be two emperors.  Two *living* emperors.

Or as Kruschev puts it to Malenkov, in The Death of Stalin:  “It’s a choice between his death (Beria’s) or his revenge.  Now sign this fucking thing.”

But there can. There are lots and lots and lots of examples for this.

I mean, George's narrative clearly has Jon Snow and Daenerys Targaryen as woman and man to allow them to fall in love and/or enter into an (arranged) marriage. That is how this silly thing could have been resolved.

If you have two pretenders for a throne ... and then marry each other then the conflict is over. At least open conflict and civil war.

But, seriously, the whole GoT setting is so full of holes and nonsense that it really makes no sense to seriously discuss it.

@GZ Bloodraven

'Dune' also makes little sense as a white savior story. Not only is the Imperium not racialized and the Fremen not exactly people of color or 'natives' ... but Paul Atreides is basically a figure Fremen culture and ideology (shaped by the Bene Gesserit) take and exploit. The story is not about race but about political and religious ideology ... and how it turns people into monsters, basically.

The Fremen also never actually need any saving. Never. They always controlled their planet and the spice-miners were always doing their stuff with their (clandestine) permission.

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3 hours ago, SeanF said:

Bear in mind, St. Tyrion, who is the two D’s mouthpiece, brands the killing of the child abusers of Astapor as “murder”, a highly loaded term;  claims that Daenerys killed twice as many people as his family (he’s obviously forgotten about what his dad did in the Riverlands); omits to mention the crucifixion of children at Meereen, or Daenerys’ kidnap and near-rape by the khals.  Then, we have the entire aesthetic of portraying Dany and her followers as Nazis.  And the twist is that -Dany aside - the Nazis all have dark skins.

I’d say the political message is both clear and very reactionary.  The message is that fighting an unjust status quo is the hallmark of a fascist tyrant.  At the same time, it’s portrayed as a good thing that Westeros is now ruled by people who compare the smallfolk to livestock, and see new brothels as their main priority.

Issue with revolutions is that they usually replace one unjust status quo with another unjust status quo, since people who had grown up in the previous system simply do not know better.

Of course, sometimes you just have to get rid of the old ruling caste to see any change.

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1 hour ago, Lord Varys said:

'Dune' also makes little sense as a white savior story. Not only is the Imperium not racialized and the Fremen not exactly people of color or 'natives' ... but Paul Atreides is basically a figure Fremen culture and ideology (shaped by the Bene Gesserit) take and exploit. The story is not about race but about political and religious ideology ... and how it turns people into monsters, basically.

I don't know enough about Dune to comment on this, I've just seen the movie, but from the limited knowledge I have about the future story, it seems like an explicit commentary on messiah and white savior narratives.

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17 minutes ago, GZ Bloodraven said:

I don't know enough about Dune to comment on this, I've just seen the movie, but from the limited knowledge I have about the future story, it seems like an explicit commentary on messiah and white savior narratives.

Dune is very much an anti messiah story.

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