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Is Dany a White Savior?


Corvo the Crow
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32 minutes ago, Aldarion said:

I know I'm not Bloodraven, but - entirety of Africa and the Middle East. Europeans divided the map by drawing lines on the map, while completely ignoring the ethnic/tribal composition of these areas. So you have the situation where each state has multiple tribes in it, while at the same time some tribes are divided by artificial borders. Result being that Africa is full of dysfunctional states.

They wanted me to talk about another example in fiction, but I wasn't talking about other examples in fiction. But this is a good example of people who thought they were white saviors with superior weapons "stopping tribal violence and slavery" and making the problem worse in many senses.

4 hours ago, the trees have eyes said:

So you are projecting the Iraq war and rise of ISIS onto Slaver's Bay.  That's a rather crude, even facile, comparison. 

Assuming anti-war George was not considering the war that was happening from 2003-2011 in influencing the events in Meereen seems intentionally ignorant. It's not one-to-one, frankly none of the real-world allegories are one-to-one that's the point of a fantasy series, but it is definitely influencing it. Slaver's Bay is also, as others mentioned, influenced by the confederacy and KKK, what with the slave state and all. There, you could argue, that George is talking about the importance of an effective reconstruction. Which is essentially what I am talking about: after a leader deposes an unjust system, how do they stabilize that system? It's a timeless political question, one that George is clearly discussing.

17 hours ago, Lord Varys said:

The slaves in Slaver's Bay are just slaves - they are not racialized slaves, they come in all colors - like the runaways slaves who founded Braavos. It is a wrong take on the setting to equate the slaves in Slaver's Bay with PoC. Just as it is wrong to view the Westerosi as 'white' when they most obviously don't view themselves - nor are they viewed - as the rulers/most powerful people of the world ... nor have they ever been a colonizing force. Hell, even Valyria is more the American Empire than the British Empire in the sense that they didn't really try to colonize, say, Sothoryos. They did establish some military outposts and the like, but they didn't act like the British and took over huge countries.

This is a good point, but Dany, a Valyrian, is white, and the Ghiscari, largely, are POC. As @Nathan Stark said, the show did a lot to create this view, and obviously the white savior critique wouldn't be accepted in-universe because they don't really do skin-color race. It can only be levied because of the metatextual reading that Dany, a white woman, saves mostly POC people, the slaves, and we are told about this from her perspective alone. For me it's as simple as that, and it's a white savior narrative. Again, I'm not saying that this is bad or bad storytelling: I actually think part of why the Meereen stuff is compelling (I mean for most people it isn't that compelling, but putting that aside) is because of Dany's limited white (Valyrian, if you'd prefer) savior perspective on what the hell to do now that she did a regime change. Like, what next? 

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37 minutes ago, GZ Bloodraven said:

They wanted me to talk about another example in fiction, but I wasn't talking about other examples in fiction. But this is a good example of people who thought they were white saviors with superior weapons "stopping tribal violence and slavery" and making the problem worse in many senses.

Assuming anti-war George was not considering the war that was happening from 2003-2011 in influencing the events in Meereen seems intentionally ignorant. It's not one-to-one, frankly none of the real-world allegories are one-to-one that's the point of a fantasy series, but it is definitely influencing it. Slaver's Bay is also, as others mentioned, influenced by the confederacy and KKK, what with the slave state and all. There, you could argue, that George is talking about the importance of an effective reconstruction. Which is essentially what I am talking about: after a leader deposes an unjust system, how do they stabilize that system? It's a timeless political question, one that George is clearly discussing.

This is a good point, but Dany, a Valyrian, is white, and the Ghiscari, largely, are POC. As @Nathan Stark said, the show did a lot to create this view, and obviously the white savior critique wouldn't be accepted in-universe because they don't really do skin-color race. It can only be levied because of the metatextual reading that Dany, a white woman, saves mostly POC people, the slaves, and we are told about this from her perspective alone. For me it's as simple as that, and it's a white savior narrative. Again, I'm not saying that this is bad or bad storytelling: I actually think part of why the Meereen stuff is compelling (I mean for most people it isn't that compelling, but putting that aside) is because of Dany's limited white (Valyrian, if you'd prefer) savior perspective on what the hell to do now that she did a regime change. Like, what next? 

Dany’s dilemma is that faced by all reformist governments that come to power by overthrowing the old regime, whether in Europe, the Americas, and Caribbean, after 1789, or the Confederacy, after 1865, or Eastern Europe, after 1989.  How far do you go, in punishing the old elites? Destroy them, and you can face total anarchy.  Leave them in power, and they may plot to re-subjugate the majority.

There’s no right answer.  The Ghiscari elites *might* have accepted that they’d got off lightly, and adapted to the new order.  With their wealth, ships, and trading contacts, they could have prospered by financing the freedmens’ business ventures.

But, like the Bourbons, they learned nothing and they forgot nothing.  They plotted to destroy free Meereen from the inside and outside, and I suspect that in TWOW, they’ll face complete ruin as a result.

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5 hours ago, Nathan Stark said:

The claim being made that Dany is a "white savior" mostly derives from how the Thrones show chose to portray these events. In the show, we were subjected to the image of white, blonde Dany moshing on the hands of millions of nameless brown and black people. In the books, that same scene outside the gates of Yunkai played out rather differently, and as has been discussed, the slaves themselves hail from many different cultures, including a few from Westeros. It was the showrunners choice to involve 21st century American notions of slavery into George's established narrative. 

And Benioff and Weiss’ attitude towards chattel slavery is pretty ambiguous.

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1 hour ago, SeanF said:

And Benioff and Weiss’ attitude towards chattel slavery is pretty ambiguous.

How so? They certainly think it's evil, but just because they think it's evil doesn't mean they can't divorce their own view from that of characters and cultures in the setting.

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2 minutes ago, Ran said:

How so? They certainly think it's evil, but just because they think it's evil doesn't mean they can't divorce their own view from that of characters and cultures in the setting.

At the end, they used Tyrion to preach to the audience, by adapting Niemoller’s prose poem “First They Came…” to denounce Daenerys’ anti-slavery campaign.

Tyrion was not claiming that slave traders were anything other than evil people, but rather, that to fight them places you in the wrong.  It’s like Gandhi urging Jews to go willingly to the gas chambers.

I honestly thought that his “evil men” speech was the absolute nadir of all eight seasons.  It reveals a rotten political philosophy.

Niemoller was making the point that he cared nothing about groups that were marginalised and discriminated against, Jews, trade unionists, and socialists, after the Nazis came to power.  And eventually, he found they came after him, and there was no one left to speak for him.

Slave traders, child murderers, and rapist khals, are absolutely not the people who are marginalised and discriminated against in the world of ASOIAF.

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Their misappropriation is not really suggesting they have ambiguous views. As I understand it -- I had to look up the text, and the Atlantic's article about how GoT lost its political way in the final season -- Tyrion's point was not, "Gosh, these were actually okay people," his point is that Dany is capable of massacring people who are evil... or people she perceives as evil. Per the text, before he launches into how she killed the slavers, murders, and khals, he asks if she sounds like someone who is done with fighting, which frames what follows as being about what she's capable of when she decides someone is her enemy.

It's really silly and sloppy of them to use that particular rhetoric, but then I gather much of season 8 was silly and sloppy, but suggesting D&D have ambiguous personal views about slavery is a massive reach

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19 minutes ago, Ran said:

Their misappropriation is not really suggesting they have ambiguous views. As I understand it -- I had to look up the text, and the Atlantic's article about how GoT lost its political way in the final season -- Tyrion's point was not, "Gosh, these were actually okay people," his point is that Dany is capable of massacring people who are evil... or people she perceives as evil. Per the text, before he launches into how she killed the slavers, murders, and khals, he asks if she sounds like someone who is done with fighting, which frames what follows as being about what she's capable of when she decides someone is her enemy.

It's really silly and sloppy of them to use that particular rhetoric, but then I gather much of season 8 was silly and sloppy, but suggesting D&D have ambiguous personal views about slavery is a massive reach

The way I took it is that those who perpetrate slavery, and those who fight it, are equally as bad as the other.  Tyrion’s not saying that slavers are good, but rather, that fighting it is just as bad.

It’s the worst kind of “both-sideism.”

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10 minutes ago, SeanF said:

The way I took it is that those who perpetrate slavery and those who fight it are equally as bad as the other.  He’s not saying that slavers are good, but rather that fighting it is just as bad.

Yeah, reading the transcript, I don't get that. It's all about the fact that Dany's increasing certainty that she is "good and right" means that those who question her will be cast as "evil". Tyrion cites the danger to Sansa and Arya if they don't go along with Dany, for example, and he asks Jon if he thinks Tyrion will be the last person she executes, etc.

It's clumsy as hell and they made a hash of Dany's narrative, but there's no question that they mean to question whether she was right to fight evil men. They were clearly evil men, Tyrion agrees. The issue is that what she sees as evil and what she's willing to do about it are not necessarily aligned with what Tyrion, Jon, or other not-insane people would do about it.

(I feel dirty even reading the transcript, BTW. I have blessedly only seen or read snippets of the final episode, so reading that scene is the single longest stretch of the final season that I've looked at. So glad I ducked out with season 5...)

 

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20 minutes ago, Ran said:

Yeah, reading the transcript, I don't get that. It's all about the fact that Dany's increasing certainty that she is "good and right" means that those who question her will be cast as "evil". Tyrion cites the danger to Sansa and Arya if they don't go along with Dany, for example, and he asks Jon if he thinks Tyrion will be the last person she executes, etc.

It's clumsy as hell and they made a hash of Dany's narrative, but there's no question that they mean to question whether she was right to fight evil men. They were clearly evil men, Tyrion agrees. The issue is that what she sees as evil and what she's willing to do about it are not necessarily aligned with what Tyrion, Jon, or other not-insane people would do about it.

(I feel dirty even reading the transcript, BTW. I have blessedly only seen or read snippets of the final episode, so reading that scene is the single longest stretch of the final season that I've looked at. So glad I ducked out with season 5...)

 

I wish I’d ducked out at Season 5.

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4 hours ago, GZ Bloodraven said:

This is a good point, but Dany, a Valyrian, is white, and the Ghiscari, largely, are POC. As @Nathan Stark said, the show did a lot to create this view, and obviously the white savior critique wouldn't be accepted in-universe because they don't really do skin-color race. It can only be levied because of the metatextual reading that Dany, a white woman, saves mostly POC people, the slaves, and we are told about this from her perspective alone. For me it's as simple as that, and it's a white savior narrative. Again, I'm not saying that this is bad or bad storytelling: I actually think part of why the Meereen stuff is compelling (I mean for most people it isn't that compelling, but putting that aside) is because of Dany's limited white (Valyrian, if you'd prefer) savior perspective on what the hell to do now that she did a regime change. Like, what next? 

'Whiteness' isn't just skin color, but a larger, political concept in racist discourse (for instance, as I think Chomsky liked to point out, the Japanese were viewed as 'white' by the South African apartheid regime while the Chinese were not). 'White' in racist discourse are whatever people sit at the top of the racist or cultural hierarchy - their actual skin color doesn't really matter.

Now, iconographically the depiction of the Mhysa moment in GoT certainly presented Daenerys the way a white savior would be presented - but even silly GoT doesn't present the Westerosi as 'white people' in the sense that they view themselves as a supreme race nor were there ever a colonialist or imperial force. (In fact, ethnically the Westerosi would be First Men/Andal/Rhoynish/Valyrian mongrels.)

You can only have a white savior if there is a racial hierarchy in the world or setting you talk about. If that is lacking then you can say that the portrayal or depiction evokes the concept in the eyes of certain people, but that is then stuff that happens in the eyes of the beholder, not in the work as such. This is where it is actually important to acknowledge that we talk fantasy novels here - if Daenerys were a princess from a European country freeing slaves in slaver cities in the middle east, say, then we would have a clear white savior narrative (at least when the European princess we talk about would operate at a time when racial hierarchies were already a thing).

The slaves Dany frees in Slaver's Bay should include light-skinned people as well as those of many races. I imagine Dothraki would actually make the bulk of the slaves in Slaver's Bay since the Dothraki are more likely to fight and enslave each others than the Lhazareen or others neighbors they have. And it is from the Dothraki that the Ghiscari would get the bulk of their slaves. Although we cannot dismiss the fact that the corsairs from the Basilisk Isles would also provide them with slaves - and the people they enslave would include the crews from ships from all corners of the world.

But GoT really made no effort to accurately depict this.

23 minutes ago, Ran said:

(I feel dirty even reading the transcript, BTW. I have blessedly only seen or read snippets of the final episode, so reading that scene is the single longest stretch of the final season that I've looked at. So glad I ducked out with season 5...)

Don't beat yourself up too much. I don't remember when exactly that happened, but the show started to play up the slavery defense/justification angle much earlier. I think it may be season 5 where show Hizdahr is presented as the son of a guy who was killed by Dany's people despite the fact that he was a staunch abolitionist. This is part of an agenda to add 'depth' to an aspect of the story which definitely didn't need it ... and the point there was clearly to make Daenerys look bad for killing slavers.

The books give us no indication that the ruling class of Meereen and the other slaver cities included people who were actively against slavery - in fact, considering the fact that the Ghiscari elites are as rich as they are only because of the slave trade it feels very unlikely that this is the case. Instead, the books give us the cynical pro-slavery shit arguments of Xaro Xhoan Daxos.

It is also obvious as hell that the show's final take on Daenerys has nothing to do with their earlier portrayal of the character - nor the way other characters viewed her and her actions earlier. Especially Tyrion.

But in context of the gritty and dark nature of the books - and the depths to which everybody will sink as winter takes hold - I actually see no way how the author could even portray Daenerys as a villain. If people had her repeat some of the Conqueror's feats they would kiss her feet and call her 'the Conqueress'. Not that it is bloody likely that there will be much castle- or city-burning in the thick of winter.

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4 minutes ago, Lord Varys said:

You can only have a white savior if there is a racial hierarchy in the world or setting you talk about. If that is lacking then you can say that the portrayal or depiction evokes the concept in the eyes of certain people, but that is then stuff that happens in the eyes of the beholder, not in the work as such. This is where it is actually important to acknowledge that we talk fantasy novels here - if Daenerys were a princess from a European country freeing slaves in slaver cities in the middle east, say, then we would have a clear white savior narrative (at least when the European princess we talk about would operate at a time when racial hierarchies were already a thing).

Within the fictional world of ASOIAF, this is true, but within our world with our still constructed racial systems, the reading that this is a white savior narrative is still valid. 

 

1 hour ago, Ran said:

As I understand it -- I had to look up the text, and the Atlantic's article about how GoT lost its political way in the final season -- Tyrion's point was not, "Gosh, these were actually okay people," his point is that Dany is capable of massacring people who are evil... or people she perceives as evil. Per the text, before he launches into how she killed the slavers, murders, and khals, he asks if she sounds like someone who is done with fighting, which frames what follows as being about what she's capable of when she decides someone is her enemy.

Exactly: I hope I can spoil the show you are never going to see, but after Dany is almost entirely isolated from the people loyal to her, she loses her sense of right and wrong/innocent and guilty. I don't think D&D were saying that slavery wasn't wrong or worth abolishing, but that the impulse to burn everything down immediately is very dangerous when dealing with less reprehensible social systems as the slave systems, like Cersei's Westeros. (Though this could be tacitly endorsing the idea that people should just always default to the staus quo in fear of overstepping their revolutionary aims, which can justify some pretty bad systems maintaining power). 

6 minutes ago, Lord Varys said:

Don't beat yourself up too much. I don't remember when exactly that happened, but the show started to play up the slavery defense/justification angle much earlier. I think it may be season 5 where show Hizdahr is presented as the son of a guy who was killed by Dany's people despite the fact that he was a staunch abolitionist. This is part of an agenda to add 'depth' to an aspect of the story which definitely didn't need it ... and the point there was clearly to make Daenerys look bad for killing slavers.

 

I see this argument, but 6.09 proves Dany right and Tyrion, well, stupid and wrong. Parlaying with slavers, Hizdarh included, does not work, as Missandei and Grey Worm tell Tyrion, and it was stupid for him to think that it would. But because they make Tyrion such a sympathetic character, to a point where it seems like they aren't being unbiased when writing him, it really comes across like D&D are not settled on the issue of whether slavery is actually really bad or not.

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8 hours ago, GZ Bloodraven said:

Within the fictional world of ASOIAF, this is true, but within our world with our still constructed racial systems, the reading that this is a white savior narrative is still valid. 

 

Exactly: I hope I can spoil the show you are never going to see, but after Dany is almost entirely isolated from the people loyal to her, she loses her sense of right and wrong/innocent and guilty. I don't think D&D were saying that slavery wasn't wrong or worth abolishing, but that the impulse to burn everything down immediately is very dangerous when dealing with less reprehensible social systems as the slave systems, like Cersei's Westeros. (Though this could be tacitly endorsing the idea that people should just always default to the staus quo in fear of overstepping their revolutionary aims, which can justify some pretty bad systems maintaining power). 

I see this argument, but 6.09 proves Dany right and Tyrion, well, stupid and wrong. Parlaying with slavers, Hizdarh included, does not work, as Missandei and Grey Worm tell Tyrion, and it was stupid for him to think that it would. But because they make Tyrion such a sympathetic character, to a point where it seems like they aren't being unbiased when writing him, it really comes across like D&D are not settled on the issue of whether slavery is actually really bad or not.

When I watched 6.09, I agreed it showed Dany, Grey Worm, and Missandei, to be right, and Tyrion wrong, and objectively, this is the case.

But then we got Tyrion’s (objectively stupid) belief that Cersei could be peacefully persuaded to step down, and his sudden conversion to pacifism. Combine that with his final speech to persuade Jon to kill Daenerys and I was left unsure which side the two D’s actually thought we should be supporting, in 6.09.

Not to mention that Daenerys and her supporters were surrounded with the aesthetics of German National Socialism, to drive home the point that these people were really, really evil (and referring back to Niemoller again).

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2 minutes ago, Craving Peaches said:

But wasn't this after she torched half a million innocent people? I can't say I really fault him for asking Jonno to off her after that...

Given that he had earlier advocated starving half a million people to death (instead of suggesting they infiltrate the city through the tunnels he made use of) I’m not sure he held the moral ground there.

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4 minutes ago, SeanF said:

Given that he had earlier advocated starving half a million people to death (instead of suggesting they infiltrate the city through the tunnels he made use of) I’m not sure he held the moral ground there.

There was really no need to kill anyone but Cersei and a few of her retainers though. Drogon had enough precision to only target the Red Keep. No civilians needed to die.

I'm not saying Tyrion had the moral high ground but I don't see why it's that controversial trying to remove Daenerys after she killed a load of innocents and made her weird proto-fascist speech...

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@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.

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33 minutes 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.

I see it as far worse than that. Slaves Crassus crucified were a) adults and b) rebels, and crucifixion was Roman punishment specifically for rebellion. That is why Jewish elites went to Pilatus to have Jesus crucified.

Masters crucified children for, essentially, shit and giggles.

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20 hours ago, Aldarion said:

I know I'm not Bloodraven, but - entirety of Africa and the Middle East. Europeans divided the map by drawing lines on the map, while completely ignoring the ethnic/tribal composition of these areas. So you have the situation where each state has multiple tribes in it, while at the same time some tribes are divided by artificial borders. Result being that Africa is full of dysfunctional states.

Yeah, in fiction.  The political arguments about European imperialism and colonialism and the new world order and neo-colonialism can and will rage on for decades if not centuries to come but fantasy takes a step away from real world politics unless the reader is interested in politicising it. 

It was the words I bolded about terrorist states that I was pushing back on because this is really nothing to do with fantasy writing and all to do with positing a geopolitical allegory.

19 hours ago, GZ Bloodraven said:

They wanted me to talk about another example in fiction, but I wasn't talking about other examples in fiction. But this is a good example of people who thought they were white saviors with superior weapons "stopping tribal violence and slavery" and making the problem worse in many senses.

Assuming anti-war George was not considering the war that was happening from 2003-2011 in influencing the events in Meereen seems intentionally ignorant. It's not one-to-one, frankly none of the real-world allegories are one-to-one that's the point of a fantasy series, but it is definitely influencing it. Slaver's Bay is also, as others mentioned, influenced by the confederacy and KKK, what with the slave state and all.

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.

As for Iraq:

The Iraq war was a follow-up to the earlier Gulf War (a global alliance against an aggressive campaign by Saddam Hussein to annex Kuwait) and found the US as the sole super power (or global hyper power) reeling and vengeful after 9/11 looking to neutralise potential threats and topple hostile regimes and replace them with more friendly ones.  Geopolitical security, America first policy, oil-driven strategy (if you're cynical) or whatever you want to call it, this was never about making the lives of the Iraqis any better.  They were meant to be grateful to see the back of Saddam and be a collateral benefit but thanks to the Sunni-Shia politics and the interference of both Syria and Iran who were determined that Iraq would not become a US client state, they became collateral damage.  Dany is all about making the lives of the local people better.  Unlike imperialists or state actors, it's her main concern.

20 hours ago, GZ Bloodraven said:

There, you could argue, that George is talking about the importance of an effective reconstruction. Which is essentially what I am talking about: after a leader deposes an unjust system, how do they stabilize that system? It's a timeless political question, one that George is clearly discussing.

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.

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). 

The major theme of his work (title of first novel ofc being A Game of Thrones) is how those in power wield that power: the pressure between desire and duty, right and responsibility.  Dany is on that journey, with an unexpected discovery on a trip to Astapor snowballing into upheaval in Slaver's Bay and likely all of the old Valyrian area of influence and Essos.  It's quite possible that Volantis will rise up on it's own, inspired by her example, rather than being "liberated" by her neo-colonial saviour-like appearance and that she'll never set foot there.  She's more Spartacus than Louis XIV.

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On 3/11/2023 at 1:38 PM, Corvo the Crow said:

Firstly, for those who don't know what it is:

White savior - Wikipedia

She is white, whiter than white to the point of being whiter than your average white european, is delivered as a messianic figure, especially to people she liberated, liberates "people of color" (old gods I hate this, I'll say people of melanine advantage for them and melanine disadvantage for whites).

So Is Daenerys a white saviour? Pretty much confirms to the trope I think.

She is the hero who will pick up the broken pieces of Westeros and rebuild the Targaryen rule. The Conquest was the best thing to ever happen to the people of Westeros. Daenerys and many of the people she rescued from slavery will make up the new people of Westeros as soon as Ice, the darkness, the Wildlings, and the Starks have been defeated. There is nothing trope about this. It’s the logical conclusion. Winter will kill most of the existing people in Westeros. If it’s to be repopulated with humans they have to come from the East.  

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18 hours ago, Ran said:

Their misappropriation is not really suggesting they have ambiguous views. As I understand it -- I had to look up the text, and the Atlantic's article about how GoT lost its political way in the final season -- Tyrion's point was not, "Gosh, these were actually okay people," his point is that Dany is capable of massacring people who are evil... or people she perceives as evil. Per the text, before he launches into how she killed the slavers, murders, and khals, he asks if she sounds like someone who is done with fighting, which frames what follows as being about what she's capable of when she decides someone is her enemy.

It's really silly and sloppy of them to use that particular rhetoric, but then I gather much of season 8 was silly and sloppy, but suggesting D&D have ambiguous personal views about slavery is a massive reach

That might have been the point that Tyrion was trying to make.

What was ultimately communicated onscreen and on paper (and this is where the writers failed) was that, at the end of the day, Dany was ultimately wrong to kill slavers, murderers, and rapists because she hurt, maimed and killed more people than any one individual slaver or khal ever did.

On top of that it was framed as a "first, they came for (insert an arbitrary and innocent group of people)"

It was not only very illogical and sloppy, but it was extremely offensive.

18 hours ago, Ran said:

there's no question that they mean to question whether she was right to fight evil men. They were clearly evil men, Tyrion agrees. The issue is that what she sees as evil and what she's willing to do about it are not necessarily aligned with what Tyrion, Jon, or other not-insane people would do about it.

I disagree.

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

This same monologue also goes on to say that the position that St. Tyrion takes is for sure the right one and that Danielle's position is wrong when St. Tyrion's position would have been to make sure that Cersei gets away so that she can fight another day.

9 hours ago, Craving Peaches said:

There was really no need to kill anyone but Cersei and a few of her retainers though. Drogon had enough precision to only target the Red Keep. No civilians needed to die.

I'm not saying Tyrion had the moral high ground but I don't see why it's that controversial trying to remove Daenerys after she killed a load of innocents and made her weird proto-fascist speech...

But here's the thing. This wasn't supposed to happen.

While Danielle burned the Red Keep and the armies sacked the city, the city itself was supposed to be blown to bits by wildfire which had been carelessly set off by Danielle.

They later changed it after the fact in post-production and made it so that Danielle would destroy the entire city on dragonback and the few explosions of wildfire that we still saw incidental. The actors (who had read the script and knew the story long before we knew) have stated that they were absolutely shocked by what they saw on screen. It wasn't at all how it was supposed to end.

Because they didn't change the script for the finale, Danielle was only tangentially responsible for the total destruction of the city and thereby her blithe "Oh, well" and "Please help me rule Jon Stupid" reactions (as well as the reactions had by the cast at the script-reading table) make a lot more sense. So, St. Tyrion made the argument he made based on worse faith and conjecture...thus making him less desperate and more manipulative. And ultimately, Tyrion did it because he was bitter and wanted to save himself, not because he wanted to do the right thing.

 

But let me address your point. It's not controversial to remove the Queen after she killed hundreds of thousands of innocents and made a speech*

What is controversial is:

  • she can be easily removed without killing her. Jon is the true heir by all accounts (i.e., children before siblings, boys before girls) and is more popular and well-connected than she is. This is the series finale episode of Game of Thrones: the big R+L=J reveal has to matter, and everyone already knows it. Just press your claim and the rest will take care of itself. In the end, however, nothing went nowhere
  • the betrayal of the situation because the optics of lovingly kissing someone while quietly putting a knife in their chest is wild. They basically turned Jon Snow into Judas Iscariot and Daenerys (who they had spent the last 5-10 of script denouncing as the love child of Hitler and Satan) into Jesus Christ...which they proceeded to double-down with the La Pieta homage.
  • killing off pop culture's most revolutionary feminist heroine with a bout of domestic violence for the sake of making the audiences react is a massive "yikes!" moment...particularly on a show with a history of needlessly denigrating and mistreating female characters and actors
  • killing her to make Tyrion happy when, according to the show's own logic, Tyrion actually deserves to be imprisoned and executed
  • not even bothering to address the very legitimate Sansa problem (and then rewarding her for it)

The most controversial part about it though is the fact that Daenerys is called a villain for doing things that world leaders have always done and that her actions are in a way justified by the conduct of modern warfare. It was weird because Olenna (a universally beloved character) told her to "be a dragon," that Missandei's last words (another beloved character) were both a call to war and an encouraging reference to a previous sack of a city ruled by evil people, Tywin and Cersei were lauded (both in-show and by the creators in outside interviews) for destroying their enemies and not caring about collateral, and that Arya and Sansa both showed signs of being pleased and aroused by bloodshed

 

*That speech was very weird.

18 hours ago, GZ Bloodraven said:

I don't think D&D were saying that slavery wasn't wrong or worth abolishing, but that the impulse to burn everything down immediately is very dangerous when dealing with less reprehensible social systems as the slave systems, like Cersei's Westeros. (Though this could be tacitly endorsing the idea that people should just always default to the staus quo in fear of overstepping their revolutionary aims, which can justify some pretty bad systems maintaining power). 

That's the problem.

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

Especially since the last moments of the episode are dedicated to ensuring the widespread restoration of prostitution so that they can use the money made to rebuild the city exactly as it was before. Only King's Landing will not be as it was once as because (for all its corruption) now it will be treated as enormous brothel and its impoverished, homeless, traumatized inhabitants as whores and whoremongers

 

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