#this goes for cersei too why have 1 evil child when you could have 3 | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

turtle-paced · 4 years

Text

GoT Re-Watch: Fine-Toothed Comb Edition

This post is also available on my wordpress.

8.06 – The Iron Throne

Or, A Close-Up of Tyrion Lannister.

(1:59) Right, now that the best part of the episode is over (RIP clockwork credits), who’s ready for lots of shots of people walking around the rubble? Figurative and literal rubble? Shot of Tyrion starts here! Close up on Peter Dinklage, hooooold that close up, keep the background out of focus so we’ve only got the suggestion of the devastation he’s reacting to in the background…

(2:32) After holding that shot for thirty fucking seconds, we get to see what it is Tyrion’s reacting to. Dead kid in the rubble, in this case. Let’s just keep following Tyrion’s walking tour of the ruins of King’s Landing in complete silence, Jon and Davos trailing behind him.

(3:41) Still following people through the rubble. Skeletons visible, charred child’s toy because we didn’t get the point yet…

(3:57) We have dialogue! Whooo! And then we go right back to Tyrion walking through King’s Landing.

(4:58) You know, it’s remarkable how Lannister soldiers got a lot more attractive once the narrative allowed ordinary Lannister soldiers to be the victims of main characters. Seriously, go back and compare this lot to, say, any of the ones Arya came across in the season two-four era.

(5:45) Now we see a little bit of a conflict between the Northern forces and the Unsullied over the appropriate handling of the prisoners in the aftermath. Hang on to the thought for just a few minutes more.

(6:28) Speaking of character derailment, Grey Worm is also just here for the war crimes. That tiny little bit at the start of last episode where Dany hands over Missandei’s only possession to Grey Worm and he chucks it into the fire is the last we saw of either of their internal state of mind prior to both of them getting on the civilian/prisoner massacre train. After multiple seasons of these characters holding strongly to some sense of ideals and ethics (even if they’re not ethics you agree with!), through a lot of messed up bullshit, they just chuck all those ethics out here in the last two episodes.

(6:33) Tyrion continues walking through ruins.

(7:36) Cut to Tyrion walking through the ruined ground level of the Red Keep to Tyrion walking through the ruined secret passages of the Red Keep. Yes, that took more than a minute. Does anyone get the feeling there’s not actually much plot to this plot? Anyone feeling like we’re largely substituting shots of Peter Dinklage emoting over the ruins of King’s Landing for writing how Tyrion Lannister would react to the burning of King’s Landing?

The man can act. But nobody can act enough to make up for this sucking black hole of plot vacuity. And it blunts the impact of what’s coming up.

(9:19) Tyrion finds Jaime’s golden hand in the rubble of the mostly-uncollapsed tunnel. Shortly thereafter, he uncovers both Jaime and Cersei. A few metres to one side and they would have been fine.

Here is where we need to hold on Tyrion as he breaks down over the discovery of his siblings’ dead bodies. Here is where those tight close ups are going to have most impact. Unfortunately, of the eight minutes of episode, we’ve already spent about five of them with only Tyrion and Tyrion’s emotions to engage us as he walked through King’s Landing.

(11:00) Speaking of people walking through rubble, it’s Arya! The main difference between her in this episode and her in last episode is that she slowed her pace down from a run. Where’d the white horse she was riding go? Who knows. Off with the symbolism, we’ve got more symbolism to jam in here and we are not going to be as subtle as a white horse.

(11:33) Jon walks through Dany’s forces. First the Dothraki, all on their horses, arakhs bared despite the conflict ending. Then through the Unsullied, lined up in perfect rows with perfect armour including helmets, despite having been in a fight a couple hours ago.

Have you spotted what’s missing here? Because I have.

(13:05) See, now that’s symbolism! As Dany approaches her armies (wearing all black, natch), we get a shot of Drogon behind her so that it looks like his wings are emerging from Dany’s back! I haven’t seen symbolism this delightfully subtle since Man of Steel. Her Satanic Majesty indeed.

(13:33) We’re getting long pans over Dany’s forces, and this is where I am going to say it.

This is racist as fuck. It’s out of some fucking propaganda booklet somewhere.

We all understood (at least I hope we all understood) that when Cersei was talking about “hordes of Dothraki savages” etc etc in season seven, that was an in-universe racist dogwhistle. She was appealing to the xenophobia and racism of Westerosi lords to rally support to her own cause. And here in season eight, we see that when Cersei was talking about savage hordes etc etc, she was actually correct. Completely, 100% correct. The in-universe racism was validated by the plot. We did not get “each side is bad, because that’s war in a feudal setting” (like we did when it was mostly white people in conflict with other white people). We got soft-looking Lannister soldiers and white civilians killed in the streets, and now we’re panning over the armies that did it, almost entirely PoC. The Dothraki cheering is the only background noise, so you can be sure that it’s meant to sound foreign and alarming. The Unsullied are damn well stormtroopers, dehumanised in their discipline and in their uniformity. The shots are denying them faces.

Meanwhile, the white Northerners (who absolutely participated in the slaughter last episode) are nowhere to be fucking seen. Now that we’re showing the eeeeeeeevil that is Dany’s cause fully unveiled, with the speeches in a “foreign language”, the black outfits, the black and red banners, the whole shebang, the white people other than Dany aren’t fully participating. We’re getting white people as victims, or mysteriously missing from shots of the bad guys, and the people of colour as the bad guys, their otherness emphasised through direction and mise en scene.

Even with the plot points the showrunners wanted (which are bad enough on their own), they did not have to do this like this. Depicting the Unsullied as battle-worn human beings as opposed to Stormtrooper Evil Robots was an option. Including the Northern forces in the shots of the new bad guys was an option. Reminding people that the Lannister army is not a war-crime-free zone was an option. Casting the King’s Landing crowds as more racially diverse was an option. Not introducing and contextualising this conflict with naked xenophobia and racism was an option.

They did not do any of this. There are so many ways they could have done something that did not vindicate the in-universe racists. Instead we’ve got this fucking lazy, fucking racist shortcut of “these guys are the bad guys and you can tell because they’re not white and European-coded.”

(13:54) The other thing to note here is that Dany is now perfectly put together. She’s brushed her hair. She’s wearing clean clothing. She’s perfectly serene. We’re no longer getting the way-too-close ups to indicate a precarious emotional state. In other words, the show has dropped the indications that Dany is insane even more abruptly than it introduced them. Hold the thought.

(14:57) The Unsullied are not allowed emotional expression anymore, because now they are evil robots who do war crimes. This goes for Gray Worm (addressed conspicuously with the translation of his name, rather than the immediately-audible reminder that ‘Gray Worm’ was a slave name) who gives half a smile, and the Unsullied at large, who tap their spear butts on the ground in lieu of cheering.

(15:33) Ah, the other sign that Dany is an irredeemable monster. She wants to liberate slaves. For fuck’s sake, the woman firebombed a major city without any sort of justification last episode, that’s the evil part. Not the bit where she wants everyone to live in freedom. And yet we’re getting the ominous music and the serious reaction shots from reasonable white men over this as well.

(17:20) Tyrion freed Jaime? Yeah, Dany, wait until you hear what Tyrion promised regarding Highgarden, it’s a bit of a plot hole.

(17:47) Tyrion tenders his resignation, effective immediately.

(18:29) He is also arrested.

(19:19) Arya, last seen at the back of the crowd, does a bit of mild teleporting to arrive next to Jon as he watches Dany walk away. Just so you know why Arya’s there and what she’s doing.

(20:09) Strong contender for the stupidest line of the series, right here. I know that I didn’t think I’d hear one to match the infamous “bad pussy” line. Arya, about Dany, after the latter burned down a city on her giant fire-breathing dragon, in full daylight and in front of three full armies: “I know a killer when I see one.”

(20:40) Oh. Joy. This scene. I have not been looking forward to recapping this scene. If that last line was stupid, this scene brings stupid and offensive to the table.

(21:10) Ah yes, Tyrion betrayed Varys. That pure, innocent angel Varys, who used children in his plots to murder monarchs. As we all know, Varys’ motives were noble, and so this excuses the fact that he risked a child’s life in an assassination attempt.

(21:28) Oh yeah! Remember when Jon was resurrected? That affected a lot of things, didn’t it? A major player in the metaphysical and political arenas, that’s Jon Snow!

(22:37) “She liberated the people of Slaver’s Bay. She liberated the people of King’s Landing. And she’ll go on liberating until the people of the world are free…and she rules them all.”

Okay, there’s a bit to unpack here, because the show is smushing some concepts together.

First up is the implied equation of Dany’s actions in Slaver’s Bay to her actions in King’s Landing. I mean, forgive me if I’m wrong, but I don’t recall Dany burning Meereen to the ground. When last we saw the Meereenese theatre, it was left with the implication that she’d left a reasonably stable outfit in charge. With the implication that the slaving powers in the region had been broken. (How plausible the depiction was is another matter.) Dany just fucking set fire to King’s Landing. These two things…really aren’t that much alike. Show!Dany liberated Slaver’s Bay. She murdered King’s Landing. We can make a pretty clear distinction between her actions in each respective place. They should not be lumped in the same category.

Nor do her actions in Slaver’s Bay logically lead to her actions in King’s Landing. We’ll get into the thinking behind this part of the line when the showrunners make this connection even more explicit and offensive.

Second, just chucking in that “world domination” thing at the end. Again we’re getting this core idea that because Dany is willing to use violence to achieve idealistic ends, she’s necessarily a power-hungry tyrant in her own right. To say nothing of the leap between “Dany wants to rule the Seven Kingdoms” to “Dany wants to take over the world.” Especially given the alleged basis for Dany’s desire for the Iron Throne, i.e. she considers it her birthright. Since she believes she’s entitled to one piece of pie (debateable), she will inevitably attempt to take the entire pie.

(23:02) “It was vanity to think that I could guide her. Our queen’s nature is fire and blood.” Oh, gag me with a spoon. What happened to the word “counsel” or “advise”? Because the use of the word “guide” is a lot more teacher-student dynamic, with Tyrion in the position of power. Dany’s a grown goddamn woman, a queen for years before Tyrion came along, who hired him to advise, not to teach. Hell yeah it’s vanity!

But more than that, it’s so fucking condescending. Oh, tragic little Daenerys, who needed a man’s guidance, but succumbed to her essential nature of uncontrolled violence. This doesn’t even frame Dany’s decision to burn a fucking city as her decision. News flash: there is no dark side of the force making a puppet out of show!Dany, show!Dany made her evil decisions independently. For shitty, poorly-explained, poorly-thought-out, poorly written reasons, yes, but there we go.

(23:07) Jon addresses the bullshit “we are definitely our parents” argument.

(23:23) Which Tyrion responds to by saying “dude, did you see how many people she killed?” Which doesn’t actually address the fucking issue. He’s still arguing that Dany = Mad Queen = totally a Targ thing. Remarkably, it’s like the characters in-universe can’t think of a convincing reason for this plot development either.

Speaking of, how many people did Cersei kill? It’s like she committed some sort of atrocity, perhaps at the end of season six, that by rights should have turned all of Westeros against her to the point that everyone should have been overjoyed to see an alternative ruler show up.

(23:45) But what the conversation as a whole drives towards is this central point: Dany is evil. Not crazy. Evil. Which makes the last two episodes, with their hysterical woman bullshit, even more purely gratuitous. And also emphasises just how abrupt that fucking heel turn was. Episode three, Dany, saving humanity! Episode five, Dany, burning down a whole city because she doesn’t think John Smith of 3 Main Street, King’s Landing, is woke enough!

(24:24) “What does it matter what I’d do?” Jon asks. Hey, a good question. What have Jon’s decisions mattered thus far this season?

(24:31) And here it is, maybe the lowest moment in the series, as far as I’m concerned, and it’s got some stiff competition.

“When she murdered the slavers of Astapor, I’m sure no one but the slavers complained. After all, they were evil men. When she crucified hundreds of Meereenese nobles, who could argue? They were evil men. The Dothraki khals she burned alive? They would have done worse to her. Everywhere she goes, evil men die, and we cheer her for it. And she grows more powerful and more sure that she is good and right.”

Where to even start? The echoes of Niemoller’s famous First they came…? Sure! Why not. First Daenerys came for the slavers, and the only people who spoke out were other slavers. Then Daenerys came for other slavers, and nobody spoke out, because they were slavers. Then Daenerys came for a third group of slavers who incidentally threatened to rape her, and nobody spoke out, because they were slavers, who incidentally threatened to rape her and in every instance we can see why someone might violently oppose slavers. Meanwhile, in a key difference from First they came…, the people who are being “come for” are persecuted parties (in the context to which the text refers, keep that in mind with the Communists). Not the oppressors. Portraying the slavers as the injured parties here, and not, like, the central problem in all thistakes some fucking nerve. Or some serious moral blindness.

Next, the attack on the audience. Shame on them for delighting in seeing evil fought! Successfully as well! Shame! Where’s my shame bell?

For the most part, the show framed most of Dany’s actions in Essos as just and positive. In later seasons, we saw Dany take violent actions. But at every step of the way to this point, the show did keep in sight that Dany was fighting fucking slavers. Her end goal was securing freedom for the former slaves. While the show from time to time questioned her means, up until oh, season eight episode four, her ends were portrayed as noble. So to start questioning those ends now, here in the final two episodes of the entire series, is a little jarring. Especially since, as mentioned beforehand, we haven’t seen any signs of Dany conflating “free people from tyranny” with “take over the world, mwahahaha” until her very scary speech just then. At most, she was conflating “free people from tyranny” with “defeat Cersei and assume rule of Westeros.” Which, given that Cersei blew up the Sept of Baelor with more than a hundred people inside, would seem, y’know. Fair enough to think that defeating Cersei would be freeing people from tyranny.

The viewer was not wrong to think that show!Daenerys had good intentions for the vast majority of this show. Yes, she also had personal ambitions and character flaws. The viewer was not wrong to think that the show wanted us to support Dany’s apparent ambitions of freeing people and overthrowing the dynamite-happy Cersei. Here in season eight, episode six, the show is trying to gaslight its own viewers with this “it was there all along!” horseshit.

Finally, the politics. Fighting evil makes you evil, don’t you know. Making an oppressor stop makes you just as bad as the oppressor, in the end. Do what show!Tyrion does, both in season six with the slavers and in seasons seven and eight with Cersei, and continue making futile appeals to an enemy who’s repeatedly taken advantage of peaceful processes. That’s how you stop injustice.

Even on what the show itself has shown us: that is some horse. shit.

In short, the writing here is bad and the politics are worse.

(25:25) “Wouldn’t you kill whoever stood between you and paradise?” What a wacky utopian notion Dany’s got in her head, a world without slavery.

Also, weird question, because no is a valid and reasonable answer to Tyrion’s question. Or perhaps not so weird, when you consider that the show has been pretty reliable in saying yes, the ends do justify the means. The exception is when someone gets one of the aforementioned wacky utopian notions in their head. You know. Killing children is bad, slavery is evil, feudal monarchy isn’t any great shakes…things like that.

(26:05) “I love her too,” Tyrion says. This was…kinda set up. Kinda. The staring as Jon went to Dany’s rooms at the end of season seven, the fact that Tyrion’s not patronising sex workers any more – that equals love. First, though, I’m not feeling it, because Tyrion’s spent very little personal time with Dany. Most of his interactions with her have been all business, and most of his business has been disagreeing with her about serious moral and ethical issues. Staring is not a substitute for character interaction.

I also find this pretty superfluous. Like, it’s not enough that Tyrion’s boss went nuts and killed an entire city, including his siblings, he has to be in love with her as well. He couldn’t have just genuinely believed in Dany’s good intentions and her ideals, he had to be in love with her. And again, Dinklage can act, but nobody can act well enough to make up for a script that just hasn’t done the work.

(27:13) What I’m noticing at this point is that in a scene that is all about suggesting to Jon that he may need to put down his girlfriend, Jon’s barely said a damn thing. He got in a few lines about people not being their parents, but mostly he’s just let Tyrion exposit about his philosophy and his emotions. The scene gets across how Tyrion feels…but not Jon.

(27:43) So just to confirm, yes, Tyrion is asking Jon to kill Dany.

(28:41) “And your sisters?” Tyrion asks Jon as he’s halfway out the door. Bran who?

(28:57) Another reminder that the only logical reason Sansa told Tyrion about Jon’s parentage is to put him forward as a Dany-alternative, despite telling her because it mattered a lot to him that he could be open with his family (a sign of how much he values their relationship), despite his requests for her to keep it secret for political reasons, and despite his personal opposition to becoming king. Show!Sansa…is not a very nice person.

(29:23) Jon walks down a corridor.

(29:43) Oh, thank goodness, that was only twenty seconds of Jon walking places before we saw something different and interesting. Remarkable restraint. Incidentally, I’m pretty sure this is supposed to be snow and not ash.

(31:04) Dany approaches the Iron Throne, fulfilling the show’s take on the House of the Undying prophecies. No, that does not mean the show was always headed for Dany becoming the ultimate villain. It’s just a better retcon than Arya killing the Night’s King.

(31:44) Now this is a better use of people-walking-places shots. It’s not just the one shot of a person walking down a hall, it’s watching someone walk towards an object with significance in a setting which has recently changed dramatically. The time we spend watching Dany walk towards a a chair here lets us see those changes and process the culmination of her ambitions.

Or continue screaming in outrage, take your pick.

(33:41) Jon Snow, finally emoting! Finally expressing an opinion! About bloody time, mate.

(34:56) In this scene, Dany is worlds away from the angry, dishevelled, heavy-breathing figure she’s been for the last two episodes. She’s back to perfect grooming. She’s smiling. She shared a story about her childhood with Jon. Much like with Cersei, we’re spending the final moments of Dany’s life emphasising Dany as a woman, just happy to be spending some time with her boyfriend. Ha ha, joke’s on her, her boyfriend is going to kill her. More on this in just a second.

By the way, it would still have been offensive if Dany was in mwa-ha-ha, burn them all mode, or in the same state she was in at the start of episode five. This is because the central decision here, to make Dany a villain due to her idealism (in some fucked up notion that fighting for a better world is itself a slippery slope), was offensive. Also poor writing.

(35:11) “How do you know it’ll be a good world?” Jon asks, and Dany replies “Because I know what is good.”

(35:33) Plus “They don’t get to choose,” Dany says, in a way too perfect echo of the conversation Tyrion just had with Jon. Okay, joke’s over, who replaced Dany with Tyrion’s straw man? We need to get on with the actual finale now.

(36:17) Dany basically proposes to Jon. They start kissing.

(36:33) Then Jon stabs her. While they’re making out.

This is so many terrible, misogynistic storytelling devices rolled into one. Again before we hit the issue of shitty writing decisions. Dany’s gone mad with power! Her reasonable boyfriend must save her from herself. If only she were in her right mind, she would doubtlessly agree. Dany was killed by her boyfriend in a moment of physical intimacy! Oh, uh, wow, that might not look so great huh – better justify it with her mass murder of civilians. The real tragedy here is how it affects the men who love Daenerys! Not the woman who got fucking murdered.

(36:41) And Dany dies without a hair out of place, a trickle of blood from her mouth and another from her nose. No inconvenient protesting, either. Very neat, very clean. 10/10 for tidiness.

So I’m on to the thing about gendered character deaths! So many female characters killed off in ways meant to emphasise some aspect or another of their femininity. Melisandre is a good, recent exception. Margaery and Olenna Tyrell, Obara and Nymeria Sand, they escaped gendered deaths.

Cersei died begging for her boyfriend’s comfort. Catelyn, Selyse Baratheon, and Ellaria Sand all died with trauma over the deaths of their children. Myrcella Baratheon died just as she accepted that she was Jaime’s daughter. Tyene Sand was killed to cause her mother pain. Talisa Maegyr was graphically stabbed in her stomach to emphasise that her unborn child was being killed as well. Shae was killed by her ex-boyfriend, focus on him as he mourned the fact that he had to kill her. Ygritte died in Jon’s arms – and now Daenerys does the same. That is a lengthy list of dead female characters dead in ways connected to their familial and/or romantic relationships. This is what we call a pattern. A pattern that repeatedly emphasises that a woman’s death isn’t her own death. It recalls the value she had for others, but not her value in and of herself.

Finally, a note on Dany’s characterisation. Because in amongst all the misogyny, there was also some character writing that would have been shitty whether or not it was also sexist.

Most of Dany’s character has been subject to a giant retcon. Daenerys was a good and caring ruler when it suited the plot, freeing slaves, deciding to fight the Others. And she was a ruthless tyrant when it suited the plot, going from “fighting the Others” to “becoming fantasy Hitler” in the space of two episodes. The wildly divergent and contradictory aspects of this character were not reconciled through any sort of internal journey, but cherry-picked according to the external plot circumstances, the gaps in characterisation covered by “but she’s crazy! Don’t expect consistency!” Until she was evil instead of crazy, here at the end, despite what came before.

(37:16) Shockingly, we’re focusing on Jon as he cries over the body of his girlfriend, who he just murdered in an intimate moment. This moment brought to you by the writers who focused on Tyrion as he killed Shae and on Theon as Sansa was raped. This is also a thing we call a pattern.

Jon hasn’t even had the character writing to sustain this moment. He’s barely said anything but “she’s my queen” all season. He’s barely had a character all season. So the sexism in this entire narrative can’t even be somewhat ameliorated (YMMV) by a successfully-executed tragedy. Jon’s interiority has been pretty well ignored, which means that the conflict here is that “Jon loves Dany, but Dany is very evil.” Ignoring Jon’s interiority here means that this plot point has nothing at all to say about right and wrong or the meaning of family in order to distract us from the misogyny of eeeeeeevil woman loses control and must be killed by her boyfriend for the good of everyone. There’s no garnish of quality execution on this fundamentally messed up plot.

I suppose in some ways that’s a relief. In others…the writers can’t even do wrong, right.

(37:41) Drogon approaches Jon, who’s still crying over Dany’s body.

(38:30) The moment as Drogon nudges at Daenerys’ body is actually sad.

(38:58) Drogon rears back, roaring. Jon’s not going anywhere.

(39:17) Psych! Drogon’s not burning Jon, he’s burning the Iron Throne! If you thought the dragon wings behind Dany were subtle and artful, you haven’t seen anything yet.

(39:42) So Drogon melts down the Iron Throne entirely. Doesn’t do anything to Jon. Leaves Jon alone entirely. Just slags the throne.

(41:06) Then takes Dany’s body and flies the hell out of there. Hopefully to a story with more respect for its female characters. Or, indeed, the concept of characters, characterisation, character development…the list goes on…

(41:51) Cut to Tyrion lying on a floor. It’s a very close shot. We’ve only got his face. We don’t know when this is, or where he is.

(42:17) After nearly thirty seconds of this, Tyrion lifts his head. Nearly thirty seconds!

(42:34) Why we didn’t start the scene here, with Tyrion actually going places, is beyond me. Because the chains around Tyrion’s wrists weren’t enough of a clue that he was still imprisoned, we had to see him lying on the floor for thirty seconds, and then Grey Worm come and get him?

Mind you, it’s a bit of a nostalgia trip. How many more shots of Tyrion walking places are we going to get in this series? We’re nearly at the end here, folks.

(42:50) Or here! Here’s a good place to pick up as well, as Tyrion and Grey Worm arrive places! The Dragonpit, incidentally. Call back to 7.07 with lots of people walking around and not actually doing much plot stuff.

(43:11) Quick pan over the people here, including a bunch of blasts from the past. Aside from the Stark delegation, we’ve got Edmure Tully! Who’s still a guy who exists in this show! Brienne and Davos are here too, mostly because they are named characters, I think! Gendry’s come down and is not sitting next to or otherwise interacting with Arya, because now that Arya rejected his proposal there’s no actual characterisation involved in his appearance. There are a few more randoms. Yara Greyjoy! Someone in Dornish clothes, not that the integrity of the Dornish plot mattered at any point! The gang is all here!

(43:34) “Where’s Jon?” Sansa asks. Pssst, girl, this is a meeting for characters with consequence. Jon’s got no business here.

(43:39) So Jon’s a prisoner, Tyrion’s a prisoner, but Tyrion is here and Jon is not. For reasons that are no more than “because reasons.” Sansa, stop pointing out the inconsistencies, artificialities, and writing decisions made at the direct expense of other characters and logical plotting all involved in giving Tyrion one last monologue! You’re ruining it!

(43:58) Now that Grey Worm points out that the Unsullied, who have had custody of Jon and Tyrion both for an undetermined but presumably multi-week period of time, wish to harm Jon and Tyrion for their actions towards Dany…why haven’t the Unsullied done anything about Jon and Tyrion?

(44:29) Once again we get Grey Worm addressed by the foreign language version of his name, because we are dehumanising the Unsullied and keeping their slave pasts out of view!

(44:44) “The people who used to live [in the Reach] are gone.” I mean, what the fuck do you even say to this? It’s just – there’s no worldbuilding to it. In the entirety of the show, there’s been like one battle in the Reach – the telefrag stomping Jaime delivered last season. That’s it. That’s all. Bam, the people are gone, because that’s what’s most convenient for this particular scene.

(45:11) “You are not here to speak,” Grey Worm yells at Tyrion. Because Tyrion is a prisoner. This is not going to stop anyone, least of all the writers. They have a monologue, they have a favourite character, and this is their last fucking chance.

(45:34) A shot over at the Vale delegation shows us Lord Royce and Sweetrobin Arryn, the latter of whom is also still a guy who exists in this show. Anyhow, Tyrion’s redirected the conversation to the fact that Westeros is currently leaderless.

(45:44) It apparently has not occurred to this group of feudal lords and ladies, all of whom are upset in some way, shape, or form by the King in the North killing Queen Daenerys Targaryen, that they should at some point get around to working out who’s going to be in charge.

This is such unbelievably terrible writing and plotting. After eight seasons of people fighting over power, we’ve got a roomful of people who have been intimately involved in that struggle for power, and they have to be reminded about the leadership vacuum in the only form of government any of them are willing to accept and reminded of their own agency. None of these characters are behaving like people in this scene, informed by their past experiences and their society. They are walking, talking props for Tyrion’s/the writers’ monologue.

It doesn’t matter how good the central monologue is. If every other fucking character in the entire fucking scene has to cease being a character – something in the writing has to change.

If, of course, your aim was to write a good story.

(45:54) “Make your choice, then,” Grey Worm says, referring to ‘who should rule’, and none of these people apparently have any opinions.

(46:14) Still got time for a joke at Edmure’s expense! Sorry, man, you are amongst the many, many characters who the show did real dirty.

(47:04) Sam Tarly, also here because he’s a named character.

(47:18) A full minute gag at Edmure’s expense. Seriously, there’s hardly any plot here.

(47:30) Now that we’ve seen Sam, he speaks up, and proposes another wacky idealistic notion. Democracy, am I right? But Sam’s fine, morally speaking, because he’s not actually going to fightfor it. He’s just going to put it out there as an idea, have it be laughed at, and make no follow up.

(48:24) The first person to be asked if he wants the crown is Tyrion. Why. Again, worldbuilding! The show hasn’t done much discussion of who inherits Tywin’s lands and titles. The title “Lord of Casterly Rock” is going to go unmentioned. We’re still ignoring the fact that Tyrion’s a prisoner accused of treason. No matter how nice it is to see that this group of lords and ladies aren’t going to hold Tyrion’s disability against him, it does run a bit counter to the established prejudice he faced in earlier seasons.

(48:37) The next thing that happens is someone asking Tyrion for his opinion on who should rule. Because again, this is a thing that nobody present has opinions on. “Who should rule?” is one of those obscure points of law that you can only expect a nerd to deep-dive into the archives and come back with some heavily footnoted proposal, and not a pressing and present concern for a group of feudal nobles trying to rebuild in the midst of a devastating winter and following the conclusion of equally devastating years-long war over that exact goddamned question.

It also bears repeating: why are they asking Tyrion? Tyrion, who is a prisoner (Grey Worm totally having forgotten that he’s not here to speak), and whose advice to Dany was spectacularly useless at its best.

This isn’t even Tyrion taking over through force of personality. Literally every other character present has been silenced by the writers to provide Tyrion with this one last chance to monologue.

This has been a recurring problem in this series. Over the course of the show, the showrunners have brought in some incredibly talented people! Yay! There’s some meaty stuff in this series which talented actors can do a lot with! Unfortunately, the showrunners started giving certain actors too much opportunity to show off. They gave us too much of a good thing. The desire to keep, say, Lena Headey or Iwan Rheon around another season opened up plot holes. The screen time given over for Jerome Flynn or Diana Rigg to banter cut from time that could have been used to develop the world and the story. And now, we’re resolving one of the central questions of the series – who should rule – not with a dialogue arising from the developed perspectives of the surviving cast over eight season, but with a monologue from a character and actor the writers have already heavily favoured. At the expense of every other character in the scene, and therefore every other actor.

(48:45) Tyrion confirms that it has been weeks since Dany was killed. Weeks. And nobody has an opinion about who should rule. Nobody’s done anything about it. Complete paralysis. For weeks.

(49:27) “What unites people? […] Stories.” So it’s not just a monologue, it’s an incredibly on-the-nose, self-congratulatory monologue. Is this Tyrion Lannister speaking, or David Benioff and Dan Weiss?

(49:45) “And who has a better story than Bran the Broken?”

Is this a rhetorical question?

Also, “the Broken”, ugh, seriously? Must we?

(49:52) Anyway, Tyrion continues on, proving to us for the purposes of the scene that it was not actually a rhetorical question. Bran’s story in the show as a whole was so compelling that he got booted from an entire season and his supporting cast was killed off or unceremoniously seen off home mid-season. Bran’s characterisation for the last two seasons has been so flat the the character says he doesn’t want anything and this is entirely believable. Bran’s such a presence in the narrative that when Tyrion himself begged Jon to think of what he stood to lose if the Starks opposed Dany, he didn’t even mention Bran.

What have we been told here, and what have we been shown?

(50:30) “Who better to lead us into the future?” Again, is this a rhetorical question? Just because the characters got their brains forcibly shut off doesn’t mean same happened to the viewers.

(50:49) “That is the wheel our queen wanted us to break.” Was it, though? Was it really? I wasn’t hearing much about hereditary monarchies from Dany, and a bit more about people living in peace and freedom. Not much more, but mostly I’ve been putting that down to a failure in the writing to portray Dany’s agenda, rather than the narrative intentionally depicting a character whose agenda was poorly-developed.

(51:01) Somehow, this gets even more outrageous when Tyrion, who people are still listening towithout so much as a squeak of protest, says that rulers will no longer be born but elected by the nobility. Hey, we have someone here familiar with that form of governance – Yara Greyjoy, any opinions? What did you think about the last elected king of the Iron Islands? Edmure, Lord Royce, you compared letting peasants vote on rulers to be like letting animals vote, what do you think about Davos having a say in the monarchy? Or people like the recently-legitimised and ennobled Gendry?

(51:25) Tyrion approaches Bran and here we see Bran’s true worthiness to rule – he doesn’t want to, and he doesn’t care about power. So he’s definitely someone who will be careful with the power he has. We’ve seen this when Bran was so very sensitive in bringing up Sansa’s rape to her, and so very kind when telling Meera to go home because their paths had diverged. He was very careful in using his omniscience in those cases.

(51:37) Bran, who is being nominated to be king apparently against his wishes, sits there and listens to Tyrion’s speech without batting an eyelid. That’s how indifferent to power he is. And apparently how indifferent to human emotion he is.

(51:49) Unbelievably, it gets worse. Bran says, “Why do you think I came all this way?” Which implies that he foresaw these events. Which implies he foresaw the burning of King’s Landing. We don’t know when exactly he foresaw it, but with what we know about the extent of show!Bran’s powers, I think it’s a pretty solid implication that he saw the whole fucking thing.

Which means he a) saw the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people and did nothing to even try and stop it, and b) saw his brother murder someone he loved, from what he believed was genuine need (go with it) and did nothing to even try and stop it. If this is so, how is Bran not an absolutely terrible human being, both on the micro scale (refusing to step in to try and spare his brother pain) and the macro scale (how many people died in King’s Landing)?

Moreover, how is such a fatalist fit to rule? Bran foresees a flood that will strike a populated area and affect a great deal of a harvest. What does he do about it?

(52:02) Tyrion votes for Bran to be king. On what grounds does Tyrion vote? He’s a bound prisoner! Nobody’s even said yes to voting!

(52:14) Sam Tarly starts off the round of inexplicable agreement.

(52:34) It’s interesting how Tyrion’s in the centre of the shot, here. What’s actually being judged here is not Bran’s worth as king, but Tyrion’s proposal.

(53:18) Sansa here says that she still wants Northern independence. Even though it’s her brother on the throne. So again, we see that she’s not after national agency (which the North could probably expect with a Northerner on the throne) but personal agency and national separatism. I’m sympathetic to Sansa’s desire for personal agency. I’m less sympathetic to the separatists who were happy to accept southern and Essosi help when they needed it and unwilling to give back even common courtesy.

We’ve got people from regions with historical and current reasons for desiring independence present – do Yara Greyjoy and the Guy of Dorne have any opinions on Sansa’s actions? Hell, does anyone else here have any opinions on putting a Stark on the throne when the rest of the Starks are taking their bat and ball and going home, leaving the collective family with the perks of rule and none of the responsibilities or shared duties? Grey Worm, any thoughts?

(53:56) No, stop, fuck this “broken” shit. Of all the people who should fucking well understand what it is to be defined by derogatory terms for one’s disability. Tyrion Lannister, folks. Tyrion Lannister.

(54:28) Tyrion is rewarded with the Handship, because this scene was not about Bran. It wasn’t even about Westeros. It was about Tyrion.

(54:55) Now Grey Worm has an opinion.

(55:21) Hello, Jon! Remember when you were relevant? Remember when you were a character? Tyrion comes in with the news that Jon’s been exiled to the Night’s Watch. How poetic, he’s going full circle.

But…what’s changed, here? Jon originally went to the Watch because he felt distanced from his family, acutely aware of how his very existence was an inconvenience to others, intending to make his own place in the world. Now, Jon’s being actually exiled to the Watch, distanced from his own family, because his existence is an inconvenience to others. He still doesn’t have that place in the world that he wanted. At best he’s got a second chance, but man, what a half-assed conclusion.

It also just cements in how fucking irrelevant everything about his character was. What was the point of his parentage? What was the point of his death and resurrection? What was the point of his relationships with his siblings? What was the point of his social class? What was the point of his promotion to king? What was the point of the things he learned beyond the Wall? I’ll have a few final words on some of that in a bit.

(56:02) Grey Worm wanted more than just exile for Jon, but accepted the justice of Jon’s exile. And kept him in a dungeon for weeks beforehand, despite being the man in charge, without harming a hair on his head…why?

(57:39) Once again we’re changing it up and watching Jon Snow walk places.

(58:09) Thankfully, we’re changing up the angles. We see Jon pass a few other Watchmen, we see a shot of Dany’s fleet departing Westeros. We follow Jon on the docks as he passes Dothraki. This is way better walking-places shots, because it’s not just a picture of a man walking, it’s a picture of a man walking through a setting. For these shots, the showrunners have thought about what they wanted to say about the setting as well as the person walking through it.

(58:48) Grey Worm looks down at Jon.

(59:08) The Unsullied are heading to Naath, like Grey Worm promised Missandei. Nice that the Unsullied get faces again, though.

(59:44) Jon’s siblings head out to see him off. First Sansa, who confirms she’s staying in the North. There are hugs as the Winterfell theme plays.

(1:00:41) Then we get confirmation that Arya’s not staying in the north, to the point where she does not expect to see Jon again. This is…aaaaaargh.

(1:00:57) Arya wants to find out what’s west of Westeros. Okay. That’s a thing she’s mentioned once. Compared to her seasons-long effort to get home. I said it earlier, I think the showrunners lost sight of Arya’s motivations. They saw the things she didn’t want – to be forced into various manifestations of patriarchal society, mostly – and didn’t end up tracking the things that the book version of her character very much does want. Namely, her home and her family. Even her desire for revenge is based in how much she wants her home and her family.

Having a character not tethered strongly by motivation is convenient, because you can find an excuse to put her anywhere and make her do anything. Much like Bran! But it comes at the cost of the character. Here at the end, when the Starks are splitting up, it doesn’t feel like their life ambitions are logically leading them to different places, but like the writers are intervening. This decision to go west of Westeros, this thing Arya has mentioned once, doesn’t seem like something she wants so much that she’d forfeit any chance of seeing Jon again.

(1:02:02) Bran tells Jon that he was exactly where he needed to be. I’m reading this as that Jon was needed to kill Dany. That was the point of him as a character in the show. Killing Dany. Everything was in service of killing Dany.

One, this looks like another retcon. Two, man, what a fucking cruel retcon! Destiny’s grand plan here involves them falling in love only for Jon to fucking murder her! And I’m still not seeing how Jon’s death and resurrection was a crucial step in this plan, so it’s not even a quality retcon making sense of disparate plot points.

(1:02:54) Here’s Brienne’s resolution. She’s leafing through the White Book (props to the props folk; you can see the different handwriting from page to page).

(1:03:47) We see Brienne adding to Jaime’s entry. This shows a change in Jaime’s character development and arc from earlier – where back in ASoS, Jaime writes his captures and maiming “in an awkward hand that might have done credit to a six-year-old being taught his first letters,” complete with the acknowledgement that it was Brienne who returned him to King’s Landing, in the show apparently he recounted the first capture and his ransom only. Brienne adds Jaime’s latter-season deeds in the most flattering light before finishing “died protecting his queen.”

Note how this resolution to Brienne’s story is mostly about Jaime. With bonus romanticisation of the Jaime/Cersei relationship. The show never got how messed up that dynamic was.

(1:04:56) Tyrion walks through what’s presumably the Red Keep and approaches the Hand’s chair at the Small Council’s table. It’s great that the Red Keep got rebuilt so fast! Like nothing ever happened. Continuity schmontinuity.

(1:05:29) We’ve got time for one more take of rearranging the chairs. Another case of too much of a good thing. Both in the sense that we get thirty seconds of Tyrion fiddling with the chairs, and in that this joke made its point the first time and the second time.

(1:06:09) The new look Small Council enters to Tyrion at the head of the table. Tyrion’s in charge, here. At this point I don’t think it’s much of a stretch to say that Game of Thrones is centrally a story about Tyrion Lannister’s rise to power. Which is certainly a decision that the adaptation made. Just one that doesn’t look all that much like A Song of Ice and Fire.

(1:06:15) Bronn’s back, re-emerging from his plot hole one final time. Like he never threatened to kill Tyrion at all.

(1:06:17) Sam’s in a maester’s robes. Like he’s even a maester. What about his Watch position? Who knows?

(1:06:27) Sam presents Tyrion with a book entitled “A Song of Ice and Fire.” Hey, that’s the name of the books! Apparently it’s a history of the wars following the death of King Robert. Which is…not actually the A Song of Ice and Fire we’re following, which is about a bit more than the War of Five Kings.

(1:08:04) No word of Drogon. So Bran leaves the business of ruling to Tyrion while he goes looking for dragons. He wasn’t kidding about not caring about power. This is getting off to a great start that will in no way result in the same Robert Baratheon-y indifference to running the country.

(1:08:22) Confirmation that Pod was knighted and is now a member of the Kingsguard, just tying up these loose ends.

(1:08:57) A bit of expositing about Bronn’s new title. He is indeed the Lord of Highgarden. Master of Coin, too. Makes sense, makes sense. Not.

(1:09:52) We back out of the meeting as the new Small Council starts on solving the problems of the realm (including its lack of brothels), for some bizarre reason everyone referring to themselves in the third person.

(1:10:13) The final line of dialogue in the entire series is “I once brought a jackass and a honeycomb into a brothel.” Call back! In the same fine taste as so much of the dialogue in this show. And we never do get to hear the punchline. (He asked for someone to lick honey off his ass.)

(1:10:19) Cut to Jon arriving at the Wall. There’s a bit of rubble around, but the order’s still functioning, the Wall’s still there. Where’s the fundamental change the events of the series wrought on the setting?

(1:11:03) Jon reunites with his truest friend, Tormund. Speaking of, it’s nice that someone has a buddy.

(1:11:37) Time for Ramin Djawadi’s last hurrah. It’s a Stark montage, as Jon, Sansa and Arya get ready to set out on their next adventures. I think there’s a significant structural change in evidence from the books here. In the books, Sansa, Arya and Bran are more closely in parallel. Jon’s got strong thematic connections to them, of course, but his primary parallels are with Dany.

Which isn’t necessarily a bad change until you recall how badly the show’s treated Dany. And how anemic the writing for Jon was, too.

What this final montage also emphasises is the atomisation of the Stark family, and that, that is fucking sad. This is not a montage of the Starks. This is a montage of Jon, Arya, and Sansa, starting their permanently separate lives.

Again, compared to the books, the love the Starks have for each other is one of the central themes running through their PoVs. The Starks love each other. The Starks love their home. It is grounding and centralising and helps bring out the best in each of them. This ending, where apparently these three get what they want at the cost of those familial relationships – it seems almost backwards. I’m not sure the book versions of these characters could get what they wanted out of life if it meant sacrificing the notion of their family unit.

It’s different, and it’s not a different I prefer. I have thought for a long time that the show did not show the bonds between the Starks well. I’m not surprised at the ending of the series those bonds are severed altogether.

Bran? Who’s Bran? Is he part of the family?

(1:13:40) What. Jon is paying attention to his direwolf. This is madness.

(1:14:45) It makes me very sad how alone Sansa is in this shot as she’s crowned queen. Show!Sansa isn’t a nice person by any means, but for the sake of her book counterpart…

(1:15:15) As Jon helps lead the Free Folk back north past the Wall, you can see grass starting to poke through the snow cover. The show finishes with him riding into a northern forest.

I asked this a bit more than a year ago, but what was the point of all this? What changed? I touched on it with Jon, but what is the difference in the setting? Some borders got rearranged, a different king’s on the throne, but the system remains fundamentally the same. The game of thrones goes on. The aspects of the plot that were supposed to be agents of major change, worthy of an eight-season series – Dany and her dragons, the Free Folk moving south, the Others– all got dealt with and removed from the ending with nice neat little bows and nice neat little deaths.

All that story and all it did was destroy a family.

Thus ends the recap, but I am trying to work on a wrap-up essay. A bit more looking at the forest instead of the trees, and trying to work out where the series went so, so badly wrong.

#anti got #fine toothed comb edition #cw: violence #cw: rape mention #season eight #long episode long post long face

195 notes · View notes

iheartbookbran · 3 years

Note

1/ Okay, this is going to be a bit of a long reply, but do you honestly think Jaime is comparable to Cersei? Cersei has never done a single good thing in her life, has been murdering kids since childhood, and hardly regrets a thing. But Jaime? Like, pre-AGOT, what great crimes has Jaime committed with Cersei, besides incest? It’s pretty clear from Cersei’s POV that she’s been acting autonomously on everything besides conceiving Joffrey. Jaime hasn’t been involved.

2/ Getting into ASOIAF, Bran: yes, totally unforgivable, but a classic trolley situation in which GRRM states most people would do the same. And Jaime has said he’s ashamed in-text, more on that later I presume. Arya: his absolute lowest point, and he acknowledges it as such. It comes at a time when he’s practically out of his mind following Bran, and disturbs the hell out of him later. But hold him to account for sure, this is the closest he ever gets to being like C.

3/ Baby Tully: personally, I think it’s pretty clear in-text that Jaime isn't going to do this. If you look harder at Jaime’s whole relationship with bluffing, the way bluffing is being discussed in these chapters, and Genna, an insightful character, saying Jaime is NOT like his father, it becomes obvious that this is just an ugly attempt at imitating Tywin, complete with trebuchet. It’s dark to threaten this at all, sure, but Edmure is expecting dark so Jaime serves it.

4/ Slut-shaming Cersei - I mean, his thoughts are pretty fucking unpleasant, but… he’s human? This woman has cheated on him, multiple times (and not just as a means to an end, see Taena) whilst asking him to throw away his entire life since he was 15 to remain loyal to her. But sure, let’s just call it slut-shaming lol, Jaime should obviously be proud of Cersei and support her in fucking whoever she likes?

5/ Jaime and consent: GRRM is appalling at writing consent, I totally agree (look at Asha and Qarl)… but he has outright said that the twins’ sex is consensual, whether it looks it or not. You are going to have to use death of the author here if you want to argue that it’s anything otherwise, but by all means call GRRM out for his bad portrayal of it. Tysha: Jaime already knows he was wrong, and it’s plagued him his entire life. But let's not hold him accountable for his dad's extremes.

Oh boy, ok, let’s unpack all this, shall we? Honestly if someone had told me even yesterday that I’d be reciveing Jaime anons out of all the characters, I wouldn’t believe them. Because, again, I’m no renowned Jaime expert and my investment in him extends to... he’s interesting alright, I hope he stays alive long enough so that Bran gets to fling some shit at his face at some point or another in the next two books, but that’s really it.

1. So on the “Cersei has never done a single good thing in her life, has been murdering kids since childhood, and hardly regrets a thing. But Jaime?” part of your ask. I don’t believe there’s much difference on when someone starts committing crimes and it makes it somehow less bad of you don’t begin in your childhood, Jaime could have been attempting to kill/maim children at 13 or at 33 and guess what I would still believe he’s an asshole for it. He’s made choices that involve harming others in the name of maintaining his precious affair with his sister and upholding his family’s crimes, and it doesn’t matter to me when he started on it. This is not a fucking “evilness” point accumulation and Jaime doesn’t get a pass just because Cersei got a head start.

2. “Bran: yes, totally unforgivable, but a classic trolley situation” Sorry, nonny, but did you just compared Jaime pushing Bran from a window so he could continue with his toxic relationship... to the fucking trolley problem? WTF? Jaime, a goddamn adult with critical thinking skills, chose to continue that affair for years and years while having full knowledge of what the consequences of being discovered could be. He chose to be reckless and take his chances anyways. He was between the sharp object and the hard place because he chose to put himself there, and he doesn’t get to say “well I had no other choice” now because he fucking did, for years, he had a choice, and he went ahead with the most selfish one and when the consequences of his actions almost caught up with him, he again choose to be a selfish jerk and harm an innocent bystander, a child, that had no part in any of it. And you could argue that he did it to protect his own children but lmao, Jaime really doesn’t care that much about his children, lbr; just remember how he thinks of Joffrey. Cersei never gave him the opportunity to connect with them that’s true, and he only starts to bond a little with Tommen during aFoC, but I just think that if Jaime truly, sincerely, cared that much about his children’s well-being he could’ve oh idk stopped having sex with his sister??? Instead of being in a position in which he has to ruin a little boy’s life so that he can go on his merry way, even if he feels bad about it, that will never be good enough for me. Jaime had a choice, Bran didn’t.

3. “Baby Tully: personally, I think it’s pretty clear in-text that Jaime isn't going to do this.” I mean, given Jaime’s track record of shoving children from windows so that he can cover his and his own family’s ass, I’m not so sure about that, but fine, that still doesn’t mean that threatening someone with killing their baby so that they will submit to your will any less of a jerk move. I also think you’re kind of missing the point: Jaime here wants to have his cake an eat it too. He tells himself he’s upholding his oath to Catelyn (he really isn’t) while at the same time siding with the fucking Freys and aiding them, he’s basically giving legitimacy to the Red Wedding, the one thing most people agree was a hideous unforgivable act. I just think that if I make the active choice to defend and side with criminals, then I’m not less of a criminal myself.

4. Lol, I made that slut-shaming comment with a clear tongue-in-cheek intent, I obviously know their relationship at present is far more complicated than that, and I do think Jaime has the right to feel betrayed, I just also think that Jaime has this tendency of glorifying Cersei without actually truly seeing her for what she is. At times I almost feel like he considers her the fair innocent maiden to his noble knight, and that’s a big farce to both of them. When Cersei inevitably fails to live up to his expectations he’s shocked, as if he hasn’t known her all their lives.

5. “GRRM is appalling at writing consent, I totally agree” yes of course, he’s the same guy who considers Dany/Drogo consensual, that doesn’t mean I can’t still call it out and see it as a flaw. But even more than that, as you say next: “Tysha: Jaime already knows he was wrong, and it’s plagued him his entire life. But let's not hold him accountable for his dad's extremes.” like, again Jaime recognizing something is wrong and feeling bad about it doesn’t magically absolves him of it. Of course he’s not responsible for his dad’s fuckery but he’s guilty of withholding the truth from his little brother, whom he claims to love, with the full knowledge that it was an extremely traumatic experience for him, and that it had plagued him all his life, while patting himself on the back thinking that’s the right thing to do, and Jaime rationalizes it believing that of course Tysha couldn’t possibly care for Tyrion, so she was doing it for the money, which makes her no better than a whore (because Jaime, too, can be a misogynist UwU). You know, Tyrion has a lot of bad going on for him, but my god he’s 100% right in being furious with Jaime in this situation.

Like as you said, Cersei’s big problem is her lack of empathy, but Jaime’s is his apathy. With some big exceptions like when he killed Aerys and protected Brienne, Jaime’s apathy towards what he fully well knows is wrong and yet choses not to do anything about it is my biggest qualm with him. It’s something I believe GRRM is working with his development, but so far as the story goes, he hasn’t really made any significant turn, so I’m not giving him a gold star for participation. I mean, I realize that I’m the minority here when it comes to my opinion of Jaime, and maybe, nonny, how you and other fans interpret him is how he’s meant to be interpreted, but I don’t care lol. Writing this made me remember what GRRM said...

“Sometimes he felt like showering after writing a chapter about Cersei, though, as her world-view is quite unsympathetic.”—In this article.

I honestly wonder why he had to take a shower for Cersei torturing people (who yes, is a horrible evil person, I’m not trying to defend her), but not for Tyrion strangling a woman or Jaime crippling a child for life, but oh well ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

#well now let’s stop talking about jaime i’m sick of him #better tell me about ur day anon babe #ask #Anonymous #ask pam #asoiaf #asoiaf meta #a song of ice and fire #valyrianscrolls #meta #my meta

18 notes · View notes

kallypsowrites · 5 years

Text

I know we talk a lot about stuff the show screwed up from the book and like, I get it, stuff was bound to get lost in translation in any adaptation. But I wanna talk about a few of my favorite show-only scenes:

1. Cersei and Robert’s conversation in season 1

In this scene we have two non POV characters discussing the state of the kingdom and their marriage. We never get a perspective from Robert in the books and nothing from Cersei until book four. At this point in the books, Cersei is a pretty unsympathetic character. We know her relationship with Robert is pretty bad, of course, but it’s filtered through Ned’s perspective.

Here, Cersei and Robert have a rare moment of truce and we get some of the best dialogue in the series. They’re not fighting. They are...resigned. Cersei puts away her hatred of the Starks to admit that Ned is a good choice for hand and she recognizes that Robert shouldn’t have dismissed him. She asks about Lyanna, something she has avoided for a very long time out of spite, because “what harm can her ghost do to us?” Robert admits that he doesn’t even remember what she looks like, which reveals that his “love” for her was probably just infatuation.

And then my favorite set of lines--

Cersei: Was there ever a chance for us, ever a moment?

Robert: No...does that make you feel better or worse?

Cersei: It doesn’t make me feel anything.

Here, two broken people confront the mess of their lives and wonder if they ever had a chance to have something good. But they didn’t, because Robert has always been his stubborn, prideful self and Cersei is just as proud and stubborn. And Cersei is resigned to it. If it made her feel something once, now that feeling is numbed.

When I first saw this scene, a scene between two characters I didn’t particularly like, I was struck by the humanness of it. Humanness we did not get at this point in the books. And it informed how I saw her afterwards. For every terrible thing she did, I wanted to know more about her.

2. Tywin and Jaime

Our first introduction to Tywin in the books is Tyrion. Understandably, Tyrion and Tywin have a complicated relationship and Tywin is always much more of a dick whenever Tyrion is around. In the show on the other hand? We first see Tywin interacting with Jaime.

Now, don’t get me wrong, Tywin is still an asshole in this scene too. It is an inherent part of his character. But it is one of the most powerful character introductions for him, and one of the first humanizing moments for Jaime.

Tywin is skinning a stag in some wonderful foreshadowing of Robert’s death in that same episode. When Jaime tries his usual quips, which we have seen work well on others, Tywin shuts him down because he sees through them. Jaime is weaker here in the presence of his father because even if he can appear unbothered to the rest of the world. And we see how many expectations Tywin puts on Jaime which he does not want, because he is supposed to be the “golden son”.

More than anything, this is Tywin’s grand entrance. For all of the damage we’ve seen in the three Lannister kids, this is the motherfucker they got it from. So many of these kids insecurities and faults trace back to Tywin being a shit dad with the emotional availability of rock. You see this scene and you’re like...ah...yep...this makes sense. And of course, we see how differently Tywin treats Jaime (someone he has high expectations for) vs how he treats Tyrion (someone he has no expectations for).

3. Robert, Barristan and Jaime

I’m sorry but there’s more than one Jaime scene on this list. Obviously like him. But his season one scenes are great on rewatch partially because of what we learn about him in season three.

So in this scene, Jaime, Barristan and Robert tell war stories, mostly on the drunken king’s request. We see that Jaime is not at all fond of Robert but also some of his admiration for Barristan Selmy as he compliments his battle techniques. He starts to let down his walls a bit during this conversation because its talking about what he’s good at: fighting.

Then Robert asks about his killing the mad king and Jaime’s wall shoots right back up.

Robert: What did the mad king say when you stabbed him in the back?

Jaime: He said the same thing he’d been saying for hours...burn them all.

We don’t know the context of this last line but when you rewatch the scene you can see what Jaime is thinking. That he killed the Mad King and saved king’s Landing, but he has only ever been scorned for it. He’s very bitter. And his bitterness shows in the next scene (which I promise is the last Jaime scene)

4. Jaime and Jory

Jaime has a brief conversation with Jory, who tries to deliever one of Ned’s messages to Robert while he’s whoring. We see how Robert makes Jaime mind the door while he’s insulting Cersei with as many women as possible. But despite the Stark and Lannister animosity, Jory tries to make conversation about when they met during the Greyjoy rebellion. Jaime’s wall starts to drop again because talking about fighting is the one thing that makes him comfortable (which is why losing his hand so shatters his identity later). It seems the two men have come to some sort of understanding.

Then Jory brings up Ned and back comes the bitterness! Jaime resents Ned so much for judging him on that day for killing the Mad King and that bitterness all comes to a head later during the street fight. Again, we don’t know why he’s so bitter yet, but it all comes across so well in this scene.

5. Sansa and Shae

Sansa and Shae have many scenes together and I really like their friendship. The show goes a long way to develop Shae more than George ever did (only to kill her in the same way but...we can’t all get what we want). Her more genuine relationship with Tyrion is okay, but it sours for me with the season four result. But it’s her genuine friendship with Sansa that I love.

Shae becomes protective. She gives her advice. At first Sansa snaps at her because she doesn’t trust her and she is still traumatized but eventually the two become very close. I like so many of their conversations, especially in season two and three. And Shae never blames Sansa for any part of her marriage with Tyrion which thank CHRIST for that.

6. Arya and Tywin

Anyone who has talked to me for two seconds knows how obsessed I am with these scenes. Because they are...basically the only humanizing scenes that Tywin gets at all. The very smallest bit of vulnerability. I think it really shows how much of a people person Arya is, sort of without even trying. And she really holds her own with one of the most powerful men in Westeros. She’s smart and capable and she manages to slip under Tywin’s nose even though he could have used her as a valuable hostage if he figured her out. He was starting to catch onto her toward the end, but fortunately did not. Good scenes. Love them. Very good.

7. Catelyn and Tailisa

In season three, Catleyn tells Tailisa about the time she made a wreath for Jon Snow. Now I’m a very team Catelyn sort of person. I don’t think she abused Jon so much as she just ignored him. But I think this scene is very telling. Because despite Jon not being her son and also being a potential threat to her own son as bastards often were, despite Ned’s betrayal still being fresh, Catelyn fought to keep this child alive. She prayed for him and he lived. And yes, she didn’t treat him as a son afterwards because it was still a very complicated situation. But I think this goes a long way to show that Catelyn is not the evil, Jon abusing woman that a lot of people paint her as.

8. Ramsay’s new introduction

Ramsay has a great intro in the books, but his intro in the show genuinely caught me by surprise. He seems to be completely helpful to Theon and listens to him talk about his regret. He kills the people who are after him and he seems very genuine. But then, it’s all a ruse. This scene so perfectly illustrates how Ramsay uses mind games to toy with people. I thought the number of torture scenes in season three was excessive, but this one I thought was a GREAT intro to Ramsay.

9. Arya and Lady Craine

A lot of Arya’s Bravos stuff in the show is very meh. But I love her stuff with Lady Craine because it shows that Arya is not the ‘emotionless killing machine’ that the show sometimes tries to portray her as. Arya does not kill Lady Craine because she can see that she is innocent and she does not want to kill people who haven’t earned it. Later on, her kindness drives Lady Craine to help her and they share a scene in the woman’s house. It’s really sweet and it’s nice to see Arya smile again. Beneath it all, she’s still a child and a traumatized one a that. One who lost her mother and father in a brutal way. And lady Craine gives her just a bit of maternal energy again, before dying horribly because Arya’s life is a nightmare. Still, liked this character.

10. Varys and Littlefinger sass offs

Gotta love some Varys and Littlefinger and I do love how they dance around each other all throughout seasons 1-3. They’re the kind of enemies who respect each other but still want to see the other choke. And it also because clear that while one of them is a more neutral figure who doesn’t covet the throne, the other is driving toward it with his ladder of chaos. We got a great sense of both of them in these scenes and it was great.

Look, the show has some messy parts and even some straight up bad ones (thanks Dorne arc). But it also did a lot right and even some show original scenes are worth quite a lot in my mind.

#game of thrones #arya stark #jaime lannister #sansa stark #tywin lannister #Cersei lannister #Robert Baratheon #Catelyn Stark #Ramsay Bolton #Shae

279 notes · View notes

trinuviel · 6 years

Text

Winterfell’s Daughter. On Sansa Stark (part 10)

This is the 10th installment in my analysis of Sansa Stark’s narrative arc in Game of Thrones (Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7, Part 8, Part 9). In this post I’ll primarily focus on episode 9 of season 2, titled Blackwater, which was written by George R.R. Martin himself. We’ve come to the conclusion of Sansa’s season 2 arc and this episode sums up all the relationships that Sansa has with various characters during the season: Joffrey Baratheon, Cersei Lannister, Tyrion Lannister, Shae and Sandor Clegane. It is also an episode that emphasizes Sansa’s kindness and bravery.

This is a really long so the rest is under the cut.

PREPARING FOR A SIEGE

The fleet of Stannis Baratheon has almost reached King’s Landing and the Lannisters are preparing for a siege. Sansa and Shae are in the throne room on Joffrey’s orders when they encounter Tyrion.

They engage in a short conversation where Sansa proves that she has mastered to politely express exactly what she thinks about any member of House Lannister.

Tyrion: Will you?

I love this exchange because this is a good example of Sansa using her courtesy as a lady’s armour. She is polite on the surface but anyone who can detect the subtext will know that she’s meaning the opposite of what she says. Tyrion is clever enough to understand her meaning as it isn’t difficult to realize that she holds little love for Joffrey. Tyrion may have been kind to her but he’s still a Lannister and he’s now actively working to keep Joffrey on the throne - the boy who had her father killed and who has his King’s Guard physically abuse her

Joffrey arrives and calls Sansa over to him. He commands Sansa to kiss his sword and then he crows about how he’s kill Stannis and make Sansa taste his blood - because Joffrey never fails be gross like that.

However, this exchange also shows us Sansa attempting to manipulate Joffrey into putting himself in danger during the battle. From the incident with Ser Dontos in ep01 Sansa has learned that the key to manipulate Joffrey is appealing to his overinflated ego. She saved Ser Dontos by stroking his ego, saying that he was clever to see that Dontos was a fool and that Joffrey should make him a jester as a punishment instead of killing him. Now she tries to manipulate him by goading his ego when she asks:

Joff (ill at ease): A king doesn’t discuss battleplans with stupid girls.

Sansa: I’m sorry, Your Grace. You’re right, I’m stupid. Of course you’ll be in the vanguard. They say my brother Robb always goes where the fighting is thickest. And he’s only a pretender.

She brings up the military prowness and personal bravery of her brother, knowing full well that Joffrey cannot stand anyone else looking better than him. All the while playing the role of the stupid girl that Joffrey thinks she is. Ironically, the joke is on Joffrey as he is too stupid to realize that Sansa is trying to manipulate him into putting himself into harm’s way.

After Joffrey leaves, Shae goes to Sansa and mentions that many of the boys that now go into battle will never come back. Shae is, of course, worried about Tyrion who is her lover though Sansa doesn’t know this. However, Sansa answers thusly:

This is such a sad statement because it shows how disillusioned Sansa has become and how defeated she has come to feel. The younger and more idealistic Sansa would have believed that evil would be punished and goodness rewarded. The world doesn’t always work this way and Sansa has realized that the hard way. However, sometimes even the monsters will fall but Sansa won’t experience this for quite some time.

A TOXIC MENTOR

After the conversations in the throne room, Sansa and Shae retreats to Maegor’s Holdfast where Queen Cersei and the women of the Red Keep has sought refuge during the battle. As soon as Cersei spots Sansa, she calls her over - and just before she joins Cersei, Sansa lets her true feelings be known to Shae.

Sansa: I don’t know why she [Cersei] wants me here. She’s always saying how stupid I am. She hates me.

Sansa: I doubt it.

Shae: Maybe she’s jealous of you?

Sansa: Why would she be jealous?

The notion of Cersei being jealous of Sansa is an interesting angle - and I do think that it has some merit. But what is it about Sansa that Cersei is jealous of? Is it her youth? Her beauty? Or that Sansa will be queen? I don’t think so. Rather it may very well be Sansa’s innocence and idealism, which has been shaped by her upbringing in the bosom of a happy, stable and loving family. This could explain the way that Cersei reacts when she sees Sansa praying with a group of women.

Cersei: What are you doing?

Sansa: Praying.

Cersei: You’re just perfect, aren’t you. What are you praying for?

Sansa: For the gods to have mercy on us all.

Cersei: Oh, all of us?

Sansa: Yes, Your Grace.

Cersei: Even me?

Sansa: Of course, Your Grace.

Cersei: Even Joffrey?

Sansa (hesitates before she begins to give her rote reply): Joffrey is my…

Cersei: Oh, shut up, you little fool.

Cersei is being sarcastic when she calls Sansa “perfect” but I also think that she’s a little bit jealous, especially since she then proceeds to tell Sansa about how her father told her that the gods don’t have mercy when she prayed after her mother’s death when she was a young child, revealing just one of the many ways that makes Tywin Lannister a shitty parent. This jealous streak may also be a reason why Cersei bullies Sansa. She constantly belittles her, calling her stupid and a little fool. Even the way that Cersei presses a reluctant Sansa to drink wine is a form of bullying.

The scenes between Cersei and Sansa during the siege are highly entertaining, mainly because Lena Heady really nails a slightly drunk Cersei airing her bitterness for all to see. Cersei dominates the scenes between her and Sansa in Maegor’s – she’s the one that holds the forth on her opinions and Sansa only answers when Cersei makes it clear she wants a response. This is also underscored by the camera work since the camera is mainly on Cersei whilst it only occasionally cuts to reaction shots of Sansa.

It is a bit difficult to write about from Sansa’s perspective because she comes off as rather passive. However, it is worth noting that Sansa doesn’t really want to be there and she certainly doesn’t want to spend time with Cersei so she’s very guarded and only reacts when prodded or shocked by Cersei. A good example is when Cersei suggests that a woman’s best weapon is between her legs.

Cersei: Have I shocked you, little dove?

This is Cersei acting as a toxic mentor to Sansa, doling out what she considers “wisdom”, such as making use of a weaponized sexuality. Another example of Cersei’s toxic mentoring is when she orders disloyal servants executed as an example to others who might think to leave the keep. Cersei follows the Tywin Lannister school of political thought, i.e. ruling through fear.

Cersei: The only way to keep the small folk loyal is to make certain that they fear you more than they fear the enemy. Remember that if you ever become a queen.

This is where the show falls short of the books because Sansa is so very guarded with Cersei and, unlike the books, the audience hasn’t access to Sansa’s private thoughts. She’ll never tell the queen that she thinks differently but the books makes it clear that she rejects Cersei’s toxic “wisdom”.

"The night's first traitors," the queen said, "but not the last, I fear. Have Ser Ilyn see to them, and put their heads on pikes outside the stables as a warning." As they left, she turned to Sansa. "Another lesson you should learn, if you hope to sit beside my son. Be gentle on a night like this and you'll have treasons popping up all about you like mushrooms after a hard rain. The only way to keep your people loyal is to make certain they fear you more than they do the enemy."

"I will remember, Your Grace," said Sansa, though she had always heard that love was a surer route to the people's loyalty than fear. If I am ever a queen, I'll make them love me. (ACoK, Sansa VI)

There is, however, one moment where it appears as though Sansa subtly rebukes Cersei - and that is when Cersei bitterly laments that she’s forced to be shut up in the keep with all the frightened women. Sansa responds like this:

Here Sansa reminds Cersei that she has certain responsibilities as queen during a siege - to keep the women safe and their spirits up. She cannot afford a panic. However, Cersei bitterly responds:

Cersei: It was expected of me, as it will be of you if you ever become Joffrey’s queen. If my wretched brother should somehow prevail, these hens will return to their cocks and crow of how my courage inspired them.

During the scenes in Maegor’s Holdfast, Cersei belittles Sansa and delivers her own brand of toxic “wisdom”. However, she also abuses Sansa emotionally. First when she spells out what will happen to the women if the city falls, making sure to point out that Sansa would be a particularly delectable victim for the rapers:

Cersei: Do you have any notion of what happens when a city is sacked? No, you wouldn’t, would you? If the city falls, these fine women should be in for a bit of rape. Half of them will have bastards in their bellies come the morning. You’ll be glad of your red flower then.

Cersei: When a man’s blood is up, anything with tits look good. A precious thing like you will look very, very good. A slice of cake, just waiting to be eaten.

Now Sansa drinks unprompted because she’s scared. This is Cersei being outright cruel! This scene takes place not long after the Bred Riots where Sansa came very close to being raped – she still has an wound on her cheekbone from that attack. This is no longer about Cersei doling out her toxic womanly “wisdom”, this is Cersei emotionally abusing a traumatized young girl.

Later on, Cersei gets even more specific in her torment of Sansa when she lets the girl know that Ser Ilyn Payne will kill her if the city falls to Stannis’ troops.

Cersei: When I told you about Ser Ilyn earlier, I lied. Do you want to hear the truth? You want to know why he’s really here? He’s here for us. Stannis may take the throne, but he will not take us alive.

Cersei is directly threatening Sansa’s life here. I understand why Cersei doesn’t want to fall into enemy hands but she wants to take Sansa with her into death out of pure spite! Sansa would be an important hostage for Stannis and Cersei wants to deprive him of that. This is made particularly clear in the books:

"You heard me. So perhaps you had best pray again, Sansa, and for a different outcome. The Starks will have no joy from the fall of House Lannister, I promise you." She reached out and touched Sansa's hair, brushing it lightly away from her neck. (ACoK, Sansa VI)

Despite all this mental abuse it is Sansa that rises to the occasion when Lancel Lannister arrives to tell Cersei that the battle is lost. Cersei immediately abandons her responsibilites and leaves the women, who start to panic. This is where Sansa steps up and does what Cersei ought to have been doing: Keeping people calm! It is even more remarkable when you consider that most of these women have repeatedly stood silently by whilst they witnessed Sansa being physically abused. Sansa has no reason to care about these women and their fear – yet she steps up all the same – and remember that she has just been informed that Ser Illyn will murder her if the city falls and that is the exact news that Lancel brought. So, even when her very life is immediate danger, Sansa still takes the time to calm the fears of people that she has no reason to care about!

(She proceeds to lead them in singing the Mother’s Hymn)

Sansa, not Cersei, is the one that is acting the Queen here!

She shows herself to be both compassionate and brave since she’s probably even more afraid than anyone else in the room, knowing that she may very well lose her life at any moment because of Cersei’s orders.

“DO YOU WANT TO GO HOME?”

After having rallied the spirits of the women, Sansa leaves on the advice of Shae and locks herself into her chamber. This is also the first time that Sansa shows the strain she has been under as she leans against the door she has just bolted shut. Then she picks up the doll that Ned gave her in season 1. There’s something both beautiful and sad about her attachment to this doll. Once it was a reminder of Lady’s death, now it represents her last tangible link to her father and it has become a source of comfort to her.

However, her peace is quickly broken when she discovers that Sandor Clegane is hiding in her chambers. When she demands what he’s doing there, he answers that he’s leaving, perhaps going north. At this point everybody thinks that the battle is lost and Cersei has spent hours filling Sansa’s head with the potential threats of rape and death - and now she finds a notorious warrior hidden in her chambers. Frankly, it is amazing that Sansa isn’t a complete wreck by now.

Sandor: I can take you with me. Take you to Winterfell. I’ll keep you safe. Do you want to go home? (He walks towards her)

This exchange is so weird (she knows she isn’t safe) – because she’s just been filled with stories about getting raped and threatened with death but she doesn’t want to go with Sandor, even though we know she wants to go home. Obviously she doesn’t trust him but the show hasn’t really given us any reasons why she distrusts him (other than the fact that he’s a Lannister man). Neither has the show given any narrative motive for the Hound to show up in Sansa’s chambers (due to giving LF his dialogue in season 1. I have discussed this issue elsewhere). I honestly, think that this scene could have been completely cut without it mucking up any of the story lines.

Then Sandor suddenly lunges at her and she visibly flinches, so there’s an indication that she’s afraid of him.

Sandor: Look at me. Stannis is a killer. The Lannisters are killers. Your father was a killer. Your brother is a killer. Your sons will be killers someday. The world is built by killers. So you better get used to looking at them.

Sansa looks him in the eye, unflinchingly. All the while holding her doll, which makes her look very childlike and vulnerable.

Sansa: You won’t hurt me.

Sandor: No, little bird, I won’t hurt you. (He leaves)

IMO, this exchange is narratively superfluous since they already had the “all men are killers” conversation in ep07. I honestly don’t understand the point of this scene as it is written and I don’t know why this scene was written so differently from what it is like in the book. In the book it is clear that Sansa has cause to be afraid of the Hound since he physically assaults her:

"I could keep you safe," he rasped. "They're all afraid of me. No one would hurt you again, or I'd kill them." He yanked her closer, and for a moment she thought he meant to kiss her. He was too strong to fight. She closed her eyes, wanting it to be over, but nothing happened. "Still can't bear to look, can you?" she heard him say. He gave her arm a hard wrench, pulling her around and shoving her down onto the bed. "I'll have that song. Florian and Jonquil, you said." His dagger was out, poised at her throat. "Sing, little bird. Sing for your little life."

Her throat was dry and tight with fear, and every song she had ever known had fled from her mind. Please don't kill me, she wanted to scream, please don't. She could feel him twisting the point, pushing it into her throat, and she almost closed her eyes again, but then she remembered. It was not the song of Florian and Jonquil, but it was a song. Her voice sounded small and thin and tremulous in her ears. Gentle Mother, font of mercy... (ACoK, Sansa VII)

As said, I don’t know why this scene was written so differently from the source material and by GRRM himself no less! The showrunners are clearly not afraid of brutalizing Sansa as shown by the unnecessary and graphic near rape earlier in the season. Furthermore, a lot of viewers were confused as to why Sansa didn’t leave with the Hound since we’ve only seen him defend and rescue her in season 2. However, this scene does in fact contain a call back to a deleted scene that takes place immediately after the torturous dinner with Cersei in ep02.

youtube

In this deleted scene Sansa is cornered by Sandor Clegane as she’s walking back to her chambers after spending an evening being emotionally tortured by Cersei. Not only does Sandor blatantly leer at her, he also talks about how she’s soon ripe for bedding and he physically intimidates her to the point of grabbing her, causing Sansa to cry out that he’s hurting her. He demands that she sings him a song and she looks at him defiantly, saying:

Sansa: You won’t hurt me.

However, Sandor doesn’t back off here. Instead, he grabs her again and shakes her, once again physically overpowering her.

It is Tyrion that finally puts a stop to Sandor’s abuse though Sansa does stand up for herself. However, she is terrified of the Hound, which comes across very clearly in the still photos from the scene.

If this scene had been included in the final cut of the episode, then the general audience might not have been as confused as to why Sansa chose not to go with Sandor. While he’d probably be able to keep her safe from others, it is very possible that Sansa would not have been safe from him.

The Lannister victory crushes Sansa’s dream of escaping her captors and putting an end to her abuse. However, Joffrey setting her aside as his betrothed in favour of Margaery Tyrell briefly lifts her spirit.

Yet Petyr Baelish immediately steps in to shatter this sense of relief and hope as he implies that Joffrey will still abuse her, both physically and sexually. Then he offers to help her get home (out of his “brotherly” feelings for her mother Catelyn).

I believe that this is the moment when Baelish starts to make his play to secure Sansa as a pawn, not only for his political ambitions but also for his personal obsession with her mother. After all, Catelyn violently rejected his advances at Renlyn’s camp and now he’s transferring his obsession with Catelyn onto her daughter. Baelish isn’t necessarily lying – Joffrey likes to torment Sansa - but he’s also deliberately scaring her, keeping her on an uneven footing all the while he’s also dangling the prospect of home in front of her. However, Sansa’s reply to him (King’s Landing is my home now) also shows that she doesn’t trust him. Interestingly, this scene is followed by a scene between Ros and Varys where it is explicitly stated that Baelish is a very dangerous man and thus the editing subtly suggests that he also represents a danger to Sansa.

Whilst Sansa and Baelish has interacted before, this is the moment when he enters Sansa’s narrative arc in truth and his character will stay entangled in her narrative for several seasons to come.

(GIFs and edits not mine)

#game of thrones #character analysis #sansa stark #winterfell's daughter #cersei lannister #shape #tyrion lannister #joffrey baratheon #sandor clegane

303 notes · View notes

thespacebetweenworlds · 5 years

Text

ya know... i GoT thoughts

This post is my summarized thoughts and feelings on episodes 4, 5 and 6 in season 8. I’m putting it in a read more because... long

In short: -Missandei in e4, why it’s stupid and what should have been done differently -Varys discourse -Cersei -Daenerys -morals? in MY game of thrones? -”magic who” said everyone at HBO -opinions on the end

Me @ game of thrones: Don't ever talk to me or my son ever again

At the end of episode 4 I was having serious flashbacks to Katniss' expression at the end of Catching Fire, and I was violently reminded that even though I did not like some of the things she did I am with Daenerys. And if she burns the entire world, I am with her.

So... episode 4. What a disaster.

I've been thinking of Missandei's death and that it could easily have been something better, something that impacts the last two episodes more than just another emotional blow at Daenerys. (Like Rhaegal was bad enough? Her son died? Why double the pain and take her best friend?) (Rhaegal owns my life and That Scene killed me and I’m not okay)

The plot could have easily been changed so that either Jaime or Brienne or both of them were on that ship with Tyrion, Grey Worm and Missandei. Really, they ended up going to King’s Landing anyway. And then, instead of Missandei, either Tyrion, or Jaime, or Brienne could have been captured and then killed at the end of the episode. Don’t look at me, it’s not like any of them did anything for the plot or the story later. And Tyrion telling Jon to kill Daenerys doesn’t count because it was stupid.

If it were Tyrion, standing chained on the city wall, we'd have Jaime standing next to Daenerys and in front of his sister. We’d have an emotional show down between them, the physical distance and the different sides they’re on can be a metaphor for their love life. OR if it were Jaime who was captured, we'd have a Jaime and Euron confrontation an episode earlier, and a Jaime and Cersei confrrontation, before Jaime dies in front of Tyrion by their sister's hand. Cruel, but hey, so was Missandei’s death. OR if it were Brienne, captured and chained, then Jaime and Cersei would stare into each others eyes all emotionally, and Brienne would die for love, and when Jaime and Cersei would meet in private an episode later, maybe it would be different.

Game of Thrones would have: a very emotional audience, very emotional characters AND an actual reason for Sansa and Arya to leave Winterfell (vengeance).

Game of Thrones would not have: killed off the only major black character, and given the white men another reason to think Daenerys is being "emotional" and therefore somehow unfit for the throne.

Now... Varys. What an idiot.

To understand my point, watch this video where Varys and Littlefinger discuss chaos. Littlefinger claims chaos to be a ladder, and the higher you climb the greater your power, while Varys calls chaos a gaping pit. Varys claims to acting “for the realm,” which is what he says in season 8 when justifying his betrayal. I think he’s afraid. I think that Varys only just noticed that he can’t influence Daenerys like he could all the kings he served before, and he sees chaos in Daenerys’s power, a gaping pit that he thinks will swallow his precious realm. Varys hasn’t realised that his idea of a realm is the wheel Dany wishes to break.

Like, Varys wasn't there when she went through flames, he wasn't there when she freed the slaves or united the khals. He wasn’t there when she locked her dragons underground when they killed a child, he wasn’t with her during her desperate attempts to bring peace.

And when did we forget that not only Unsollied and Dothraki followed Daenerys? She promised a home to those who followed her, warrior or not. She had many families following her ever since her dragons were born, and from all the cities she went through there were people who followed her. For a better world. Where are they when Daenerys goes to Westeros?

Moving on to the major bullshit in episode 5.

Or wait, first some sibling bonding. Jaime and Cersei. I suppose lots of people liked Jaime breaking up with Cersei, but I quite liked the fact that in the end he was at her side (I kinda expected him to stab Cersei the same way Jon stabs Daenerys later, but now I think they probably attempted to not be repetitive). I like that Tyrion helped him be there. Families are important to Westerosi culture. It’s sad that the Lannisers got more heartfelt sibling bonding than the Starks though (Alexa, play the Rains of Castamere).

Things get soupier. Both Cersei and Daenerys have three children that lived, and they’d do anything for them. Then throughout the season, we see Cersei standing around, looking badass, plotting the death of her enemies, all that. But that’s all she does, She’s painted as a villain, when she is only a woman who wants to rule.

Now the bullshit: Cersei is the villain in episodes 4 and 5, and then there’s a seamless change to Daenerys as the villain in episodes 5 and 6. And that’s fucked up. Other posts talk about the sexism (and racism, with Missandei killed for... shock value? tears? fuck knows) in this season better than I could.

The to Cersei’s disappointment nonexistent elephants in the room when discussing my favourite dragon lady is the moral question. The entirety of tumblr fandom likes to have their characters and storytelling labeled neatly as “good” or “irredeemably bad.” It’s one of those things and never both. But Game of Thrones doesn’t work like that, and if you think it does, please, please read the books, or rewatch everything.

Despite that, if you had one (1) functional brain cell, you’d know that Daenerys wouldn’t burn the entire city. She’s never kiiled innocent people on purpose. Why would she start now? But okay, she did that. About half of the other major players would have done the same. Maybe Robert Baratheon wouldn’t, but only because he was the rebel and he needed public opinion of him to be somehwat positive. Renly idk, but Stannis would have. To Margaery it probably wouldn’t occur, but both Littlefinger and Cersei wouldn’t hesitate, just as Cersei didn’t hesitate when blowing up the sept.

Game of Thrones has never been so much about good and evil, it has been about a bunch of people who want things. All of them did morally black things, but suddenly we have Jon, a character who wants to do the “right” thing? Ned Stark died for this kinda mindset. (Not to mention it’s out of character. Jon has always been Ned Stark’s son, but even Jon broke his oaths.)

And hell, that’s why the story works so well. There’s no moral initiative, no “good” or “bad,” and while yeah, the Night King and the Lord of Light drama is pretty dark/light storytelling (not to mention all the comparisons to the real world and climate change), that’s in the background. A subplot.

Because what we care about are the characters, the very real motivations they have, how they deal with life, how they get what they want, the fucking game of thrones. And there’s no good and evil people, there’s people, and you disagree with some of them. Just like Captain America and Ironman disagreed in Civil War, maybe a bit like T’Challa and Killmonger disagreed in Black Panther, and definitely like some people like cats and others like dogs.

(Vanilla vs. Chocolate discourse, anyone?)

Moving on to episode 6.

I cried a lot, and to be honest, I wanted both Jon and Tyrion to be dragon food. But okay, they’re both nice guys, I can deal with them being alive, and after all Jon’s ending with the wildlings is good for him. But.

Jon killing Daenerys is the stupidest thing ever. I get that it’s somehow like some Shakespearean Drama, and Daenerys is the tragic hero, but like??

Sometimes show writers have no idea who they’re writing and it shows. Because Jon loved Ygritte, and he wasn’t able to kill her when they were on opposite sides of a battlefield. And Jon loved Daenerys. ???????

Additionally, I’m not saying I hate all of what they did with the magic and the Lord of Light and the Night King, the Children of the Forest and Azor Ahai lore. But they didn’t do enough of it. There are so many lose threads on the magic in this series, I can’t. And it hurts, because it could have been so beautiful. Those scenes where Daenerys walks through fire and doesn’t die, those scenes beyond the wall with the three eyed raven, and the beautiful, majestetic, perfect dragons? They are what I love about A Song of Ice and Fire.

Last but not least, the end. Like, I have many opinions, and I’m not going to attempt to list all of them. Game of Thrones has many strong women characters, and I’d like to give another thought to Yara of House Greyjoy. Both she and Sansa deserved more. I love that Sansa became Queen in the North, but I hate that apparently she planned Daenerys’s downfall by telling Tyrion about Jon’s parents. Why can’t strong ladies be friends?

The end to such a successful story can’t please everyone, so if you feel like it you can join me and my son, Drogon, in a pile of blankets where we pretend GoT ended with episode 3 and it was simply too dark to see what exactly happened. Did Melisandre bring Viserion back from the dead? Did Bran do some cool magic? Did Missandei marry Grey Worm and sail home to Naath? Guess we’ll never know...

But seriously, the thing with the book was so cheesy and stupid what the fuck?? Can we rename the series to “The Rise and Fall of Daenerys Stormborn of House Targaryen”?

You know what I missed in season 8? The Stark siblings. They interacted like,, 2 times in 6 episodes. They were all finally united again, well, those who didn’t die, and then they part ways? Um? No?

@ game of thrones: don’t talk to me or my son, Drogon, ever again. You know what you did.

And I'm salty that Daenerys and Sansa aren't best friends. Like, enemies to lovers is fine but what about enemies to friends to lovers -

#game of thrones meta #asoiaf #daenerys is too good for westeros but that's a whole other post #daenerys targaryen #cersei lannister #got season 8 #drogon #missandei #jon snow #house stark #game of thrones #got #meta #long post #if you spot a typo please tell me #if you're gonna call Daenerys mad please just shut the fuck up and go away I don't care about your opinion #the night king deserved better

2 notes · View notes

meriwebnet · 4 years

Text

All Those Game Of Thrones Fans, Let’s Rank Your Favorite Villain

When it comes to a television show that does justice to combining horror, death, and royalty, Game of Thrones hold no other competition. According to the author of this breakthrough television series, George R.R. Martin, this series based entirely on fantasy and works solidly atop the genre of bad vs. the good. The author further added how he made all his characters not completely good and not completely bad. He has emphasized the fact that they are all human beings and because they are not in control of their actions, they are levitating between the transition of good and bad. Now without further ado, let us get right down to what this article is going to be about. Here we are going to rank all the Game of Thrones from the lowest to highest and see which one of them has managed to outshine among all the others through his/her evilness.

1. Shireen Baratheon

The lowest in the ranking stands ShireenBaratheon. People consider her one of the tamest villains the series could ever have. Having the intentions of committing as less bad as she possibly can, poor Shireen has always been surrounded with the evil but because of her pure intentions, she chose to stay as good as she can.

2. Gilly

We can never overlook the fact that it was Gilly who we always adored and will continue to do that, no matter what! His sacrifices, his pains, everything just makes Gilly stand lowest in the ‘bad’ villains list.

3. Sam well Tarly

Being one of the most easily scared people, Tarly is another villain in the list who deserves to stand lower than the rest of the bad guys.

4. Grey Worm

Having a heart of gold and nature of an angel, Grey Worm is another perfect candidate for our list who deserves to stay just at the bottom like the rest of the good people. Yes, we can never overlook the fact that she has always been dragged into doing upsetting things, but that doesn’t mean she is a bad person!

5. Davos

A dedicated, family man who never intended to harm anyone else around him. His honesty speaks for itself, we mean, where else would you find a smuggler so dedicated and honest like this wise man, right here?

6. Ned Stark

A man who doesn’t care about lying, even if it takes him his entire life. Ned Stark goes next in our list as he is the man who is crazy about getting his hands on the throne. Yes, his mistakes are what that has brought him to this list because his adamancy regarding the throne is what that cost him, his own life.

7. Jon Snow

Just another guy who makes his life difficult by falling hard in love, Jon Snow is another one in our list. A guy who seemingly does right, but because his actions are driven by Ned Stark, who gets him to shed blood of whoever that stands in Ned’s way of conquering the throne, poor Snow is blinded by the evil, which eventually takes a toll on his own life.

8. Sansa Stark

Poor, little lady, who has made it into the villains’ list by only lying once. Her wrongdoing of telling on Stark’s plans to Cersei has surely got her in trouble.

9. Margaery Tyrell

Seemingly sweet, naïve and kind, but on the surface below, dark, bitter and manipulative. We all know what kind of an opportunist lies beneath the face of Margaery Tyrell.

10. Arya Stark

From seemingly cute little kid, to have a heart of a hitman. Arya Stark entered the realm of darkness by murdering her own pet pigeon. This girl is a well deserving candidate for our villains’ list because her craving for serving pure vengeance is very much ignited.

11. Oberyn Martell

Filled with a deep love for vengeance which eventually led him into a fight that cost him his own life. Oberyn lacked a proper logical sense, which took his own life.

12. Daenerys Targaryen

Another one in the list is the much-awaited face of the GOT, Daenerys, who holds no contempt in getting too frank with whoever that crosses her way. Weird, obviously!

13. Melisandre

Being a man with absolutely no heart, Melisandre is a twisted man who murdered a child by burning him alive. His actions are no less than a nightmare itself.

14. Jaqen H’gar

Committing a series of endless murders and having a character of pure evil, Jaqen is the true face of a nightmare. Torturing, terrorizing and traumatizing a child is nonetheless one of the cruelest things that he could possibly have done.

15. LorasTyrells

Killing numerous people and ending up grabbing the throne in a very unsettling way, Loras Tyrell is definitely the guy who got us into all this mess after all.

16. Olenna Tyrell

Probably one of the most manipulative and twisted women, Olenna surely knew how to get her way in this male-ruling world. After all, whatever she did, the good, the bad, was all to protect her family and that’s all.

17. Sandor Clegane

A character who went from, good to bad, in a wink. Sandor is another one in the list who has become what he is now, after overcoming all the bitterness of his traumatizing childhood.

18. Khal Drogo

A warlord who had a little respect for the relations and responsibilities, Drogo’s life was evidence of the difficulties he was born among.

19. Cersei Lannister

A perfect depiction of how far a mother goes while protecting her children, CerseiLannister is the woman who killed a lot of people to get her way. Not only this, she is a woman of no compassion, which is why she was even ready to poison her own child – such brutality.

20. Tywin Lannister

Filled with a deep rage and a craze to rule over this world, he is the man who went through the highest peaks of animosity just so he could protect his legacy, but not his family.

21. Ramsay Bolton

And the guy who finally tops our list of villains in GOT is none other Ramsay Bolton. A murder, a rapist, a psychopath and what not, this guy is the worst example of a human and we are unsure why he and his atrocities even have to be on the show? Read the full article

#GameOfThrones

0 notes

horrorhouse · 7 years

Text

Game of Thrones thoughts - 07x03 The Queen’s Justice

Spoiler’s ahead!!! I also may have misspelled character’s names in my excited state.

1. The "previously on" is excellent!

2. Fucking Littlefinger! He needs a throat punch!

3. Why does the Red Keep still have a stag? I mean, there's no REAL Baratheon on the throne. Cersei goes by Lannister. Could that be a clue that the Red Keep may one day be back under Baratheon control? GO GENDRY!!!

4. First shot right out the gate - JON SNOW IS AT DRAGONSTONE!!!

5. Jon and Tyrion are like two old high school friends getting back together.

6. Hand over your weapons? WTF is this? There needs to be a little trust here. Some give and take.

7. And the ship, too. Damn!

8. Davos making small talk with Missandei = so pure.

9. Tyrion misses Sansa (a.k.a. wifey). He was always a classy guy towards her.

10. I DRINK AND I KNOW THINGS!!!

11. "I'm not a Stark." Jon, if you only knew.

12. Damn it, Drogon, slow your roll!

13. This means Davos and Melisandre are gonna be in the same room. I wanna see that rumble!!!

14. I'm wondering if Melisandre had something to do with Varys being cut and he's playing it off because he plans to get revenge later?

15. "I have to die in this strange country. Just like you." Remember that. That's going to be on the test later. And damn it, no Davos reunion?!?

16. Misandei rattles that list off pretty good.

17. Davos doesn't have much to say. "This is Jon Snow. He's King of the North."

18. Seems like Dany is humble here. Is that an act?

19. "I am the last Targaryen, Jon Snow." NO, YOU'RE NOT!!!!

20. Nevermind. Dany's not humble. She was just trying to be nice.

21. Dany is such a fucking hypocrite! She just gave a speech about not judging someone by the sins of the father, but look what she's doing to Jon - she's throwing what Ned and Robert did to her father in his face. Even after she acknowledged her father was an evil man.

22. Her ego's getting as bad as Cersei's.

23. Davos isn't bringing up the fact Jon was brought back from the dead - why not?

24. Varys ex machina.

25. Poor Theon. He can't catch a break.

26. Euron riding through the Red Keep like he's a rock star.

27. Where's Ulna with the SHAME bell? Oh yeah....

28. Ellaria with all that sass.

29. Euron trying way too hard.

30. Euron and Jaime are having a dick showing contest.

31. Cersei's lip color. OMG!!! I recognize that color!!!

32. Cersei and Oberyn's sister were both close to their children.

33. Tyene knows what's going on because she survived the poison before, when she was teasing Bronn.

34. Cersei is a genius. The worst death Ellaria could face.

35. I know Cersei and Jaime are brother and sister, but this is kinda hot.

36. YEAH, GET IT, GIRL!!

37. At this point, Cersei doesn't give a fuck. Everyone already heard about her escapades with her brother when Joffrey was King. She's in power now. She'll do what she wants.

38. Notice the woman who came to tell Cersei about the visitor was dressed like her. When the handmaids were under Cersei's children, they were in flowing gowns with long, styled hair. Now they're dressing like Cersei. It's good to be the Queen!

39. Oh shit! The Iron Bank is coming to collect their debts. Fuck fuck fuck!!!

40. Euron Greyjoy is loyal to himself, let's face it.

41. She's gonna kill him. That's how she's gonna pay her debt.

42. Oh, I thought Tyrion was gonna piss over the cliff.

43. Jon Snow: "I'm not playing word games." Me: "This isn't Scrabble, motherfucker!"

44. Jon needs to capture a White Walker. Or cut off one of their heads.

45. Tyrion: "Children are not their fathers...." Tell that to Dany.

46. Love it! Tyrion got busted!!!

47. Ask him about the heart comment!!! Damn it!!!

48. Damn it! Littlefinger is lingering around Sansa.

49. Littlefinger spoke to Sansa! Kill him, Jon! Kill him!

50. After everything Sansa's been through, why is Littlefinger still talking to her like a child?

51. Sansa and Bran are back together!!! I'M NOT CRYING, YOU'RE CRYING!!!

52. Bran: "I'm the ThreeEyed Raven." Sansa: "I don't know what that means."

53. OMG, TELL HER JON IS A TARGARYEN!!!!

54. OMG, he saw her wedding. And what happened after. OMG. OMG.

55. Whoa! Ser Jorah looks fantastic!!!

56. Take that, asshole! Samn knew what he was doing!!!

57. The Maester knows better.

58. Jorah's gonna go back to Dany!!!

59. Sam should take Gilly and Sam and go with Jorah!!! He could reunite with Jon!!!

60. In other words, he did RESEARCH!!!

61. Yes, Sam's getting a promotion!!!

62. Hey, not having to clean up bed pans or clean the outhouses.

63. Gee, I've seen this before.... *cough*BLACKWATER*cough*

64. Grey Worm is VICIOUS!!!

65. Oh shit! Jaime's in High Garden with the Lannister army.

66. "She'll be the end of you." Or maybe he'll be the end of her.

67. Jaime looks like he wants to cut Olenna's head off. But maybe he gave her a worse death. She's gonna die alone. Literally alone.

#Game of Thrones #GOT #07x03 #The Queen's Justice #spoilers

1 note · View note

kallypsowrites · 5 years

Text

Daenerys Targaryen vs Light Yagami

A long while back, I made a post about the different readings of Daenerys Targaryen and how one could make an argument for a light, bittersweet and dark version of her storylines. And I knew that if she ever went dark, I was going to make this post. The version of Dark Daenerys that I think they were set up to write is not the version they wrote at all, which is part of reason her ultimate arc falls so flat. But, shoddy execution aside, I do think this is the direction George is going with the books. No doubt he’ll do it better and more gradually but he has not come out in any way saying that the MAJOR beats of the plot are different. Just the side characters and the execution.

This is the point to turn back now if you don’t like Dany criticism or mentions of Dark dany. I understand that people in the Dany fandom are grieving right now and I get you. So, for all of my pro-dany followers, please don’t read this post! You will not enjoy it, and I REALLY don’t want to fight!

But, for the rest of you, I’m going to talk about Daenerys arc and how it is awfully similar to that of Deathnote’s Light Yagami--or it would have been if the writers were like...smart and good at character development and framing.

For the non-anime watchers of the fandom, Deathnote is the story of Light Yagami, a privledged, attractive, genius student who comes across a notebook which grants him the power to kill anyone with just the stroke of a pen-so long as he knows their name and face. If the victim’s name is written in the notebook, they will die of a heart attack less than a minute later. But the user of the death note can also specify HOW the person will die (though they must stay within the realms of reality). Once Light finds out that, yes, the Deathnote is real, he sets out on a quest to rid the world of evil doers by taking justice into his own hands. He wants to create a new world--one of only innocent people who follow the law--and he will be it’s savior.

And Light Yagami, despite being the main character, is the villain of this story.

Because while yes, Light’s vision of the world SEEMS great at first, he has effectively made himself judge, jury and executioner for the entire population. He doesn’t investigate to see if anyone is wrongly convicted, he often kills criminals who are already serving their time and jail, and he also has no problem killing innocent people if they happen to threaten him or get in the way of his grand plan. Light’s main problem, you see, is his ego. A vision of a better world with no evil is all well and good, but LIGHT is the one who wants to make it happen and he has a grand vision of himself as some sort of divine, just God. Its not enough for the world to BE better. No. He needs to be the one pulling all of the strings. His vision is useless to him if he is not the one at the top.

Daenerys Targaryen, likewise, is bestowed three dragon eggs which she hatches into dragons, giving her a powerful weapon unlike any the world has seen in centuries. She sets out to change the world into a place where there is no more sorrow. Only laughter and happiness. She wants to break the wheel. She wants to end slavery. These are all great things. But, like Light, her desire for this new world is tied with her own ego. She wants to be the queen behind it all. She needs the throne. She needs people to love and bow down to her. And she has no trouble with killing or punishing people if they happen to threaten that. She believes the ends justify the means and is willing to slaughter millions...if it will help her to build her new world.

Now, its not a one to one comparison. Light lives in the modern day, Dany lives in medieval times. Dany’s story, as a woman in a sexist world, is gonna be different. Dany has way more advisors and people actually know her face, while Light keeps his secret from nearly everyone and acts covertly. Dany faced a lot of hardship in her younger years and Light is relatively privledged. Dany has a name that makes her think she has a divine right to rule and Light has no such ‘divine right’. They aren’t the same people and neither are their circumstances. But I would like to delve a bit into their similarities here.

1. A Sense of Divine Purpose

Let’s play a game. Who said it? Daenerys Targaryen or Light Yagami?

“This world is rotten, and those who are making it rot deserve to die. Someone has to do it, so why not me?”

“I am justice”

“In all things, one cannot win with defense alone. To win, you must attack.”

"Look around you, and all you will see are people the world would be better off without."

"I must protect my fledging Utopia."

"No matter what the world is, the god of that world creates the rules. In truth, you have been defeated by the rules I created. And as punishment for defying the God of the new world, you will die..."

"But you know the saying, "play with fire, and you'll get burned". I'll make you regret underestimating me."

“There was no other way! The world had to be fixed! A purpose given to me! Only I could do it. Who else could have done it, and come this far? Would they have kept going? The only one who can create a new world is me."

"I am Justice! I protect the innocent and those who fear evil. I'm the one that will become the god of a new world that every one desires!”

"Our battle will be concluded, and I will begin my reign from the summit of victory!"

“I was chosen to renew this rotten world, to bring about true peace."

"He was someone who deserved to die."

Its a trick question. They’re ALL Light Yagami. But some of these quotes are just a few words off being Danerys Targaryen quotes like:

“I will answer injustice with justice.”

“They can live in my old world or they can die in their old one.”

“They’re all just spokes on a wheel. This one’s on top then that one’s on top and on and on it goes, crushing those on the bottom. I’m not going to stop the wheel. I’m going to break the wheel.”

“We’re going to leave the world better than we found it.”

“You are small men. None of you are fit to lead the Dothraki. But I am. And I will.”

“My reign has just begun.”

“I will do what queens do. I will rule.”

“If it comes to that they will have died for good reason.”

“Because I know what is good.”

“They don’t get to choose [what is good]”

In all of these quotes, Dany and Light have a strong sense of justice, a desire to protect their new world, and an inflated sense of self. But I think the best quote that sums up Light’s state of mind is this one:

"This world is rotten and those who are making it rot deserve to die. Someone has to do it, so why not me? Even if it means sacrificing my own mind and soul, it's worth it. Because the world... can't go on like this. I wonder... what if someone else had picked up this notebook? Is there anyone out there other than me who'd be willing to eliminate the vermin from the world? If I don't do it, then who will? That's just it: there's no one, but I can do it. In fact, I'm the only one who can. I'll do it. Using the death note, I'll change the world."

You can start picking up Light vibes from Daenerys as early as season two with the “but I’m no ordinary girl. My dreams come true”/”I will take what is mine. With fire and blood, I will take it” monologue, but the similarities REALLY make themselves clear in season 4 and 5 when Dany talked about the breaking the wheel and ‘answering injustice with justice’. As Barristan said, her father also believed in his own form of justice. It made him feel powerful and right.

But this type of talk shows, from the beginning, that it is more about who THEY are (their claim/purpose/skills/divine right) than saving the world itself. This is not a selfless, ‘I want to make the world a better place’ motive. This is a “I want the world to see me as its savior” mentality. Very different things. Dany and Light both want to be powerful. And they both want to be right.

2. The Power to Kill

At it’s core, Deathnote is an exploration about how the power to kill corrupts. No matter what the intention. No matter how it is used. Whenever one has the power to kill indiscrimately and on a massive level, that power will corrupt them the more they use it. Light’s father straight up states that at one point in the show. Light has a weapon that almost NO ONE else has. A notebook that can kill anyone with just a stroke of a pen. He uses it for what some of us might deem a “good” purpose. But it doesn’t matter. It’s still death on a massive scale.

Daenerys, likewise, has dragons, which are weapons of mass destruction unlike any that have been seen in centuries. They can burn whole cities to the ground and melt stone. They are very difficult to kill unless you yourself have a dragon (they went down too easy in the show but I digress). With them, she has the power to kill and she uses it often. It starts small with the warlock in Quarth. And then it grows until the season 8 massacre of King’s Landing.

And many of Dany’s victims are bad people, which Tyrion acknowledges in his 8x06 monologue. Early on in the show she kills slavers and murderers and people who have wronged her. But she often does so without fair trial which also results in some innocents being killed as well. She battles against this. She even locks her dragons away at one point for killing a child, knowing that this could poison her. But ultimately, she is unable to turn away.

Now, many people say that Dany isn’t the only person in Game of Thrones to commit acts of murder. And you would be right. Ramsay, Joffrey, Tywin, Euron, Cersei...they’ve all got war crimes to speak of. But none of them--thank god--had dragons. None of them had the power to kill on the same scale that Dany does. The message, in this case, isn’t just ‘murder is bad’. Rather, it is that the power to kill on such a massive scale corrupts, no matter how noble the intentions, and it eventually leads Dany to kill hundreds of thousands of innocents in King’s Landing.

3. Charisma and Love Interests

Both Light and Daenerys are extremely charasmatic people and generally well liked by those who surround them. They, in particular, attract several suitors from the opposite sex, many of whom they have no true feelings for, but some of whom can be useful to their interests. Daenerys, in the show, is of course given a genuine love in Jon, while Light only barely seems to tolerate his main love interest Misa, so there are some differences.

Both of them draw followers as well, particularly based on their cult of personality. Light takes up the persona of ‘Kira’ a just god who punishes evil doers and many people around the world vehemently defend his actions because he has made the world safer. Daenerys, likewise, becomes ‘Mhysa’ to many of the slaves she has freed. They are both very concerned with maintaining this image. Light, for instance, gets very angry when a second Kira starts pretending to be him and operating outside the bounds of what he wants. Daenerys often thinks of herself as a mhysa, because she likes to think of herself as a savior, and many of her good actions stem from not wanting to fall from that pedestal.

Naturally, they both attract a great deal of enemies too because of their severe policies. In some cases, we could say that we don’t care about those enemies because, well, they’re bad people. Criminals. Slavers. Who cares right? It seems like good people support them and bad people are against them. This is a prescedent that Light upsets MUCH EARLIER in Deathnote when a private investigator is hired to tail him. The guy hasn’t done anything wrong according to the law, but Light gladly kills him since he could reveal his secret. The ends justify the means, right?

Daenerys, on the other hand, has the benefit of her enemies being mostly awful people. The majority of her enemies, well, we don’t care about them. That doesn’t change until she actually starts clashing with other characters we know and love, starting with season seven but especially season eight. In the book we do see the RESULT of her conquest all across Essos. Many of the cities she has visited turned into a living hell for many innocent people. But this is ignored in the show. Most of Essos is ignored in the show.

This is because of a problem with framing. Light, despite being similar in many ways to Dany, is framed as problematic from the beginning. We still want him to win in the beginning because, lets face it, he’s fun to watch, but we get the sense that he is sinister and its not surprising when he does bad things later. Daenerys darkness, however, was mostly hidden and misdirected and overshadowed so that it could be a plot twist. We’ll circle back to that later.

Regardless of framing, both Light and Dany have a similar effect on their AUDIENCE. Because you can bet your ass that there were SEVERAL fans defending Light to the death in the fandom, saying that he ultimately had good intentions and the ends DO justify the means. He fooled the audience. He won many of them over with his charm and charisma. And Daenerys has done the same on a much wider scale. There’s a reason that people are saying that it ‘wasn’t foreshadowed at all’. Sure, the execution of the writing wasn’t the best, but not at all? Then why were so many people able to predict this turn? Dany is a likable person on the surface. She’s someone to root for. To get behind and cheer on as she burns her enemies. But a good villain is able to convince you (and themselves) that they are not really villanous

4. Lost Potential/Goodness

One of the most common defenses I’ve seen of Dany in the past week is people posting a bunch of gifs in which she was nice and kind to people as ‘refutations’ that she would ever go bad. But sympathetic and good traits only make a more three dimensional villain. Part of the tragedy of Light and Dany is that they COULD have been great. They COULD have been good...if the power to kill had not corrupted them.

The story starts with Light getting the Deathnote and he moves pretty quickly into dubious morality territory. But halfway through the show, he ends up losing his memory (its all part of his one hundred step plan) when he gives up the Deathnote. He then joins the task force trying to find Kira. Light is clearly a hard worker who cares about justice. He’s smart and capable. He would have made a brilliant detective. And throughout the arc he wonders, what would HE do with the Deathnote? Would he become Kira? No, surely not. He’s overthinking it. He would never do such a thing.

Daenerys starts out the story with no dragons, and she’s a very sympathetic character. As a victim of abuse, we see her rise above her circumstances with only her wits and raw determination. Then she gets the dragons and its a much more gradual descent. She frees slaves after all! She wants to make the world a better place. And when one of her dragons kills a child she willingly locks them away (I.E. gives up her power to kill) in order to try to be better. Throughout this arc in the book, Daenerys often thinks about whether she is a monster or a mhysa, just as Light contemplates his own morality. Self reflection does not automatically equal “good”, after all. But in both cases, we see two bright young souls who could have been wonderful...and that makes their arc even more tragic.

In the end, Light gets his hands back on the Deathnote and his memories and, rather than letting his time without the Deathnote change his ways, he returns to his original plan. And Daenerys rides away from the dragon pit on Drogon and (in the show) releases her other children from the keep, fully embracing the dragon. They tried to give up the power and set it aside (though Light with his memoires never really intended to give it up, it was just part of his plan to throw the investigators off the trail), and they ultimately chose violence in the end.

5. The Ultimate Result

Daenerys and Light both die at the end of the story, killed by someone they trusted--someone who believed in them until they realized the truth behind their supposed goodness. And they both die doubling down on their misdeeds. They do not have regret. They are still overflowing with their divine purpose. They want to do MORE (”It’s not enough. The world is still rotten”/”We will not stop until we have liberated everyone in the world”) and they would willingly kill anyone who stands in their way. Above all, neither of them see anything wrong with their actions. The ends justify the means. They must. If they look back, they are lost.

Their deaths have different framing of course. Light’s is filmed as a mental break down of sorts as he finally reveals just how violent and delusional he is beneath the charismatic facade. At that point we WANT him dead. He’s clearly gone nuts. The angles show as much.

Daenerys’ death is filmed more...empathetically. She’s not frothing at the mouth. She’s smiling. She still so fully BELIEVES in what she has done, and it quite frankly hurts to see. She dies quietly and quickly and gets tragic music in the background while Jon sobs over her body. Light dies alone on some stares after desperately running away until he’s too weak to move anymore.

It’s a similar conclusion. But the framing is the problem. Which is why we have to talk about...

Why Daenerys’ arc fails to deliver

I’m not wild about how they ultimately executed Dany’s arc. Because don’t get me wrong I would LOVE a villainess who fulfills the Light Yagami role. I’ve never seen a female Light Yagami before and Light is one of my favorite characters of all time. But remember when I said earlier that Light is always framed as morally dubious from day one? Daenerys’ framing is ALL the FUCK over the place.

Is she good? Is she bad? We’re not going to tell you because we want it to be a TWIST. Gotta give several scenes that don’t jive with her arc in order to throw everyone off the trail. Can’t make it too obvious where this is heading right? Can’t even tell the goddamn actress until the last season so she can use that info to inform her performance. Make the framing topsy turvy!

Framing is how a film communicates how we are supposed to feel about a character and there is a REASON Daenerys is so divisive in the Game of Thrones audience. Because the directors just didn’t know what the hell they were doing during the scenes, so it didn’t ultimately build in a satisfying way. In the end, there was foreshadowing but her turn was rushed and sudden and not that well written.

There are other problems that make Daenerys fall short of the Light Yagami brand, including:

1. Premeditated vs ‘crazy woman’ evil

This kind of villain is most effective when they think through their decisions and carry them out while they are of sound mind. Light Yagami rarely acted on impulse (except at the beginning and toward the end) and he was never ‘crazy’. Narcisisstic and psychopathic, yes, but not ‘crazy’. But they ultimately choose to make Dany’s turn be this sudden, emotional break down. Like, whoops! My friend was killed. Guess I gotta genocide because I’m SO emotionally unstable. The catalyst for this kind of character’s villain decent can NOT be revenge or an emotional loss of some sort. Because this kind of villain is characterized by being obsessed with themselves in their own vision.

2. Losing supporters to death vs losing them to your own growing ego

In the end of Deathnote, all of Light’s supporters and friends have turned against him as they realize what he has become. This is more effective than killing off all of a character’s greatest supporters so that you don’t have to deal with them. Missandei shouldn’t have died. If they wanted to have a good villain arc, they should have had Missandei realize Dany’s growing darkness and start to have doubts. Maybe they could have had her and Greyworm try to leave for Naath and have Daenerys get snappy and annoyed because she needs her supporters to believe in her.

But by killing her dragon and two of her closest companions, we only feel sorry for her, and it makes it much harder to turn against her in the next episode. If you’re going to make her go villain you HAVE to make the audience turn on the character. Why give them a sympathetic motivation?

3. An earlier turn

Light graduates to full villain about 2/3 of the way through the series which means we actually have time to deal with the aftermath and spend time with the character on his descent. Its the worst written part of the series but, no one’s perfect.

Dany goes dark and gets killed in like...seconds. So there’s no time to actually explore her as a villain. Its just a twist. That’s all it is. A twisty twist.

4. Targaryen madness

I don’t think D&D actually understand what Targaryen madness is or how it works. Like the fact that Aerys deteriorated slowly over the course of many years but Dany had a complete mental break in the span of a couple of days. Also, not all Targaryens are mad, and blaming Dany’s genetics is just one more way to say ‘but its not her fault. It’s just a blood thing’.

Light has no history of ‘madness’ in his family. His father is actually a detective. He’s a normal kid who comes across a powerful tool of death and it corrupts him. That’s it. So Light has more agency in his villain narrative than Daenerys.

5. Legitimate love vs Fake Love

Jon x dany is what ultimately kills the villain arc, because it make Daenerys look like she turned evil because “Jon wouldn’t love her”. Dumb. Very dumb. Stupid and dumb. The writers got caught in between doing a ‘tragic love story’ and a ‘villain decent’ that they decided to write both characters terribly in the final episodes.

Light never cared genuinely about his main love interest and his fall ultimately comes because of his own ego and his death comes not from a love interest he genuinely cares about, but from someone who supported him who he used. Dany’s fall comes from...love. And that makes her potential villain arc so much less powerful. She could have been this strong, amazing character. A great female villain for the ages. But you just HAD to make her a woman scorned/tragic love interest didn’t you. You had to make it about Jon’s man pain didn’t you? How very feminist. How progressive. Groundbreaking.

So Dany could have been a great Light Yagami style villain, and I’m holding out hope for that execution in the books. But the show did not nail it. Not even a little.

In Conclusion

Daenerys and Light’s goals and dialogue and sense of self worth are practically identical in nature, and so is their ability to drawn in the audience. But whereas Light’s story has direction, proper framing, and never tries to trick it’s audience for a cheap twist, Daenerys’ writing is ultimately confused and that’s why very few people like this ending for her.

Both of their stories are about how the absolute power to kill corrupts even the most promising souls. But Deathnote stuck the landing and Game of thrones stumbled and went out with a confused whimper.

#game of thrones #got spoilers #anti-daenerys #dark-daenerys #dark daenerys #anti daenerys

75 notes · View notes