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[OPEN SPOILERS] GAME OF THRONES S8 |*FULL LEAK DISCUSSION*| IT IS KNOWN
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Not defending how quickly the show has tried to pull this turn, but if someone just described the Dany plot out of context, the natural assumption for what sort of "twist" the ending could have would be that the people reject her and she turns violent. Like, of course combining a sense of royal privilege with the mythical birthing of weapons of mass destruction creates someone with a dangerous ego and sense of destiny, and of course those things lead to trouble when she arrives in an ancestral homeland in which she is a foreigner with an army of foreigners and a trio of monsters. Realizing that the way you the reader see Dany is very different from how the characters in world see her is a key part of the narrative, and those issues are pretty exactly targeted to break the most delicate faultlines in Dany's psyche. She is different only so far as another human can be different. She still has her issues, her frailties, and can be broken. The show has failed to execute on that, but the core of the story is solid.
The Iron Throne is the One Ring and Daenerys fell to its temptation.
I knew Daenerys wasn't going to sit the Iron Throne when they started putting in speeches about her breaking the wheel and building her up to be a never before benevolent monarch(ignoring the book canon) but never saying how she's going to change everything.
Basically, Benioff and Weiss wanted to build your expectations in order to laugh at you when they crush them.
Nope, but the witch killed him because she knew he was prophesied to conquer the world.
After seeing what his father's men did to her village and to her, can you really blame her?
The Jon-kills-Dany-and-retires-North ending and the Tyrion-executed-for-treason ending are pretty mutually exclusive. One of them is someone who got a lot of other things right getting faked out by the production, and right now it still feels like the former has the greater bulk of evidence behind it.
Could very well be a mix of truth and bullshit all around with the leakers. Could be that the current hot leaker just had episode 4 and inferred the rest from plot points in that episode. Or it could all be true. Lol
based on what i have read of the leaks, the latter sounds like someone just jumped to conclusions. tyrion being tried and sentenced to death by dany seems to be happening, but if she is killed before the sentence is carried out he might be off the hook.
i could see someone knowing "tyrion is sentenced to death" thinking that tyrion is also executed.
As time passes, I more and more come to believe "Jon stabs Dany" was the fake ending. It's the way so many were so candid at hinting about it, despite being so tight-lipped about everything else. I don't think HBO is that smart, though.
Yes. Oh, yes, it's true, as much as you may disagree, it's absolutely true. Go back and compare.
And let's not pretend GRRM is some brilliant writer beyond reproach. His shit got clunky as fuck as it went on. And who's to say all the complaints from the current season aren't things that he's planned all along? Everyone's complaining about D&D, while forgetting that they're pretty much taking their cues from GRRM.
Yeah I'm gonna have to agree with this. That's why I'm also disappointed to hear that mad queen Dany is also the likely ending in the book series too.
The bittersweet ending to me I thought was going to be her dying after childbirth. She always wanted to be a mother to a human child, bears a child, but does not live long enough to be a mother.
Jon killing her to save the world just doesn't come off as satisfying considering what she had gone through throughout the show
Nobody has issues with the plot of this season. It's the awful execution and rushed nature of 6 episodes + bad writing
Friki's source for the Dragonpit info is a different one from his localization source. And I believe his localization source went dark. Friki had no idea what would happen in episodes 3 and 4.
Yes, especially if they don't sell the necessity of it.
It's a fan favorite killing another fan favorite.
The only thing i can say to all those responding to my last post, sure her "descent into madness" was poorly paced/written/directed, but that's exactly what the show wanted you to think. You're literally falling for the horrendous showrunning.
I don't know about any of you, but if my hand consistently fucked up giving me terrible advice, causing the loss of two of my children, as well as losing all of my previous military and political advantages then how the fuck am I supposed to act? Of course I'd he angry!
Her responses are not out of proportion to the hullshit she has been dealing with.
Her descent was handled so piss poorly but I guess it's clearly working on a lot of people thinking she's the "mad queen" now.
Cersei is the bad guy, remember that, she's an actual monster. I'd also do whatever it took to get that bitch out of power.
I don't know about any of you, but if my hand consistently fucked up giving me terrible advice, causing the loss of two of my children, as well as losing all of my previous military and political advantages then how the fuck am I supposed to act? Of course I'd he angry!
Her responses are not out of proportion to the hullshit she has been dealing with.
Her descent was handled so piss poorly but I guess it's clearly working on a lot of people thinking she's the "mad queen" now.
Cersei is the bad guy, remember that, she's an actual monster. I'd also do whatever it took to get that bitch out of power.
Is there anyone left in this show who hasn't been character assassinated yet? Real talk.
The tier 1 chars are basically a shit-show.
Tyrion, Davos, Varys...they are only there for the fans. They have done nothing and it will be impossible to twist their arc into something meaningful.
My boy Bronn...lawd, don't let me even start: I would take his ep.4 stuff as a reminder that he's not Han Solo just a clever opportunist, fine. Now who's idea was it to put him in the council then? This is painfully bad.
So for me Cersei up to this point is the only character on this show with consistency and a remotely believable arc.
But I still can't wrap my head around the "let's show a single zombie to Cercei" plan. This was one of the worst aspects of the whole show. A women who has basically lost everything and wasn't even portrayed as someone who wanted the throne for herself...and a depressed alkoholic on top of that, would give two fucking cents about her biggest enemy showing her one scary creature.
The tier 1 chars are basically a shit-show.
Tyrion, Davos, Varys...they are only there for the fans. They have done nothing and it will be impossible to twist their arc into something meaningful.
My boy Bronn...lawd, don't let me even start: I would take his ep.4 stuff as a reminder that he's not Han Solo just a clever opportunist, fine. Now who's idea was it to put him in the council then? This is painfully bad.
So for me Cersei up to this point is the only character on this show with consistency and a remotely believable arc.
But I still can't wrap my head around the "let's show a single zombie to Cercei" plan. This was one of the worst aspects of the whole show. A women who has basically lost everything and wasn't even portrayed as someone who wanted the throne for herself...and a depressed alkoholic on top of that, would give two fucking cents about her biggest enemy showing her one scary creature.
I'd also say that if they really weren't bullshitting about filming multiple endings to throw people off, the easiest way to do that would be to find one scene that could easily be reworked multiple times, which a big Council of the Seven Kingdom scenes would work for. The leaders of the kingdoms are all in one spot, and then film one scene trying Tyrion, another electing Bran, and maybe others that didn't leak. Different crew see different versions, and probably even the actors, other than the ones who have to film epilogue material, don't know which of the scenes they just shot is the real one.
I'm really entirely positive Jon is stabbing Dany
The last episode confirmed it, she is obviously going to go nuts after Missandei. And Varys is already switching sides, the rumors about him betraying her and getting executed seem true as well.
The most interesting foreshadowing from last episode was someone asking Bran about being Lord of Winterfell and he said "I don't want it" and then in a later scene between Varys and Tyrion, Varys says "maybe the best person for the throne is someone who doesn't want it". Like I'm starting to believe Bran is on the throne too.
The last episode confirmed it, she is obviously going to go nuts after Missandei. And Varys is already switching sides, the rumors about him betraying her and getting executed seem true as well.
The most interesting foreshadowing from last episode was someone asking Bran about being Lord of Winterfell and he said "I don't want it" and then in a later scene between Varys and Tyrion, Varys says "maybe the best person for the throne is someone who doesn't want it". Like I'm starting to believe Bran is on the throne too.
They were clearly talking about Jon there
No room for misinterpretation there
Actually the golden company hasn't done shit either this season after the bogus leaks of them attacking Winterfell in episode 3. Are they just fodder for the next episode? Assuming they are present as the 2 new characters in Frikis leak. Do they change sides when it becomes apparent that they're outmatched?
Duh
But it's still foreshadowing because earlier in the episode you have a character literally talking about not wanting a position of power
Just to give Cersei a chance
Imagine if gc wasn't there and dany didn't fall into like 3 traps
They couldn't just use more Lannister troop fodder? Why even include them in the show.
I've been trying to formulate my final thoughts since I'm going to try to take a break from this thread for a while. I'll probably edit and repost this in the OT in two weeks when the finale airs.
I guess I finally know what TLJ detractors feel. I still think their disappointment with Luke's character arc stems from a fundamental misunderstanding of the nature of the Jedi and the Force, but I don't blame them for their misunderstanding. Decades of Star Wars media have provided a very muddled interpretation of the meaning of the Force, so I can see why they would be very confused and betrayed by a more spiritual and pacifist ending to Luke's character rather than something cool and badass. They thought they understood the character and his story and were instead left empty and unsatisfied.
But...at least he got an ending. At least he dies a hero.
When I think about Game of Thrones now, I just get this crushing sense of disappointment and emptiness. I've read the books three times, I've rewatched the show four times. I've spent hundreds of hours discussing and debating and theorizing. I loved this franchise and I evangelized it to everyone I knew. Even when the writing went off the rails in season 5, I still got immense enjoyment from the series. I would defend the series as a whole as being better than its individual parts. You can even find my posts, as recently as mid-April, defending the show as an entertaining spectacle unlike anything on TV. Now I look back on it all and just feel empty, like it was all a massive waste of my time.
Game of Thrones and ASOIAF were always a story with three major moving parts. There's the political war for the Iron Throne, starring Tyrion Lannister and a variety of others, in which dozens of houses wage war, make alliances, and stab each other in the back, to see who can accumulate the ultimate power. There's the mysteries of the north, starring Jon Snow, who is lost and feels without a destiny until he joins the Night's Watch and finds brotherhood and a new purpose: fighting a deadly enemy that knows no allegiance to any house and seeks only to destroy everything. And then, across the sea, is a third storyline segregated from the others. For five books (and counting) and six seasons, we follow the almost completely unrelated story of Daenerys Targaryen.
Dany is a teenage girl who was born amidst the collapse of her house and her family. As an infant, she gets shipped off to a foreign country with her brother. She grows up hearing stories of the life she could have had and the country her brother wants to rule. She just wants a family and a house with a red door. Viserys, who exhibits sadistic and perverse tendencies, tells her that one day he will marry her. She will never have a life of her own. Then he changes his mind and sells her off to a savage warlord instead, to be raped and used as property. This would be the end of her story. But it's not the end. She's stronger than Drogo, and bends him to her will. She makes him care for her as his equal. When Viserys oversteps his bounds and threatens her unborn child, she gets Drogo to kill him. Finally, she's taken control of her story. Dany starts to form her own identity: she is someone who wants to make the world better for the downtrodden, and to take the Iron Throne in the process. She tries to change the Dothraki and end their cruelty towards women. When Drogo is injured, she becomes desperate and enlists a witch to save him. Drogo is left in a coma and her unborn baby is dead.
She thought she could have a better life and now everything she loved was taken from her. Dejected, she steps into a pyre with her dragon eggs to die. But she doesn't die. She comes out, unburnt, with three dragons. They're the only children she'll ever know. She takes control of Drogo's khalasar and they set out to fulfill her mission. When she learns of the slavery in Astapor, Yunkai, and Meereen, she doesn't stand idly by and let these socially acceptable injustices continue to go unchallenged. Even as everyone around her tells her that's just how the world is, khaleesi, she refuses to accept it. She doesn't accept the world as it is. She wants to make it better. She frees the slaves and conquers their cities. In Meereen, where she finally has the army and the strength to sail to Westeros, she decides against it. Instead, she decides to remain in Meereen so she can learn how to rule. Winning was easy, young lady, governing's harder. She doesn't always succeed at what she tries to do. She tries things and sometimes they fail. Sometimes she does things that others call cruel, like executing the slave masters. But everything she does is guided by a sense of justice for those who can't fight for themselves. She's been told that her father went mad, and that she might too. She is ever-conscious of this. But she doesn't have to be like her father. She can be kind and strong instead of wicked and weak.
Eventually, after six years, she goes to Westeros to take back the Iron Throne and hopefully change it just a bit. Maybe she can make it just a little better. But thanks to the advice of the wise Tyrion and Varys -- and a little help from some of the worst and most contrived writing in TV history -- everything goes wrong. Her fleet is devastated, huge portions of her armies and her alliances are destroyed, and Jon Snow shows up with a wild story about walking dead men and the fate of the world. Dany could just ignore him. She could go to the Red Keep and wipe Cersei off the face of the planet. But she doesn't, because she trusts Jon, and she eventually loves him. Because what she really wants is the family she never had and a house with a red door. So she goes north to help him and loses one of her dragons, her baby, to a magic plot device so that the White Walkers can get through the Wall. Then she arrives in a Winterfell that doesn't accept her and treats her like vermin. But they're part of her kingdom, even if they don't want to be, and the more important war for the fate of all life is upon them, so she sets that aside and helps fight the dead. Dany loses a huge chunk of her army and is nearly killed. While Tyrion and Sansa are cowering in the crypts, Dany fights the dead herself, even picking up a sword and fighting them head-on when all hope seems lost. But when the battle is won, nobody thanks her. Nobody appreciates her help. She learns that Jon is apparently the real heir to the throne, although he can't prove it, and that his ungrateful sisters are trying to undermine her even after she risked everything for them.
This is where the story of Daenerys Targaryen ends, because the character that appears in the final three episodes is not her. She is a character who is warped and twisted into some hateful, psychotic, evil mass murderer because of a few betrayals, a few deaths, and some obscenely bad writing and plotholes so big they'd cause the entire planet to collapse on itself. And after everything she's been through, everything she's fought, everything she's beaten, and everyone she's inspired, it all ends in complete chaos and destruction and death. There was no point to any of it. She's dead, and she dies a terrible villain. No throne. No acceptance. No friends. No dragons. No love. No house with a red door. No family. Apparently, if you are ambitious and seek to change the world, you are a fool -- worse, a psychopath and a monster, one who deserves to have everything stripped away from you before your untimely death.
I don't know to what extent this story resembles the one that is yet to be told in the books, or may never be told. Frankly, I no longer care. I invested years of my life into this character and this story and this franchise -- as did millions of others -- and this was our reward. To be told that the person we admired, appreciated, and loved wasn't a hero or a liberator or even a good person, but an evil, violent, witch that has to be put down like a rabid dog. Apparently my understanding of the five books I read and 69 episodes I watched up to that point was wrong, as was the understanding of many others. We, apparently, completely and utterly misread the text and the character. We were fools, and we got played like fools.
I just feel empty thinking back on all of it. I feel like an idiot for caring and investing myself into this story and this character. I feel like it was all a massive waste of time and emotion.
I'll end it this way: this is not how I choose to remember this series, or this character. I choose to remember her as someone who was kind, who helped others, who looked out for the downtrodden. I choose to remember her as a liberator, just ruler, and protector of women and children. I choose to remember her as the scared young girl who bloomed into a strong and powerful woman. Most of all, I choose to remember her as Daenerys Stormborn of House Targaryen, Queen of the Andals and the Rhoynar and the First Men, Lady of the Seven Kingdoms and Protector of the Realm, Queen of Meereen, Khaleesi of the Great Grass Sea, the Unburnt, Breaker of Chains, and Mother of Dragons.
Thank you for the memories.
I guess I finally know what TLJ detractors feel. I still think their disappointment with Luke's character arc stems from a fundamental misunderstanding of the nature of the Jedi and the Force, but I don't blame them for their misunderstanding. Decades of Star Wars media have provided a very muddled interpretation of the meaning of the Force, so I can see why they would be very confused and betrayed by a more spiritual and pacifist ending to Luke's character rather than something cool and badass. They thought they understood the character and his story and were instead left empty and unsatisfied.
But...at least he got an ending. At least he dies a hero.
When I think about Game of Thrones now, I just get this crushing sense of disappointment and emptiness. I've read the books three times, I've rewatched the show four times. I've spent hundreds of hours discussing and debating and theorizing. I loved this franchise and I evangelized it to everyone I knew. Even when the writing went off the rails in season 5, I still got immense enjoyment from the series. I would defend the series as a whole as being better than its individual parts. You can even find my posts, as recently as mid-April, defending the show as an entertaining spectacle unlike anything on TV. Now I look back on it all and just feel empty, like it was all a massive waste of my time.
Game of Thrones and ASOIAF were always a story with three major moving parts. There's the political war for the Iron Throne, starring Tyrion Lannister and a variety of others, in which dozens of houses wage war, make alliances, and stab each other in the back, to see who can accumulate the ultimate power. There's the mysteries of the north, starring Jon Snow, who is lost and feels without a destiny until he joins the Night's Watch and finds brotherhood and a new purpose: fighting a deadly enemy that knows no allegiance to any house and seeks only to destroy everything. And then, across the sea, is a third storyline segregated from the others. For five books (and counting) and six seasons, we follow the almost completely unrelated story of Daenerys Targaryen.
Dany is a teenage girl who was born amidst the collapse of her house and her family. As an infant, she gets shipped off to a foreign country with her brother. She grows up hearing stories of the life she could have had and the country her brother wants to rule. She just wants a family and a house with a red door. Viserys, who exhibits sadistic and perverse tendencies, tells her that one day he will marry her. She will never have a life of her own. Then he changes his mind and sells her off to a savage warlord instead, to be raped and used as property. This would be the end of her story. But it's not the end. She's stronger than Drogo, and bends him to her will. She makes him care for her as his equal. When Viserys oversteps his bounds and threatens her unborn child, she gets Drogo to kill him. Finally, she's taken control of her story. Dany starts to form her own identity: she is someone who wants to make the world better for the downtrodden, and to take the Iron Throne in the process. She tries to change the Dothraki and end their cruelty towards women. When Drogo is injured, she becomes desperate and enlists a witch to save him. Drogo is left in a coma and her unborn baby is dead.
She thought she could have a better life and now everything she loved was taken from her. Dejected, she steps into a pyre with her dragon eggs to die. But she doesn't die. She comes out, unburnt, with three dragons. They're the only children she'll ever know. She takes control of Drogo's khalasar and they set out to fulfill her mission. When she learns of the slavery in Astapor, Yunkai, and Meereen, she doesn't stand idly by and let these socially acceptable injustices continue to go unchallenged. Even as everyone around her tells her that's just how the world is, khaleesi, she refuses to accept it. She doesn't accept the world as it is. She wants to make it better. She frees the slaves and conquers their cities. In Meereen, where she finally has the army and the strength to sail to Westeros, she decides against it. Instead, she decides to remain in Meereen so she can learn how to rule. Winning was easy, young lady, governing's harder. She doesn't always succeed at what she tries to do. She tries things and sometimes they fail. Sometimes she does things that others call cruel, like executing the slave masters. But everything she does is guided by a sense of justice for those who can't fight for themselves. She's been told that her father went mad, and that she might too. She is ever-conscious of this. But she doesn't have to be like her father. She can be kind and strong instead of wicked and weak.
Eventually, after six years, she goes to Westeros to take back the Iron Throne and hopefully change it just a bit. Maybe she can make it just a little better. But thanks to the advice of the wise Tyrion and Varys -- and a little help from some of the worst and most contrived writing in TV history -- everything goes wrong. Her fleet is devastated, huge portions of her armies and her alliances are destroyed, and Jon Snow shows up with a wild story about walking dead men and the fate of the world. Dany could just ignore him. She could go to the Red Keep and wipe Cersei off the face of the planet. But she doesn't, because she trusts Jon, and she eventually loves him. Because what she really wants is the family she never had and a house with a red door. So she goes north to help him and loses one of her dragons, her baby, to a magic plot device so that the White Walkers can get through the Wall. Then she arrives in a Winterfell that doesn't accept her and treats her like vermin. But they're part of her kingdom, even if they don't want to be, and the more important war for the fate of all life is upon them, so she sets that aside and helps fight the dead. Dany loses a huge chunk of her army and is nearly killed. While Tyrion and Sansa are cowering in the crypts, Dany fights the dead herself, even picking up a sword and fighting them head-on when all hope seems lost. But when the battle is won, nobody thanks her. Nobody appreciates her help. She learns that Jon is apparently the real heir to the throne, although he can't prove it, and that his ungrateful sisters are trying to undermine her even after she risked everything for them.
This is where the story of Daenerys Targaryen ends, because the character that appears in the final three episodes is not her. She is a character who is warped and twisted into some hateful, psychotic, evil mass murderer because of a few betrayals, a few deaths, and some obscenely bad writing and plotholes so big they'd cause the entire planet to collapse on itself. And after everything she's been through, everything she's fought, everything she's beaten, and everyone she's inspired, it all ends in complete chaos and destruction and death. There was no point to any of it. She's dead, and she dies a terrible villain. No throne. No acceptance. No friends. No dragons. No love. No house with a red door. No family. Apparently, if you are ambitious and seek to change the world, you are a fool -- worse, a psychopath and a monster, one who deserves to have everything stripped away from you before your untimely death.
I don't know to what extent this story resembles the one that is yet to be told in the books, or may never be told. Frankly, I no longer care. I invested years of my life into this character and this story and this franchise -- as did millions of others -- and this was our reward. To be told that the person we admired, appreciated, and loved wasn't a hero or a liberator or even a good person, but an evil, violent, witch that has to be put down like a rabid dog. Apparently my understanding of the five books I read and 69 episodes I watched up to that point was wrong, as was the understanding of many others. We, apparently, completely and utterly misread the text and the character. We were fools, and we got played like fools.
I just feel empty thinking back on all of it. I feel like an idiot for caring and investing myself into this story and this character. I feel like it was all a massive waste of time and emotion.
I'll end it this way: this is not how I choose to remember this series, or this character. I choose to remember her as someone who was kind, who helped others, who looked out for the downtrodden. I choose to remember her as a liberator, just ruler, and protector of women and children. I choose to remember her as the scared young girl who bloomed into a strong and powerful woman. Most of all, I choose to remember her as Daenerys Stormborn of House Targaryen, Queen of the Andals and the Rhoynar and the First Men, Lady of the Seven Kingdoms and Protector of the Realm, Queen of Meereen, Khaleesi of the Great Grass Sea, the Unburnt, Breaker of Chains, and Mother of Dragons.
Thank you for the memories.
Who would thought to combat dragons was a ballista so much for Dragons, Unsullied and Dohraki being a ridiculously over powered army every character shat themselves talking about how dangerous Dany having these was
I'm sorry, but if you haven't been getting the hints throughout the show that Dany's narcissism and underlying god complex would lead to trouble the minute she started getting real resistance after coming to Westeros and attempting to do military combat neither she nor either of the armies she brought with her have experience with, then I don't know what to tell you.
I always got the impression there was a seething psychopath under there the minute she stepped out of the fire.
I always got the impression there was a seething psychopath under there the minute she stepped out of the fire.
Those "hints" only came when the show was clearly rushing it's way through that story arc. Culminating with this tragic season.
More than most of her frustration is warranted, her advisors fucked her every decision they made, why would she listen to them now? She's not doing anything irrational.
The story of Daenerys Targaryen is quite the tragedy when you put it that way. But I actually love her arc in S8, I'll write about it when the season is over, but it works in a lot of ways. I just wish they had more eps to organically develop her downfall.I've been trying to formulate my final thoughts since I'm going to try to take a break from this thread for a while. I'll probably edit and repost this in the OT in two weeks when the finale airs.
I guess I finally know what TLJ detractors feel. I still think their disappointment with Luke's character arc stems from a fundamental misunderstanding of the nature of the Jedi and the Force, but I don't blame them for their misunderstanding. Decades of Star Wars media have provided a very muddled interpretation of the meaning of the Force, so I can see why they would be very confused and betrayed by a more spiritual and pacifist ending to Luke's character rather than something cool and badass. They thought they understood the character and his story and were instead left empty and unsatisfied.
But...at least he got an ending. At least he dies a hero.
When I think about Game of Thrones now, I just get this crushing sense of disappointment and emptiness. I've read the books three times, I've rewatched the show four times. I've spent hundreds of hours discussing and debating and theorizing. I loved this franchise and I evangelized it to everyone I knew. Even when the writing went off the rails in season 5, I still got immense enjoyment from the series. I would defend the series as a whole as being better than its individual parts. You can even find my posts, as recently as mid-April, defending the show as an entertaining spectacle unlike anything on TV. Now I look back on it all and just feel empty, like it was all a massive waste of my time.
Game of Thrones and ASOIAF were always a story with three major moving parts. There's the political war for the Iron Throne, starring Tyrion Lannister and a variety of others, in which dozens of houses wage war, make alliances, and stab each other in the back, to see who can accumulate the ultimate power. There's the mysteries of the north, starring Jon Snow, who is lost and feels without a destiny until he joins the Night's Watch and finds brotherhood and a new purpose: fighting a deadly enemy that knows no allegiance to any house and seeks only to destroy everything. And then, across the sea, is a third storyline segregated from the others. For five books (and counting) and six seasons, we follow the almost completely unrelated story of Daenerys Targaryen.
Dany is a teenage girl who was born amidst the collapse of her house and her family. As an infant, she gets shipped off to a foreign country with her brother. She grows up hearing stories of the life she could have had and the country her brother wants to rule. She just wants a family and a house with a red door. Viserys, who exhibits sadistic and perverse tendencies, tells her that one day he will marry her. She will never have a life of her own. Then he changes his mind and sells her off to a savage warlord instead, to be raped and used as property. This would be the end of her story. But it's not the end. She's stronger than Drogo, and bends him to her will. She makes him care for her as his equal. When Viserys oversteps his bounds and threatens her unborn child, she gets Drogo to kill him. Finally, she's taken control of her story. Dany starts to form her own identity: she is someone who wants to make the world better for the downtrodden, and to take the Iron Throne in the process. She tries to change the Dothraki and end their cruelty towards women. When Drogo is injured, she becomes desperate and enlists a witch to save him. Drogo is left in a coma and her unborn baby is dead.
She thought she could have a better life and now everything she loved was taken from her. Dejected, she steps into a pyre with her dragon eggs to die. But she doesn't die. She comes out, unburnt, with three dragons. They're the only children she'll ever know. She takes control of Drogo's khalasar and they set out to fulfill her mission. When she learns of the slavery in Astapor, Yunkai, and Meereen, she doesn't stand idly by and let these socially acceptable injustices continue to go unchallenged. Even as everyone around her tells her that's just how the world is, khaleesi, she refuses to accept it. She doesn't accept the world as it is. She wants to make it better. She frees the slaves and conquers their cities. In Meereen, where she finally has the army and the strength to sail to Westeros, she decides against it. Instead, she decides to remain in Meereen so she can learn how to rule. Winning was easy, young lady, governing's harder. She doesn't always succeed at what she tries to do. She tries things and sometimes they fail. Sometimes she does things that others call cruel, like executing the slave masters. But everything she does is guided by a sense of justice for those who can't fight for themselves. She's been told that her father went mad, and that she might too. She is ever-conscious of this. But she doesn't have to be like her father. She can be kind and strong instead of wicked and weak.
Eventually, after six years, she goes to Westeros to take back the Iron Throne and hopefully change it just a bit. Maybe she can make it just a little better. But thanks to the advice of the wise Tyrion and Varys -- and a little help from some of the worst and most contrived writing in TV history -- everything goes wrong. Her fleet is devastated, huge portions of her armies and her alliances are destroyed, and Jon Snow shows up with a wild story about walking dead men and the fate of the world. Dany could just ignore him. She could go to the Red Keep and wipe Cersei off the face of the planet. But she doesn't, because she trusts Jon, and she eventually loves him. Because what she really wants is the family she never had and a house with a red door. So she goes north to help him and loses one of her dragons, her baby, to a magic plot device so that the White Walkers can get through the Wall. Then she arrives in a Winterfell that doesn't accept her and treats her like vermin. But they're part of her kingdom, even if they don't want to be, and the more important war for the fate of all life is upon them, so she sets that aside and helps fight the dead. Dany loses a huge chunk of her army and is nearly killed. While Tyrion and Sansa are cowering in the crypts, Dany fights the dead herself, even picking up a sword and fighting them head-on when all hope seems lost. But when the battle is won, nobody thanks her. Nobody appreciates her help. She learns that Jon is apparently the real heir to the throne, although he can't prove it, and that his ungrateful sisters are trying to undermine her even after she risked everything for them.
This is where the story of Daenerys Targaryen ends, because the character that appears in the final three episodes is not her. She is a character who is warped and twisted into some hateful, psychotic, evil mass murderer because of a few betrayals, a few deaths, and some obscenely bad writing and plotholes so big they'd cause the entire planet to collapse on itself. And after everything she's been through, everything she's fought, everything she's beaten, and everyone she's inspired, it all ends in complete chaos and destruction and death. There was no point to any of it. She's dead, and she dies a terrible villain. No throne. No acceptance. No friends. No dragons. No love. No house with a red door. No family. Apparently, if you are ambitious and seek to change the world, you are a fool -- worse, a psychopath and a monster, one who deserves to have everything stripped away from you before your untimely death.
I don't know to what extent this story resembles the one that is yet to be told in the books, or may never be told. Frankly, I no longer care. I invested years of my life into this character and this story and this franchise -- as did millions of others -- and this was our reward. To be told that the person we admired, appreciated, and loved wasn't a hero or a liberator or even a good person, but an evil, violent, witch that has to be put down like a rabid dog. Apparently my understanding of the five books I read and 69 episodes I watched up to that point was wrong, as was the understanding of many others. We, apparently, completely and utterly misread the text and the character. We were fools, and we got played like fools.
I just feel empty thinking back on all of it. I feel like an idiot for caring and investing myself into this story and this character. I feel like it was all a massive waste of time and emotion.
I'll end it this way: this is not how I choose to remember this series, or this character. I choose to remember her as someone who was kind, who helped others, who looked out for the downtrodden. I choose to remember her as a liberator, just ruler, and protector of women and children. I choose to remember her as the scared young girl who bloomed into a strong and powerful woman. Most of all, I choose to remember her as Daenerys Stormborn of House Targaryen, Queen of the Andals and the Rhoynar and the First Men, Lady of the Seven Kingdoms and Protector of the Realm, Queen of Meereen, Khaleesi of the Great Grass Sea, the Unburnt, Breaker of Chains, and Mother of Dragons.
Thank you for the memories.
So many titles Daenerys have.
Being honest, I have never liked Daenerys, neither book or tv version. Well, not true; perhaps a liked her a little in the first season/book. I may have misinterpreted it, but for me, she believes she deserves the Iron Throne just because she is a Targaryen. And that anyone must bow to her and kiss her hand because of that. That obsession of hers with the Iron Throne is getting worse and worse.
Being honest, I have never liked Daenerys, neither book or tv version. Well, not true; perhaps a liked her a little in the first season/book. I may have misinterpreted it, but for me, she believes she deserves the Iron Throne just because she is a Targaryen. And that anyone must bow to her and kiss her hand because of that. That obsession of hers with the Iron Throne is getting worse and worse.
We have no way of knowing. Speculating is pointless, were ages from ADoS releasing.
We spent six seasons with Dany in Essos with her drive, narcissim, and god complex on full display the entire time. I don't see how any of that was rushing through the story arc.
The ugly truth requires external knowledge of the books and grrm intent
like I can make assumptions it will be good in the books as I think it's pretty easy were Faegon
I've been trying to formulate my final thoughts since I'm going to try to take a break from this thread for a while. I'll probably edit and repost this in the OT in two weeks when the finale airs.
I guess I finally know what TLJ detractors feel. I still think their disappointment with Luke's character arc stems from a fundamental misunderstanding of the nature of the Jedi and the Force, but I don't blame them for their misunderstanding. Decades of Star Wars media have provided a very muddled interpretation of the meaning of the Force, so I can see why they would be very confused and betrayed by a more spiritual and pacifist ending to Luke's character rather than something cool and badass. They thought they understood the character and his story and were instead left empty and unsatisfied.
But...at least he got an ending. At least he dies a hero.
When I think about Game of Thrones now, I just get this crushing sense of disappointment and emptiness. I've read the books three times, I've rewatched the show four times. I've spent hundreds of hours discussing and debating and theorizing. I loved this franchise and I evangelized it to everyone I knew. Even when the writing went off the rails in season 5, I still got immense enjoyment from the series. I would defend the series as a whole as being better than its individual parts. You can even find my posts, as recently as mid-April, defending the show as an entertaining spectacle unlike anything on TV. Now I look back on it all and just feel empty, like it was all a massive waste of my time.
Game of Thrones and ASOIAF were always a story with three major moving parts. There's the political war for the Iron Throne, starring Tyrion Lannister and a variety of others, in which dozens of houses wage war, make alliances, and stab each other in the back, to see who can accumulate the ultimate power. There's the mysteries of the north, starring Jon Snow, who is lost and feels without a destiny until he joins the Night's Watch and finds brotherhood and a new purpose: fighting a deadly enemy that knows no allegiance to any house and seeks only to destroy everything. And then, across the sea, is a third storyline segregated from the others. For five books (and counting) and six seasons, we follow the almost completely unrelated story of Daenerys Targaryen.
Dany is a teenage girl who was born amidst the collapse of her house and her family. As an infant, she gets shipped off to a foreign country with her brother. She grows up hearing stories of the life she could have had and the country her brother wants to rule. She just wants a family and a house with a red door. Viserys, who exhibits sadistic and perverse tendencies, tells her that one day he will marry her. She will never have a life of her own. Then he changes his mind and sells her off to a savage warlord instead, to be raped and used as property. This would be the end of her story. But it's not the end. She's stronger than Drogo, and bends him to her will. She makes him care for her as his equal. When Viserys oversteps his bounds and threatens her unborn child, she gets Drogo to kill him. Finally, she's taken control of her story. Dany starts to form her own identity: she is someone who wants to make the world better for the downtrodden, and to take the Iron Throne in the process. She tries to change the Dothraki and end their cruelty towards women. When Drogo is injured, she becomes desperate and enlists a witch to save him. Drogo is left in a coma and her unborn baby is dead.
She thought she could have a better life and now everything she loved was taken from her. Dejected, she steps into a pyre with her dragon eggs to die. But she doesn't die. She comes out, unburnt, with three dragons. They're the only children she'll ever know. She takes control of Drogo's khalasar and they set out to fulfill her mission. When she learns of the slavery in Astapor, Yunkai, and Meereen, she doesn't stand idly by and let these socially acceptable injustices continue to go unchallenged. Even as everyone around her tells her that's just how the world is, khaleesi, she refuses to accept it. She doesn't accept the world as it is. She wants to make it better. She frees the slaves and conquers their cities. In Meereen, where she finally has the army and the strength to sail to Westeros, she decides against it. Instead, she decides to remain in Meereen so she can learn how to rule. Winning was easy, young lady, governing's harder. She doesn't always succeed at what she tries to do. She tries things and sometimes they fail. Sometimes she does things that others call cruel, like executing the slave masters. But everything she does is guided by a sense of justice for those who can't fight for themselves. She's been told that her father went mad, and that she might too. She is ever-conscious of this. But she doesn't have to be like her father. She can be kind and strong instead of wicked and weak.
Eventually, after six years, she goes to Westeros to take back the Iron Throne and hopefully change it just a bit. Maybe she can make it just a little better. But thanks to the advice of the wise Tyrion and Varys -- and a little help from some of the worst and most contrived writing in TV history -- everything goes wrong. Her fleet is devastated, huge portions of her armies and her alliances are destroyed, and Jon Snow shows up with a wild story about walking dead men and the fate of the world. Dany could just ignore him. She could go to the Red Keep and wipe Cersei off the face of the planet. But she doesn't, because she trusts Jon, and she eventually loves him. Because what she really wants is the family she never had and a house with a red door. So she goes north to help him and loses one of her dragons, her baby, to a magic plot device so that the White Walkers can get through the Wall. Then she arrives in a Winterfell that doesn't accept her and treats her like vermin. But they're part of her kingdom, even if they don't want to be, and the more important war for the fate of all life is upon them, so she sets that aside and helps fight the dead. Dany loses a huge chunk of her army and is nearly killed. While Tyrion and Sansa are cowering in the crypts, Dany fights the dead herself, even picking up a sword and fighting them head-on when all hope seems lost. But when the battle is won, nobody thanks her. Nobody appreciates her help. She learns that Jon is apparently the real heir to the throne, although he can't prove it, and that his ungrateful sisters are trying to undermine her even after she risked everything for them.
This is where the story of Daenerys Targaryen ends, because the character that appears in the final three episodes is not her. She is a character who is warped and twisted into some hateful, psychotic, evil mass murderer because of a few betrayals, a few deaths, and some obscenely bad writing and plotholes so big they'd cause the entire planet to collapse on itself. And after everything she's been through, everything she's fought, everything she's beaten, and everyone she's inspired, it all ends in complete chaos and destruction and death. There was no point to any of it. She's dead, and she dies a terrible villain. No throne. No acceptance. No friends. No dragons. No love. No house with a red door. No family. Apparently, if you are ambitious and seek to change the world, you are a fool -- worse, a psychopath and a monster, one who deserves to have everything stripped away from you before your untimely death.
I don't know to what extent this story resembles the one that is yet to be told in the books, or may never be told. Frankly, I no longer care. I invested years of my life into this character and this story and this franchise -- as did millions of others -- and this was our reward. To be told that the person we admired, appreciated, and loved wasn't a hero or a liberator or even a good person, but an evil, violent, witch that has to be put down like a rabid dog. Apparently my understanding of the five books I read and 69 episodes I watched up to that point was wrong, as was the understanding of many others. We, apparently, completely and utterly misread the text and the character. We were fools, and we got played like fools.
I just feel empty thinking back on all of it. I feel like an idiot for caring and investing myself into this story and this character. I feel like it was all a massive waste of time and emotion.
I'll end it this way: this is not how I choose to remember this series, or this character. I choose to remember her as someone who was kind, who helped others, who looked out for the downtrodden. I choose to remember her as a liberator, just ruler, and protector of women and children. I choose to remember her as the scared young girl who bloomed into a strong and powerful woman. Most of all, I choose to remember her as Daenerys Stormborn of House Targaryen, Queen of the Andals and the Rhoynar and the First Men, Lady of the Seven Kingdoms and Protector of the Realm, Queen of Meereen, Khaleesi of the Great Grass Sea, the Unburnt, Breaker of Chains, and Mother of Dragons.
Thank you for the memories.
Well said. It disgusts me that Daenerys and Missandei have turned into the ultimate victims of the misogynistic writers. (Sansa and even Brienne, too.)
This season could scarcely be worse if it tried. One of the reasons I'm hopeful for the prequel is that it has a female showrunner, which is a major step up from Game of Thrones employing almost no female writers/directors.
The huge amount of titles she holds that her fans love to list out are a giant neon sign saying "THIS PERSON IS A NARCISSIST".
As much you insist on it, it's absolutely not true. Sending Jaime to Dorne was dumb as fuck and totally derailed his character arc, having Sansa be raped by Ramsey was totally unnecessary and was just used for shock value and to 'toughen her up' (eugh), it also ruined littlefinger, ruining Stannis by changing the nature of his character was stupid as his screentime amounted to filler and diluted his arc, killing Barristan how they did was lame, the entire thing with Locke being send beyond the wall to kill Jon Snow was pointless filler. The entirety of Dorne is laughably bad compared to the books, EURON IS THE WORST CHARACTER EVER IN A HBO SHOW! His writing didn't get clunkier as he went on, the writing in the last two books is better than the earlier ones, it is the editing that was bad. He IS a brilliant writer (and who said he was beyond reproach? Don't create a straw man to argue against). Most of the major changes have been structurally damaging to major character arcs ( Jaime, Tyrion Varys, Dany without FAegon is less interesting too) or embarrassing like Euron and Karl Tanner. The show was good because of the books not in spite of them.
This isn't true at all. My only experience with ASOIAF is the HBO series, which I just marathoned over the month before S8 started. It's pretty blatant throughout.
I'm not saying it excuses the rush job here at the end to push her to the final endgame of her personality, or that it wouldn't be more elegantly done in the novels with more plausible and less "bad advisor" circumstances, but it seems all of these kinds of series (mainly on TV and movies) suffer from this kind of thing when they try to cram things in at the end.
I think my biggest thing with Dany, both past and present, is that while away from Westeros she always had an injustice to "solve". She always had something to point at and say, "This is bad for the people," and she was more often than not right.
But in Westeros, her whole campaign has been about entitlement. Varys said it during the clusterfuck that was the last episode, but the overwhelming majority of people don't care who sits on the throne. They get fucked over by the events of the show and book, but only because it's a game of nobility and entitlement. A political game who's only injustice is that the people playing the game don't care. Dany has no desire to see that end, she plays directly into the thing that's harming the common folk of Westeros. She isn't here to solve any injustice, she's here to take what's hers, because she grew up being fed the idea that it was hers.
But in Westeros, her whole campaign has been about entitlement. Varys said it during the clusterfuck that was the last episode, but the overwhelming majority of people don't care who sits on the throne. They get fucked over by the events of the show and book, but only because it's a game of nobility and entitlement. A political game who's only injustice is that the people playing the game don't care. Dany has no desire to see that end, she plays directly into the thing that's harming the common folk of Westeros. She isn't here to solve any injustice, she's here to take what's hers, because she grew up being fed the idea that it was hers.
Nah. Calling it a path of tyranny is a huge, huge stretch.
The show writers demanded a heel turn and we are getting one in fast forward right now that involves so much character assassination for so many folks.
Dany's the victim of poor planning and writing. Her in the books is far different and works much better as the mad queen, even so far away from the book ending (if ever).
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