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mind the walrus posted:Dany was unquestionably one of the cultural focal points for the #girlboss aesthetic of the 2010s and if you've ever had to actually deal with the strong-willed ladies who embrace that aesthetic as a cudgel, you know that they weren't thinking "Oh wow what a complex examination of this character's actions" they were whooping and cheering "Yas Queen slay!" and not giving the matter one spare neuron of thought, and the GoT team were extremely happy to recycle that musical note for years. In a way, this is one of the things that kind pisses me off the most about Dany's incomplete "heel turn". She may have been very one-note for those first six and a half seasons, but it didn't really matter because people truly did love that single note, and it was something entirely new to them - because she was such a strong symbol of female empowerment, at least in terms of the fantasy genre. There have been plenty of triumphantly cool and wicked female villains in the past - that's nothing new or original, and the "evil queen" is a pretty deeply embedded archetype. What made Dany unique and interesting (at least I thought so, anyway) was that she ends up being viewed as a strong and formidable "evil queen" from an outside perspective, but because we see her rise from nothing, creating and finding that strength from within her, we are extremely predisposed to view her in unambiguously sympathetic terms. In the male-dominated fantasy genre, this was pretty unusual until fairly recently. And the show absolutely played into this naturally, and it worked. But it doesn't work at all with the "heel turn" they manufactured for her. There was some essential character work that they simply skipped over, and then got really accusatory about afterwards, insisting that everyone had somehow been mistakenly viewing her as a cool badass that whole time she was killing people. That's such a deeply hosed up and weird take to have about your own show because it's just so wrong.
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Aug 8, 2021 18:43
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kaworu posted:But it doesn't work at all with the "heel turn" they manufactured for her. There was some essential character work that they simply skipped over, and then got really accusatory about afterwards, insisting that everyone had somehow been mistakenly viewing her as a cool badass that whole time she was killing people. That's such a deeply hosed up and weird take to have about your own show because it's just so wrong. Name a more iconic duo.
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Aug 8, 2021 19:07
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I honestly think it was pretty obvious where Dany was heading. She's the embodiment of "no, it's the children who are wrong". She is convinced that she's owed the throne and that everyone in Westeros will love her (even if people try to tell her that the Targaryen supporters are a minority). When she actually gets some power she's unable to use it. And, she burned a rape victim alive. But I also agree that the show hosed up the execution of that arc. Her character needed more time and better writing for the heel turn to work properly.
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Aug 8, 2021 19:15
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Oh yeah the outline is very obviously there, especially in the books, but the show refuses to hat tip.
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Aug 8, 2021 19:21
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Alhazred posted:I honestly think it was pretty obvious where Dany was heading. She's the embodiment of "no, it's the children who are wrong". She is convinced that she's owed the throne and that everyone in Westeros will love her (even if people try to tell her that the Targaryen supporters are a minority). When she actually gets some power she's unable to use it. And, she burned a rape victim alive. It would have worked if she just came to Westeros and started conquering. We cheered for her in unfamiliar Essos, let's see how we all feel when she does the same to familiar Westeros. It was done poorly in the show, but having her taking on Jaime and fighting with Jon was way more fun that Bond villain Cersei. Have the anti-dragon Scorpions* show their usefulness early on so that Cersei could make a case for rallying around her. I don't know. Just something instead of Cersei replacing Night King and then Dany replacing Cersei as the evil final boss. *God, that was a particularly dumb MacGuffin. All that hype about Dragonfire and Valyrian Steel and apparently a Roman siege weapon surpasses Metal Gear.
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Aug 8, 2021 19:28
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Coquito Ergo Sum posted:It would have worked if she just came to Westeros and started conquering. We cheered for her in unfamiliar Essos, let's see how we all feel when she does the same to familiar Westeros. You want to heel turn? Do the loving heel turn.
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Aug 8, 2021 19:34
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Ehh, I'm not sold. Tywin Lannister genocided two noble houses while still in his teens, crushed the knees of those who left their posts in a battle where his own grandson fled the walls, ordered children of 5 and under murdered and presented their corpses wrapped in his House flag, and is seen by everyone, as well as the narrative, as one of the most formidable, intelligent and crafty rulers of his time. Hoster Tully, whom we see only as a benign, dying father ever keen on protecting his wards and daughters, put a whole village to the torch just in case it didn't turn on the king along with him. Daenerys didn't burn Durr for being a rape victim; she burned her for betraying her trust when Dany put her status and safety on the line for her... in order to half-kill a man who was already dying? It was dumb, now that I think of it. But hardly psycho territory. I mean, since she can't wield a sword, he has to bank on her +4 save vs. fire. Yeah, she considered the throne was her birthright....like every other seated lord in the setting (except Aemon Targaryen). She also saw what trusting that to be enough did to her older, crazy, abusive brother. And heeded advice from her companions, often to her detriment. Heck, she wouldn't even kill her hostages while their families merrily butchered her 'children', something that 99% of the 7 Kingdom lords would. If GRRM wanted to establish her as any more keen on going Girlboss Hitler than any other player in Westeros, he failed flagrantly. And the show did even worse. At the end, she's a touch more relatable than the other bigshots because she starts from such a lower position, and thus holds a measure of empathy for others seen as low on the totem pole. But it's silly to nod when the other players advance by being ruthless/opportunistic and then say she's a tyrant in the making when she doesn't play by Steven Universe rules.
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Aug 8, 2021 19:45
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I understand where you're coming from and you're not wrong. Shocker of shocker the franchise infamous for careless use of sexual assault has a misogynistic undercurrent while thinking it's a lot more progressive than it is-- Brienne ultimately just wants good dick, Margaery uses sexy sex sex to get what she wants, Sansa and Arya turn into sociopaths to survive their trauma and reclaim agency, and Cersei doesn't really have an arc as much as get rolled across a flat plain throughout the series. Meanwhile Tyrion and Jamie get full-on "we're not as bad as we seem" arcs, Tywin is lionized (pun intended) as a set-up to a punchline about how ironically he's still just a man ("he did not in-fact poo poo gold"), and Ned/Jon/Robb are actively punished for trusting in the innate compassion/good faith of others. Dany is just another piece of that puzzle. And all we're saying is they could have done that particular piece more artfully as they intended, even if as part of the wider tapestry it's pretty 
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Aug 8, 2021 19:59
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Sephyr posted:Tywin Lannister genocided two noble houses while still in his teens, crushed the knees of those who left their posts in a battle where his own grandson fled the walls, ordered children of 5 and under murdered and presented their corpses wrapped in his House flag, and is seen by everyone, as well as the narrative, as one of the most formidable, intelligent and crafty rulers of his time. eh, imo the narrative falling head over heels for Tywin's supposed brilliance is more of a show thing, and in hindsight it was an early symptom of D&D not quite understanding the material they're working with. i never got the impression while reading the books that Tywin was anything but a monster - with a well-cultivated image of a smooth, emotionless political operator, sure, but still driven by spite and pettiness and cruelty to an unseemly extent. and with tyrion inadvertently and unconsciously following in his footsteps
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Aug 8, 2021 20:31
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We're used to poorly-written male characters getting away with what we deride as "Girl Boss" behavior, but those male characters are not scrutinized as much as female ones due to the fact that that singular type of male power fantasy character is more normative. When you're going to boast that you're creating strong female characters, you had best come with your A-game because those characters are going to be scrutinized beyond simple representation checklists. When bad writers try to create "strong" female characters, they tend to make their female characters suffer hardship and then reward them for surviving hardship, as opposed to earning their spoils and development through their own actions and initiative. I can really only think of Dany earning one thing through her actions, and that's earning Drogo's love by teaching her savage husband that cowgirl can be fun, too. Everything else is given to her because she merely survived trauma or tension, or was solved with Dragons, or was earned through the actions of a man who followed her. The show doesn't even really want her screw-ups to be caused by her, and passes the buck to her evil nemeses or even to Tyrion. I know I left a few holes in this idea, but I don't want to write an essay that nobody wants to read. Coquito Ergo Sum fucked around with this message at 17:46 on Sep 7, 2021 |
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Aug 8, 2021 20:41
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Because the end of the show was so ungodly bad people are already diving into the critical retrospective of all of its previously unnoticed flaws. That usually takes like a decade.
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Aug 8, 2021 21:45
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The books also go a long way toward paiting Tywin as the MVP of Westeros when the story starts. Everyone is scared shitless of him, the crown owes its pants to him, the court is stacked full of his relatives and agents. He literally went from sitting out the rebellion to having his daughter made Queen, his nephew squire to the same king, and his House's position as the strongest one secured. Then we see the man in the flesh and he is a flexible commander, delegates tasks and makes use even of people he finds unsavory (like Tyrion), takes the chance to make peace with the Tyrrells and flip the war, gets a distant house to treacherously butcher his enemies while he kept his hands clean. He was not a cackling monster like Joffrey of Gregor Clegane, but merciless and brutal when it came to settling matters of tending to what he saw as the reputation of the family. In the end, it wasn't even his cruelty and crimes that did him in, but his failure of judgement of those 'closest' to him. Tyrion's resentment, Cersei's narcissism, Jaime's hunger for something authentic. Coquito Ergo Sum posted:I can really only think of Dany earning one thing through her actions, and that's earning her Drogo's live by teaching her savage husband that cowgirl can be fun, too. Everything else is given to her because she merely survived trauma or tension, or was solved with Dragons, or was earned through the actions of a man who followed her. The show doesn't even really want her screw-ups to be caused by her, and passes the buck to her evil nemeses or even to Tyrion. I know I left a few holes in this idea, but I don't want to write an essay that nobody wants to read. Can't quite agree. She 'earned' her army by playing on the greed and hubris of the Wise Masters and freed their slaves under their noses. She won an important battle by playing mercenaries against each other and getting them drunk before a surprise raid. She saw the merits of a plan involving a small force to cause a slave uprising while doing a diversionary attack. If her going from genderlfipped Alexander the great to drooling indecisive moron is good writing or not can be discussed, but compared to John Snow, who literally had command fall into his lap because his best friend is good at 5th grade gossip, she's the soul of meritocracy. Almost no one in the series wins anything by 'their' actions alone, which is actually a point in its favor. That's not how things work. Robert 'won' his throne when Tywin betrayed the Targaryens and Ned was the next main force to reach the capital. Joffrey 'won' the battle of the Blackwater because his uncle planned a good defense and secured a powerful ally. Stannis 'won' his army for that fight thanks to his firemage spawning assassins to clear the path for him.
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Aug 8, 2021 22:25
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Shimrra Jamaane posted:Because the end of the show was so ungodly bad people are already diving into the critical retrospective of all of its previously unnoticed flaws. That usually takes like a decade. I'll say this much, BravestOfTheLamps was a loving rear end in a top hat lunatic stalker with probably several full on hate shrines to his online enemies scattered around his house, and he got run out of this thread for being a miserable unfunny dink, but he was loving spot on about every failing of the show and books alike. I regret never getting the chance to tell him he was right, and to tell him to gently caress off one last time.
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Aug 8, 2021 23:10
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nine-gear crow posted:I'll say this much, BravestOfTheLamps was a loving rear end in a top hat lunatic stalker with probably several full on hate shrines to his online enemies scattered around his house, and he got run out of this thread for being a miserable unfunny dink, but he was loving spot on about every failing of the show and books alike. I regret never getting the chance to tell him he was right, and to tell him to gently caress off one last time. Ok, that set off a real 2-minute laughing fit here. I'm afraid for my sanity. And got me curious to scan back and see what pearls of mad wisdom he threw to us swine and we blithely ignored.
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Aug 9, 2021 00:28
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Sephyr posted:Can't quite agree. She 'earned' her army by playing on the greed and hubris of the Wise Masters and freed their slaves under their noses. She won an important battle by playing mercenaries against each other and getting them drunk before a surprise raid. She saw the merits of a plan involving a small force to cause a slave uprising while doing a diversionary attack. If her going from genderlfipped Alexander the great to drooling indecisive moron is good writing or not can be discussed, but compared to John Snow, who literally had command fall into his lap because his best friend is good at 5th grade gossip, she's the soul of meritocracy. Yes, but even those people did some kind of work like fighting in battles and trying to form alliances. Dany basically just had followers who would say "you're beautiful" and then do things for her.
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Aug 9, 2021 00:33
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Sephyr posted:Ok, that set off a real 2-minute laughing fit here. I'm afraid for my sanity. It’s not gonna be any Socrates level poo poo, don’t get your hopes up.
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Aug 9, 2021 02:35
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Coquito Ergo Sum posted:Yes, but even those people did some kind of work like fighting in battles and trying to form alliances. Dany basically just had followers who would say "you're beautiful" and then do things for her.
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Aug 9, 2021 02:45
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nine-gear crow posted:I regret never getting the chance to tell him he was right, and to tell him to gently caress off one last time. Do people really leave when they get perma'd? I thought you just dropped another $10 to re-roll, or logged into one of your parachute accounts. He seems like kind to have parachute accounts, know what I mean? Anyway, the only point he seemed to make over and over was that GRRM was a poo poo writer & the books are poo poo books. And blah blah blah world building blah blah blah cargo cult. I did read his analysis of some scrooge mcduck comics that was pretty intense, so maybe he was bringing the heat on other boards, but I never thought it brought much to the ASOIAF discussions. YMMV I guess.
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Aug 9, 2021 12:03
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TERFherder posted:Do people really leave when they get perma'd? I thought you just dropped another $10 to re-roll, or logged into one of your parachute accounts. He seems like kind to have parachute accounts, know what I mean? His major criticism of ASOIAF was in this other thread - https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3833655&pagenumber=12#post481623887
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Aug 9, 2021 12:22
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TERFherder posted:Do people really leave when they get perma'd? I thought you just dropped another $10 to re-roll, or logged into one of your parachute accounts. He seems like kind to have parachute accounts, know what I mean? Didn’t he get permad due to being upset about anime and then gave up posting here? He probably spent more time criticising Rothuss than Rothuss actually spent writing his books.
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Aug 9, 2021 15:35
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Cardiac posted:Didn’t he get permad due to being upset about anime and then gave up posting here? He got permad because he was incessantly negative and he would just do that thread-strafing thing where people would be discussing something and he would just roll in with "the movie is bad actually." I also never liked his critiques as I would never know what the gently caress he ever wanted from an author. I keep reading over that post that plunge linked, and I can't even figure out what he's criticizing. "Ugh! outsider characters!" So, are we supposed to have characters who love and are embraced by the status quo? I genuinely don't know what he wants art to be. Plan Z fucked around with this message at 17:06 on Aug 9, 2021 |
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Aug 9, 2021 17:01
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While that was given as the reason given on final perma the thing that spurred mods to action was him specifically harassing people he had decided were guilty of wrong think.
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Aug 9, 2021 17:16
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TERFherder posted:Do people really leave when they get perma'd? I thought you just dropped another $10 to re-roll, or logged into one of your parachute accounts. He seems like kind to have parachute accounts, know what I mean? If you get identified as a re-reg of a permabanned account, your new account gets permabanned. If you can fly under the radar with your new account then you'll get away with it, but the kind of person who gets permabanned usually isn't capable of doing that.
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Aug 9, 2021 17:30
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That BotL post almost makes me want to read the books again, which I’m shocked by “The point-of-view characters are constantly faced with reverses that they could not foresee, with the most obvious example being Martin’s trademark gruesome twists.” “Through the these characters, readers of A Song of Ice and Fire may engage in a fantasy of being an insider to politics, history, and heroism while finding their own alienation validated.” gently caress yeah Though he was super obnoxious and trolling all the time, forum villains could be fun every now and then. Bring him back
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Aug 9, 2021 17:49
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some bust on that guy posted:That BotL post almost makes me want to read the books again, which I’m shocked by With villains, you need to know when they're too much. Compare, say, Ramsay Bolton in the books and in the show. In the books, he's a horrendous brute who shows up in a couple of chapters here and there. In the show, he's the most cunningly devious mastermind and the world's most amazing ninja, with equal screen time to any of the main characters. One of these is a good amount of villainous, the other one is way too much. BotL was the Show Ramsay of forum villainy.
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Aug 9, 2021 18:55
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Kylaer posted:If you get identified as a re-reg of a permabanned account, your new account gets permabanned. If you can fly under the radar with your new account then you'll get away with it, but the kind of person who gets permabanned usually isn't capable of doing that. Is that identification purely reliant on them being an rear end in a top hat in exactly the same way? Seems like both the best system and hilarious for how many times it seems to happen.
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Aug 9, 2021 19:11
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Yes, it's like a lava lamp.
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Terrible Opinions posted:While that was given as the reason given on final perma the thing that spurred mods to action was him specifically harassing people he had decided were guilty of wrong think. No... the claim was that he was harassing one particular individual and even doing so off-site. The biggest reason he was banned is he would come in to threads and poo poo on things nerds loved in an extremely hostile, acerbic, viterpurative way. Nerds hate that and so they reported him. The mods got tired of playing referee, because SA probes and bans are essentially calvinball, and they dredged up an excuse that fit the current zeitgeist and perma'ed him. Much was made of the fact that the guy he was supposedly "harassing" was disabled either physically or mentally, I can't remember. I thought his book barn posting was great, but what I saw of his non-book-barn posting was often a lot more childish and basically name-calling, which I think was probably because people genuinely engaged with the idea of criticism in the book barn, but I get the feeling in CD or whatever the anime/comic book sub is there are sacred cows and they are not to be poked fun at in certain ways. Anyway, he definitely re-reged, he's outed himself at least once as a re-reg, hey may well be reading this very thread right now ooohweeeehoooo.
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Aug 9, 2021 19:30
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That thread he made however long ago where he posted huge rear end effort posts on why all the fantasy authors I enjoy actually blow was really entertaining. One has to wonder why he read all those books he hated though.
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Aug 9, 2021 19:35
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Tofu Injection posted:That thread he made however long ago where he posted huge rear end effort posts on why all the fantasy authors I enjoy actually blow was really entertaining. A sane person would read a lovely book, say meh and go read a new book. Not write a long treatise why a book is bad. Edit: on the other I post in this thread which is the above. 
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Aug 9, 2021 20:17
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some bust on that guy posted:Though he was super obnoxious and trolling all the time, forum villains could be fun every now and then. Bring him back I get where you’re coming from, but maybe please don’t advocate for the unbanning of a literal cyberstalker with a slew of vendettas against people who made him mad online. It’s not a good look. Terrible Opinions posted:While that was given as the reason given on final perma the thing that spurred mods to action was him specifically harassing people he had decided were guilty of wrong think. The perma was more of a lifetime achievement perma because the mods and admins were just loving sick of him and his antics after like three years of him being a giant gaping rear end in a top hat. The revelation that BravesOfTheLamps was a serial stalker and harasser who followed people around SA and to offsite places like Discord in coordinated, psychologically abusive harassment campaigns came after the perma when people started crying for his return, and the mod of CineD at the time was like “Hey, yeah, the guy is an insane stalker who has been hounding me across multiple platforms for years, and also preying upon the vulnerabilities of another poster, including attacking their therapy photography, and then gaslighted people into believing he was the one being stalked somehow.” Guy’s a world class creep. nine-gear crow fucked around with this message at 20:29 on Aug 9, 2021 |
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Aug 9, 2021 20:25
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nine-gear crow posted:I get where you’re coming from, but maybe please don’t advocate for the unbanning of a literal cyberstalker with a slew of vendettas against people who made him mad online. It’s not a good look. This is a cool fictional universe you're working on, I'd be interested to know if you're planning to publish.
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Aug 9, 2021 20:52
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pseudanonymous posted:This is a cool fictional universe you're working on, I'd be interested to know if you're planning to publish. I’ll be sure to ship a copy to you on Earth-2. God, I thought Lamps’ lunatic fan club went subterranean after he got outted as a stalker, but nope the torch still burns bright in some places.
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Aug 9, 2021 21:01
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pseudanonymous posted:This is a cool fictional universe you're working on, I'd be interested to know if you're planning to publish. If only BotL was still around to critique it! I actually never cared for him and I'm glad he's gone.
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Aug 9, 2021 21:19
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Vichan posted:If only BotL was still around to critique it! Careful now, he might just light  on fire and do some revenge posting.
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Aug 9, 2021 21:52
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ASoIAF characters and the vaccines : Ned died way back during the first wave insisting it was just a flu. Brienne got her shots but did not tell anybody. Dany got vaccinated as soon as she could and posts cringy multi-paragraph posts everyday on social networks about she thinks how the anti-vax should be punished. Theon got his shots but tried to suck the vaccine out with a venom pump. Stannis is sulking in his apartment, mostly spends his time making note of everyone he sees wearing their masks wrong. Jon Snow got COVID and almost died, now is against vaccines because "herd immunity is the better option". Tyrion got one shot but forgot to get the second dose, has a new contrarian take everyday on the epidemic, supported the quarantine but broke it all the time. Cersei did not get vaxxed because she thinks covid is both a hoax and a bioweapon. Jaime is "definitely not an antivaxxer" but thinks more research is needed to know if it's really safe. Littlefinger is publicly anti-vax but got his shots secretly. Varys bought shares in Pfizer and insists the other vaccines are less effective. Euron lied to get all five vaccines to obtain "super-immunity". Victarion went to Russia to try and get Sputnik, got shot in the arm with krokodil instead.
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Aug 10, 2021 15:43
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There is no way Ned Stark would be a covid denialist
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Aug 13, 2021 06:31
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Flesnolk posted:There is no way Ned Stark would be a covid denialist He'd believe in it but still go to the capital to meet Robert because it's the honorable thing to do. And then he'd catch it and prolly die
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Aug 13, 2021 15:16
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speaking of lovely diseases, remember when in the show the solution to greyscale was to "uhm, cut it off carefully?".
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Aug 14, 2021 19:20
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Ginette Reno posted:He'd believe in it but still go to the capital to meet Robert because it's the honorable thing to do. And then he'd catch it and prolly die Ned would be the one who figures out just how bad the pandemic is going to be in like, say, late January of 2020, tries to warn everyone about it but is ignored, and then catches it and dies by like mid March. And then Joffrey gives a speech from the Iron Throne telling everyone to drink bleach, because he’s an idiot and thinks that that might actually work.
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Aug 14, 2021 20:46
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Whizzing Wizard posted:speaking of lovely diseases, remember when in the show the solution to greyscale was to "uhm, cut it off carefully?". Clearly the way you cure a skin disease is to cut off a person's skin! 
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Aug 15, 2021 22:38
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