HBO's adaptation of Game of Thrones - Thread 2. There are a lot of nerds.

push Dany into her Mad Queen arc

Is it really an arc if it takes place over the course of the final two episodes of a 7 season show?

Mad Queen finger roll

I would say it started the moment she got to Winterfell and didn't immediately have Northerners falling head over heels in love with her. xpost

Is it really an arc if it takes place over the course of the final two episodes of a 7 season show?

A generous reading would be that the arc began when she crucified the slave masters in Meereen two or three seasons ago, but I dunno if the writers had that in mind when writing those episodes? They do claim they've known Arya would kill the Night King since season 4 or something, so maybe they have had some long-term plan for Daenerys too, though obviously that could've been better executed. At least Arya's arc leading to slaying the NK made a lot of sense in retrospect.

What if Emilia Clarke's acting has always been an intentional choice, and the reason she makes Dany seem so uncharismatic and pouty is because that's how she really is? So the only ones who would find her to be a good ruler are the slaves she freed, and everyone on Westeros is totally unimpressed with her, which leads to her going crazy?

given clarke's career trajectory, you may be reading a bit much into her choices.
anyways, dany's "arc" of being chekhov's mad gun being left around for the moment when her fiery (GET IT?!?!?!) blood overflows into mass dragon slaughter, to either be reigned in or let loose as befits the endgame, has been telegraphed for years. it's just very poorly and patronizingly framed by these circumstances. fuck's sake, they stuffed misandry in a fridge!

So the only ones who would find her to be a good ruler are the slaves she freed

and (until recently) a ton of actual characters!

Speaking of which, I have to say I haven't really missed Daario Naharis but it is kinda weird that he's not around for all the action

xp

hey stuffed misandry in a fridge!

lol

given clarke's career trajectory, you may be reading a bit much into her choices.

Was aiming for sarcasm there, in case it wasn't clear.

Clarke was perfectly fine in the Han Solo movie, she just doesn't seem to be cut to play the sort of regal and authorative character Daenerys is supposed to be, it's hard to see why Tyrion et al would be so impressed by her.

I've been watching the show from the beginning the last week (just got to the red wedding) while simultaneously watching the new episodes (yes, a very dumb tv watching tactic) and dany is pretty monomaniacal from (almost) the very beginning. basically as soon as the dothraki start respecting her as queen she's on a one way trip to the iron throne.

that's a pretty good watching tactic, imo. you start to notice the references and echos back to earlier encounters a lot more easily if you're watching the episodes in parallel

that is, when they remember to do those things

woman has destiny to rule and consistently takes steps to accomplish this = monomaniacal
man does the same = hero

counterpoint: Stannis

Stannis wasn't set up as having a destiny to rule ...

Stannis was like, if someone convinced Hot Pie he should be the captain of the Kings Guard

I seem to remember that someone was telling him he had one

lol and everybody knew that was full of shit!

Remember when the two of them knew a sooper seekrit way in and out of the Red Keep? That's OK, neither do they!!

― Plinka Trinka Banga Tink (Eliza D.), Monday, May 6, 2019 12:02 PM (one hour ago)

the point was not to invade but to give Cersei an opportunity to step down peacefully so fewer people die. ...

stannis is such a boring character. also monomaniacal. also believes he has the right to rule due to being robert's heir given that "his" children are not his

well yeah, his claim is pretty similar to Dany's. He was a relative of the murdered king. He has some supernatural freaks telling him that he's the choice of the Lord of Light.

the entire subplot with Stannis was vile enough that everyone, including Melisandre, decided to wash their hands of the entire affair as soon as he was gone

but he spent many years of his life being storms end dude, middle brother ... like he wasn't raised with this destiny.

like Stannis is kinda the Joe Biden of Westeros ...

dany's older brother was the rightful heir until drogo killed him

no matter what Danerys was up to (including incinerating Sam's family) it was nothing compared to the shit Stannis and Melisandre were doing in the name of whatever prophecy

also "rightful heir". weird how much stock people put in the rules when obv no-one in this universe actually obeys them

also dany's claim is always very weird because it's predicated on the mad king being murdered and his reign ending that way as being a bad thing when he was obv terrible

xp every time Dany mentions her brother I groan and remember how he was the smarter but nearly as loathsome as Joffrey and at no moment do I feel bad about his fate

he was the worst, i was very stoked to see him getting his head melted

there was another character who didn't have any prophecies or bloodlines backing him, but who nonetheless took a lot of actions to get himself into a position to rule something or other, and he was mostly treated as a villain.

the show is pretty hard on people who believe their own hype

one of my coworkers said that he could imagine Euron carrying around a bag of feral cats and throwing them at people

seems about right

Euron is the first Proud Boy of Westeros imo

I couldn't completely agree with people referring to the Greyjoys as "the white trash of Westeros" but I get where they're coming from

Theon and Yara's dad going on about how Theon "didn't pay the iron price" for his fancy shirt which apparently means you only get a cool shirt if you take it off someone you killed was really something. And judging from Dad Greyjoy's look, he probably did that decades ago and never changed his shirt

implication was that they basically don't have commerce because paying the gold price for anything is ignoble. must be hard to do your grocery shopping on pyke

Dany and her storyline have been trash since at least season 3, if not 2. They literally repeated her one story 3 times: rulers refuse to obey her or capture her, then her dragon breathes fire and the rulers all die/surrender. Repeat. Which might explain why Dany is so tactically dumb: all she ever had to do was say Descarys and she won.

If she ended up being a Mad Queen it would be the most interesting thing to happen to her since she walked out of the fire in S1E10.

I agree (and I openly wished for it earlier itt I believe), but as other people have said, shoehorning that turn into the last few episodes is pretty shitty

i sorta resent this show for it's full infiltration of my life, like i can't even buy groceries
https://www.foodkick.com/product/win_pid_5003600

4☹4

I hadn't connected this to the Mad King, but Missandrei's last word basically being "fire em up with the dragon" is really close to his last command of "burn them all"

not sure how they're going to justify the dragon being able to do much considering all the mega-crossbows on the ramparts

maybe they can design some devices to eliminate big crossbows

bigger crossbows

I liked that they just stuck the big crossbows everywhere. Sort of thought they were going to fire Missandrei out of one when Danny etc turned up.

so, did they use all that wildfire when blowing up ships and the big church, or does Tyrion know where the rest is?

it was a bit weird that the crossbow bolt had enough velocity to slice through a ship

xpost

*Dany

maybe they can design some devices to eliminate big crossbows

giant thick armor, of course

bet Euron was touched that everyone knew about his baby already