WARNING: SPOILERS AHEAD
Bespoke,
Reading right-wing takes on Game of Thrones Season 8 (e.g. the replies to Gregory Hood‘s recently article) is rather bewildering. Justified disappointment with D&D’s mishandling of everything is interspersed with a certain glee that SJW-feminist white girl Daenerys got her well-deserved comeuppance for invading Westeros with hordes of raping swarthy foreigners, with the metaphor here being rather obvious. I wonder if they were watching the same serial that I was. Or perhaps all these obsessions with SJWs, womynz, and rapefugees have addled their brains to such an extent that they can’t help but see these phantasmagorias anywhere they look.
By GoT standards, Daenerys was not a bad ruler by any stretch of the imagination. To be sure, she was on that game’s Easy Mode after her dragon eggs hatched, at least so far as conquest was concerned. She did inspire love and admiration, at least in Essos, though she did fail to build good institutions in the places she conquered. But nor were there any major mistakes, at least before the IQ of everyone in Westeros took a two standard deviation hit when D&D ran out of book material during Season 5. Robb Stark inviting ruin on account of Muh Dick, Stannis rage quitting his own line thanks to a weird red woman and twenty good men, Cersei letting a sect of religious fanatics take over King’s Landing who then proceeded to imprison her – I don’t recall Daenerys doing anything nearly as stupid until the very end.
All the “moral” arguments are so contrived and ridiculous. There are strong taboos against slavery in Westeros, and it seems the sentiment is shared by most people in Essos as well. Slave masters who crucified slaves for sport got crucified in turn – what a tragedy. What should she have done, anyway? Left them alive and plotting against her? Inviting foreign armies to Westeros? The only people complaining about it are those without the gold or charisma to do likewise. At this point, I would remind agitated Alt Righters that the Unsullied are eunuchs, so not much risk of race miscegenation there. Burning the Tarlys? Reminder that they were traitors to their liege lords, the Tyrrells, whom they had just helped to snuff out as a House. They then refused to bend the knee when Daenerys magnanimously gave them the chance to do so. Both essentially volunteered to die for dubious and frankly implausible reasons, and Daenerys is supposed to be bad for granting them their Darwin Award. Burning Varys? Lifelong spymaster who runs a network of mutilated child killers who had no apparent qualms about serving all sorts of tyrants who had a change of heart that was very believable and started openly plotting a coup against her. The people who had enabled that treason – Sansa, Jon, and Tyrion – did not even experience any significant repercussions. Reminder that Robb Stark used to execute his vassals for a tenth as much treason. Reminder that Arya Stark, who is supposed to be “good”, basically exterminated an entire House to punish the treason of its patriarch.
Come to think of it, even larping as Nuclear Gandhi towards the end was somewhat defensible. Varys had ensured that news of Jon’s true parentage and greater legitimacy spread. This was enabled by Jon, who told his sister Sansa about it, who in turn wanted to use that to assert the North’s independence – even though there would be no North at all had it not been for Daenerys and her dragons and dragonglass. Consider the actions of the “honorable” (if rather thick) Jon. He absolutely had to tell Sansa about his parentage, despite her pronounced disloyalty towards her Queen (also contrast that with his “father” Ned Stark, who had the discipline and self-sacrifice to carry Jon’s secret to his grave). Moreover, he had to tell Sansa all about it right there and then, instead of waiting a couple of months until the war was over and Daenerys had been formally crowned. Even towards the end, he could still have probably salvaged the situation by giving Dany a convincing physical demonstration that he still loved her, but apparently getting his dick wet was too much of a sacrifice.
Meanwhile, consider things from Daenerys’ perspective. Over the course of the past two Seasons, she had lost all her most trusted advisors and companions, and two of her three war-winning dragons – in large part thanks to people who had outright betrayed her like Varys, undermined her with their idiocy like Jon, or a combination of both like Tyrion (whose divided loyalties were always self-evident). Her own legitimacy was under question thanks to her supposed friends and allies. At that point, imposing her rule through a demonstration of terror may very well have been the only avenue left to her. In the end, her terminal mistake was not to have had Jon arrested as well.
And so instead of spreading Westerosi Supremacy to the ends of the end, the continent is now ruled by an all-seeing derp state that worships trees and everyday affairs of state are managed by an illiterate bandit whose priority is to rebuild all the brothels. Based AF! /s
Here’s an even more powerful take. In reality, the real lesson of Game of Thrones – taking the show at face value – is that it is the northerners who are subhuman scum. Think about it. Everybody who has ever tried to help that flyspeck backwater out of the goodness of their hearts ended up getting a knife in their back for their troubles. They failed to rally to Stannis, the rightful King of the Seven Kingdoms, to save their own hides from a psychotic despot. In gratitude for rallying the Vale to their aid against Ramsay Bolton, the Starks imposed a show trial on Littlefinger that did not even have the appearance of due process (unlike the cases against Tyrion in both the Vale and King’s Landing). While we the audience knew Littlefinger pretty much deserved to die, this would not have been at all obvious to the assembled at Winterfell. So far as they were concerned, it was more of a “meet the new boss, same as the old boss” situation. Finally, they repaid Daenerys for provisioning dragonglass, the life of one of her dragons, and thousands of her soldiers by plotting against her and eventually murdering her.
Woke.
The Night King was the only guy who was truly woke to the NQ. Even his world of eternal darkness and undeath would have been objectively far superior to the clown world w actually got. The one thing we can take consolation from is that there is still a chance that the Three Eyed Raven becomes wise to northern duplicity, wargs into Drogon, and gives Winterfell the deep frying that it deserves.
(Literally) Broke.
imo it would be better if you wrote the promised post about Ivan Grozny instead of devoting so much thought to the failed kingship of that dragon queen.
But since this is apparently now the Game of thrones blog, I might just as well link to this which warned of the consequences of GoT addiction already years ago:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rapo0h-RDnk
Signalling of cool aloofness from pop culture acknowledged.
Indeed, never trust the Northerners – not on Westeros and not on Earth either.
https://www.cuttingedge.org/ahpimages/Russia-Poised-to-Attack-Israel.jpg
https://www.amazon.com/Russian-Bear-Poised-Attack-Israel/dp/B00YNU4C8Y
Daenerys was never an SJW: she was an opportunist who used moral rhetoric to justify enlarging her own power. I laugh not at her fate (which was kind of tragic) but at the SJWs and Redditors who took her for some kind of Woke hero and were disappointed at her obvious, predictable denouement. The character who for 7 years talked about burning cities to the ground…burnt a city to the ground? Nooooooooo! Actually there may be a lesson in there about university-educated leftish types: words for them never mean what they actually mean, and they just assume everything is a bluff or exaggeration.
https://imgur.com/a/hSbS8Vb
This is about as bad as your “Japs deserved to be nuked” post.
The North is supposed to be grateful that the fight against the undead was joined by other people, who would be fucked if the white walkers won and added all the Northmen to their numbers anyway? Daenerys also said something stupid like “I came to fight Jon’s war”, as if it’s only the North’s problem.
She demanded the North bend the knee for her help against the common threat, and even if they didn’t like it, they did bend the knee and honored their promises.
They did not betray anyone. Demanding that people don’t share important truths with their family, even when Jon gave up his rightful claim to the Iron Throne, like he gave up the crown of King in the North before – this is too much. Just because a power hungry bitch feels entitled to rule over everyone.
Daenerys was a tyrant just like Cercei and she got what she deserved.
Varys was the only one who actually betrayed her, and it turned out that he was right.
Jon gave her the benefit of the doubt until the last moment, he basically begged her to give him a reason not to kill her, any flimsy pretense of sanity and compassion would have worked, and he stabbed her only when it was completely clear that the bitch is crazy.
The North owed nothing to Stannis, Ned Stark already died needlessly for him, and a psychopath who burns his own daughter at the stake does not deserve loyalty.
Littlefinger has nothing to do with the Knights of the Vale, he only got power there as a result of his manipulations and the murder of Lysa Aryn. The Vale’s actual representative, Lord Royce, was happy to help Sansa and I don’t think he felt betrayed by her actions.
I only agree with wishing the Night King killed everyone, the writing in Season 8 was so bad that this would really have been a more satisfying end.
Sansa and Arya not giving the Hound the threesome that he deserved was the only true betrayal from the North.
Probably the best and funniest review of GOT 8 especially the last part about the hound and the stark girls.
I’m sorry, that wheelchair just looks so out of place. Though placed next to a mug of Starbucks, perhaps not.
The first known wheelchairs, courtesy of the Chinese, looked more like wheelbarrows with a chair at the front. That seems more practical than what we are shown here, actually. The first European variant only appeared in 1565. (Wikipedia.)
As we discover in retrospect, she was correct.
The North is lightly populated; it would take the Night King at least months if not years to “assimilate” all of them. Game plan – Take King’s Landing; kill Cersei, become Queen; consolidate control over the Six Kingdoms; build a wall at the Neck; man it with dragonglass-armed troops, ballistas with dragonglass-tipped bolts, etc. Let NK smash his armies against it.
Come the next summer, logistics will be strong enough to come in and physically remove them. The new empty territories can be settled with Dothraki, who will become a hereditary warrior caste, serving in the wars of world conquest to come.
His betrayal (to which Tyrion and Jon were substantially party to) was what triggered the descent into madness in the first place. Though it’s a stretch to call it madness – as I pointed out, there was a logic to it.
We can all agree on that.
In fairness, that is perhaps the one not atrocious detail about that zemsky sobor.
3ER (Bran) is supposed to be this omniscient being with a massive Wikipedia at his fingertips (root tips?). He had access to all the world’s wheelchair designs in history so it’s natural that the end product turned out to be good. He even said so himself.
The obvious strategy for ice walkers (after overcoming the wall) is to speed South destroying potential centers of resistance (cities and castles). The fact that as a result of delay will be a new wall, an army armed with dragon glass, etc. – obviously for any reasonable creature. After the destruction of centers of resistance the ice walkers can easily “assimilate” land.
They are nomads (at least in the book), and they can’t live in the forest
Presumably he will be remembered for paving all the land for handicapped accessibility, and for launching an ambitious infrastructure program with the slogan ‘Ramps before Ramparts!’.
Doubt it, considering how fast he covered the distance from Last Hearth to Winterfell.
The united army barely survived as it was, with a heavy dose of luck and with a person who could act as bait and had the knowledge in the first place that he can be used as bait for the NK. An army without the northmen in it and an undead army with those same northmen will make the position of Daenerys much harder (though it can be argued that after consolidating the six kingdoms her army will also be stronger, but the opposite can be argued as well).
She didn’t even know about dragonglass before Jon told her (or believe in the army of the dead for that matter). So she should have left the north after seeing that army and leave the northerners fight alone after they told her about the threat and about dragonglass and everything? Now that would have been some betrayal 🙂
Building a wall at the neck is not only impossible to do in time, but I don’t see how it would fare better than the ice wall.
So she did want to replace white people with rapefugees 🙂
Varys betrayed her once she insisted on burning King’s Landing instead of sieging it and minimizing innocent deaths. But whatever, I would not defend him.
Jon’s family conversation on the other hand is only a “betrayal” because Daenerys wants to rule over people who don’t want her. He refused a crown twice, he could hardly cuck himself any further in the name of Dany’s selfish interests.
I was hoping this was a thread about how to dispose of Canada once and for all. 🙁
Frankly I was terrified of Daenerys for quite a long time, long before season 5th. TO me, her descent into madness was logical conclusion of her earlier typical revolutionary mindset. Me good, my opponents bad, let’s built a bright future over the dead bodies of everyone who stands in my way. It was a bit rushed, but her being a tyrant was one of few bright spots of the final season. The 5th episode for me was the best episode of the season.
I’d call the fifth episode the best of the series. A nice change from the relentlessly average, idiotic fan service the Marvel movies have become. It’s a shame George RR Martin wasted his time on various nonsense and left the writers to essentially wing it.
The old tyrants were replaced by the very 21st century tyrant Bran. He knows everything about everyone, you sent a raven’s message 10 years ago, he’s read it, you’ll have a conversation next year, he’s already overheard it. Maybe he’ll be benign but really he’s the deep state and getting rid of him will be quite a problem.
His first order as king will be to re-plant weirwood trees in the south so that there’s 5G coverage everywhere.
Game of Thrones was a reflective myth – as most myths are, they are about our times. The story was very contemporary, it tripped over itself to be relevant to today’s world. In a typical Hollywood fashion it also didn’t know how to do an ending. Instead they had some platitudes, lots of improbable stuff, and the usual deus ex machina rush to end it. (G. Martin also had no idea how to end it better.)
The resolution was – as you noted – an all-knowing Bran surveillance state with oligarchs in charge of day-to-day rule. And some low level infrastructure for the hoi polloi, peasants are entitled to eat and breed. No change to the system. Mistakes were made, and they will be corrected – by oligarchs themselves like Tyrion. There were bad kings as there are bad people. But change is utopian, dangerous – and it obviously doesn’t work (see poor Dany).
The assembled oligarchs, from Dorn to Vale, women and cripples, meritocrats (Sam Tarly) and lucky bandits (Davos, Bronn) – will now keep things under control. Until the next psycho emerges among them or externally. It is all about better management, and maybe banning incest.
If people meeting in Davos would do an offsite to write a mythical story, it would play out roughly the same. We cried, we laughed, now we can go home – it is all under control. That was the message.
Why not both the GoT crap AND the Ivan Grozny post?
Good points.
Rejoinders:
NK has no sense for strategy or even tactics (the only reason he even stood a chance at Winterfell was because the northerners were similarly idiotic).
If I was the NK, I would have raced past the one dragonglass-defended redoubt in Westeros down south to King’s Landing and its 500,000 potential zombies. Not even the walls would have posed a problem thanks to my Cryostasis perk. Freeze the water around the harbor and attack from there.
The Northerners knew that there was a large White Walker column moving slowly in their direction, and had a pretty good idea of where it was. Dany still had air superiority; the correct thing would have been to do periodic, hit-and-run strafing attacks with the dragons to gradually deplete their numbers. This would have had the added bonus of being visually very cool.
The problem is that they relied on the strategic insight of Jon Snow. One unnoticed but recurring theme of the show is Jon getting himself into hopeless situations and only being bailed out by some combination of luck, magic and the kindness of others: Hardhome, Battle of the Bastards, the coup attempt, the expedition beyond the wall all followed this pattern. Jon was a great swordsman but a lousy leader.
Regarding Beckow’s post, it seems like the Davos types are deeply unsatisfied with the outcome. Everybody wanted Dany to be queen, or failing that, at least Sansa. It was supposed to be her turn!
although the books were very well-crafted and the show very well acted and produced…
the books are a mixture of cultural poison (deliberate absence of the battle between good and evil traditional in fantasy) and Jewish revenge fantasy on Europeans (complete with Carthaginian slave-soldiers and nomadic Turkic invaders with a finale of a mass burnt sacrifice of white devils in dragon fire.
the TV series didn’t quite get the references (a mixture of younger generation and less historical knowledge maybe) and so was more concerned with modern tropes i.e. girl power.
the two things combined: anti-white + girl power = female SJW super heroine.
so not surprising non-SJWs are enjoying how mad female SJWs are.
Canada will eventually recede into the lower 49 as the ice cap melts, similarly to California as a result of earthquakes and oceanic water levels increasing too. Think of it Thorfinnsson, both of your worst nightmares will eventually be taken care of by an ‘act of God’. 🙂
Maybe having the blond, female SJW get murdered is part of the J revenge fantasy.
hard to say – i think the motivation behind the books (older guy, revenge fantasy) was different from the TV show (younger dudes, standard SJW tropes) so as Martin hasn’t written his ending yet (iirc) i was expecting the show’s makers to end it with the dragon lady as Queen girlpower 1st.
I don’t think that identity manias matter much to the Davos crowd. It is a tool, a method to be used. But if the resulting message would be that ‘change is possible‘, if it encourages disobedience, well, then clearly Dany is not worth it. Sansa was more complicated, and I think as an alternative ending that was possible and within what was desired as a modern myth. They probably didn’t do it, because of the unseemly rush to end it – it would had required 1-2 episodes to tie loose ends with Sansa.
I also don’t think that Bran’s all-seeing surveillance message was accidental – it has been a dream of elites since time immemorial to ‘know everything‘, it makes them feel secure. Bran was an ideal outcome for the oligarchic state. And the assembled oligarchs at the end sitting around discussing ‘naval buildups’, and budgets was priceless. With all the clowning around it was precisely the image that an elite oligarch has as the ideal state of affairs. The clowns always exist to distract – look around, they have been popping up like mushrooms after heavy rain.
Beckow, I would like to get in touch with you.
pharmakon1913 at protonmail dot com
Regards,
Pharmakon
Scratch a Russian, find a Dothraki?
But seriously, the Night King is the true hero of this epic.
The Children of the Forest tried to turn him into a weapon ensure their victory over the First Men, but he somehow broke free of their control and turned against his creators, ensuring that humans, not The Children, would inherit Westeros.
From the depths of time he foresaw the hour of greatest peril for his people, the Westeroi (First Men and Andals, obviously one people, hence the profound cultural similarities and ease of intermarriage despite different religions).
He foresaw a time when all the assembled evil of Essos would invade a divided, unprepared realm.
A time when the dragons of accursed Valaria, the depraved sorcerers of Assai, the savage Dothraki bloodriders and the mindless Unsullied slave soldiers, under the leadership of a cruel, vengeful, bloodthirsty queen, would overwhelm a Westeros hopelessly weakened by Wormtongue traitors – traitors who would ignore their sacred obligations to the Gods, their families and their nation, merely to avenge their petty personal grievances.
Patiently, across uncounted eons, he prepared the only possible force large enough, and fierce enough, to meet the needs of The Day.
When the time came, he began to move. He brought the oldest war in Westeros to a victorious conclusion by exterminating the remnants of The Children, whose truly evil nature he knew all too well. He contrived a series of incidents designed to build the heroic stature of the Starks and Jon Snow, so that they would be prepared to do their part for Westeros in the denouement.
Above all, he severely weakened the army of Essos, killing one of the dragons, half of the Unsullied, most of the Dothraki, and several prominent sorcerers of the demon R’hllor.
Having weakened the forces of Essos sufficiently to prevent the conquest of Westeros, the unpleasant task demanded by Necessity was finally complete.
He then presented himself before his chosen successor and allowed himself to be struck down.
Matt Yglesias made a similar argument: https://www.vox.com/culture/2019/5/26/18637091/game-of-thrones-targaryen-restoration-daenerys
It’s okay man.
You too can admit that the GoT character you most identify with is Ser Jorah Mormont and you too are secretly in love with Khaleesi.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k3hCPYCZGGM