#danereys

[shake-the-dust-kid]

GOT writers:

[schraderbrauu]

me, not knowing a thing about GoT and watching everyone's reaction to the newest series:

[amtk86]

Burning King’s Landing w/out killing Dany’s character

The citizens surrender, Dany thinks she’s won and goes to burn the castle. Cersei, realizing she’s lost, sets off a chain of the wildfire that no one knows how to stop. It makes a lot more narrative sense for Cersei to kill everyone since her entire character has been built on a lack of empathy for anyone beyond her own family. It goes against everything that not only the series BUT THE EPISODE ITSELF set up for Dany to be the one to burn King’s Landing. Dany was listening to Tyrion! She agreed to give the citizens a chance to surrender! She waited for them to ring the bells, even seemed like she was hoping for it (so it’s really fucking stupid that the bells seemed to trigger her)! She clearly had a strategy that involved minimal civilian death! She expressed that she was upset that Westeros didn’t love her like Esso did! In fact, the hints towards Mad Queen Dany these last two episodes would have made Dany not burning KL more subversive than if she did. We knew she was going to do it, people were more angry that D&D went down this route than surprised. Making it so the audience thinks everything is fine and that Cersei is going to get executed, only for her to give Dany one last fuck you by releasing the wildfire would have been less insulting to the audience and more in character.

So here’s how I think these last two episodes should have been written:

A small time skip of maybe a couple of months would have made Dany seem less idiotic than she did last episode. Making so everyone had mostly healed would have been better. I’d rather not have her die but if she must, Missandi would not have died in chains because as a black woman FUCK YOU. It was unnecessarily cruel to her character to kill her off like that. The last thing she says before she died would not have been Dracrays but maybe some proclamation of her loyalty to Dany. The hints to mad Dany stay but make it ambiguous whether she actually wants to attack King’s Landing.

Next episode, have everyone question Dany’s mental health and keep Dany’s true feelings about the idea of attacking King’s Landing ambiguous. Give indication that she’s willing to go either way. Stray away from Dany’s POV, this makes keeping her thoughts ambiguous easier as at this point I don’t think she would trust anyone beyond Grey Worm–even if she does love Jon. Keep the execution of Varyes, which makes Jon question Dany. Tyrion pleas about the bell, Dany doesn’t respond and Tyrion begins to lose hope about Dany sparing the civilians. So carry on as the original episode goes—except for the Red Army standing down. As Ironically funny as I found that part, I need them to keep going for this—up until the part where someone rings the bell. Dany is visibly relieved they surrendered making it clear to the audience she never wanted to attack the citizens. Cersei sets off the wildfire and begins to burn down King’s Landing. No one knows how to stop it and everyone attempts to get as many civilians to safety as possible. Dany goes to attack the castle.

[jae-writes-fanfiction]

She couldn't remember their names They spun her around on the damp old stones Spun away all her sorrow and pain And she never wanted to leave.

Jenny of Oldstones: GoT 8.02

[squeakowl]

I never post fandom stuff, but...

I have had an EPIPHANY.

OK, so: I’m binge-watching Game of Thrones Seasons 5-7 in preparation for Season 8. But I was thinking about all the seemingly needless divergences from the source material - I’m noticing things as far back in Season 3 or 4, even earlier. Plot lines are changed, accelerated, rearranged, eliminated, or combined. Characters who are dead in the books are still with us on the show, and characters that have been written out of the show in very final ways are still alive and kicking on the pages of the novels. It’s both frustrating and baffling. And I got to thinking about how I’m hearing all this RAGE about the 8th Season, how the character “development” doesn’t make sense (even between episodes), how the choices the characters make are both upsetting and completely out-of-character. How there are too many undeserved and unnecessary character deaths (which, for this show, is saying an awful lot). And I was just wondering to myself...why? Why are the writers doing this? Why is G.R.R.M. (as producer) approving these choices? Shock value? Ratings? Alcohol? Why?

And then I realized - they don’t want to spoil the books. It explains everything. TV shows air in a much quicker, more regular fashion than books get released. So even if they were moving relatively in-step with the publications of the novels, the TV show would very quickly outpace them. And then you have the problem of, if you stick very closely to your source material, said source material then becomes old news. Viewers/readers would already know what happens in the yet-to-be-published books...if they actually depict on the show what will actually happen in the novels. If that were the case, G.R.R.M. wouldn’t ever sell another book, because why bother? We’d already know what happens, so who cares? But if they change things on the TV series, lots of things, things like killing still-living-in-the-books characters, or changing plot-lines, or eliminating them entirely...then they keep the watchers/readers in the dark. We have no idea which plot lines are canon, which are crap, who’s dead, who’s not, or who will eventually win. We have no idea if the plot lines and character developments we hate so much on Season 8 are even real (”real” here meaning “source material canon”). I almost wouldn’t be surprised if the endgame of the books works out in practically the exact opposite way that the series is depicting.

Of course G.R.R.M. wants to sell books, so why would he reveal what will happen in the very end with two whole (enormous) books yet to be released? So many of the newest developments on the TV series diverge so dramatically from every single one of the seeds he’s been planting for 23 years and counting, that it would be literary suicide to throw away all that intricate plotting now. It would make even less sense than the show diverging from its earlier seasons. It seems inconceivable to me for an author to spend almost a quarter of a century intricately plotting, and foreshadowing, and dropping hints for things that basically amount to gigantic glorified red herrings. It would be an absurd amount of effort to go to for something you’re basically throwing away? Like spending a week prepping for and cooking a huge fancy 10-course dinner party, only to purposefully dump it on the floor right before your serve it to your guests.

So I think it’s pretty safe to guess that the show is, in its own weird way, saving us from spoilers with its bizarre changes. And that means that whatever you’re upset about might not even be “real”.

(Help me make this go viral, people, it might quell some of the fandom rage...)

[soldierofkrypton7777]

You know there is absolutely no reason that Danereys and Sansa, two of the most powerful and intelligent women in Westeros, couldn’t just talk to one another and actually got to know each other. Both of them have had hard lives that the other would understand and sympathize with. There was no reason for them to be against one another.

[butnottome]

Sansa is *RIGHT* let your soldiers *REST* idk why this is a difficult concept dany????? what is you dOING

[gleefully-macabre]

Someone’s gotta either kill the dragon or win it over so it listens to them instead of Daenerys. I’m hoping for the latter, because in the end they are just beasts that were trained to be vicious.

Unfortunately, Drogon was setting cities ablaze as an adolescent. I’m not sure he can be retrained. He also hasn’t bonded with anyone except Daenerys. It wasn’t even one of the dragons that Tyrion unchained ( though how poetic would it be if the once child who wanted even a small dragon got the biggest?).

Dragons are Dany’s identity and her power. They’re the only reason anyone follows her, and she’s proven she can’t hold a city without them. And she destroyed any claim to the moral high ground of a savior.

If Rhaegal somehow survived (why not? The Dothraki did), it’s possible Jon could get to him and challenge Dany to what amounts to a dog fight with nuclear weapons. Or he could kill Drogon before Tyrion is excecuted. I think it has to be Jon since he’s been so stupid about her all season, though by now I think it just proves he’d be a lousy king.